Art on a plate

A signature cocktail at Museo using sake and fresh black grapes. [Photo provided to Shanghai Star]

A restaurant that fuses food and art hopes to inspire its customers' palates and minds. Xu Junqian reports.

Don't ask the staff members at Museo why the deep fried Camembert is called Mona Lisa's smile, or how the cold pasta tossed with flying fish roe and truffle shavings is related to Van Gogh. You will struggle to get a straight answer.

Museo, (museum in Italian) is the latest fusion restaurant on the Bund, and the wait staff and chefs are far more interested in inspiring you with their food than telling you the story behind each delicacy.

Owned and run by three Singaporeans with various backgrounds, including art management, accounting and cooking, Museo is by no means the first restaurant in Shanghai "conceived through the marriage of art and fine dining".

It goes beyond just having an artsy environment and a literary menu. The restaurant also runs a program called "Art Jam," with the aim to "discover the inner artist in all customers". Canvas, acrylic paints, and brushes are given to diners who are encouraged to let loose their imagination.

Kicking off our imaginative culinary journey is an assortment of Mezzanine dishes, the equivalent of tapas in Singaporean cuisine. Picasso's Blues, which is deep fried prawns flavored with lavender, is definitely a standout.

The name of the dish causes quite a lot of head-scratching and heated discussion at the table until the spongy, ping pong ball-sized prawns are tasted. The table, which sounded like an art appreciation classroom minutes before, suddenly fell silent, with everyone too impatient to eat the crispy skinned, juicy prawns so that they can reach for a second piece, if not a third.

Of the rather short list of entrees, we sample the char-grilled Angus sirloin and the pan-roasted cod fillet. The beef is like a treat from heaven. Not only is the 300-gram cut of meat reasonably priced, it is of equal quality as that served at the Ruth Chris steak house next door. The chef has taken an appropriately simplistic approach, not overwhelming the meat with too many sauces or spices.