Perfectly paired dining and art

It is amazing to me how great restaurants can get art wrong.

Some of my very favorite places to dine in Milwaukee, reputable joints that know my name and my drink (a whiskey Manhattan, perfect, up and with an extra cherry), put art on the walls that pales in comparison to the food on the plates.

These esteemed establishments fuss over so many details. The wine lists are carefully curated. The provenance of the mushrooms can be discussed at length. Yet, the art is hardly inspired, commonplace even, the equivalent of serving flat RC Cola with coq au vin.

There are exceptions, though, places where dining experiences and art experiences come perfectly paired. To be clear, this is not a column about the broader subject of interior design, about the creation of space and decor in restaurants. This is about that rare thing: restaurants that masterfully make art part of who they are.

Corazon, 3129 N. Bremen St., serves locally sourced Mexican fare, often featuring foods harvested from the owners’ family farm. The wee, triangle-shaped dining room, painted cornflower blue and trimmed in cherry red, is one of my favorite places to linger over eggs (Huevos Divorciados with the green sauce on the side, to be precise).

Collecting and displaying objects can be a folk art form unto itself. Here, the bar, walls and window sills are crammed with crucifixes and statues of saints, traditional and less so. It’s a soulful use of icons that makes this an inspired setting for breaking

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