At Robb Report's House of Robb during Miami Art Week, Mario Carbone discussed how he designed the Grill's custom china, inspired by JFK's White House.
The celebrated chef best known for his eponymous Carbone is behind more than 40 restaurants in dozens of cities around the world, and he has a hand in everything from the menu to the décor to the outfits that the staff wears. It’s this sort of attention to detail and service that makes him one of theat Miami Art Week on Tuesday. “We tell a story, we set a stage, we have uniforms—those are the costumes. It’s set to music.
Carbone shared one example that demonstrated his detail-centered ethos when it comes to creating restaurants that transport customers into another time and place. The Grill was largely inspired by John F. Kennedy’s White House—in its former life, the space was the iconic, which Carbone called “the most important fine-dining American restaurant in history.” It was there where Marilyn Monroe sang “Happy Birthday” to JFK, a rendition that still holds strong in the American cultural memory.
So we got to the china and they asked, “Well, what do you want to do for the plates?” And I said, “Let’s call the White House and find out what President Kennedy’s china was,” because that’s the period we’re working with. John F. Kennedy celebrated his 45th birthday there the night Marilyn famously sings “Happy Birthday, Mr. President.” So he was the president at the time of the opening. I said, “Call the White House and find out what JFK’s presidential china looked like. I want to see it.
The answer came back that the china actually never got made. Jackie went through a long process of figuring it out. But then, unfortunately, he’s assassinated in the third year of the term. So there is no plate in the White House cabinet for his administration. I said, “Okay, well, what was Jackie working on?” Then I went to the company called Lennox in America, who would have made that china.
And ultimately we did. We put it on the same plate, the same cream/bone palette that it would have been for the White House, gold trim, with all the details that Jackie liked, that we think may have been the plate had he not been assassinated. And then on the bottom, Lennox put their old logo from the ’60s on the bottom, and it says “Presidential china made for the Grill.” So the plates at the Grill are as close to JFK’s plate that it would have been.
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