Le Petit Chef

Skullmapping’s immersive animated dinner experience arrives in New Orleans.

by

On a recent Friday night I sat across from my fiancé in the historic Hotel Monteleone’s Criollo Restaurant, and enjoyed a five-course meal. Such indulgent meals have been enjoyed in the French Quarter for well over a century, but this one was different. We watched course after course as a tiny, 3D-animated chef painstakingly prepared each dish—from growing the radishes alongside the burrata, to wrestling sea creatures from a jet ski for the bouillabaisse, to tackling a lobster three times his size—in vibrant projection mapping right on the tabletops in front of us. 

The experience is called Le Petit Chef, a concept hatched by Belgium artistic collective Skullmapping, which was co-founded by Creative Director Filip Sterckx and 3D Artist Anton Verbeeck. Skullmapping creates 3-dimensional animation projects that use projection mapping to bring intricate and colorful scenes to life on any surface, from table place settings to historic building faces (one project they completed for New Year’s Eve in Antwerp involved a story of a firebird’s battle with evil, projected magnificently on a massive historic building face, in the style of Luna Fête in New Orleans or Allumer in Natchez).

Le Petit Chef has been staged (Eaten? Cooked? Shown?) in cities across the world including Bangkok, Paris, London; and more recently in American cities like New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. For the first time anywhere in the Gulf South, it’s currently being offered at Criollo through the summer and into the fall, with dinner seatings at 5:30 pm and 8 pm. 

Besides each dish consistently being exquisitely prepared, the grown-up menu presented alongside the cartoon show was made of crowd-pleasers: a burrata and heirloom tomato salad, a seafood bouillabaisse flavored with garlic and saffron; a sous-vide lobster tail in a creamy garlic butter topped with truffle oil; wagyu beef tenderloin atop a celeriac mash with prosciutto-wrapped asparagus; and a relative of the baked Alaska featuring neapolitan-flavored gelato with torched meringue and a cherry on a chocolate wafer called “Le Bombe”. 

Coming straight from a busy week of work, it was just the combination of indulgently delicious and outright silly that I didn’t realize I was craving. That can only be properly executed if the food and animation technology are both actually very serious—Le Petit Chef spares no effort in either area, ensuring that a concept so precariously close to veering gimmick holds fast its status as a delight.

I appreciated that even though the projections felt contemporary—even futuristic-seeming—staples of a fine meal out weren’t compromised. The real, human service was still excellent—a waiter explained each course between the animated interludes, and the actual, human chef (though somewhat less petit than our adorable protagonist), greeted us warmly as we arrived. 

Timeout called Le Petit Chef at the Los Angeles Ritz an “uncomplicated delight”. And that’s exactly what it is, if you let it be. Coming straight from a busy week of work, it was just the combination of indulgently delicious and outright silly that I didn’t realize I was craving. That can only be properly executed if the food and animation technology are both actually very serious—Le Petit Chef spares no effort in either area, ensuring that a concept so precariously close to veering gimmick holds fast its status as a delight. In a world where technological advancements often feel daunting (between resetting the wifi router and wondering/worrying about the future of A.I.), Le Petit Chef feels like a rarely-simple digital-age treat. 

Learn more about Le Petit Chef or book your experience at criollonola.com. 

Disclaimer: The writer's experience was hosted by the Hotel Monteleone, though the thoughts and opinions included are entirely her own.