Food as Art at Madeleines

Food as Art at Madeleines

February 25, 2008

Dinner at Madeleines in Copenhagen is more than a meal. Much more. Described as a food theatre, even a food laboratory, Madeleines is all about the experience of eating. It’s food as art, a multi-sensory adventure where music, art, imagery and dynamic lighting merge to create a dining experience like no other.

Cyclo Series™
As an integral part of the gastronomic celebration, Martin Cyclo Series™ color changers set the mood, creating scenes, complementing cuisine and supporting themes in an ever-changing atmosphere of emotion and feeling.

The Cyclo Series is a line of color changing T5 fluorescent luminaires with RGB color mixing or color correction control that uniformly washes surfaces in color and variable white light. The Martin fixtures for Madeleines were supplied through Lightmakers of Copenhagen with lighting design by Thomas Dreyer of Lightmakers in collaboration with Madeleines.

The experience
Located in an old Tuborg warehouse in Copenhagen, Madeleines is essentially one large room with dining tables surrounded by large semi-transparent panels. It is here where scenes are set and the culinary theatre takes place. Guests enter as a group, at set times, and are led to their table where a hostess – essentially an actress – takes over.

At one end of the room is a green area where welcome drinks are uncharacteristically dispensed from a vending machine. At the other end is an open kitchen where cooks practice their molecular gastronomy, a scientific discipline that investigates the social, artistic and technical components of culinary phenomena. To say that the menu is special would be an understatement. At Madeleines, the chefs are artists.

Multimedia
Madeleines sought to create an environment where senses are awakened and memories forged by a series of changing moods and scenes, and multimedia plays a key element in the experience - music, video projection and dynamic lighting.

As guests marvel at their multi-course meal, the surrounding panels, uplit with Cyclos, glow in shades of complementary color that set the mood for each dish or change depending on the dinner’s theme, i.e. springtime. The venue’s somewhat dim atmosphere, almost void of ambient lighting, allows the rich colors from the Cyclos to permeate the room while providing a silhouetting backdrop for guests. It’s food like it’s never been served before. Lighting control is via a Martin Lightcorder.

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