No, it’s not an optical illusion where AI – NYC now has its very first 2D restaurant

It is an optical illusion in which you can eat.

With New York restaurants increasingly high technology, an Omakase enterprising restaurant returns to the drawing board – by allowing customers to “dinner in 2D”.

UP is broken and black is white to Shirokuro, the first “bidime” restaurant with full Big Apple service in the East Village, which evokes a diet inside a pop-up graphic novel.

And they don’t need technology to get there. The interior of the restaurant – Its name means “black and white” in Japanese – is meticulously illustrated by hand with various patterns, including boars in the shape of tar on the ground, stylized wall portraits and shelf, seat and table desigited to appear 3D.

Conversely, the real seats and tables are white with black fillings, which makes it difficult to say where the 2D and 3D worlds collide – if customers do not pay attention, they will enter a chair.

The designers have even placed paper flowers specially designed inside large vases to improve the effect.

“(Shirokuro is) where you can immerse yourself in art,” said co -owner James Lim, 49, at the post.

This illusion was made possible by the artistic director Mirim Yoo, a veteran of the luxury make -up industry who would have taken three months to make the existence of the space, as shown by several videos on the Tiktok account of Shirokuro.

Yoo, who courts part -time real estate with Compass, said that she wanted to make customers feel like “fallen into a sketch book”.

Lim opened Shirokuro in March with the co-founder Alex Kim, both inspired by a trip to Asia.

“When I was in Korea 10 years ago, it was super popular,” said the restaurateur, who also headed the Korean restaurant and the Noflex lounge in the New York Koreatown. “I saw this first concept and I said to myself:” We need something like that in New York “.

The 2D craze would have been from Seoul in 2017 at the Yeonnam-Dong 239-20 café now closed-after which the phenomenon stormed Asia.

Then, like each cultural mode of the Far East of Pokémon in K-Pop, this “summary” trend moved to the west with restaurants opening in Paris, Dallas, Chicago and countless other cities, each with different patterns.

“Asia’s trends are taking a while to arrive here,” said Lim.

Of course, it took months to open because everything is marked by hand, but Lim said they had opted for personalized illustrations for a “personal touch”.

“We did not want it to be like wallpaper,” he said. “We wanted to have the artist’s hands in all aspects of the restaurant, from the walls to the floors to the tables and the chairs. In this way, it is not produced en masse. ”

Another way Shirokuro hopes to stand out? Food, which is far from monochrome.

Shirokuro offers a range of Kaleidoscopic sushi which, in contrast to the Spartan environment, makes Dorothy feel like going from the sepia tone in the Technicolor in the “Wizard of Oz”.

With standard Nigiri classics such as Amberjack and Fatty tuna,, The offers include remixes like chopped tuna tuna lined with caviar and chawanmushi (Japanese egg cream) and sea urchin that melts in your mouth like baby’s marine foods.

The menu and prices have not been finalized, but for the moment, guests can choose between an Omakase meal of 10 dishes for $ 50 or an option of 16 dishes currently listed at $ 80.

The à la carte options include a good business of three rolls for $ 25.

Lim’s hope is that the memory of the flavor persists long after the novelty of the environment dissipates.

Shirokuro, open from 12 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. and 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. seven days a week. 103 Second Ave., East Village; shirokuryc.com