In August 2011, M. Wells, an audacious, Quebecois-inspired diner in Long Island City, New York, bid farewell to the cult following it had amassed in just over a year’s time. Having failed to settle a rent dispute with their landlord, owners Sarah Obraitis and Hugue Dufour, the husband-and-wife duo who gave the eatery its renegade streak (and its foie gras-infused menu that had patrons washing down bone marrow and veal brains with cups of diner coffee), announced their sorrowful exit. “Our spirit will not be crushed,” read an online missive from the couple. “One thing is for sure, we will stay in Long Island City and we will have you back for brunch as soon as possible.” At the end of the month, M. Wells vanished from its derelict Queens outpost, etching itself into local folklore.
The grieving period was hardly over, however, before the diner announced details of its imminent renaissance: True to their word, M. Wells was to reemerge in the fall of 2012 as M. Wells Dinette, operating out of another Long Island City mainstay, MoMA PS1. The rogue restaurateurs had been handpicked to craft a radical dining experience parallel to PS1’s adventurous contemporary art offerings. Yet this extraordinary creative license came with caveats. The space of the just-opened Dinette, a classroom-meets-diner-meets-theatrical stage hybrid designed by architect Guy Reziciner, is a testament to the philosophy behind the entire project: When life gives you lemons, you sous-vide them into something strange and wonderful.
“Making a restaurant in a museum like PS1 is a challenge,” said Reziciner in an interview with ARTINFO at his Lower East Side studio. “The classrooms of PS1 are the basis of what is offered…for artists to work with.” For Reziciner, who collaborated extensively with Obraitis and Dufour on the new design, the challenge of working with a space just shy of landmark status became an opportunity for artistic reinvention. The new M. Wells was to wander from its retro diner origins and embrace a new culinary archetype: the school cafeteria.
Occupying the space of the museum’s unremarkable former café, M. Wells Dinette explodes open the once closed kitchen, cladding it with shimmering stainless steel panels and shelves that climb all the way to the classroom’s lofty ceiling. The only barricade between the kitchen and the dining area is a four-stool “roe bar,” a relic of the diner aesthetic, along with an immense twin-sink washbasin, which rests on a thick counter of nougat-colored poured concrete and is transformed into a cornucopia of uncooked seafood during restaurant hours. Diners are instructed to line up before the kitchen — cafeteria style — to place their orders and receive their food.
But the kitchen at Dinette is more than just a space where sophisticated food preparation meets canteen-style service. “M. Wells is, in a way, a contemporary culinary art collective that employs what we eat and how we eat as a medium for social interaction,” explained Reziciner. “This performative aspect was a real starting point for our design: a large open kitchen — the stage — where cooking is performed in front of the dining hall — the audience.” The open kitchen, built at an almost operatic scale, frames the theatricality of Chef Dufour’s cooking. It becomes “sort of a pantry of curiosities,” as Reziciner described, “where everything is visible to the public.”
During our interview, Reziciner recounted how Dufour had realized early on in the project that bringing gas into the museum (and, thus, his restaurant) would be impossible. Undiscouraged, the chef reworked his culinary repertoire, straying from his flame-powered comfort zone to work with sous-vide and other slow-cooking techniques. Much in the same way, Reziciner embraced the original public school aesthetic rather than dodging preservationist concerns: The classroom’s austere white walls and clerestory windows are left in tact; the furniture consists largely of long wooden desks with individuated cubby-like openings and heavy, mid-century modern, hard plastic chairs; the menu is written on a rectangular chalkboard hanging opposite a display of actual class photos from the PS1 of yore.
“Design is an exciting conversational experience where the end result is the materialization of the exchange of ideas,” said Reziciner. Like Dufour’s ever-rotating seasonal menu, the design of Dinette lends itself to constant change. Not only does Reziciner anticipate that the space be filled with miscellaneous found objects gathered by Obraitis and Dufour, but he also foresees a multiplicity of possible renovations responding to the needs of the restaurant. In many ways, M. Wells Dinette is an evolving experiment. And the experiment has just begun.
