Sketching New York's Tastiest Landmarks: John Donohue on Drawing "All the Restaurants" (2024)

He’s been called the “Rembrandt of New York City’s restaurant façades” by New York magazine food critic Adam Platt — but for artist and author John Donohue, it’s the ritual of observing and creating that gives him satisfaction in sketching the city’s many cafes, eateries and bistros.

“For me, it’s a process of being in the moment,” said John, whose books All the Restaurants in New York, A Table in Paris and A Taste of London have captured restaurants around the world through vibrant, thoughtfully-captured sketches. The artist, who draws restaurants as they exist moment-to-moment — trucks and tree obstacles included — aims to capture the “live” feeling of encountering a cafe on the street. “When I’m drawing, I have to be careful. I get into this flow state where I’m not really aware of what’s around me,” said John as he described sketching on busy thoroughfares like W42nd Street. “I typically find my point of view from standing next to a piece of street furniture — if there’s a posting box or a lamppost or something — so I can feel a little bit of a sense of protection!”

He’s managed to avoid injury while archiving the ever-changing landscape of New York’s culinary scene, capturing everything from tony Michelin-starred institutions to humble hidden gems — including a robust selection of restaurants right here in Hell’s Kitchen, like Becco, Chez Josephine and Joe Allen. A retired actor named Tony Craig who had purchased the Joe Allen print told John that the sight of the stoop next to the famous cafe “brought tears to his eyes” as he recalled working there as a young performer. “Joe Allen was really good at accommodating their schedules,and he would sit on those stairs after working before he made it big and dreamof his future,” said John. “After he got his break he’d go back to eat at Joe’s and then sit on the steps to thank the ether for his good karma. That’s very representative of my process.”

In addition to documenting long-standing local favorites like Joe Allen and the West Bank Cafe — “When I was an editor, I ate there with one of my writers,” said John — he’s also memorialized some of the neighborhood’s late, great landmarks, like Manhattan Plaza’s Esca. “I became acutely aware of the archival nature of the project during the pandemic,” said John. “New York is always changing — you’ll go back to a neighborhood and it’s changed. These places are disappearing and I like that I’m able to capture so many of them in the moment.”

John’s moment began 22 years ago, when, while working as the editor of The New Yorker’s Goings on About Town section, he began drawing and was immediately hooked on its meditative benefits. “I noticed that when I draw, it puts me in a really, really good mood,” said John. “I’ll get off the train and be like, ‘Hey, good morning!’ to strangers in Times Square,” he laughed. After taking classes at the School of Visual Arts and The Arts Students League (as well as practicing on the subway), the editor began pitching cartoons to the magazine.

“I’ve had five [cartoons] published in the magazine, which is exciting,” John said. “Most of the cartoonists whose names you might recognize, they’ll hand in 10 drawings and sell one — they’re selling 10% of their work. I was handing in over 100 and selling one, so I was around 1%,” he noted with a chuckle. After pivoting from cartoon illustration, he published the New York Times Bestseller Man With A Pan: Culinary Adventures of Fathers Who Cook for their Families, a collection of essays by notable writers and chefs about the joys and challenges of cooking at home.

When the time came for John to move on from The New Yorker and into nonprofit grant writing, he still found himself returning to drawing as a creative outlet — and a potential career. Mulling over ways to make drawing into more than a hobby, John turned to a daily practice of sketching his kitchen dish rack, when inspiration struck. “I had this relationship with food where I spent a lot of time in the kitchen and I thought, ‘what if I flipped that around and draw restaurants and just see what happens,’” John said. He completed a sketch ofTriBeCa’s well-known Odeon cafe and posted it to Instagram on January 1, 2017, where his fast-growing collection of restaurant illustrations quickly caught the attention of other New Yorkers.

A friend offered to host a showing of his work at the Powerhouse on 8th bookstore, where public interest and coverage from Eater and the New York Times led John to propose a book series of streetscape illustrations. Publisher Abrams picked up the pitch and promptly assigned the author to spend time in the many memorable cafes of Paris and London. Traveling to sketch some of the world’s most beautiful restaurants “was a fantastic experience,” said John, adding that it was “kind of like a midlife term abroad!”

But while he loved the global aspect of researching restaurants, John remains deeply dedicated to supporting his home city. “I feel really blessed that I can do this work,” said John, “and when I started I was working with City Harvest, donating a portion of my profits to hunger relief. During the pandemic, I was devastated — like so many people — about everything that was happening to everyone, and in particular the restaurants,” he added. John now includes regular donations to the Restaurant Workers Community Foundation in his mission to keep New York’s culinary scene alive and thriving.

And though John doesn’t eat at every restaurant he sketches — “eating is expensive!” — he and his wife still make it a practice to try some of their favorite aspirational spots for lunch. “It’s hard to get a reservation at Le Bernardin, but you can walk in at noon when it opens and sit in the bar — which is quite comfortable!” Sometimes, he’s even invited to dine by restaurant owners grateful to learn that he isn’t an incoming city inspector. “When they find out that I’m drawing a picture,” said John, “they’re usually like, ‘Oh, cool.’”

More than anything, he relishes in the ability to take on a new sense of observation and appreciation for the world around him as it is right now. “That’s the thing about drawing — it’s really about seeing,” he said. “Lawrence Wechsler, who used to work for The New Yorker, has a biography of Robert Irwin called Seeing Is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees. When I draw, it’s a different state where it’s very much: what’s in front of us is usually manageable, whereas what’s in our head — what we regret about what we did in the past, or we’re concerned about what we’re doing in the future — those things aren’t manageable, because we’re not in the past or the future.”

You can buy John’s prints at alltherestaurants.com — and if you are looking for a holiday gift, orders received before December 15 will be delivered by Christmas.