Damien Hirst — bedazzler of skull, embalmer of shark, maker of the money — is opening a new restaurant in only a week’s time. On February 23, the doors to Pharmacy 2 (the seeming, er, sequel to his other restaurant, Pharmacy — which closed) will open. The question is, how is it the case that Hirst can have an studio worker stuff a pigeon into a virtine and have it be worth hundreds of thousands, while somehow whatever bird ends up on these plates will presumably not cost the price of a large country estate?
The public will find out in a few days — or at least, those who don’t indignantly avoid Hirst’s massive, $38 million Newport Street Gallery in London, to which the restaurant is attached — will. Hirst said of the restaurant, and of its head chef Mark Hix, in the Evening Standard:
Pharmacy 2 combines two of my greatest passions: art and food. I’ve always loved Mark as a chef and his approach to food, so it’s great we’re working together on this.
The restaurant itself is bedecked in odes to Damien Hirst’s art — mostly in the form of pharmacy themed items that recall his earlier works, like the gargantuan medicine cabinet stretching across the room, the pill-shaped barstools, the pill-patched booths, and other objects throughout the room generally smothered in pill imagery. Check it out: