A creative practice exploring time, memory, and the relationship between our lived experience and the physical world
Order of Good Cheer — Mount Rose's
Client:
Order of Good Cheer
Type:
Gatherings
Location:
New York City
Year:
2015
Discipline:
Concept Development
Spatial Design
Production
Overview
"It should feel as if it always existed." This was the guiding phrase when conceptualizing Dinner at MOUNT ROSE’S for Order of Good Cheer, an event collective and themed dinner series founded with Marissa Chen. Over a span of two evenings on a balmy May weekend, MOUNT ROSE’S was both an intimate gathering and an homage to the neighborhood dining establishments of the near and distant past.
Strategic Approach
With windows and doors opening out onto the sidewalk, the small Brooklyn storefront was transformed into a two-night restaurant connected physically, and conceptually, to the building’s neighborhood and surrounding community. Beginning by uncovering bits and pieces of its past with research across archival documents, tax photographs, census sheets and more, we unraveled the history of the building and Brooklyn neighborhood. Using archival visuals as key reference, combined with a sense of imagined nostalgia, cues from the 1930s New York dining clubs and domestic interiors of a fictional family informed the direction for the creative direction and coursed menu.
Fig 1.0 93 Montrose Avenue, ca. 1940s
New York City tax photograph of the venue in the 1940's, then inhabited as "Montrose Beer Garden."
Fig 2.0 Classic steak for two, Eutaw House, ca. 1947
Archival references from menus, decor, and plating styles past informed visual and conceptual direction.
1/3 The storefront at 93 Montrose Avenue.
Senses & Atmsophere
Layered on with references to past and present New York-specific restaurant culture, with a nod to the evolution of social dining in America over the past century, vintage pieces were sourced to imbue the existing space with a sense of time and memory: mid century-era wallpaper, milk glass light fixtures, and silver serving ware were all included in the presentation.
Each element combined together reimagined the storefront as a place itself: a building at 93 Montrose Avenue, its inhabitants, and the historical narratives created over time to create a new one.
An initial sketch.
CREDITS
Co-Founder, Chef & Menu Development — Marissa Chen
Photography — Paulsta Wong