Inside of a boxy building on the corner of Olive Street and Olympic Boulevard sits the Gallery, a new restaurant offering an immersive dining experience in the space beloved craft beer bar Mikkeller once inhabited. If you were just walking by, you’d never predict the whimsy and interactive fun the Gallery team has dreamed up for guests on the other side of the door.
There are a lot of concepts and titles involved here, so here’s a guide: The Gallery is the name of the restaurant itself, which is the debut project from immersive hospitality company Allureum. The Gallery doesn’t operate as a regular restaurant, though. Instead it offers a dining show called Elementa (which will presumably be followed by others down the line). And to get to the Gallery, you pass through a more casual cocktail bar, Horizon. Got all that?
The minds behind the Gallery have plenty of experience in the immersive world: Cofounders Chuck Fawcett and Daren Ulmer both have history with studios including Disney, as well as backgrounds in themed entertainment and experiential attractions. On the culinary side of things, they teamed up with chef Joshua Whigham, who notably served as chef de cuisine at José Andrés’s ThinkFoodGroup restaurants, including the Bazaar in Los Angeles.
I started my night inside Horizon, where red velvet banquettes and moody blue lighting set the scene for a lively crowd sipping on cocktails. The real star of Horizon, though, is the dimensional city skyline behind the bar. It’s made up of buildings set before a sky screen, the windows are lit up with different colors, and if you peer inside, you’ll see mini silhouettes of people playing instruments, dancing and chatting. It’s a fun Rear Window-esque feature to enjoy as you’re waiting for your drink. You’ll find other cityscape snippets throughout the Horizon space too. They feel reminiscent of L.A.—an art deco tower, a classic cinema marquee—but don’t specifically re-create the Downtown skyline.
Horizon offers a full menu of cocktails, wine and beer. I ordered the refreshing Angel’s Flight—with vodka, rose, watermelon, aloe and mint. Another L.A.-themed drink, the Burlington Arcade, caught my eye too. There’s also a food menu of more low-key options than you’ll find inside the Gallery itself—think salads, a “South Park” pizza named for the neighborhood, a requisite burger and a hamachi melt that sounded intriguing.
But I was saving room for the main course—or the five prix-fixe courses of Elementa, to be precise. True to its name, Elementa is a themed experience that explores the five classical elements of nature through food, music and “stunning visuals.” There are vegan and gluten-free options available, and to drink, you can choose a supplemental wine, spirits or nonalcoholic pairing.
The Gallery itself, where Elementa takes place, consists of one fairly large room with some 20 tables arranged diagonally. There are panels on each wall that serve as canvases for projection art that, along with the tabletops, set the stage throughout the night. At the start of the meal, each diner’s name was projected from above onto their place setting, which was a nice touch.
After settling in, we were introduced to the Curator, an “enigmatic master of sights, sounds and tastes” who guides you through the two-hour-plus dinner experience. Basically, there’s a two-minute performance between each course during which the Curator introduces the next element and interacts with the projections with big, magician-style energy as a classical score centered around Claude Debussy swells.
After a savory blueberry amuse-bouche, the first element on the menu was earth, which paired projections of a forest and ivy growing along the walls with practical paper butterflies released by the Curator and—my favorite part—interactive animation on the tables. Digital butterflies flitted about between the place settings, and by waving your hand over the projected greenery, you could make flowers bloom, which was incredibly charming. The “earth” dish—roots with strawberries and flowers growing out of a cocoa powder “dirt”—was one of the night’s best, and seemed the most organically tied to its elemental concept. For the next element, water, the dish was a thoughtfully plated hamachi, which was served amid a coral-reef-inspired tablescape and colorful swimming fish after the Curator weathered a simulated rainstorm.
Air was perhaps my favorite course of the night. After the Curator bounced a big balloon through the air and enlisted diners to help him keep it afloat, an entrée of eggplant and duck with pickled eggplant chermoula and candied pistachios, all topped with airy honey foam, was served, and it was by far the most flavorful dish of the five. On the table were bubbles you could interact with by diverting their course through motion sensors, but I found myself wishing that you could pop them instead and turn it into a game for a bit more interactivity.
The fire portion invoked everything from fireworks to lava, and a flick of your finger above the tabletop would send sparks flying. The coriander- and peppercorn-crusted tenderloin didn’t scream “fire” to me, though. The dessert course, inspired by aether, or space, was a better fit: A cosmic-looking dish of ube, coconut and candied ginger called to mind a celestial orb. The interactive feature here was pretty fun: By placing your hand on the table, you could form constellations between the stars with your fellow diners.
An earnest sendoff from the Curator (“I’d like you to keep in mind that this culinary journey through the five elements should leave you with feelings of nourishment and inspiration”) marked the end of the night. Overall, I left feeling that all of the food was decent—a couple of the dishes were memorable, and none were bad—and there was some truly impressive technology at play. I didn’t necessarily feel immersed in each of the elements (the wall projections tended to fade into the background after their novelty wore off) but I did enjoy the interactive tabletop displays for each course. They’d be a good conversation starter or ice breaker if needed.
I opted for the nonalcoholic beverage pairing, and it’s worth noting that for both that and the wine pairing, it wasn’t a traditional pairing of five different drinks/glasses of wine. I had three mocktails; the first was the best—it tasted like guava, but despite my asking a couple of times what it was, no server had the answer—followed by a cucumber-infused spritz and a glass of nonalcoholic champagne.
And now, the million-dollar question: How much does it cost? A night at Elementa is a bit of an investment. The five-course dinner is $200—with fees and taxes, it comes out to $233 per person. And that’s without beverage pairings, which start at $45 for nonalcoholic and go all the way up to $170 for the premium wine pairing option (the house wines will run you $74). That does feel steep for the experience. It’s less than the city’s most acclaimed fine-dining tasting menus (like the Michelin-recommended Providence, Somni and Kato), as it should be, but it’s also pricier than the tasting menu at Baroo or even some great under-$100 options, and priced similarly to Orsa & Winston and Bar Sawa (which are both five-star experiences, according to our restaurant critic). But you’re not there just for the food; you’re largely paying for the interactive elements and unique experience (but even then, it’s hard to swallow that a two-hour projection show will cost you more than a Disneyland ticket).
That said, if you want both fine dining and immersive entertainment, Elementa does fill that specific niche. Though it calls to mind a couple of recent culinary pop-ups that implemented similar projection technology (specifically Le Petit Chef and WcDonald’s), Elementa stands out with its unique combination of immersive projection and tabletop interactivity—and the fact that it’s a permanent space. (Plus, its Downtown location is much more convenient than a trek to Orange County.) If you’ve read this far and Elementa’s concept is appealing to you, you likely won’t be disappointed if you go. A lot of the experience does rely on novelty, so I can’t imagine the Gallery will see many repeat diners—at least until it unveils its next experience with a new set of visuals. Horizon, however, could become a go-to for drinks before a show at the nearby Belasco or Mayan theaters.
Horizon and the Gallery are located at 330 W Olympic Blvd. Horizon is open Wed, Thu and Sun from 5–10pm and Fri and Sat from 5pm to midnight. You can make a reservation for Horizon here. Elementa showtimes are more limited: Upcoming reservations are currently available select Friday nights at 7:30pm and Saturday nights at 6:30pm, with just one seating a night. Reservations are $233 with taxes and fees, with an optional $45 nonalcoholic pairing, $74 house wine pairing, $82 spirits pairing or $170 premium wine pairing. You can buy tickets here. Parking is available in nearby lots.