Lingering over a cappuccino and croissants and watching a cubist painting — Parisians have done it and still do. Even in Delhi — which once saw art as much as artists hanging out at Olive’s Med Mosaic nights — paintings, photographs and even designer clothes are coming out of galleries and ramps and climbing up the walls of a bar and a chocolate boutique. Both Choko-La and the F Bar and Lounge at The Ashok have given a wall for art.

At Choko-La’s Khan Market outlet, a catalogue is handed to you along with the menu: so along with hot chocolate you can order a canvas for, say, Rs 1.5 lakh from the dozen paintings on display. Choko-La has tied up with art promoters Nirvana, which rents the wall as exhibition space. And it has proved a success; within the past month, four paintings have been sold. The works are mostly of lesser-known artists, like Arun Pandit, Joydeep Mukherjee, Debashish Ghosh and Ranjan Paul and costs Rs 30,000 upwards. “All these artists are brilliant but waiting to get their due,” says Manjula Singh, proprietor of Nirvana. “And Choko-La doesn’t have a college crowd eager for pizza. Instead they have people who know their food and art.”

F Bar and Lounge, which launched its Art Café on Wednesday night, meanwhile, has a “Celebration Wall” on which an artist can display his or her works for a week. While it began with designer Rohit Bal displaying creations from his spring-summer 2009 and autumn-winter 2008 collections, the following days will see artist Illoosh Ahluwalia, who will have a collage of six paintings on the Celebration Wall and 10 others splashed across the lounge, apart from photographers Atul Kasbekar and Akash Das.

“We wanted to provide a platform for artists and designers,” says Rajan Madhu, MD, F Bar & Lounge. Agrees Karan Singh, COO, Choko La: “We started the art initiative to promote youth and talent. It has just been a month and the response has been pretty reasonable.” While a smattering of art can raise the bar of a lounge or a choco boutique and add a patina of intellectual pretension, for the artists associated with the venture, it is a means to reach the masses. “People will finally have the opportunity to touch and feel what I create,” says Bal, whose designs, like him, should feel quite at home on a nightout. Even Das finds the idea interesting and will be displaying his glamour shots interspersed with some wildlife photos. F Bar & Lounge does not stop at the wall. They will serve the artist’s favourite dish and drink and for Bal it began with vodka martinis and ended with steamed trout.