By Susan Breitkopf

This article was published in Museum News, September/October issue of 2007.

In the three years since the Museum of Modern Art reopened, Adam Freed has never stepped foot in the galleries that hold groundbreaking works. He has never seen the 110-foot-tall, light-filled atrium where rotating works hang as perfect foils for architect Yoshio Taniguchi’s simple geometric forms. He has never strolled through MoMA’s Abby Aldrich Rockefeller sculpture garden.

But Freed, who lives 5 miles from the museum, has twice dined at MoMA’s award-winning restaurant, the Modern, and sampled such offerings as the chorizo-crusted Chatham cod with white coco bean puree and harissa oil and the Long Island duck breast with black trumpet marmalade. “The [restaurant] space is quite unique, but it could be in any type of building,” says Freed, 31. “I would love to have walked through the galleries, but the reservation was for 9 or 10 at night [when the museum is closed].”

Americans may love museums, but they love to dine out even more. Today, more than half of the average American household food budget is spent on meals outside the home, compared with 25 percent in 1955, the National Restaurant Association reports. As museums have become increasingly adept at marketing, you would hardly expect the dining trend to escape their notice, especially in the age of reality T.V. shows such as Iron Chef, Hell’s Kitchen and Top Chef. And it hasn’t. Alongside the starchitect of recent years now stands the celebrity chef, whom museums are increasingly recruiting to create a top-notch dining experience that will increase the institution’s prestige and audience. “It’s not an accommodation,” says Ray Coen, a foodservice consultant who works with museums. “It’s part of the institution’s image.” The destination museum should have a destination restaurant.

According to AAM’s 2006 Museum Financial Information, 22 percent of museums have some sort of foodservice in-house. In art museums, having a restaurant is much more likely—54 percent have full-service restaurants, according to a master’s thesis survey by Crissa Van Vleck Williams at John F. Kennedy University.

“What I hear from museum directors is they want their restaurants to become . . . an attraction, a draw,” says Arthur Manask, president and CEO of Arthur M. Manask and Associates, which consults on foodservice in cultural institutions. “The reality is that if a percentage of customers are coming because of the restaurant, some percentage are coming to museums that wouldn’t otherwise come and be exposed to your collection.”

Operating almost entirely independently, the destination restaurant can bolster a museum’s image. “These are not dependent upon museum visitors,” says Manask. “The way they are set up, they’re really becoming detached from the institution, the mission. If you cut them away from the museum and put them across the street, they’re restaurants.”

Foodservice in museums is nothing new. By the early 20th century, the presence of museum tearooms at such institutions as the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Detroit Institute of Arts was expected, according to Williams. By mid-century the fashion was to have lunch spots or cafeterias, such as the one at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., which opened in 1941.

Beginning in the 1970s, museums looked at restaurants as more than a rest stop for weary visitors. “Many directors regard their restaurant facilities solely as a service for visitors and staff, and . . . some may even consider it a necessary evil,” Carol A. King wrote in the June 1975 issue of Museum News. “A well-merchandized, well-operated food service can be a profitable venture and a continuing source of funds for operations.”

Profitable, maybe, but not necessarily gourmet. “Museum visitors historically are going in with an expectation that the food is not going to be great,” says Manask. “Museums are trying to turn that perception around.”

Star chefs, designers and architects are helping in this transformation. “It used to be taboo,” says Mike Devine, president and chief operating officer of the Malrite Company, which owns Washington, D.C.’s International Spy Museum and its Zola restaurant. Early pioneers include Sette MoMA in the mid-1990s, Joy America Café at the American Visionary Art Museum in 1995 and Palettes at the Denver Art Museum in 1997. Zola, which opened in 2002, also charted new territory by seeking neighborhood restaurant status. “It’s a restaurant that could be any place,” says Dan Mesches, president of Star Restaurant Group, which operates Zola.

Zola, for one, meets the current high-end restaurant menu trends. A recent trip there was not a disappointment. The menu included such trendy items as asparagus, ham and brie “sliders” battered in egg like a croque monsieur and lobster macaroni and cheese further upscaled with fontina and asparagus. The grilled flatbread with proscuitto and fresh figs is made luscious with foie gras butter and mascarpone cheese. The food is not what you would expect from most museums. Neither are the prices: That mac and cheese runs $21 for a lunchtime entrée.

This is the mantra of the destination restaurant: Don’t just make it adequate; make it exceptional.

“We think the cafes should stand on their own and be another reason people should come to the museum,” says David Swinghamer, who co-owns Union Square Hospitality Group, which operates the Modern as well as several other top-rated New York restaurants.

“We can make it so good that others will want to come if they don’t have time to go to the galleries.”

Whereas the Modern opened with splash and sizzle from the start, when Café Sebastienne opened in Kansas City’s Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in 1994, founders envisioned it as a place to grab a snack. As it became more popular, the offerings grew and in the last few years it has developed into a true destination for locals, who dine on tempura-watermelon salads with baby spinach, candied pecans and a balsamic vinegar reduction. “It’s an important amenity, but it really serves to draw people in who might not have a reason to come here,” says Kemper Director Rachael Blackburn Cozad.

Until 2001, Café Sebastienne was under a management company, which was not an efficient or profitable way to do business, according to Cozad. Since then, the museum has owned and operated the restaurant, hiring local talent Jennifer Maloney to run the kitchen and giving managers a financial incentive. “It’s been doing a whole lot better the last few years,” says Cozad.

With the much larger Nelson Atkins Museum of Art nearby, the Kemper wanted to set itself apart with great food, convenient parking and a “fun, easy and welcoming” environment, according to Cozad. “There aren’t many places like this in town.”