A new wave of culinary creativity has hit the kitchen at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art restaurant, Café Sebastienne, with the chef Ted Habiger now serving as the permanent artist-in-residence. Habiger has negotiated a newly minted restaurant ownership role, taking full control of the kitchen and restaurant operations inside the museum in addition to managing his own restaurant, Room 39. Habiger will operate the restaurant as usual this summer, and then in the fall the restaurant will close to undergo a complete remodel, with a new menu and name change. Habiger, a three-time James Beard Award semifinalist, whose food has always centered around locally sourced, seasonal American cuisine, will be following in the footsteps of several great chefs there, including Jennifer Maloney, who was the original chef at the museum before her untimely death in 2016. Habiger and Maloney were friends, and he says he has been revisiting her old recipes for inspiration and still feels her presence in the museum kitchen.