Excerpt: FOOD: the restaurant

In 1971 Carol Gooden, with Gordon Matta-Clark and others, opens Food at the corner of Prince and Wooster Street in SoHo, New York.  The restaurant is a gathering place....On Sundays, menus are designed by artists.  Sometimes there is a whole meal of only shrimp.  When it's my turn, we eat with our hands.  (Chapter 4, p. 126)

 

MEMORY: Cafe Bustelo

Richard Nonas had a loft around the corner from Food Restaurant.  I remember that yellow can of Cafe Bustelo coffee .  It was always nestled on a shelf in Richard's kitchen.  This is the place I first taste the deep bitter espresso and fall in love with it. Deep influences all around me from this time.  There is an environment like no other that marks me still. Watching FOOD, the film about the restaurant by Gordon Matta-Clark and Robert Frank, I see Richard and so many of the people that created the constellation I inhabited.

FOOD restaurant in Soho, New York City. 1971

FOOD restaurant in Soho, New York City. 1971

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