Restaurant Review: Eat Art Esslokal in Austria

Restaurant Review: Eat Art Esslokal in Austria

In 1964, the artist Daniel Spoerri mounted an exhibition in New York called “31 Variations on a Meal.” He served meals to 31 art-world figures that included Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, theDecades later, the everyday diner can enjoy creations by the peripatetic 79-year-old in rural Austria, 35 miles northwest of Vienna. On an idyllic square in the village of Hadersdorf am Kamp, the Romanian-born, Swiss-bred Mr. Spoerri paired a minimuseum displaying his work with a restaurant called Eat Art Esslokal.
The kitchen serves seasonal menus that rotate weekly and feature just one or two starters, two entrees and one dessert. In keeping with the New Realism manifesto that Mr. Spoerri signed in 1960 in Paris, Eat Art aims to integrate life and art; Ibo Altun, the chef, sticks to dishes prepared slowly with largely local ingredients.
A recent late-summer meal started with a trio of refreshing soups — cucumber, melon, gazpacho — and a mango lassi (a yogurt drink) served together in mini portions (6 euros, or $8.80 at $1.50 to the euro). A risotto followed, flawlessly melding the sharpness of Parmesan with the sweetness of just-ripe local plums (8 euros). The entree was a meltingly tender beef ragout with a hint of saffron, served with couscous (12 euros). A tangy crema of ricotta jazzed up with pine nuts and orange zest offered a perfect endnote (4 euros). Like the menu, the wine list skews local: in this case, a grüner veltliner from the village’s Turmhof vineyard up the road (2 euros).
Service is friendly and informal, and upstairs is a spacious room in which Mr. Spoerri’s team organizes readings and concerts. And then there’s the art: Mr. Spoerri’s trademark table collages, made just for the restaurant, decorate interior walls.
Opening a restaurant in a tiny village at 79? For Mr. Spoerri, it’s nothing new — food has always been important to his work.
“A restaurant is like an atelier,” he said. “I wanted to have a territory in which objects are manipulated unconsciously. You don’t think about where you put down a spoon. I also do it because it keeps me alive.” The words of a true new realist.
Eat Art Esslokal; Hauptplatz 16, Hadersdorf am Kamp, Austria; (43-664) 88-45-47-88; www.spoerri.at; open Thursday to Sunday, closed from Christmas until Easter.n created collages from their dirty plates and other detritus, to be hung vertically on a wall.