Artful Tasting Menu
While a rare and incurable autoimmune disease attacked my skin and the steroid treatment ballooned my body to the point of immobility, I flipped through art books, finding comfort in the paintings by European masters at The Hermitage in St. Petersburg, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the Louvre in Paris, and the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.
I already knew how healing art could be. In August 2024, while at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, I hooked my blue metallic cane on my arm and entered the Mary Cassatt impressionist exhibit. I ambled from painting to painting, reading the wall text, soaking in the colors and lines. Only when I needed to bound down the stairs to my Uber did I remember I even had a cane. On my artful tasting menu, I consider this visit my amuse-bouche.
Once my doctors cleared me, I set out on a pilgrimage to Eastern American art museums. My physical therapist suggested I invest in a rollator walking device—my now constant companion, my stamina safeguard. Eager to leave the house after nine months of isolation, I invited writer friends to join me on my savory and sweet artful itinerary. I looked forward to leisurely lunches and delectable face-to-face conversation. Dabs of color I could squeeze on to my palette of healing.
The Appetizers
Soft-shell Crab, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City
May 2025. Several special exhibits at The Met marked the starting point of my trek. My hired car service delivered me and my rollator to the red-awning accessible entrance on Museum Mile. There I met Daisy, an emerita bright star from the history department colleague at William Paterson University. We strolled through the special exhibit of German Romanticism painter Caspar David Friedrich, noting how his deft brushstrokes bring in the light from clouds, white mountains, and alabaster rock formations. Friedrich’s vibrant turquoise waistcoat, used in The Wanderer above the Sea and Fog (1817), mesmerized me. We wandered through the special exhibit of portraitist John Singer Sargent. I stood in front of his portraits, the result of his many commissions. But none of his subjects spoke to me. Not like Picasso’s portrait of Gertrude Stein. Her gaze pulled me from the hallway into her gallery as if to say she’d been waiting for me. I’d long had a postcard of this painting. But the printed image was only two-dimensional. Picasso’s brushstrokes gave Gertrude life. Now here she was right in front of me. I thought about her forcefulness, her direct delivery, the art she and her brother collected, those works by her friends Picasso, Renoir, Cezanne, Matisse. She’d been at the center of it all and she now pulled me into her circle, too.
After a couple of hours on my feet, I was ready for a five-star restaurant experience at the members-only Met Dining Room. Mega bucks, but I didn’t care. Daisy and I relaxed into our seats and our gossip about the department, her post-retirement work, and my writing. While our fields of interest differed—she focused on Latin America and as I focused on the Holocaust—we found common ground in art appreciation and in the present moment.
Some cooking show had recommended always ordering from the day’s specials. Today that meant a soft-shell crab appetizer. After the first crunchy bite dripping with buttery sauce, we looked up from our plates at one another and said, “Yum.” Her eyes lit up. Maybe mine did, too. This was exactly what I needed: a bright daisy. This crab sure beat the grilled chicken breast I was eating at home. After three hospitalizations in two months, I deserved this luxury, this umami.
Carrot Soup and Crab Taco, The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond
June 2025. After months of prednisone treatment that made my legs feel as heavy as tree trunks, and despite having to use a rollator, I insisted on driving seven hours from New Jersey to Richmond to see the Frida Kahlo exhibit. I didn’t think twice about the possibility of swelling or blood clots. But my skin disease wasn’t the only condition I’d been dealing with. I’d been on blood thinners since January for pulmonary blood clots brought on by COVID. Nothing was going to stop me from seeing Frida. My college roommate, Donna, flew up from Florida to make a mini-vacation out of it. We hadn’t seen much of each other since she moved out of New Jersey.
At the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, I discovered the necessity to look beyond the canvas. I didn’t expect to be wowed by the artworks’ original frames. For instance, a shell-studded, tulip-shaped frame for Frieda and Diego (1944). Or the way Frida’s brushstrokes slid from the canvas over the frame in The Suicide of Dorothy Hale (1938). The artist’s full vision, the intentionality could only be viewed, I told myself, when encountering the art in person.
Still, the American Wing captured my attention more. George Bellows and John Sloan, John Singer Sargent and Edward Hopper. Like seeing TV and film stars on Manhattan streets. I was starstruck. But Donna was bored. She plunked herself down on a bench, arms folded in her lap. Little interest in either Frida or American artists. I knew what I had to do.
