Hello, Dalí!

In an Upstate New York mountain range, a new bar and restaurant is opening, and is something of a gesamtkunstwerk by the two artists, a married couple, who run it. For the past four years, painter Josh Reames and multimedia artist Amber Renaye have been building out the ground floor of an old lodge on Main Street in Margaretville, New York to create DFW, a “village lounge” where practically every employee is an artist. 

The inventiveness and artistic approach doesn’t stop at the walls. John Cerasulo, a painter with work in MoMA’s collection, is the sommelier. In the kitchen, painter Melissa Murray is putting her gardening and cooking hobby to work as its chef. “She’s like Google Maps for recipes,” Renaye told me of hiring a chef with no training in the kitchen, but a lengthy CV of gallery shows. “It’s like she prints ingredient lists from her mind.” Her menu includes popped sorghum strewn across an autumn ceviche and popcorn chicken that includes as much actual popcorn as it does chicken. Hungover the morning after its soft opening, I found myself at the bar eating a slice of pistachio cake with a tangy dusting of freeze-dried raspberries.