April 2016
A five-day interactive restaurant pop-up celebrating the ten year anniversary of Google Translate. The activation featured eighteen different chefs from around the world and each day, the restaurant featured a new menu inspired by global food traditions. Menus, art and signage around the restaurant were presented in dozens of languages and our multi-lingual waitstaff conversed with guests in French, Norwegian, Korean, Indonesian, Portuguese, Spanish, and Hebrew as guests used Google Translate to guide them through the experience. The restaurant’s 468 seats sold out in less than ten minutes.
To engage a broader audience, we had Brooklyn-based bakery Dough create a line-up of custom doughnut flavors reflecting flavors from around the world. Each day the restaurant was open, we gave away thousands of doughnuts from a cart on this bustling corner in Chinatown. Passersby had to use Translate’s WordLens feature to translate the flavors so they could order.
View the campaign video here.
Read a recap of the event here.
April 2015
A collaboration between Momofuku, MAD, and The World Bank to draw world leaders’ attention to issues surrounding hunger, poverty and the future of food. This daylong symposium helped kick off the World Bank’s 2015 Spring Meeting. We flew in a roster of food activists from around the world, including Chido Govera of Zimbabwe and David Hertz of Brazil, to share their inspiring stories of using food to combat social and economic inequality in their home countries.
MAD’s Head of Research Arielle Johnson spoke about the culinary community’s role in minimizing food waste as we passed out tastings of fermented food products that Johnson had produced in collaboration with Momofuku’s culinary lab, using spent grains from Brooklyn Brewery. The delegates then broke for lunch and found their cafeteria turned on its head for the day: Momofuku and MAD had consulted with Restaurant Associates, the World Bank’s food service provider, to create menus highlighting sustainable proteins and “ugly” produce.
Read more here.
July 2011-January 2015
A collaborative event series celebrating up-and-coming chefs from around the country. For each installment, Executive Chef Matthew Rudofker brought a new chef to NYC to re-create a meal like one at their respective restaurants within Momofuku Ssäm Bar. Initially billed as the “Late Night Dinner Series,” with 11pm and 1am seatings to cater to restaurant industry professionals, the initiative later evolved into an all-night affair hosting up to 180 guests.
Featured chefs included:
- Mike Solomonov, Zahav (Philadelphia)
- Cosmo Goss, The Publican (Chicago)
- Matt Woodall, Cochon (New Orleans)
- Philip Krajeck, Rolf and Daughters (Nashville)
- Travis Grimes and Brian Baxter, Husk (Charleston + Nashville)
- Jeremy Fox, Rustic Canyon (Santa Monica)
- Chris Shepherd, Underbelly (Houston)
- Jonathon Sawyer, Greenhouse Tavern (Cleveland)
These collaborations also led to a series of reciprocal dinners that brought Chef Rudofker to Zahav, The Publican, and Rolf and Daughters.
May 2014
A 500-guest party to celebrate the launch of Audi’s A3, hosted by Chef David Chang at Pioneer Works in Red Hook, Brooklyn. The Momofuku team selected the venue, curated the guest list, catered the event, brought in beverage sponsors, signed Questlove on to DJ, and worked with experiential marketing agency MKG to integrate Audi’s brand into the event.
March 2014
The first U.S. fundraising events for MAD, a Danish food-focused nonprofit founded by Rene Redzepi. We opened with a private cocktail party aimed at the younger demographic. The event was hosted at The Apartment at The Line and featured catering by Hot Bread Kitchen incubator businesses, cocktails by PDT's Jim Meehan, and the musical stylings of Cibo Matto and James Murphy (LCD Soundsystem). Read more at Vogue.com.
The main event was a $1500-a-plate benefit dinner at Eleven Madison Park. We brought in some of the world's biggest culinary names (Alex Atala, Barbara Lynch, Rene Redzepi, David Chang, and Daniel Humm) to collaborate on the dinner menu. A live auction emceed by Padma Lakshmi and Sotheby’s Lydia Fenet raised nearly $250,000 for MAD’s initiatives around the world.
Produced all signature events for Lucky Peach, Momofuku’s quarterly magazine, from May 2013-December 2014.
The first two installments of “Winners are Losers,” the magazine’s annual after party for the James Beard Media Awards, brought together over 450 of Lucky Peach’s greatest supporters and the who’s who of food media. We collaborated with a diverse range of talent to pull these events off, including Hugue Dufour (M.Wells), Joaquín Simó (Pouring Ribbons), and Kevin Denton (wd~50 + Alder), and featured live painting by artist Steve Keene, light shows by Ggeeoorrggiiaa, and DJ sets by Miho Hatori, Andy Ricker and Mark Ibold.
“The Art in Article,” Lucky Peach’s first gallery exhibit and holiday pop-up shop, celebrated artists from the first nine issues of the magazine. Hosted at Bleecker Street Arts Club, the show raised funds for Red Cross relief efforts in the Philippines.