“Let’s go see the Impressionists!” I said. She bolted from the bench with renewed vigor.
On the way we passed through a room of several Faberge eggs once owned by the doomed Romanov tsar and his family. Such exquisite creations. We lingered there until Donna rushed to a Degas ballerina sculpture. Then came Monet, Bonnard, Vuillard, Renoir. The gallery was somewhat small compared to the space given to other art movements, but as long as it made Donna happy, it made me happy. Watching her engage with the art made me forget the growing pain in my knees and the fatigue in my legs.
We took the elevator upstairs to Amuse in the late afternoon. The restaurant was fairly empty. I ordered two appetizers on the special summer menu: carrot soup and crab taco. I ordered the latter without the taco itself, since I am diabetic and am carbohydrate-averse. I ate slowly, savoring each refreshing bite, reminding me of how we used to meet up at The Manor in northern New Jersey for the lobster buffet or go to McDonald’s on steak night at the college cafeteria because the lines would be too long.
Main Course
Coq-au-vin, The Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia
August 2025. For my virgin visit to the Barnes, I ached to see the From Paris to Provence exhibit. The space seemed like it was once a private mansion yet was a specially constructed building. I wanted it to be the former residence of its founder, Dr. Albert Barnes. I wanted to step inside his world.
Here at the Barnes, I could feast on each piece of art. No need to go to the Musee d’Orsay in Paris, and no need to deal with all those tourists. Dr. Barnes amassed the largest collections of Cezanne, Matisse, and Renoir in the world. One Cezanne that immediately struck me was an oil on canvas of potted plants, Terracotta Pots and Flowers (1891-1892). The colors grabbed me first, the blues and greens. Viewing it created a portal into a greenhouse where I stood in front of this very set of plants. The orange cloth between the pots created an atmosphere of unfinished business, like the gardener stepped away for a moment. Pots varied in size and the plants gave height to the composition. Cezanne’s signature lines, those heavy strokes, outlined the leaves. He was interested in structure, less in the traditional Impressionist focus on light.
“Renoir is too pretty,” she said, as we moved around the exhibit. I had never thought that before. I’d known Cindy for more than forty years. All this time, I never knew she liked art museums or knew her point of view about individual artists.
We had a few minutes before lunch to attend a brief docent-led session that introduced the collection and Dr. Albert Barnes’s unique perspective on art display. No wall text. Just the paintings, curated along certain themes (such as vertical lines or use of black) and in conversation with hinges and other metalwork. I shouldn’t just say paintings. Dr. Barnes also collected and exhibited sculptures, masks, and other artifacts. Each room has its own personality.
The museum’s light-filled restaurant, The Garden, offered two entrees in homage to the exhibit: coq-au-vin and escargot. I went with the chicken, a perfect accompaniment to the works of Cezanne, Monet, Renoir, Matisse, van Gogh, Modigliani, and Soutine. I could envision the dish in one of their still life paintings.
I pushed away my plate after a few bites. “You’re not going to finish?” Cindy asked.
I shook my head. I was too full from biting into the Impressionists, chewing their colors that seemed to fill my diseased chasms. “I’ll just get a box. I can stick it in the rollator’s seat pouch.”
I wished more museums paired menus with artwork to enhance the experience, the way cable channel TCM pairs wines with specific movies. I wanted more of this. If I lived in Philadelphia, I’d be at the Barnes every week. For me, it’s a place of tranquility and respite. A place of intimate conversation with the art while I examine the shapes, lines, and colors from the seat of my rollator.
Seared Scallops and Morcilla with Shelling Beans and Pistachios, Museum of Modern Art, New York City
September 2025. I arrived alone on this hot late summer day and the wig I wore to conceal hair loss caused by my disease, just made me sweat more. I came to see Kazimir Malevich’s Suprematist Composition: White on White (1916). I had in mind a story about someone throwing a pail of green paint on this pristine painting, confusing white supremacy with white suprematism. When first introduced to this artwork in a generative writing session, someone described it as “a polar bear eating marshmallows during a blizzard.” But that’s not what I saw in the actual painting. I observed an array of whites in a single composition. There was no absolute white, but a spectrum of whites. White is actually all colors. Looking at the painting long enough, I spotted hints of gray and pink, and Malevich’s meaning of “suprematist”: the supremacy of abstraction and feeling. The painting put me off balance, as if I had to contort myself to see it upright. Malevich worked his magic on me: I felt! Alive. Engaged. Almost healthy. I was that polar bear dropping marshmallows into my maul during a blizzard.
