Hypebeast Visits: We Are Ona Combines Fine Art and Fine Dining

We Are Ona is known for its seamless combining of fine art and fine dining, achieved through temporary pop-up experiences in the world’s biggest cities. After stops in Milan, London, Paris and Basel, the collective recently touched down in New York City for a pop-up spearheaded by Michelin-starred chef Dalad Kambhu, whose day job is running Kin Dee, an establishment that offers “contemporary and sustainable Thai food” in Berlin, and brutalist architect Marc Leschelier, who created a bespoke seating arrangement to accompany the food.

“All my life, I wanted to find a way to bring creatives together around culinary experiences,” says We Are Ona founder and creative culinary director Luca Pronzato, as he walks through the WSA building — a self-described “new downtown hub blurring the lines of the arts, production, working space, food, play and culture” — in the city’s Wall Street neighborhood, where the pop-up is being held. “We [like to have the pop-ups led by artists and designers], so we give them carte blanche [for the] criteria of numbers of covers or type of cuisine and they create around it.” In the cavernous yet well-lit space, guests enjoyed a multi-course meal at Leschelier’s “open sky pavilion,” a seat that also functions as an architectural element.

Get a behind-the-scenes look at the pop-up in the video above, and when you’re done check out the other enteries in the Hypebeast Visits series.