The Museum of Food and Drink (or MOFAD) is a refreshing change of pace from the countless other museums you can find in NYC. For one, it’s the only museum dedicated to food history, and for that reason alone is worth a visit for anyone interested in the topic. Quite frankly, you just have no other option.
But luckily, this museum actually gets it right. It is not only entertaining, but also very user-friendly, providing easily digestible information.
Located in Williamsburg in a refurbished warehouse, the museum is much smaller than you’d normally find, but filled with relevant and user-friendly information and exhibits. Only one cuisine is featured at a time, and the current exhibit, called “Chow: Making the Chinese American Restaurant”, focuses on the history of Chinese American food. When you first enter the museum, you’re greeted with an enormous curtain of inter-connected Chinese restaurant take-out boxes (known as “oyster pails”), with each box representing 7 Chinese restaurants in the United States, for a total of 30,000 restaurants domestically. Past the curtain, the exhibit begins with the history and origin of Chinese American cuisine, making a clear distinction between the cuisine found throughout China and the one that has become a cultural phenomenon here in America. The museum is careful to highlight that Chinese American cuisine is being discussed.
The museum takes you through the history of Chinese people in America, and the progression of the Chinese American cuisine since the late 1800s, from the chop suey and egg foo young crazes that started over a century ago to a more modern understanding of Chinese American cuisine. Though it highlights the development of the cuisine throughout the country, it focuses on California and New York in particular as these were the two epicenters of the boom. There are videos of various Chinese American cuisine pioneers, tons of visuals of various dishes, restaurant interiors, and people, and fun items like a wall of menus from Chinese American restaurants throughout America.
The museum also features several interactive stations. First, there’s a large fortune cookie machine where you can watch fortune cookies being made live. It’s manned by an employee who is on hand to answer any questions and encourage you to eat as many fresh made fortune cookies as you like. Each fortune cookie contains a fortune that was submitted by a prior visitor to the museum, so you in turn can submit a fortune that will be received by a future visitor. It’s definitely a clever and playful idea.
Flavor: Making It and Faking It is another interactive exhibit, featuring a scent station where you can press buttons to release different scents. The display highlights the fact that some of the flavors of our favorite foods are actually created by scientifically crafted flavors and scents that are infused into the food. The exhibit also demonstrates that many familiar scents are actually composed of a combination of individual scents. In the display, you can press each of the scent buttons (such as vanilla, cinnamon and caramel) at the same time to release a scent that resembles Coke.
But perhaps the most unique feature of the museum is the live cooking demonstration at the end. The dishes rotate monthly and every visitor gets to watch and eat fresh cooked Chinese American cuisine. Aside from simply cooking, the chef is also on hand to answer any questions about the style of cooking, ingredients and dishes, and is also incredibly accommodating to those with various dietary restrictions.
Though the basis of MOFAD is food, the museum is more than that. It highlights the way a certain food plays into our pop culture, history, and sociology. The museum is well organized, logically designed, and provides the right amount of information. The literature is easy to follow and digest, the exhibits and displays are purposeful, and the museum is also just incredibly fun.
The current exhibit is on show through Labor Day, so be sure you catch it before then. After that, the museum will rebuild to feature something entirely new. What this will be is a mystery, but no matter what it is, we would recommend you go check it out!
