Aperture & Void: A Restaurant Review
By Ridley Longsworth
Aperture & Void, located deep within a reclaimed industrial park, promises an experience of gastronomic friction. It delivers on that promise, but the friction is entirely between the diner’s common sense and the chef’s nihilistic ambition. The visit felt less like a meal and more like a high-end, carefully orchestrated psychological evaluation designed to see how much absurdity one would tolerate before demanding the check.
The ambiance is less "minimalist chic" and more "brutalist purgatory." The walls are poured concrete, painted a noncommittal shade of ash, and the temperature is maintained at a perpetual, slightly too-cool 62 degrees. The only sound is the white noise of a faulty ventilation system, giving the room an air of sterile, expectant dread. Our server, whose uniform resembled a hospital scrub and whose demeanor suggested deep-seated philosophical regret, presented the "menu," a pair of smooth river stones on the zinc table, making it clear that hospitality here is subservient to the chef's performance art.
We began with the appetizer, The Unwritten History of the Cod ($85). This was served on a polished, black granite slab that was freezing to the touch. The dish consisted of three things: a single, glistening flake of perfectly poached cod; a massive, unappetizing chunk of raw, hand-mined sea salt; and a single, tiny, lukewarm parsley leaf. The flake of fish was sublime (tender, oily, oceanic), but its isolation was agonizing. The presentation did not complement the fish; it mocked it. When questioned about the gargantuan salt rock, the server merely whispered, "It is meant to suggest the vastness of possibility."
The centerpiece was the disastrous Quiet Collapse of Structure ($120), a supposed pork cheek course. The presentation was stunning: a single, deeply caramelized cube of meat centered on a bone-white plate. The moment my fork (which was fashioned from a cold, heavy piece of oxidized copper) made contact, the meat, which should have been firm, simply dissolved. Not melted, but instantly collapsed into a dark, rich liquid that soaked immediately into the ceramic. It was technically cooked, yet engineered to defy the physical act of eating, turning the pursuit of flavor into an instant failure. I was left with a forkful of sauce and the dizzying realization that the meal was designed to be beautiful, expensive, and impossible to consume.
After the existential crisis of the pork cheek, we proceeded to what was labeled as the mid-course: The Parable of the Empty Plate ($95). This dish was a culinary exercise in auditory distortion. It featured a teaspoon-sized coil of bright green, extruded kelp "pasta" placed at the very center of a massive, heavily insulated, bell-shaped ceramic bowl. The bowl had been heated to an unnerving temperature, causing it to amplify every scrape of the copper fork and every distant, guttural kitchen noise into a shocking racket. The kelp coil itself tasted profoundly of nothing but saltwater and regret, and the volume of the serving vessel felt specifically designed to humiliate the diner with the sheer disparity between the size of the container and the emptiness of the experience.
For the grand finale, we faced Negative Space and the Taste of Yesterday ($75). A dessert should be a gentle denouement; this was a sharp, bitter conclusion. It arrived as a perfectly square block of frozen, clarified shiitake mushroom consommé, placed on a slab of slate. The block was dusted heavily with ultra-fine, flavorless activated charcoal powder, which resembled soot. The texture was clean and cold, but the flavor was jarringly savory and earthy (a bitter, cold anticlimax that extinguished any lingering warmth or expectation of sweetness). Our server informed us that the dish "challenges the binary of comfort and consumption," which, translated, means "it tastes like frozen dirt."
In summary, Aperture & Void is a culinary critique of dining itself. The dishes are brilliant in their cruelty but fail as food. It is an act of expensive, self-indulgent conceptual art. Unless you are looking to spend your entire paycheck proving the chef's cynical point about modern consumption, avoid the Void. Rating: 0.5/5 Stars (The perfect collapse of the pork cheek was at least a memorable scientific feat.)
This work first appeared in The Radish on January 5, 2026. It won a Scholastic Gold Key Writing Award and has been nominated for an American Voices Award. It is part of my satirical “Restaurant Review” series. You can also read my reviews of The Fern & Fable and The Rusty Hubcap (all fictional establishments, just like Aperture & Void). Any resemblance to actual restaurants is purely coincidental.
