Many chefs think of themselves as artists in the kitchen. Craig Thornton has taken it to another level: For the past five months, he’s been serving up multi-course meals as part of a room-size installation at the prestigious Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles.
Thornton, 34, is a cult figure in LA’s booming food scene. And for this pop-up dining experiment, he whipped up a rococo menu. A typical dish — if typical is a word that even applies — might be a mélange of grilled rib-eye, creamed kimchi, beef tongue, Asian pear and crispy shallot arrayed under a surprisingly purple, squid-ink dumpling skin.
That was just one of nine elaborate dishes served within MOCA’s Geffen Contemporary location, in what looked like the set of a dystopian Disney film — a space replete with taxidermied deer, wolves and peacocks arranged in a forest of cherry trees, some of them burnt. Wolvesmouth: Taxa, as this unorthodox eating experience was called, just closed after a five-month residency. It was the most recent iteration of a roving restaurant that Thornton has run for years — sometimes in warehouses, sometimes in apartments and usually with more amenities.
“We’re cooking in the middle of a museum with no running water,” Thornton said ruefully during a recent dinner. “I mean, we have to know how much water we’re using.” (The answer: 75 to 85 gallons per night.)
It’s funny to think that for the past several months, Thornton — a chef behind some of the most coveted reservations in Los Angeles — has had to finish each night lugging and emptying gallons of water into a tiny painters’ sink in the back of the museum.