Meet the Cult French Food Collective Finally Arriving Stateside

In addition to pop-ups, We Are Ona also hosts larger events. “So, like weddings?” I ask. Turns out they did the recent—and absurdly idyllic—wedding of Simon Porte Jacquemus and Marco Maestri in Provence, for which they chose local chef Nadia Sammut. For the occasion, Sammut reinvented Provençal classics from soupe au pistou to panisse to ratatouille. “Our guest chefs are amazing,” Pronzato tells me when we met the next afternoon for lunch. “They really let us think as creatives.” (The team also stages around 100 events a year for an illustrious list of clients that includes Hermes, Chanel, Saint Laurent, and Gagosian.)

The February dinner I attended in Los Angeles, coinciding with the Frieze Art Fair coming to town, is part of the We Are Ona “Art Tour” that kicked off at the 2022 Venice Biennale and has now led to their first pop-up in the U.S. When it comes to harnessing the energy of the influx of creative people during art fairs and fashion weeks, the team understands that “everything starts with the location.” They try to find spaces outside of traditional restaurants that even the city’s locals have never visited; in Venice, after touring several enormous palazzos, they ultimately settled on one that was far more modest in scale and somewhat falling apart at the seams. “It felt really true to the city, and that’s the way we like to find a space,” Pronzato explains.  

A similar sentiment applied to their Los Angeles event. Pronzato began as an admirer of Perron’s work, but soon enough, a friendship blossomed, and they decided to host the dinner together at the Perron-Roettinger studio in Silver Lake. (Perron describes the unassuming, cacti-filled outdoor space they settled on for the 50-person dinner as “like a mistress” to his full studio next door.) Perron took the lead on the artistic direction for the event, and his vision was to bring a loose, Americana-inflected spirit to the Ona world. “The Ona crew is formal and European and as much as I like traditional formality, I really like the idea of breaking that,” he says, noting this even applied to the cutlery and crockery, which included “durable and robust” American diner plates. “We couldn’t have done white tablecloths—that kind of thing would feel out of place here,” Perron adds. (Before I even sat down for dinner, a fellow guest—incidentally, the wine buyer at Erewhon—and I were admiring the wine glasses, which dipped elegantly inwards at the base.)

For the meal itself, Parisian chef Thomas Coupeau—whose contemporary style is buttressed by his traditional French gastronomic training—prepared eight courses, with the aim of recreating French classics using seasonal produce only. Highlights included gougères featuring local cheese, crêpes Suzette with California blood orange, and prawns with sorrel, bone marrow, and pineapple course. (The latter tasted less complicated than it sounds on paper, and was my far-and-away favorite.) Inspiring the most conversation, on the other hand, was the parsnip ice cream, as well as the thoughtful wine and beverage pairings courtesy of Lucy Rosedale and Iris Godec.

You could say the point of a party is to come together to forge communal memories—to share food and to talk about it, sure, but also to absorb the finer details of it all and let them imprint themselves on your memory. (I’ll forever associate Diptyque candles, for example, with my sister’s New York apartment, where I’ve spent many an evening watching the wax drip one of their tapers over the course of a long dinner.) And in the best-case scenario, you leave a dinner party with a new friend, feeling, or idea. I certainly did. 

With plans to continue their dinner series at Frieze New York in May with chef Mory Sacko and at Art Basel Miami in December, We Are Ona’s stateside art world takeover is only just getting underway—and if their kickoff in Los Angeles is anything to go by, coming by tickets will likely be rarer than a slice of French steak.