I launched this project in New York City on January 1, 2017, inspired by the late Jason Polan’s Every Person in New York and James Gulliver Hancock’s All the Buildings in New York. At that time, according to a New Yorker profile of the critic Pete Wells, there were some 24,000 restaurants in the city. It is mathematically possible to visit all of them in under a year by spending 20 minutes at a stop. Luckily, it takes me almost exactly 20 minutes to draw the façade of each place, working strictly from life, in ink (without a pencil or erasing anything).
In a perfect world, I would have finished New York City in twelve months. Of course, my calculation didn’t take into account openings and closings, travel between each one, sleep, work, outside responsibilities, and coloring and printing. Or black-swan events like the Coronavirus pandemic. So, I have been at it ever since.
Since 2017, I’ve expanded my reach to include Paris and London and (hopefully) beyond as I expect to continue doing this work for the rest of my life—which is precisely the point. I first conceived of this site’s title as intentionally hyperbolic, but it has a deeper meaning. For when I say, “All the Restaurants,” I’m being more aspirational than descriptive. It’s my aim to draw forever, and your support of this project makes that goal achievable.
I draw at least twice a day, and if you are curious about why, details are in the articles below. In a previous life, I was an editor at The New Yorker magazine, where I also published a few cartoons. In 2011, I edited “Man with a Pan: Culinary Adventures of Fathers who Cook for their Families,” a best-selling anthology featuring recipes and essays from Mario Batali, Mark Bittman, Mark Kurlansky, Stephen King, Jim Harrison, and many others. I also used to write about cooking at home on my blog, Stay at Stove Dad.
Life & Work
Bio:
I’m an artist and a writer and the founder of All the Restaurants in New York. My articles and cartoons have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Barron’s, and other publications.
I’m also the editor of “Man With a Pan: Culinary Adventures of Fathers Who Cook For their Families,” a 2011 best-selling anthology featuring contributions from Mario Batali, Mark Bittman, Mark Kurlansky, Stephen King, and many others.
Quotes, Notes & Etc.
“John Donohue is the Rembrandt of New York City’s restaurant facades.”
– Adam Platt, restaurant critic, New York magazine
"If you know someone who’s wild for a special New York restaurant, this is the perfect present.”
– Ruth Reichl, former editor of Gourmet magazine
"John Donohue, a former editor at The New Yorker, has a talent for the visual image, not just the written word."
– Florence Fabricant, of The New York Times
Recommendations
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The Recôncavo is an almost invisible center-of-gravity. Circumscribing the Bay of All Saints, this region was landing for more enslaved human beings than any other such throughout all of human history. Not unrelated, it is also birthplace of some of the most physically & spiritually uplifting music ever made. —Sparrow
"Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix."
—Susan Rogers: Personal recording engineer for Prince, inc. "Purple Rain", "Sign o' the Times", "Around the World in a Day"... Director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory
I'm Pardal here in Brazil (that's "Sparrow" in English). The deep roots of this project are in Manhattan, where Allen Klein (managed the Beatles and The Rolling Stones) called me about royalties for the estate of Sam Cooke... where Jerry Ragovoy (co-wrote Time is On My Side, sung by the Stones; Piece of My Heart, Janis Joplin of course; and Pata Pata, sung by the great Miriam Makeba) called me looking for unpaid royalties... where I did contract and licensing for Carlinhos Brown's participation on Bahia Black with Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock...
...where I rescued unpaid royalties for Aretha Franklin (from Atlantic Records), Barbra Streisand (from CBS Records), Led Zeppelin, Mongo Santamaria, Gilberto Gil, Astrud Gilberto, Airto Moreira, Jim Hall, Wah Wah Watson (Melvin Ragin), Ray Barretto, Philip Glass, Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd for his interest in Bob Marley compositions, Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam and others...
...where I worked with Earl "Speedo" Carroll of the Cadillacs (who went from doo-wopping as a kid on Harlem streetcorners to top of the charts to working as a janitor at P.S. 87 in Manhattan without ever losing what it was that made him special in the first place), and with Jake and Zeke Carey of The Flamingos (I Only Have Eyes for You)... stuff like that.
Yeah this is Bob's first record contract, made with Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd of Studio One and co-signed by his aunt because he was under 21. I took it to Black Rock to argue with CBS' lawyers about the royalties they didn't want to pay. They paid.
MATRIX MUSICAL
The Matrix was built below among some of the world's most powerfully moving music, some of it made by people barely known beyond village borders. Or in the case of Sodré, his anthem A MASSA — a paean to Brazil's poor ("our pain is the pain of a timid boy, a calf stepped on...") — having blasted from every radio between the Amazon and Brazil's industrial south, before he was silenced. (that's me left, with David Dye & Kim Junod for U.S. National Public Radio) ... The Matrix started with Sodré, with João do Boi, with Roberto Mendes, with Bule Bule, with Roque Ferreira... music rooted in the sugarcane plantations of Bahia. Hence our logo (a cane cutter).