Putting a foot inside the gallery, a new restaurant and bar in the center of the city, must be taken to a suitable world for a theme park.
They enter through their bar, and the views of the Olympic boulevard have been gone. In the place of the windows, you will find a fantastic and idealized version of an important city, a vision of the horizon that seems to tear from an animated film. Walk to the dining room and at first you can see a blank canvas, only soon its walls and tables wake up to place it underwater, in nature or surrounded by a hot warehouse and boiling where the lava flows on the clock -shaped gears.
The goal is wonderful: sometimes you can place your hand on the table and wait while the fish swim towards you. Or you can track a circle around a plate and see the flowers around it. Each scene, each dish in five -plates food, is conjured through an artist, its choreographed dance movements to digital projections designed to evoke a sense of curiosity.
It is, to use a traditional phrase, dinner and a show.
The tables in the gallery will be illuminated through projections, giving life around the plates for unique interactions in the new space dinner, “Elementa”.
(The gallery)
However, the team behind the concept, veterans of the theme park industry, I hope that the gallery feels completely modern, always changing and something alive. Stay, for example, in the bar, and notice dozens of scenes that develop within the windows of skyscrapers, each one an improvised abstract story.
The complete experience of the dinner, called “Elementa”, is launched this Friday with a menu developed by Joshua Whigham, the former kitchen chef in the advanced Bazaar now closed by José Andrés. A two -hour dinner that explores the five classic elements, is the first of what creators expect many shows to use the space.
“It is a difficult world in which we live,” says the co -founder of the gallery, Daran Ulmer. “If I can give it some relief, I think it is therapeutic, take it to another world and allow you to imagine, dream, escape, relax and, in some cases, inspire.”
The gallery bar, called Horizon, is established in the middle of an idealized fiction urban landscape. Pay close attention to buildings, as the scenes develop in the windows and doors.
(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)
Thematic parks designers enter the world of nightlife
When Disneyland celebrated the centenary of the Walt Disney Co. throughout 2023, he did it with a new night fireworks show, “Wondrous Journeys”. That production, which presents looks in each animated film that the study has produced, will return this year for the 70th anniversary of Disneyland. Ulmer, through his company, Mousetrappe Media, collaborated with Disney about the experience, designing projection mapping that could be seen in the castle of sleeping beauty and in other places. Over the years, Mousetrappe's work may also have caught in a show at the Hollywood Bowl, while the study developed the projections for the performances of “The Nightmare Bephore Christmas”. The extensive Mousetappe portfolio also includes experiences at the Kennedy Space Center and One World Trade Center, among many other cultural projects.
For the gallery, Ulmer created a new company called Allureum, but is closely connected with Mousetappe, with many of its same employees, including co -founder Chuck Fawcett. And is extracted from Ulmer's love for theme parks. When it came to looking at the next phase of his career, Ulmer, 57, began to look at night life.
“I'm not going to build a new theme park, but what should there be?” Ulmer says. “I started focusing on this gap between dinner and a movie and going to a bar and a fairly expensive day in a theme park.”
Ulmer conducted research trips, visiting what he calls “convincing” local premises such as Skybar, Castaway and Perch. He received projection dinner shows on cruises, animated table shows, some more traditional dinner theater and, of course, elaborately thematic restaurants. I was looking for a mixture of food, entertainment and themes.
“I found that many people did two of those well, but they rarely did all three together,” says Ulmer. “I was not seeing many places that really designed something that put the three on equal foot from scratch.”
The diners interact with the images projected on a table during the show “Element” in the gallery.
(The gallery)
Do not think about it as a trick (although its owners know what can)
The gallery is the last thematic restaurant in a city with a long history with the format. Only this depends largely on technology instead of memories or the elaborate design sets that have placed us from a prison to a submarine. The gallery points to an elegant but playful atmosphere; The purple urban bar, known as Horizon, has an optimistic but retro version of a city. And although a seat in the dining room is not cheap (“Elemento” will cost around $ 200 per person, with interactive communal tables, the sensation is anything but exclusive.
“We are not here today without the planet Hollywood, Hard Rock Cafe, Rainforest Cafe and all those things of the past,” says Ulmer, although he emphasizes that he is a bit worried that diners can have preconceived notions about some of those places. After all, many have not been traditionally known by the type of elevated food to which the gallery points. Ulmer realizes that those in the food space can see the gallery as a trick.
