Mina's
Editor's Note: This article was written before the COVID-19 crisis for what would have been our print Women's Issue. Mina's is closed indefinitely. Follow @minas.nyc for updates.
“It seems like no matter what I’m doing in my life, it’s always a sort-of renegade operation,” says Mina Stone, who opened her café, Mina’s, on the ground-floor of MoMA PS1 in September 2019. It’s her first restaurant—and a high-profile one at that—after nearly a decade of working for the artist Urs Fischer, cooking daily meals for him and his staff. Fischer designed Stone’s acclaimed, aptly titled first cookbook, Cooking for Artists. The book is as much a trip to Greece—where Stone watched her grandparents cook as a child—as it is a peek into the New York City art scene, where she began her cooking career.
“I would take any cooking job in the beginning,” says Stone, who taught herself to cook as a way to support herself and the fashion line she was starting at the time. She had no intention of pursuing a life as a chef. She offered to cater events at the stores that sold her clothes; it was at one of those events that Stone met the director of Gavin Brown’s gallery. She asked Stone to put on a dinner party at her house. Following that night’s success, she was asked to cater an event at the gallery, where she met Fischer.
“It was so special to be in the life of an artist who has always made cooking and food part of his practice,” she says of the artist, who will design her second cookbook, to be released spring 2021 “[It was always] provided for free for everyone working on his projects. It’s pretty incredible.” Stone saw the cooking she did for Fischer’s staff as “an offering,” and she seems to be treating Mina’s with a similar ethos.
The bright white space, previously operated by the team from M. Wells, was redesigned by Stone with the Greek artist Alex Eagleton to be “a respite from looking at art.” The details, like café chairs imported from Greece, are thoughtful but subtle, and Stone closed the formerly open kitchen off from view. “People don’t want to come from one show to another show,” she says.
Her approach to cooking is similarly free from ego and showmanship. Her palate, though shaped by visits to Greece, spans the Mediterranean. The yellow-lentil soup with turmeric is warm and comforting, balanced with a hit of lime juice. The braised chicken, one of the menu’s more substantial dishes, swims in a sauce spiced with cinnamon and clove.
Mina’s operates on museum hours, with an all-day menu that’s designed to be accommodating. “I’ve had to learn how to cook in a way that satisfies people’s needs,” she says of her time cooking in Fisher’s studio and catering art-world events.
“Someone’s going to want a sandwich, someone’s going to want a hot meal—either a late lunch or an early dinner—and someone’s going to want a snack.” Breakfast is served all day, because “sometimes people just want eggs at 1pm.” There’s a mezze plate of Arahova feta and Greek sausage flecked with leeks and orange, or “what I would want with a glass of wine in the afternoon,” says Stone.
It is, in obvious ways, a perfect match: the chic chef whose career has always straddled art and food and a world-famous museum’s cool younger sister. But it’s Stone’s approach that makes her such an ideal choice for the job. Resisting the temptation to put on an exhibition of her own, she has considered what a museum-goer might need and provided it like an artfully prepared offering.
Mina’s at MoMA PS1 | @minas_nyc
22-25 Jackson Ave, Long Island City
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