Cucina conrumore

The New Inquiry on Futurist dining.

In a room whose walls are lined with aluminum, nimble waiters flit past diners, spritzing the air with perfume. A Wagner opera blares from a phonograph somewhere hidden. On each table sit four plates, each containing a small morsel. A quarter of a fennel bulb occupies the first, a single olive the second, the third holds a minute pile of candied fruit, and the fourth, a “tactile device” of red damask, velvet, and sandpaper, which the diners fondle as they eat.

That is what you would have encountered had you been dining at the Tavern of the Holy Palate on its opening night, March 8, 1931. An Italian Futurist restaurant, it astonished everyone; and as more of its kind opened across Italy, serving increasingly bizarre meals, the astonishment grew. Diners at the Bologna location were dubbed “experimental passengers,” seated in a room that resembled a fuselage, and served dishes named for an airplane’s various gear. Engine noises blared in lieu of Wagner. The experimental passengers came away from the experience unnerved and disoriented yet impressed by its beauty. “Too poetic to be appreciated by the needs of the stomach” one critic deemed the dinner. Another, awestruck by the spectacle of it all, believed he may have eaten “Bologna mortadella sausage, mayonnaise and the sort of Turin caramel know as pasta Gianduja,” but after 24 hours and “careful examination of consciousness” he admitted he couldn’t say for certain.