“I hope the world of food is skeptical,” says Ulmer. “There have been trick things in the past. I ask you to trust us and look and see where we are going from here. “
He says that chef Whigham “is literally a protected from José Andrés who designs this menu.” Ulmer quotes Whigham's work in Bazaar as particularly impressive, and says that “it was an inspiration for this project due to this passion to make an emotional experience.”
Each course in “Elementa” has the theme of one of the elements. The images are an example of the “water” dish, here Hamachi and algae with Kabocha pumpkin and tamari-shitaki dashi dressing.
(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)
The “Elementa” menu can change, but expect the courses to align with the projections on the table and on the walls, such as a mailbox surrounded by images of the ocean. One of Whigham's creations for the “water” element, for example, is the Hamachi and algae with the Kabocha pumpkin and Tamari-Shiitake Dashi dressing. A “fire” dish? Loin and mushrooms with coriander and pepper bark. This contrasts with the most informal plates in the horizon bar during their soft opening, which have leaned towards luxury but familiar pub food: a squid appetizer, a plate of abundant hummus, cheese and charcuterie, an 8 oz. Castye, and a variety of sandwiches and pizzas.
“Elementa” will be special occasion food, but for the concept to work, the horizon of the gallery bar will also have to become a meeting place. It is easy, for example, get lost in the scenes that are reproduced in the windows and doors of the city's buildings, which were filmed using improvisation actors of the comedy company The Groundlings.
“It's that public house,” says Ulmer. “We want to be a place where people meet and the meeting place, and it is a transformative. That is why the urban landscape has media. You can expect that to change vacation to vacation, and we will have activated events there. When we discover that it is your birthday, the city will celebrate your birthday for a moment. “
Under everything, there is a stimulating message
Few meals begin with an overture. His night in “Elementa” Will, courtesy of a brief musical composition of Ulmer. It begins with a dramatic floriture, but soon it becomes something more fantastic, with tones, perhaps, of the edifying themes of John Williams of “et el alierarestre”. The rest of the night is marked by the work of the impressionist composer Claude Debussy, lending food as cinematographic floriture.
The idea is that we are all actors in a performance. During dinner, guests will be encouraged to search and create unexpected interactions. Place a candle, for example, in the center of the table, and the lava and the ashes can explode around them. In other places, extend towards the hands of the person in front of you, and a cosmic bridge can appear under you.
The co -founder of the gallery, Daren Ulmer, is among the tables illuminated by projectors in his new restaurant in the center. Ulmer is a veteran of the space of thematic parks, who has worked on shows in Disneyland and Walt Disney World. “I think it is therapeutic: take you to another world and allow you to imagine, dream, escape, relax and, in some cases, inspire,” he says about his career working on fantastic environments.
(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)
That is ultimately the underlying theme of food: create and solidify connections. Ulmer says he was strongly influenced by Cirque du Soleil.
“Cirque du Soleil is an extremely emotional experience,” says Ulmer. “There is a thread and a general theme and scenario, but it is not act one, the two and Act three. It is just human emotion, drama, scale, color and experience. If you compare me with something, we have a Cirque du Soleil type approach to gastronomic experience. “
Napa Valley through the center of Los Angeles? It is possible.
With approximately $ 200 per person, Ulmer acknowledges that “Elementa” will not be for everyone.
“Everyone can't do it here,” says Ulmer. “We understand that. We would like to do it as accessible as we can. We aspire to offer and overcome the level of experience that until now has only been available in 12 to 20 seats of experiences of type $ 400. Our goal is to be a gastronomic experience at the Michelin level with our experience of Disney and universal combined with it. ”
And yet, if the two gastronomic offers of the gallery are a success, Ulmer is looking for more affordable and family options out of “elementation” or the presentation of the Horizon bar. He imagines using the space to schedule unique meals on days or nights when “element” is not running. This is also a form, he says, to cultivate regular customers who have already seen “element.”
“We will also have experiences that will offer more as a traditional restaurant,” says Ulmer. “You will have a reservation and you will come here and the environment will be alive and perhaps something happens every 10 or 15 minutes, but it is not a linear meal of five dishes like 'elementa'. For example, maybe one Sunday afternoon is an experience of wine tasting by Napa Valley, and you are looking at Napa's vineyards outside the virtual windows. We have as many possibilities of how we can use this platform. “
And although Ulmer says that “Elementa” is friendly to the family, since he believes that children with adventurous food palates will enjoy the show, he also expects the programming of Matinées on Saturday to be specifically oriented to families with young children.
If everything agrees with the plan, then, the restaurant itself can change so frequently, or even more than the menu.
