To set foot inside the Gallery, a new restaurant and bar in downtown, is to be whisked into a world fit for a theme park.
Walk in via its bar, and gone are views of Olympic Boulevard. In the place of windows, you’ll find a fantastical, idealized take on a major city, a skyline vision that looks ripped from an animated film. Stroll into the dining room and at first you may see a blank canvas, only soon its walls and tables awaken to place you underwater, in nature or surrounded by a scalding hot warehouse where lava flows over clocklike gears.
The goal is wonder — at times, you can place your hand on the table and wait as fish swim toward you. Or you can trace a circle around a plate and watch flowers spring to life around it. Each scene — each dish in the five course meal — is conjured via a performer, their dance-like moves choreographed to digital projections designed to evoke a sense of curiosity.
It is, to use a time-honored phrase, dinner and a show.
Yet the team behind the concept — veterans of the theme park industry — hope the Gallery feels wholly modern, ever-changing and somewhat alive. Linger, for instance, in the bar, and you’ll notice dozens of scenes unfolding inside the windows of the skyscrapers, each one an improvised, abstracted story.
The full dinner experience, called “Elementa,” launches this Friday with a menu developed by Joshua Whigham, the former chef de cuisine at José Andrés’ now shuttered L.A. outpost of Bazaar. A two-hour dinner that explores the five classical elements, it’s the first of what creators hope is many a show to utilize the space.
“It’s a tough world we live in,” says the Gallery co-founder Daren Ulmer. “If I can give you some relief, I think it’s therapeutic — to take you to some other world and allow you to imagine, to dream, to get away, to relax and in some cases, to inspire.”
Theme park designers enter the world of nightlife
When Disneyland celebrated the 100th anniversary of the Walt Disney Co. throughout 2023, it did so with a new nighttime fireworks show, “Wondrous Journeys.” That production, which features glances at every animated film the studio has produced, will return this year for the 70th anniversary of Disneyland. Ulmer, via his company Mousetrappe Media, collaborated with Disney on the experience, designing projection mapping that could be seen on Sleeping Beauty Castle and elsewhere. Over the years, you may have also caught Mousetrappe’s work on a show at the Hollywood Bowl, as the studio crafted projections for performances of “The Nightmare Before Christmas.” Mousetrappe’s extensive portfolio also includes experiences at the Kennedy Space Center and One World Trade Center, among many other cultural projects.
For the Gallery, Ulmer created a new company dubbed Allureum, but it’s closely connected to Mousetrappe, featuring many of its same staff, including co-founder Chuck Fawcett. And it pulls from Ulmer’s love of theme parks. When it came to looking at the next phase of his career, Ulmer, 57, however, began looking at nightlife.
“I’m not going to go build a new theme park, but what ought there be?” Ulmer says. “I started to focus on this gap between dinner and a movie and going to a bar and a rather expensive day at a theme park.”
Ulmer went on research trips, visiting what he calls “compelling” local locales like SkyBar, Castaway and Perch. He took in projection dinner shows on cruise ships, animated table shows, some more traditional dinner theater and, of course, elaborately themed restaurants. He was looking for a mix of food, entertainment and theming.
“I found a lot of people did two of those well, but very rarely did all three together,” Ulmer says. “I wasn’t seeing a lot of places that really designed something that put all three of those on equal footing from the ground up.”
Don’t think of it as a gimmick (although its owners know you may)
The Gallery is the latest themed restaurant in a city with a long history with the format. Only this one relies heavily on technology rather than memorabilia or elaborately designed sets that have placed us anywhere from a prison to a submarine. The Gallery is aiming for a stylish yet playful vibe; the purple-hued urban bar, known as Horizon, possesses an optimistic yet retro take on a city. And while a seat in the dining room isn’t cheap — “Elementa” will run about $200 per person — with communal interactive tables, the feel is anything but exclusive.
“We’re not here today without Planet Hollywood, Hard Rock Cafe, Rainforest Cafe and all of those things of the past,” says Ulmer, even though he stresses he’s slightly concerned that diners may have preconceived notions about some of those locales. Many, after all, have not traditionally been known for the sort of elevated food the Gallery is aiming for. Ulmer realizes that those in the food space may view the Gallery as something of a gimmick.
