GELINAZ! has a habit of pushing barriers when it comes to gastronomy. It has always been way ahead of the curve in pretty much all events organised over the years. At a time when four-hands dinners became more common than mosquito bites on a late summer afternoon in the Mediterranean GELINAZ! came up with the stay at home shuffle.
Now, GELINAZ! is ready to launch the next frontier in the world of gastronomy and that is for what many is an afterthought in restaurants: Music.
GELINAZ! curator Andrea Petrini, a food writer par excellence has often contended that while restaurants give full attention to detail from food to service, wine flights to lights, aprons to the loos, music is often completely forgotten.
And that is exactly what the next series of events is expected to tackle starting with the first in a few weeks time in France. The events are called GELINAZ! NAH BGM (aka No More background Music in restaurants).
A first test of a new series of GELINAZ! events has already taken place in Tokyo, Japan at Narisawa where last December chef Yoshihiro Narisawa created the first GELINAZ! NAH BGM.
On that evening, chef Narisawa said that for the occasion he had transformed the restaurant into a theatre. “We wanted our guests to experience this dinner with all their five senses,” he said.
And that is exactly what happened at the unique dinner.
Every month from August 2023, a chef will be working together with a musician or musicians to create a night to remember and hopefully restaurants will turn this into more than just a one-off event.
The first gigs confirmed are Guillaume Monjure and H-Burns Project at Le-Palegrie at Vercors on 6 and 7 August.
Arandel will be the guest of Riccardo Camanini at Lido 84 in Italy on 14 and 15 September.
In October it will be the turn of David Chalmin to work with Mathieu Roasting in restaurant Sillon in Biarritz.
This will be followed by Parallel Lives playing with the Healthy Boy Band in Munich on October 14.
Following these more names have confirmed including big names Mauro Colagreco with Gaspar Claus and Massimo Bottura’s Abbey Road Studios project in London. Others confirmed but with dates still to be confirmed are Alberto Landgraf, Augustin Balbi, May Chow, Rodolfo Guzman, Kim Alter, Daniel Patterson, Billy Wagner’s Nobelhart, Sergio Meza, Zaiyu Hasegawa, HoteloOmbrosa, Celine Pham, Jeremy Chan and Markus Stockl.
The list is likely to get longer and longer.
The issue first came to the fore in a seminal article in the New York Times in July 2018. The article reported on how a renowned musician and composer Ryuichi Sakamoto loved a particular Japanese restaurant in Murray hill but could not bear the music it played for its patrons. The issue was not that the music was loud but rather it was thoughtless. Mr Sakamoto suggested that he could take over the job of choosing it without pay if only so he could feel happier eating in the restaurant. The chef agreed and the musician started making playlists for the restaurant none of which included any of his own music.
More recently in an article in the Healthy Times, Christof Ellinghaus wrote an article called Bitch, don’t kill my vibe …! in which he noted that at an experience in Slovenia where everything was mind-blowing he realised something was not quite right but it took him more than two to three courses to realise what it was. “It was the background music in the restaurant’s dining room. Indeed man, ti was the music that was just plain annoying and a proper vibe killer. Not that it was too loud and obtrusive. it was just wrong. Wrong with a very capital W”
Unfortunately nowadays, in the world of Apple Music, Spotify or Amazon Music creating playlists or using ready playlists is easier than cooking everything sous-vide to perfection leaving no room to chance but that’s exactly what makes many things similar or should we say boring.
Just before the pandemic, GELINAZ! had come up with the stay at home shuffle following the success of the chef shuffle that took the world by storm. That could have been a bit too close to reality. Now Andrea Petrini is hoping that music, finally really takes centre stage. So which chefs and restaurants are going to take the lead? It will take us time to find out.
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