This summer, the New Museum is giving visitors a reason to become regulars.
The downtown Manhattan art museum unveiled its long-anticipated property expansion, led by renowned architecture firm OMA, earlier this spring. After remaining closed for two years of construction, the New Museum has re-emerged with 60,000 more square feet to continue, making its mark as one of the city’s leading platforms for contemporary art. As art lovers continue to flock back to check out the institution’s evocative opening group exhibition “New Humans: Memories of the Future,” the building has another addition waiting in the wings: the debut of its first full-service onsite restaurant, Oberon.
Henry Rich, founder of the restaurant’s namesake hospitality firm Oberon Group, described the dining concept as a “neighborhood restaurant for New York‘s downtown art world.”
“We always try to open a restaurant that serves a specific community — preferably in the cultural space, preferably with the sustainability through-line,” says Rich, whose portfolio includes intimate wine bars including June, Rucola and Anaïs in Brooklyn, event caterer Purslane, and community projects in the Hudson Valley.
Oberon aims to be an “everyday watering hole” for the museum and its broad community of visitors, gallerists, artists, trustees and staff.
“ The concept is still very much the same as our other restaurants,” adds Rich. “We want to make healthy, delicious food that people want to eat most of the time. It’s not too expensive, it’s not too fussy, it’s not too chef-y.”
From the Oberon menu.
Courtesy of Alex Staniloff
He tapped artist, chef and “Salad for President” creator Julia Sherman to design a menu with wide appeal that would match the restaurant’s creative setting. Sherman is joined by co-executive chef Ali Ghriskey, who will oversee kitchen operations.
The cuisine at Oberon is new American — “classic New York, but with a spin,” says Ghriskey, adding that approachability was the goal across all elements of the restaurant, from the food served to the dining room environment.
The vegetable-forward menu includes a selection of snacks — small, shareable bites — several salads, and extended list of main dishes, all informed by greenmarket seasonality and a zero-waste mindset. Late spring dishes on the menu might include options like fried squash blossoms, a kohlrabi and hazelnut salad, leek orecchiette, and chicken rubbed with dehydrated fig leaf. Classic comfort options, like the burger and fries, will be offered year-round. “We want to be somewhere that people come back to every day,” adds Ghriskey. The bar program is similarly ingredient-focused, with botanical-based cocktails and spritzes.
The restaurant extends the experience of a visit to the New Museum by showcasing art in the dining room. Artist collaborations include a mural by Ian Cheng located behind the bar, and furniture including wooden tables, the bar top, and resin lights designed by Minjae Kim. After dinner, guests will be presented with chocolates featuring custom wrappers by artist Laurie Anderson.
Oberon also marks the first full service restaurant commission for OMA. Lead architects Shohei Shigematsu and Rem Koolhaas worked closely with the restaurant team to hone the dining room concept, creating a transition from the museum’s metal interiors to the warm wood tones of the restaurant. OMA integrated sustainability, a core tenet of the Oberon Group, into the restaurant build-out through usage of carbon-negative cork material throughout the space.
”The space is meant to encourage celebration, conviviality, conversation, privacy, intimacy,” says Rich of the room’s design, which creates moments of intimacy within the larger room through booth-pod seating. “Their design did a really good job of allowing for those moments throughout the space,” he adds. “But also, at any moment you can port into the fact that you’re in a busy, buzzy restaurant.”
One that also happens to be located inside one of New York’s most exciting museums.
Chefs Ali Ghriskey and Julia Sherman.
Courtesy