I entered the Bar Lounge for my lunch reservation. I wanted to join the conversation of the women seated next to me, not feel so alone. I had only the wait staff to talk to. I wanted to gush not just about my Malevich experience, but also about other work saw on the fifth floor: Picasso, Braque, Klee, Matisse, Chagall. Although I had to keep my excitement to myself, threw myself into the blizzard of the menu.
The Bar Lounge offered the kind of menu that necessitated an online dictionary. I knew what seared scallops and pistachios were, but morcilla? Blood sausage. The dish reminded me of the Malevich. What if green mixed with white, for example?
As I waited for my meal, trying to cool down from all the walking, my wig cap snapped and it seized up. I asked for my rollator and pulled the cap and the wig off my head and stuffed both into the rollator pouch under the seat.
The scallops, meaty and juicy, were seared perfectly. The blood sausage added the savory component and a texture that meshed well with the chopped pistachios. I moved the food around on the plate to create my own Malevich splashed with a vibrant green. A Pollock.
After lunch I encountered the wall-length Pollock, but it was Lee Krasner’s painting I wanted see. I was, after all, a Krasner. She named her painting, Untitled (1949), so viewers could make their own meaning. I made mine. I took a selfie in front of it, wigless. My gray hair now blending into her black-and-white composition that reminded me of ghoulish ancestor faces. Faces that told me I’d be okay. I was a Survivor, my new title for the painting.
Wiener Schnitzel mit Erdäpfel und Gurkensalat, The Neue Galerie, New York City
November 2025. As a former German major who spent my junior year abroad in southwestern Germany near the Swiss border, I now practiced German in my head just in case anyone at the museum asked me a question or thought I was German. The museum, housed in the former private residence of industrialist William Starr Miller and his family, and its white-and-black tiled floors and hardwood paneled exhibit rooms, declared fin-de-siecle.
I supposed most people viewing the Austrian Collection on the second floor would spend most of their time in the room with various Gustav Klimt works. And while I lingered in that room, it was the painting in the hallway that startled me: White Interior by Carl Moll (1905). In this white, tranquil space, a woman arranged yellow roses in a blue vase. Her back to the viewer, and the train of her dress trailing behind her like an obedient servant, she focused on the job at hand. Yet, she spoke to me. She pointed to the oriental tchotchkes in the curio cabinets. “Tchotchkes” was my word, because this Viennese woman would not be speaking Yiddish. I could not see her face. I did not know her identity. The museum did not allow photographs, so I tried to sear the painting into my memory.
My poet friend Maria came up the staircase. She had taken a subway in from Queens. “I’ll stay here while you catch up,” I said. I continued to consider this painting, my painting, while she entered the galleries I’d already seen.
I was still thinking about White Interior and the woman’s curio collection when we took the elevator down to the basement’s Café Fledermaus. Given my rollator, I could live without the Central Park View from the first floor’s Café Sabarsky. However, the Fledermaus presented issues, too. The cafe tables were too high and close together for me to navigate. I had to maneuver through a labyrinth to reach tables in the back where I could comfortably use my rollator as my chair.
I perused the menu. So many items that brought me right back to my year abroad: Bratwurst, Weisswurst, Gulaschsuppe. Eating at the local Wienerwald in downtown Konstanz every Friday for lunch. Holding a wurst in a bun while buying carnations at the Saturday morning market. Making my own goulash, technically a soup, from a packet of Knorr in the dormitory kitchen. But now I wanted to order a meal that would pair best with White Interior. That meant something decidedly Viennese. Therefore, the only choice I could make was the Wiener Schnitzel, the most expensive food item on the menu. We both ordered it. The schnitzel came in two large pieces of breaded veal with lemon slices. I wished the chef offered spaetzle with it instead of potato-cucumber salad. Potatoes I could order anywhere, but handmade dumplings formed by pushing dough through a small-holed special press, soft, short, pillows to offset the schnitzel’s crunch.
