For 12 years, Harley Langberg’s passion has been being in a kitchen. His day begins at 4 a.m., while his family is asleep and the sun has yet to rise is when Langberg says he works his best. He takes out some apples and nectarines, mashed potatoes are shaped into form, peppers, mushrooms, turnips, and eggplants are cut and placed, and a spoonful of pasta is cooked for hair. An image appears of Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce.
Langberg, 38, is a lifelong New York painter who uses plates as his canvas and food as his paint and makes art into edible masterpieces. Over the years, he has partnered with more than 75 companies, including Netflix, Whole Foods, and Apple. He has 40,000 followers on his Instagram account, Harley’s Food Art.
The New York City skyline. The Knicks. Chewbacca. The Golden Gate Bridge. Bad Bunny. A puffer fish. Once the sun rises, he uses the natural light to take pictures of his day’s creation, and his family wakes up; his 5 year old daughter, Blake, is usually the first to see it. “She tells me if she loves it or hates it, and then she’ll ask if she can eat it,” he said.
Afterwards, he goes off to work at his family’s investment firm. He majored in economics at Northwestern University, but he has always had a connection with food and art. He began cooking at age five, and in high school he attended culinary school.
In 2013, he noticed on the walls of a market an exhibit about food art and photography. That night he grabbed peppers, rosemary, and eggplant and spent several hours making his first creation. Over the next few years, his skills improved, and he got his first gig: to commission six portraits of iconic fashion figures for New York Fashion Week for the media company Refinery29.
Now, over a decade later, he’s a pro creating about four to five pieces a week. Any food, as long as it’s edible, can be used. After a day of work in his family’s office, he goes to the supermarket, which he goes to every single day of the week. “I want food art to be up there with reading, painting, knitting,” Langberg said, “any pastime activity where you can just go in the kitchen, create a piece to relax, do something with your spouse, with kids.”
It’s certainly food for thought.
