These Restaurants and Cafes Double as Art Galleries

Expat artists Megan Boon Siegl and Ruth Watson-Blumenfeld have painted in cafés all around their adopted home of Paris, creating their art in sketchbooks over pastries and cups of café crème. Neither ever dreamt that they would have a Parisian gallery to call their own, and yet, this month marks their gallery debut with a collaborative exhibition gracing the walls of what has become one of the most exclusive spaces in the city’s ninth arrondissement.

A cake shop.

Opened in late 2023, 12 Cakes Paris has grown into a salon of sorts for creatives and artists of all kinds, much to the delight of owner and pastry chef Jenni Lepoutre. “I’ve been in Paris for 15 years,” explains Lepoutre, who moved here to be with her French husband after graduating at the top of her professional pastry program in Massachusetts, “but I missed the creative community I had back in Boston, so I’m looking to re-create that community of creatives, and I’m doing it the only way I know how … with cake and a blank wall.”

Lepoutre’s shop is petite by American standards, but its white walls and prime location are highly prized by the artists she hand-selects and allows to exhibit free of charge. In the beginning, it was a way to beautify her space — where she also creates custom cakes and leads pastry classes — but it quickly turned into a magnet for customers who were hungry for art. Writers, painters, and makers pop in to be inspired, both by her sweet creations and by the creative events and workshops that take place throughout each month. It is her way to support female artists and to help encourage other artists to continue to make art … especially as art programs are cut and AI continues to advance.

“How I see it, it’s not much more different than someone choosing to buy a birthday cake from a small business like 12 Cakes versus buying a cake from a grocery store,” she explains. “AI is generating art based on algorithms and the information it’s fed, but it’s lacking in what makes art ‘art.’ Art is a personal expression, based on experiences and emotions of the creator. Real art tells a story. If we want to continue to have authenticity in this world, we need to continue to support the true creators.”

Lepoutre is not alone in her pursuit to save the arts, and many culinary artists and restaurants have been stepping up as well. In Charlotte, North Carolina, chef Christa Csoka, based her entire restaurant concept around celebrating local artistry. Every month she selects a new artist (75 artists since opening) to exhibit at the dedicated gallery inside The Artisans’ Palate. She also creates a custom cocktail for her menu to pair with the artist’s theme that she launches during the official gallery opening. “We’re all artists, and we need to be supporting each other,” explains Csoka. “Watching someone walking into the gallery and seeing this original art and feeling something just by looking at it; it’s how I want people to feel after having a great meal, where they say, ‘I ate something that somebody made with care, and I’m buying something to put up on my walls that someone took the time and energy to create.’ You can go buy mass produced paintings, but this is something special.”

That something special overflows into the clothes customers wear at all the restaurants inside sketch in London — including its three-Michelin-starred-fine dining restaurant, The Lecture Room & Library, and its widely popular afternoon tea inside the Gallery room — where the dress code is “Art Smart.” Art permeates every aspect of the historic 1779 townhouse that houses sketch, with each room featuring different dining experiences and different art experiences.

“A founding philosophy of sketch is that the art and design is ever evolving, so that each time you visit you have a different experience,” explains Milly Wright, creative director and art curator for sketch. “Art will always have the power to spark dialogue, meaningful connections and independent thinking, and our support of the arts has positioned us as not just a restaurant but a cultural destination.” The art department and culinary team work together with every new art exhibition (operating on an eight-week program, where the space is free for their selected artists) to draw inspiration from the works. “This may take the form of our patisserie team drawing inspiration from specific colors or more directly from the culture and country the artist represents,” Wright adds.

In Mexico City, LagoAlgo purposefully blurs the line between gallery and restaurant from its lakeside location at Chapultepec Park. It is not a gallery with a restaurant nor a restaurant with a gallery, but rather a space where the two coexist all at once. Composed of Lago (a gastronomic restaurant) and Algo (a gallery), guests are free to walk or shop the gallery before or after dining in the art-filled restaurant below. Some come for the restaurant, some come for the rotating exhibitions in the gallery, but most come for both since the two concepts work together to promote an overall theme of sustainability and the idea that art and food pair well together.

To some, it may seem like a small thing, letting artists display their artwork on an already blank wall, but these altruistic art cafés and gallery restaurants are doing so much more than helping artists survive; they’re satisfying a craving for authentic artistic experiences that many of their customers didn’t realize they had. It’s powerful to pair food with art, as many have witnessed, and these meaningful moments of brilliance that are taking place both on the plate and on the wall are making lasting impacts with patrons and the art industry as a whole.