Diego Sandoval News · Dining room
Eat With Art: fifteen works, fifteen bites and a dining room that sets their order
Coque and Juan Alfaro Studio have hung fifteen pieces of contemporary art across the restaurant's 1,100 m² and set fifteen bites in front of them that translate them. Tàpies, Vasconcelos, Canogar, Huanca, Secundino Hernández, Kerwick. The least discussed consequence of the format belongs to the dining room: the journey stops being the way to the table and becomes half of the work.
The question with which Eat With Art begins sounds like a quip, but it is not: what does a Tàpies taste like? The project, by Coque and Juan Alfaro Studio, hangs fifteen pieces of contemporary art around the restaurant and places in front of each one a bite that translates it. It does not illustrate or copy it: it translates it, which is something else and considerably harder.
An idea from 1958
The conceptual origin is documented and predates any fashion for crossing disciplines. In 1958, Yves Klein offered the audience at one of his actions a cocktail dyed with his blue. The work did not end on the wall or on the retina: it ended inside the viewer's body. Eat With Art takes up that idea and brings it to a two-star restaurant, where ingestion is not a provocative gesture but the craft of the house.
From there comes the rule of translation that orders the menu. The point is not to reproduce a work on the plate —that would be decoration— but to extract its meaning and carry it into another language: colour, matter, texture, temperature, time.
The translations
Of the fifteen pairs, six have been published, and they show how the rule works:
- Synesthesia, by Daniel Canogar → teardrop pea. The colours of the video art are literally those of the bite.
- Work by Antoni Tàpies → baby squid in textures, ink and puntillita. Here the translation is one of matter: the thick impasto and the scratch of the canvas.
- Magma 7, by Donna Huanca → shrimp.
- Painting by Secundino Hernández → Pedrosillano chickpea.
- Atila, by Joana Vasconcelos → oxtail.
- Work by Jordy Kerwick → suckling pig.
That a suckling pig or an oxtail should appear on such a list is telling: they are the house's most deep-rooted dishes, not its most conceptual. Translation does not force the kitchen into disguise.
«Cooking is an ephemeral art».
What this asks of the dining room
This is the least visible work in the project. Coque was already a restaurant built around a journey: guests do not sit down and wait, but move through the building —the English-style bar, the private room devoted to The Macallan whiskies, the wine cellar and, finally, the dining room— before and during the meal. Eat With Art adds to that journey a second layer of content that has to be managed.
The problem is one of time, not space. A work needs you to look at it; a bite needs to go out when it is ready. If the guest reaches the piece late, the dish gets there first and the translation cannot be read. If they linger too long, the kitchen waits. Coordinating fifteen encounters of that kind, table by table and service by service, is exactly what a dining room team led by Juan Diego Sandoval does, and it is the part of the project that never appears in a photo.
There is also a decision about tone. With fifteen works on the walls, the temptation is to explain them. A service that turns every stop into a guided tour ruins the meal; one that says nothing wastes half the project. The middle ground —how much to tell, to whom, and when it is better to stay quiet— is decided table by table, and it is a matter of dining room judgement, not of script.
A project of the house, not of the chef
Eat With Art is signed by Coque and by the studio that curates it, and the sources credit the culinary translation to Mario Sandoval and the Coque team. That second half of the sentence is the one that tends to get lost in summaries. In a house where the cellar and the dining room have signatures of their own —the three brothers hold all three National Awards for the three disciplines—, a project that takes over the whole building can hardly belong to a single craft.
Frequently asked questions
- What is Eat With Art?
- A project by Coque and Juan Alfaro Studio, launched in June 2026: fifteen pieces of contemporary art exhibited in the restaurant and fifteen bites by Mario Sandoval and the Coque team that translate them into the language of food.
- Which artists take part?
- Among others, Antoni Tàpies, Joana Vasconcelos, Daniel Canogar, Donna Huanca, Secundino Hernández and Jordy Kerwick.
- Where does the idea come from?
- From a 1958 action by Yves Klein, in which he offered the audience a cocktail dyed with his blue: the work ended up inside the viewer's body.
- Where can the works be seen?
- Spread across the restaurant's 1,100 m², along the journey guests already make: the English-style bar, the private room for The Macallan whiskies, the wine cellar and the dining room.
Sources
- Alta gastronomía con sabor a Tàpies, Vasconcelos y Secundino, ARS Magazine, (in Spanish).
- Probamos en Coque «Eat with Art», la propuesta de Mario Sandoval y Juan Alfaro Studio, elEconomista, June 2026 (in Spanish).
- Eat With Art: cuando el arte contemporáneo se convierte en un menú degustación, Yellowbreak (in Spanish).
- La fusión entre el arte contemporáneo y la alta cocina, Tapas Magazine (in Spanish).
The other half of the project: the kitchen's approach to Eat With Art, told by Mario Sandoval.
More about the team: Diego Sandoval, maître d' · Mario Sandoval, chef · Rafael Sandoval, sommelier · The experience, step by step
