Is this the future of fine dining? Culinary creative studio We Are Ona offers food for thought

For all the variety there is among the restaurants of the world, the experience remains, at its core, almost always the same: eat in one space, with food dictated by one chef and a menu that, even if it rotates, adheres to a particular style. So Luca Pronzato’s creative culinary studio We Are Ona has been captivatingly conspicuous for its offering of a new alternative to this model.

Show time: We Are Ona

‘The idea was to form a creative culinary studio where we can gather a community of fine dining and restaurant talents: chefs, sommeliers, baristas and waiters, of course, but also a lot of different creatives,’ says the Paris-based Pronzato. ‘Interior stylists, floral designers, artists, we want to let them all express themselves through the art of food.’

Since 2019, Pronzato and his team have rolled out pop-up restaurants worldwide, from the Turkish seaside to Manhattan skyscrapers. At each event, they work with a different chef, a different group of creative directors, a different set of local suppliers, and a different group of guests around the table. Emphasis is placed on recruiting Michelin-starred chefs alongside rising stars that have generated significant buzz but haven’t quite reached stardom – yet.

We Are Ona alumni include Adeline Grattard, head chef of the Michelin-starred Yam’Tcha in Paris; Atsushi Tanaka, known for his strikingly minimalist take on Japanese cuisine; and Mory Sacko, who fuses French, African and Japanese influences. The creative talents that the team decides to collaborate with are there to add the visual components of the evening, whether that’s having artist Paul Créange create a series of light sculptures or Harry Nuriev, of Crosby Studios, designing a set of plates.

When it comes to location, Pronzato is always thinking about how to reintroduce guests to the place they call home. Attendees at We Are Ona events tend to be writers, designers and artists – often the people who make a city a cultural hub. Pronzato aims to surprise even those most familiar with their hometown by inviting them to unexpected venues, such as an old stable in Arles or an unknown tennis club in Milan.

Running a restaurant is notoriously difficult, and operating multiple restaurants, each more complex than the next, is exponentially so. But thankfully for Pronzato and the teams he assembles, the challenge is part of the thrill.

The year 2024 proved to be particularly challenging. At Art Basel Paris 2024, We Are Ona teamed up with Carsten Höller’s Stockholm restaurant Brutalisten to create a unique dining experience that adhered to its strict food preparation classification scale. The menu, which featured dishes categorised as ‘semi-brutalist’ (a few ingredients), ‘brutalist’ (one ingredient plus salt and water), and ‘orthodox brutalist’ (just one ingredient), aimed to highlight the natural flavours of the produce, either by serving it raw, quickly heating it or applying intricate cooking techniques. The black and white interiors of the old train station where the event was held matched the brutalist influences of the food.

More recently, the team celebrated a collaboration between Pharrell and Evian by transforming a private home in Bel Air for a dinner. And in Milan, the studio collaborated with scenographer Laura Floor, photographer Mark Borthwick and Scottish-born, Marseille-based chef Megan Moore on a pop-up inside Fondazione Sozzani, the new art foundation created by former Vogue Italia editor and 10 Corso Como founder Carla Sozzani.

Meanwhile, in New York, the studio invited French sculptor and architect Marc Leschelier to create a building within a building. It was held at the WSA building, the financial district office tower that has been repurposed as a cultural hub (built in 1983, it all but sat empty during the pandemic, but now hosts tenants such as fashion designers Luar and Bode and food collective Ghetto Gastro, alongside A-lister parties). Here, guests were surrounded by and ate on a series of brutalist architectural structures that Leschelier had designed for the occasion, with food by Dalad Kambhu, the Berlin-based head chef of the stylishly innovative Thai restaurant Kin Dee.

‘These are huge projects that deserve a lot of creative energy,’ says Pronzato. ‘We’re creating a functional restaurant where guests eat seven to ten courses each, and there is all this production before, and then it’s show time. I think designers like the exercise because it asks them to create a living piece – not just an object you look at but one you dine with. That is the art of food – it creates these souvenirs you can keep in your memory.’

‘The art of food’ is a significant concept for Pronzato because he believes that the culinary world has always been viewed as a separate creative field, and that is a perception he wants to change. If we define art as an act that evokes emotions from those who experience it, then the chefs, designers and guests at every We Are Ona event can be seen as artists. Everyone involved, from those preparing the meal to those enjoying it, is participating in a collaborative alchemical happening that is far greater than the sum of its component parts.

‘What makes We Are Ona exceptional are the memories you create with the people you share these moments with,’ says the studio’s chief of staff Alix Randriana. ‘It’s more than just the food or the tablescape – it’s the entire experience. From the minute you arrive at the venue to the final bite, every detail is carefully considered to craft a timeless, immersive moment. I have fantastic souvenirs for each pop-up I’ve been to.’

We Are Ona offers a new blueprint for the future of fine dining. Before launching the studio, Pronzato spent years at Noma in Copenhagen. Working at the restaurant that redefined fine dining gave him the experience and network he needed to launch his own project. And, as Noma now shutters its doors after more than 20 years, it feels like a precedent sign of the change that is occurring in the industry at large. The mode of fine dining that Noma’s René Redzepi and his contemporaries pioneered is, as Redzepi himself has acknowledged, ‘financially and emotionally unsustainable’. The system needs to change for both the people in the kitchen and the people in the dining room. ‘Fine dining now is about the experience, about how you can create something you will remember,’ says Pronzato.

‘In a digitalised world, at We Are Ona, we believe in human moments – long, shared tables where people meet other people, where they eat food that is really thought about. That is fine dining to me: a human moment that guests will always remember.’

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