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Imagine a suggestive, decadent apartment in Brera, in the midst of the artistic and historical centre of Milan. You’re invited here for a private midnight dinner. The menu? All black. Like a ritual, at midnight, the waiters appear (all wearing different headpieces resembling oyster shell, designed by Zara Gorman) to serve, wearing latex gloves, bizarre dishes that could have come straight from an 18th Century wunderkammer.
All the ingredients of the Midnight Dinners, which took place during Milan Design Week, are also on exhibition: eggs cooked in black tea, resting in a transparent latex net; dried bread soaked in squid ink, into which silver knives are stuck – first they get dipped in water and then cane sugar. There are soft, burned artichoke hearts and even carbon served alongside immaculate goat cheese.
The event, created by a food design collective of four women architects from Florence - Arabeschi di Latte (in collaboration with Studio Toogood) is part of Underkitchen, their project set up ”to reveal the hidden, subtle and abstract nature behind food and hospitality”.
It’s an immersive performance that engages all your senses: taste, the delicate and sometimes spicy perfume that embraces you upon entering, and of course sight – indulged by the bizarre black food, which is set off by the erotic drawings by Piero Fornasetti, hung on the walls.
Milan Design Week is coming to a close today. Again, this year, the pairing between food and design has been a part of this entire manifestation (check out some of the notes we’ve gathered over the past few days, if you’re curious).
But for Fine Dining Lovers, the Underkitchen/Midnight Dinners has been the real “black pearl” of this edition.
