Mario Sandoval News · Kitchen
What does a Tàpies taste like? The kitchen's approach to Eat With Art
Since June 2026, fifteen contemporary artworks have hung throughout the restaurant with fifteen bites facing them. The hard part is not the idea: it is the rule of translation that lets a piece become a dish without turning it into decoration.
For Eat With Art we placed fifteen contemporary artworks around the restaurant and, facing each one, a bite. We created the project with Juan Alfaro Studio, and it has been at the house since June 2026. What follows is the kitchen's side: how you get from a piece hanging on the wall to something you eat.
Translating is not illustrating
There is one rule, and it is demanding: the work is not reproduced on the plate. Reproducing it would be decoration —the painting turned into a sauce drawing— and everything would be lost. The point is to extract its meaning and carry it into the materials a kitchen works with: colour, matter, texture, temperature and time.
Two examples from the published pairs show the rule at work. Synesthesia, the video art of Daniel Canogar, is translated through colour: the colours of the bite —a teardrop pea— are literally those of the piece. A work by Antoni Tàpies is translated through matter: baby squid in textures, ink and puntillita, because what has to reach the plate is the thick impasto and the scratch of the canvas, not its image.
The house classics, in another language
Among the published translations are an oxtail —for Atila, by Joana Vasconcelos— and a suckling pig, for a work by Jordy Kerwick. That the house's most deep-rooted dishes should appear on such a list says something about the approach: translation does not force the kitchen into disguise. There is no need for new dishes with a conceptual air; what is needed is to find which dish already says what the work says.
Cooking is an ephemeral art.
Mario Sandoval, on Eat With Art
An idea from 1958
The origin is not some recent 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, but inside the viewer's body. Eat With Art takes up that idea and brings it to a place where ingestion is not a provocative gesture, but the craft itself.
The other half of the project does not happen in the kitchen: what Eat With Art asks of the dining room, told by Diego Sandoval.
Frequently asked questions
- How is a work of art translated into a dish?
- Not by reproducing it, but by extracting its meaning and carrying it into colour, matter, texture, temperature and time. Canogar's video art is translated through colour; Tàpies, through matter.
- Which of Coque's dishes are part of it?
- Among the published pairs: teardrop pea, baby squid in textures, shrimp, Pedrosillano chickpea, oxtail and suckling pig. Deep-rooted house dishes, not pieces made for the occasion.
- Who cooks Eat With Art?
- Mario Sandoval and Coque's kitchen team. The project is by Coque and Juan Alfaro Studio.
- Where does the idea of eating a work of art come from?
- From 1958: Yves Klein served a cocktail dyed with his blue, and the work ended up inside the viewer's body.
Sources
- Probamos en Coque «Eat with Art», la propuesta de Mario Sandoval y Juan Alfaro Studio, elEconomista, June 2026 (in Spanish).
- Alta gastronomía con sabor a Tàpies, Vasconcelos y Secundino, ARS Magazine, (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).
More about the team: Mario Sandoval, chef · Diego Sandoval, maître d' · Rafael Sandoval, sommelier · The experience, step by step
