BISTRO Sarasota Art Museum
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Bistro Hours: daily 9am - 3pm |
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Bistro at the Sarasota Art Museum of Ringling College opened October 1 2020 following the Museum’s reopening in its new home, the renovated historic Sarasota High School building dating from 1926.
Operated by the renowned Constellation (the team behind culinary masterpieces Verde at Perez Art Museum Miami and The Restaurant at the Norton Museum of Art), Bistro will offer local and seasonal-inspired dishes. Menu specials will be featured on the blackboard behind the counter, a nostalgic nod to the former high school. Created with Museum visitors, community members, vacationers, faculty and students in mind, the new eatery is the Museum’s first dining destination.
Bistro will be open to the general public as a stand-alone restaurant. The purchase of a Museum ticket will not be required to dine-in, take-out, or order delivery service from the restaurant.
At the helm of the kitchen is Executive Chef and Tampa native Kaytlin Dangaran, a celebrated and French Culinary Institute-trained chef with multi-coast experience from renowned restaurants in New York, San Francisco, and most recently, Miami. Having led restaurants within cultural institutions, Chef Kaytlin has elevated the museum experience with seasonal and art-inspired menus.
Inspired by both the 1926 M. Leo Elliott neo-Gothic building and Paul Rudolph’s 1951 Modernist building, Bistro’s design pays homage to both eras, and calls upon the buildings’ origins as a high school and public space to create an environment for museum-curated art experiences coupled with artfully crafted fare. The design aims to provide a flexible space for transitional dining experiences from grab-and-go offerings, full coffee service (espresso, cappuccino, etc), casual breakfast and lunch daytime dining to fine-dining evening dinners, special events, and cocktail receptions.
The building’s rich history is the driving force behind all aspects of the design down to the restaurant’s Thonet Bistro Chairs, a classic staple in bistros around the world dating back to the mid-1800s. Additionally, the classic Paris park “Luxembourg” chair of the 1920s are used in the Plaza for outdoor dining. The Banquettes throughout Bistro are inspired by Paul Rudolph’s innovative seating designs. The reclaimed heart pine tables, benches and finishes further emphasize this connection between both spaces, as they are made from 600-year-old longleaf heart pine reclaimed from the Elliott building’s joists. The tiles along the vast wall of the open kitchen mirror the Brickcrete façade of the Rudolph building.
Bistro provides a continuation of the art experience, with culinary-inspired art and site-specific installations. Dining plates by Vik Muniz, a Dominus Methuselah with a label designed by William Kentridge, and a history of the no14 chair by Michael Thonet provide a link between art and the dining experience. An exhibit about Olivier Mosset, whose painting installation collaborates in a site-responsive manner with the Rudolph Plaza-side Façade, and a mural installation, Coming Together, by Jose Alvarez, completes the inaugural exhibitions in Bistro.
Bistro will be open daily from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. For more information, visit https://www.sarasotaartmuseum.org/bistro/
