Museum cafes trend toward fresh, sophisticated menus

Can a salad compete with a Cezanne?

Maybe not, but at museums across the country, food is becoming a major attraction.

With interest from an increasingly sophisticated dining public — and the desire of cash-strapped cultural institutions to create reliable revenue streams — museum restaurants today go well beyond cafeteria fare.

According to Travel + Leisure magazine, local ingredients and scratch-made food rank as top trends in museum dining, and Indiana cultural institutions are reflecting that shift in focus.

“With the emergence of places like Black Market, Recess and Libertine, we now have a foodie movement,” said Brian Poonpanij, vice president of food and beverage for Kahn’s Catering. “It raises the expectations of the entire community. When you raise expectations, more and more establishments come into play to meet those expectations. It just helps the whole city.”

As the new food service provider at the Indiana State Museum, Kahn’s Catering is revamping the menus of the L.S. Ayres Tea Room and the new Farmers’ Market Cafe, which will open May 6.

Kahn’s also recently launched a new menu at the Indianapolis Museum of Art’s newly renamed IMA Cafe (formerly known as Nourish).

The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis also has been tweaking its food options. Last June, the museum was the first cultural institution in the country to launch Kids ­LiveWell, a nationwide initiative from the National Restaurant Association that spotlights “better-for-you” menu items.

“We’re trying to move away from institutional food to fresh, local and hand-crafted,” said Chazz Alberti, national culinary director with Sodexo Leisure Services, which handles food service for The Children’s Museum. “I think it’s the way museums are headed.”

Nationally, museum restaurants are going beyond offering a quick lunch or between-gallery snacks.

At Provenance, the fine-dining restaurant in the Cleveland Museum of Art, chef/partner Douglas Katz creates special menus themed around exhibits, such as Southern fare inspired by the works of William H. Jackson or a Peruvian menu pegged to an exhibit on ancient Andean culture.

“It takes a lot of energy to put these menus together,” said Katz, who is also the chef/owner of Cleveland’s Fire Food and Drink. “But it’s bringing people to the restaurant and giving people a reason to come back again and again.”

The restaurant is open daily for lunch and on Wednesdays and Fridays for dinner, the same nights the museum is open late. The 76-seat fine-dining restaurant is regularly booked, said museum communications manager Caroline Guscott.

Provenance, said local chef Thom England of Ivy Tech Community College, is well-established and hard to get into.

“The Atlanta art museum restaurant draws more people than the museum,” he said. “In both of those cases, it wasn’t a celebrity chef that started them. Good food done right and served elegantly will draw people.”

But museum boards have to believe in the concepts, England said.

“Without those cheerleaders,” he said, “the fans don’t know when to get excited.”

Lasting success didn’t happen with Puck’s, the restaurant from celebrity chef and restaurateur Wolfgang Puck that opened in 2005 at the IMA, said spokeswoman Katie Zarich. Then, the museum had a sit-down restaurant and cafe area. The museum eliminated its fine-dining dinner service in 2008.

“The restaurant was a big hit initially,” Zarich said, “but the business model just wasn’t sustainable. We were never able to develop the evening dinner business when the museum wasn’t open for visitors.”

The museum opted for casual dining with counter service, she said. The new IMA Cafe menu spotlights such items as chili-glazed salmon served atop napa cabbage with a peanut ginger dressing ($13) and a sliced roast beef sandwich with gorgonzola cheese and a pesto aioli ($11).

The cafe is open during museum hours: 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday, Wednesday and Saturday; 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Thursday and Friday; and noon to 5 p.m. Sunday.

“Based on our location in the city, we’re not going to be a destination just to eat. They’re there to see the art,” Zarich said.

But could the IMA create more opportunity if it were to partner with a local high-profile chef? “Honestly, with its location and large space, I don’t know if anyone could make it work,” said Erin Day, who has written a blog, IndyRestaurantScene, for five years. “Although I definitely think Indy is more likely to embrace something like this now than they were when Puck’s opened.”

Creating a menu that complements a museum experience without overshadowing it is a challenge, said Kahn’s Catering owner Joe Husar. How do you make a salad reflect the Western vibe of the Eiteljorg Museum, for example, or the classic focus of the IMA?

At the Eiteljorg, Husar said, that salad might include a red chili crouton and cilantro salad dressing. At the IMA, it’s mixed greens with apples and dried fruit inspired by the museum’s orchard.

Creativity is in order, as customers today are more willing to expand their culinary horizons. At the Eiteljorg, for example, the No. 1-selling soup is buffalo chili.

“Four or five years ago,” Husar said, “if you’d said, ‘This is chili made from buffalo,’ people would’ve said, ‘What?’ People are a little more adventuresome. They’re willing to try things they haven’t tried before.”

Kahn’s is still developing the from-scratch, locally focused menu for the state museum’s Farmers’ Market Cafe. Changes at the Ayres Tea Room, a sit-down restaurant inspired by the iconic dining room of the former Downtown department store, were prompted by the changing needs of museum guests, said Aja May, the museum’s associate vice president of marketing.

“We definitely were seeing less of a demand for a walk-in experience for the tea room,” May said. “But we had a lot of people asking if they could rent the space.”

The tea room will be open for walk-in dining between Thanksgiving and Christmas and on such holidays as Easter and Mother’s Day. The space will be available for private events and museum programming at other times.