Food and Flowers

Besides serving as Cero Magazine's food and drink editor, Flynn McGarry is best known as the chef behind the Lower East Side restaurant Gem, where his seasonally focused creations are as innovative and artful as they are delicious. The cozy space on Forsyth Street also serves as a platform for exploration for McGarry's other creative pursuits, from his collection of antique cutlery to his penchant for thick-hewn, woodsy design. The room is often highlighted by ebullient floral arrangements, composed by McGarry himself from finds in the Flower District several dozen blocks uptown as part of an ongoing self-education he shifted attention to during the restaurant's long lockdown last year.

For our inaugural issue, we invited McGarry to collaborate with the photographer Ben Alsop on a series of still lifes featuring his flower arrangements, here set off by ingredients from his kitchen. The results are sculptural, alluring, and fascinating, an expression of creative freedom from an independent mind.

See this story and many more in print by ordering our inaugural issue here.