From Berlin to Tokyo to Philly to London, David Bowie’s decades-long career as performer and songwriter took him to cities across the Western hemisphere.
A new dinner series at the Brooklyn Museum’s sit-down restaurant The Norm, launching this Sunday, highlights the impact those four major urban centers had on the rock star’s discography.
A complement to the museum’s current “David Bowie is” exhibition, tickets for each of the four dinners will cover four seasonal courses prepared by The Norm’s Michelin-starred executive chef Saul Bolton. Bolton — a huge Bowie fan himself, we’re told — will be on hand to explain the influences that regional cuisines and different phases of the Starman’s life has had on the evening’s menu. Brooklyn Museum’s director of exhibition design, Matthew Yokobosky, also will make an appearance to explain the origins of the “David Bowie is” show, which comes to the end of its three-year global tour in mid July.
The Norm’s four-part dinner series is only the latest facet of Bowie mania that has swept across the city since the Brooklyn Museum’s exhibition opened its doors to the public in March, taking as many forms as the star’s constantly mutating personas. One Crown Heights wine bar and restaurant is hosting a limited-time craft cocktail menu featuring seven drinks that pay homage to the singer-songwriter’s myriad characters, and music streaming service Spotify has partnered with the MTA to install life-sized Bowie images in the Broadway-Lafayette station, as well as distribute 250,000 MetroCards picturing five of the musician’s eccentric personalities.
The first edition of the four-part dinner series at the Brooklyn Museum this Sunday will focus on Berlin street food. The meal kicks off at 4:30 p.m. with a cocktail inspired by the rock legend and features dishes like spaetzle — German egg noodles — with fried onion and scallions, and currywurst sausage. Music played from Bowie’s classic Berlin trilogy, three consecutively released studio albums recorded after the artist moved to West Berlin in 1976, and a display of rare images of the musician by Japanese photographer Masayoshi Sukita will set the mood for the dinner.
The second dinner, on May 20, is Tokyo-themed; a June 10 dinner is all about Bowie’s Philadelphia, and the final dinner on July 1 focuses on his birthplace, London.
Tickets, available here, are $95 for dinner and admission to the museum exhibition, a presentation of roughly 400 items from the Bowie archives. You’ll pay $75 for just the four-course feast.
