Meet the man who wants to draw ‘all the restaurants’ in Philly
John Donohue, a former New Yorker editor, started off sketching his dish rack. He has moved on to restaurant facades.
On the first day of 2017, former New Yorker editor and cartoonist John Donohue set out to sketch every restaurant in New York. He started with the Odeon, the iconic brasserie in Tribeca. Several cities, and about 1,500 sketches later, he has published the books All the Restaurants in New York (2019), A Table in Paris (2021), and A Taste of London (2023).
Now Donohue has turned his sights to Philadelphia.
He taught himself to draw in 2001, sketching people on his subway ride to the New Yorker office. Drawing, he realized, made him happy and calm. “When I pick up the pen, I become a better person, and the more I draw, the happier everyone in my life is,” he wrote in a 2016 essay.
In 2015, after 22 years at the New Yorker, Donohue lost his job. Taking care of his two daughters while his wife worked, he spent a lot of time in the kitchen of his Brooklyn home. He began sketching the dish rack, a daily practice that he maintains. “It’s always there and always changing,” he said. “It’s like an automatic still life.”
Given the centrality of drawing in his life, “I wanted to figure out a way to see if I could make some money from it,” Donohue said.
He was inspired by Jason Polan’s Every Person in New York and James Gulliver Hancock’s All the Buildings in New York. “My initial idea was to do bookstores,” he said, “but someone’s already done bookstores, so I was like, ‘I’ll move on to something else.’”
The world of food was familiar territory: In 2011, Donohue published Man with a Pan: Culinary Adventures of Fathers Who Cook for Their Families, which he wrote and illustrated. And restaurants, he said, fascinate him. Not just because of the food, but the space they open up for people to come together.
“All the Restaurants” was born.
That first 2017 sketch of the Odeon is indicative of Donohue’s signature style: a freehand sketch drawn in a single take in black ink, complemented with splashes of a single color. In Odeon’s case, the restaurant’s name is written in bold, red letters, contrasting against the black and white of the sketch.
He set up the eat.draw.repeat. Instagram account, which now has over 20,000 followers, and a website to sell 5x7 and 9x12 prints of his sketches.
Donohue first came to Philadelphia in 2021, when a family health emergency required him to spend a lot of time at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. “My wife and I were making a lot of trips,” he said. “She was spending time at the hospital and I was traveling down to visit. Drawing helps me maintain my equanimity and mental equilibrium, so I would go out and draw while dealing with the very stressful health situation.”
In between the visits, “we would go [to restaurants] and treat ourselves and have some nice meals, to try and recuperate,” he said.
That’s when Donohue started drawing some of Philadelphia’s most acclaimed restaurants. “Philadelphia is such a fascinating food city to me, it’s amazing,” he said. “I feel like they just punch above their weight. They try harder, and it seems like there’s a real sense of core chefs and a tight community.”
» READ MORE: The restaurants that are defining Philly’s dining scene right now
The first restaurant he drew in Philly was Old City’s Fork. The facade is drawn in thin ink lines with the signage painted in a bold black. There’s a splash of green in the awning and the plants at the entrance.
After four years, 76 of the 93 sketches he’s created of Philly restaurants are on display at "The Art of Philly Dining" show at Bella Vista‘s Gleaner’s Cafe and Gallery. The show will benefit CHOP.
Among the featured restaurants are Buddakan, Cleo Bagels, Dalessandro’s, Fiorella Pasta, Le Virtù, Sally, Talula’s Garden, Royal Sushi & Izakaya, Vetri Cucina, and Zahav.
Seven special edition 12x12 canvas prints are signed by the restaurants’ respective owners: Fork’s Ellen Yin, Her Place Supper Club’s Amanda Shulman, Kalaya‘s Chutatip “Nok” Suntaranon, Royal Sushi & Izakaya‘s Jesse Ito, Vernick Food and Drink’s Greg Vernick, Vetri Cucina‘s Marc Vetri, and Zahav’s Michael Solomonov.
“Some people are particularly interested in the work because of my style or aesthetic, but others are happy with a piece that represents their connection to the restaurant,” Donohue said. “It’s valuable in this digital world we live in, a tactile thing you can hold in your hand and put on the wall.”
Local reviews and friends help Donohue decide on which restaurants to sketch — he’s rarely swayed by their architecture or aesthetics. “There seems to be an inverse relationship between the elaborateness of the facade and its scale,” he said. “Like a mom-and-pop shop will have a big red awning. And then Michelin star places will just be all black with a little sign.”
To create a restaurant sketch, Donohue usually plants himself next to a mailbox or a bus stop across from the restaurant, spending about 20 completely engrossed-in-the-state-of-flow minutes drawing the facade. “I am not necessarily aware of what’s happening around me,” he said. “It’s all about being in the moment and noticing … I am just trying to see what’s there.”
After spending years drawing with a pencil in his notebook, he switched to ink after an artist friend suggested it’d help him draw faster. “When I draw, I realize almost everything is a mistake,” he said. “Every line I make is a mistake to begin with. So it’s very liberating.”
AI-generated copies of his work have begun popping up on the internet, but “you can tell they may be machine-made, because sometimes the lines are perfect,” he said.
Despite sketching so many restaurants, Donohue said that he rarely goes inside one to eat unless the owner invites him in. His tastes skew toward Korean, Indian, and Japanese food.
Besides, he said, his favorite food “is the food I cook for myself.”