Lucas Mullié

Department: Social Design
Website: www.lucasmullie.nl

Time Restaurant

Lucas Mullié is a ‘food curator’, a profession he invented himself. In this new function, he established a Time Restaurant in a regular terraced house, in a regular Eindhoven housing estate. He set himself the task of serving dishes that reflect the season and locale of their creation. Whenever he had food left over after a night’s cooking, he preserved it for posterity, without the help of ‘fake conservation’ methods such as refrigeration. This growing collection of culinary time capsules was displayed in the restaurant as an extra visual and temporal commentary on the proceedings.
To avoid ending up with a monotonous row of glass jars, he soon began experimenting with other age-old techniques such as drying, curing or adding sugar. These evolved into large, edible plaques that satisfy the eye as well as the palate. Paper-thin slices of dried rhubarb stems resemble a beautiful wood veneer edged with subtle pink accents, while stewed apples defy decay from the safety of thick caramel. Some plaques even resemble food fossils; sprats assembled on a flat, salt bed look as if they’ve been freshly excavated from an archaeological site. Thus, in this unique eatery, Mullié brings time to a standstill as he creates, collects, curates and displays locally produced food for instant and future consumption.