“I expect the food world to be skeptical,” Ulmer says. “There have been gimmicky things in the past. I ask them to trust us and look and see where we go from here.”
He says that chef Whigham “is literally a José Andrés protege designing this menu.” Ulmer cites Whigham’s work at Bazaar as particularly impressive, and says he “was an inspiration for this project due to this passion for making dining an emotional experience.”
“Elementa’s” menu may shift but expect courses to align with projections on the table and on the walls — such as a seafood dish surrounded by images of the ocean. One of Whigham’s creations for the “water” element, for instance, is hamachi and seaweed with kabocha squash and tamari-shiitake dashi dressing. A “fire” dish? Tenderloin and mushrooms with coriander and peppercorn crust. This contrasts with the more casual plates at the Horizon bar during its soft opening, which have leaned toward upscale yet familiar pub food: a calamari appetizer, a bountiful hummus plate, cheese and charcuterie, an 8 oz. ribeye, and an assortment of sandwiches and pizzas.
“Elementa” will be the special occasion meal, but for the concept to work, the Gallery’s bar Horizon will have to also become a gathering spot. It’s easy, for instance, to get lost in the scenes that play in the windows and doors of the city buildings, which were filmed utilizing improv actors from comedy troupe the Groundlings.
“It’s that public house,” Ulmer says. “We want to be a place people gather and hangout, and it’s transformational. That’s why the cityscape has media in it. You can expect that to change holiday to holiday, and we’ll have triggered events in there. When we find out it’s your birthday, the city will celebrate your birthday for a moment.”
Beneath it all, there’s an uplifting message
Few meals begin with an overture. Your night at “Elementa” will, courtesy of a short musical composition from Ulmer. It begins with a dramatic flourish, but soon becomes something more fantastical, with shades, perhaps, of John Williams’ uplifting themes from “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.” The rest of the evening is marked by the work of impressionistic composer Claude Debussy, lending the meal a cinematic flourish.
The idea is that we are all actors in a performance. Throughout the dinner, guests will be encouraged to look for and create unexpected interactions. Place a candle, for instance, in the center of the table, and lava and ashes may erupt around it. Elsewhere, reach out toward the hands of the person across from you, and a cosmic bridge may appear below you.
That’s ultimately the underlying theme of the meal — to create and solidify connections. Ulmer says he was influenced heavily by Cirque du Soleil.
“Cirque du Soleil is an extremely emotional experience,” Ulmer says. “There’s a thread and a theme and a general setting, but it’s not Act One, Act Two and Act Three. It’s just about human emotion, drama, scale, color and the experience. If I were to liken us to anything, we have a Cirque du Soleil-type approach to the dining experience.”
Napa Valley by way of downtown Los Angeles? It’s possible.
At about $200 per person, Ulmer recognizes that “Elementa” will not be for everyone.
“Everyone can’t make it here,” Ulmer says. “We understand that. We’d like to make it as accessible as we can. We are aspiring to offer and exceed the level of experience that up until now has only been available in 12 to 20 seat $400-type experiences. Our goal is to be a Michelin-level dining experience with our Disney and Universal-level of experience combined with it.”
And yet if the Gallery’s two dining offerings are a success, Ulmer is looking at more affordable, family-friendly options outside of “Elementa” or the bar presentation of Horizon. He envisions using the space to program one-off meals on days or evenings when “Elementa” isn’t running. This is also a way, he says, to cultivate repeat customers who may have already seen “Elementa.”
“We will also have experiences that will offer more like a traditional restaurant,” Ulmer says. “You’ll have a reservation and you’ll come in here and the environment will be alive and maybe something happens every 10 or 15 minutes, but it’s not a linear five course meal like ‘Elementa’ is. For instance, maybe on a Sunday afternoon it’s a Napa Valley wine tasting experience, and you’re looking at the vineyards of Napa out of virtual windows. We have so many possibilities for how we can use this platform.”
And while Ulmer says “Elementa” is family friendly, as he believes children with adventurous food palates will enjoy the show, he’s also looking forward to Saturday matinee programming geared specifically for families with young kids.
If all goes according to plan, then, the restaurant itself may change as often — or even more than — the menu.
