At museum, restaurant to tap into art

Crystal Bridges fare evolves

Ronnie Ridley (left) of Fayetteville and Pat Henson of Wagoner, Okla., enjoy lunch Monday at Eleven, the restaurant inside Crystal Bridges Musuem of American Art in Bentonville.

Ronnie Ridley (left) of Fayetteville and Pat Henson of Wagoner, Okla., enjoy lunch Monday at Eleven, the restaurant inside Crystal Bridges Musuem of American Art in Bentonville.

Tuesday, January 15, 2013

— Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art culinary director Case Dighero’s New Year’s resolutions for the museum’s restaurant, Eleven, are ambitious.

Dighero aims to make the fine-dining space an after hours destination for patrons from all income backgrounds, create a new dinner menu that uses food to narrate stories generated by art within the museum and enhance the monthly Wednesday OverWater (WOW) series to incorporate themes based on artwork and exhibits.

From its inception, Eleven was described as a “dining bridge” featuring laminated wood beams and natural light creating an arch overhead. Up to now, the focus has been the museum, not the eatery.

“We’ve never been a restaurant first,” Dighero said. “It’s always been a museum first, and then what we did was create ourselves within that.”

So Dighero and executive chef Jacob Harr organized Edible Culture events on Wednesday and Friday nights, holding the museum open later than its traditional 6 p.m. closing. As always, Eleven features a menu that promotes and celebrates specific farmers and artisans supported by Crystal Bridges: War Eagle Mill, Forester Farmers’ Market Poultry and Meridienne Dessert Salon, all in Rogers; Briar Rose Bakery in Farmington; Land of Milk and Honey Dairy in Wyandotte, Okla.; Sweden Creek Farm in Kingston; Ozark Natural Breads in Fayetteville; and the Bentonville Farmers Market, when in season.

The Edible Culture concept adopts Crystal Bridges’ organizational mantra for the new year, which is “Come as You Are,” Dighero said. Gone are the starched white tablecloths and formal table settings. Waiters will be dressed in T-shirts sporting the Eleven logo.

“I really want to encourage people to come, no matter who they are or where they’re from,” Dighero said. “So you could be an art collector from Europe ... or you can be a chicken farmer from Harrison, Arkansas, and because there are foods that are familiar to you ... you’re going to feel comfortable and satisfied.”

New bar and kids’ menus expand the array of offerings.

Perhaps the most colorful and unusual of what Dighero and Harr consider Edible Culture is an item described as “Way-vos of color” (beet juice pickled deviled eggs).

Dighero said he is challenging himself to find foods and develop dishes that help tell the narrative of Crystal Bridges. At least 50 percent of the menu will have some direct correlation to some chosen feature, he said.

For example, January’s offerings, as outlined in the Chef’s Ozark Woodland Tasting Menu, conveys the story of two tulip poplar trees, “Thelma and Louise,” that were once in danger of being lost but eventually saved at the insistence of museum founder Alice Walton and with help from the excavation team.

“Today, Thelma and Louise can be seen quietly swaying in the Ozark breeze over the C-corridor, nearly visible from every seat in Eleven,” the menu reads.

Harr’s contribution is fare that is his interpretation of a traditional Ozark winter solstice dinner, such as smoked river trout cake, salad of wassail brined quail and venison osso bucco.

With the museum’s first year under his belt, Harr said he has enjoyed dedicating more time to being creative with Eleven’s offerings.

“That’s the part that I enjoy the most - just being inspired by different things and showing that inspiration through a dish,” Harr said.

“It’s like a breath of fresh air,” he said.

Dighero and Harr share a saying: Dighero puts it on paper and Harr puts it on the table. The two oversee a staff of 18 in the kitchen and about 20 more on the waitstaff.

Every month, the tasting menu will have a direct correlation to WOW, Dighero said.

Wednesday’s WOW event, Winter in the Ozark Woodlands, centers around Neil G. Welliver’s 1983 oil on canvas work Snow on Alden Brook, from Crystal Bridges’ contemporary gallery.

“I thought, ‘This is a painting that could have been made on the other side of Crystal Springs,’” Dighero said.

“It’s food that really kind of tells a story,” he said. “That’s really sort of everything we want to do with Eleven in 2013.”

Seats are still available for Wednesday’s event. Tickets to the general public are $30 with a 20 percent discount for museum members.

February’s WOW event, Politics Under the Influences, will pay homage to George Washington’s birthday and the role of politics and drink in art. For instance, Washington was said to be the largest distiller of whiskey in the United States when he died in 1799, according to Dighero.

For the forthcoming traveling Norman Rockwell exhibition, American Chronicles, the Art of Normal Rockwell, Dighero and his staff are combing through all the Saturday Evening Post covers that will be on display in the exhibit and are finding foodstuffs in the artwork that could inspire the menu for April’s WOW event.

Eleven was mentioned ina 2012 write-up in Southern Living magazine that asked “Is Bentonville the South’s next cultural mecca?” Also last year, the restaurant received special recognition from the New York-based James Beard Foundation, whose mission is to “celebrate, nurture, and preserve America’s diverse culinary heritage and future.”

Harr, Dighero and the Beard folks got to know one another while planning and conducting a special WOW event at the museum last summer. Fast friends and respected colleagues from the outset, the Crystal Bridges folks have been invited along with chefs and staff members of the 21C Hotel’s restaurant, Hive, and Rob Nelson of Tusk & Trotter American Brasserie to go to New York to collaborate on a meal for the Beard Foundation in October.

Northwest Arkansas, Pages 7 on 01/15/2013