Ned Baldwin is a Yale-trained sculptor, but lately he’s become better known for feeding the art world rather than making art. The 43-year-old worked for two years as Gabrielle Hamilton’s chef de cuisine at Prune in Manhattan, then started Housemans at Lathams, a pop-up restaurant in the sleepy village of Orient, on the North Fork of Long Island, New York, where he cultivated a loyal following with semiweekly theme dinners in the summer of 2013. “There are just a lot of artists out there,” says Baldwin of his clientele, which included Jorge Pardo, Elizabeth Peyton, Lisa Yuskavage, John Currin, Rachel Feinstein, Yvonne Force, and Leo Villareal. “I had a captive audience.” Baldwin has also become a fixture in Barbara Gladstone’s kitchen, where he prepares meals for the gallerist’s artists and friends. In May, he will bring his farm-to-table cooking to downtown Manhattan; he and co-chef Adam Baumgart have taken over the Greenwich Street space formerly occupied by another beloved art world restaurateur, Giorgio Deluca. “If all goes well we’re going to open just as the farms get up and running, and the local fisheries will be producing again,” Baldwin says. “Spring into early summer is always an exciting time to create a menu.”
Photo by Harry Zernike.