“You know,” Maria said, “I have Jewish roots.” I’d been wondering how she knew so much about Judaism and why she wrote a column for The Jerusalem Times. She told me about her Jewish relatives, and of course, her Italian side. How our cultures fed into our poetry and nurtured us.
After lunch, in line for the ladies’ room, I heard a woman in front of me with a German accent. Indeed, she came from Nürnberg. I said in German that I studied at the University of Konstanz. She said I had a great accent for an American. I beamed like the light coming into White Interior.
At home, I researched the painting. The woman in White Interior was journalist and salon hostess Berta Szeps Zuckerkandel. My paternal grandmother was a Zuckerkandel, and a distant cousin of Emil, Berta’s husband. It’s too bad Café Fledermaus didn’t offer rock candy, the translation of Zuckerkandel. I bought a print of the painting from Walmart to hang in my house.
Ocean Trout, served with baby broccoli, confit sunchokes, white soubise, salsa verde, nasturtium, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia
December 2025. In Dreamworld: Surrealism at 100 I was delighted to see a whole room devoted to the art of Leonora Carrington and Remedios Varo, both of whom were born in Europe and resettled in Mexico. I’d seen their work in person at The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, but those were single paintings. Here in Dreamworld, their gallery anchored the exhibit before it delivered writer pal Kath and me into the gift shop.
One painting caused me to stop and stare, move forward and back: The Pleasures of Dagobert (1945). The egg tempura colors—deep orange, translucent indigo, soft pink—drew me in. In each of the paintings four quadrants, simultaneous activities, like a modern Hieronymus Bosch: bearded King Dagobert ferried in a horse-headed barge along a riverbank, horse-headed or human figures emerging from a purifying fire, floating sky-islands with ghostly figures, a goddess playing a triangular flute. All whimsy and enchantment at a time when the real world was in disarray. . It reminded me of my childhood fantasies of a genie living in the air conditioner and alligators swimming in the moat of the stair landing. I became so lost in this painting, I forgot all about Kath. I forgot all about anyone. I forgot I was holding onto the handles of my rollator.
Nearby on another wall, On the Boat (1954) also pulled me in, conjured refugees or immigrants—my grandparents steaming the Atlantic from Rotterdam or Bremen to New York from their homes in Poland and Russia. I could draw parallels between the creatures Carrington depicted and my family history; the precariousness of the journey, and the personalities of the individuals, young, old, and in-between, dressed in various colors, perhaps indicating their multiple ethnicities, traveling under the North Star with a torn, worn sail in solidarity.
Eventually, I spotted Kath in front of a Remedios Varo. “I love her,” she said.
“I do, too,” I said. Not only did Kath and I share writing conference experiences, but now we shared a love of female surrealists. We spent about two hours at the exhibition. It seemed never-ending. I supposed that was the point of the artwork: to place us in a dream-like state. Kath bought a book about Varo and I purchased the exhibition catalogue. We and my rollator then hoofed it to Stir, the museum’s higher-end restaurant. The smell of beef, specifically smashburger, assaulted us in a good way. But I had decided beforehand to order fish, and so I ordered the trout (which only made me think of Paul Klee’s Fish Magic (1925) from the Dreamworld exhibition. The composition of the plate, its positioning of the filet, the broccoli, sunshokes, soubise, and salsa verde, brought me back to Carrington and Varo, especially the salsa verde, textured and spicy. The texture of the sunchokes could represent choppy seas. But I would have preferred the trout’s skin to have more crunch.
Dessert
Dark Cherry Cremeux with Black Cherries and Almond, The Modern, Museum of Modern Art, New York City
January 2026. I was alone. Not having to worry about anyone else, I splurged. An eight-course tasting menu. White tablecloths that waitstaff ironed before laying on the table. A view of the courtyard, now filled with snow. But I was parting palm fronds and thick, banana-like leaves in Henri Rousssau’s The Dream (1910). Making my way through impossibly tall lilies and lotus flowers, revealing a nude woman, a parrot, a lion and lioness, a snake, and monkeys. The richness of the scene tasted like this dark chocolate mousse, thick and creamy. I was in the jungle, luxuriating in chocolate foliage.
The art and the food conspired to create a foray into a sometimes savory, sometimes sweet world I now crave.