It’s an optical phantasm you’ll be able to eat in.
With NYC eating places more and more going high-tech, one enterprising omakase restaurant is reverting again to the drafting board — by permitting clients to “dine in 2D.”
Up is down and black is white at Shirokuro, the Large Apple’s first full-service “two-dimensional” restaurant within the East Village, which evokes consuming inside a pop-up graphic novel.
And so they don’t want tech to realize it. The inside of the restaurant — its title means “black and white” in Japanese — is meticulously hand-illustrated with numerous patterns, together with pinwheel-like prospers on the ground, stylized wall portraits and shelf, seat and desk depictions drawn to look 3D.
Conversely, the precise seats and tables are white with black trim, making it arduous to inform the place the 2D and 3D worlds collide — if clients aren’t cautious, they’ll stroll right into a chair.
Designers even positioned specially-crafted paper flowers inside actual vases to reinforce the impact.
“[Shirokuro is] the place you’ll be able to immerse your self within the artwork,” co-owner James Lim, 49, advised The Put up.
This phantasm was made potential by artwork director Mirim Yoo, a veteran of the posh make-up business who reportedly took three months to attract the area into existence, as demonstrated in a number of movies on Shirokuro’s TikTok account.
Yoo, who brokers actual property part-time with Compass, stated she wished to make patrons really feel like they “fell right into a sketchbook.”
Lim opened Shirokuro in March with co-founder Alex Kim, each initially impressed by a visit to Asia.
“After I was in Korea 10 years in the past, it was tremendous widespread,” stated the restaurateur, who additionally helmed the Korean restaurant and lounge Noflex in NYC’s Koreatown. “I noticed that first idea and I used to be like ‘We want one thing like that in New York Metropolis.’”
The 2D craze is alleged to have originated in Seoul in 2017 on the now-shuttered Café Yeonnam-dong 239-20 — whereupon the phenomenon took Asia by storm.
Then, like each Far East cultural fad from Pokémon to Okay-pop, this “sketchy” development moved West with eating places opening in Paris, Dallas, Chicago and numerous different cities, every with differing motifs.
“Tendencies from Asia take some time to get right here,” Lim stated.
In fact, it took months to open since all the pieces is hand-sketched, however Lim stated they opted for customized illustrations for a “private contact.”
“We didn’t need it to be like wallpaper,” he stated. “We wished to have the artist’s arms in each side of the restaurant, from the partitions to the flooring to the tables and chairs. That approach it’s not mass-produced.”
One other approach Shirokuro hopes to face out? The meals, which is much from monochrome.
Shirokuro gives a kaleidoscopic array of sushi, which, when contrasted with the spartan environment, makes 2D diners really feel like Dorothy stepping from sepia tone into technicolor within the “Wizard of Oz.”
Together with normal nigiri classics comparable to amberjack and fatty tuna, choices embrace remixes like minced tuna topped with caviar and Chawanmushi (Japanese egg custard) and sea urchin that melts in your mouth like marine child meals.
The menu and costs haven’t been finalized, however proper now, diners can select between a 10-course omakase meal for $50 or a 16-course possibility presently listed at $80.
A la carte choices, in the meantime, embrace a strong deal of three rolls for $25.
Lim’s hope is that the reminiscence of the flavour lingers lengthy after the surroundings’s novelty wears off.
Shirokuro, open 12 p.m. to three:30 p.m. and 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. seven days per week. 103 2nd Ave, East Village; shirokuronyc.com
