Earlier this summer, at noon on what may have been the hottest day of the year, the buzzy new Brooklyn restaurant and wine bar the Four Horsemen hadn’t yet opened its doors for service — they usually serve from
the late afternoon until late at night — but three tables had been pushed together and were being set for a feast. The restaurant, which debuted in June,
is a collaboration between the consultant Justin Chearno and partners Randy Moon, Christina Topsoe and her husband, the musician James Murphy — who invited the rest of their staff and collaborators to celebrate something
of a milestone: making it past the one-month mark and finally having a moment to breathe. Read more…
This past weekend, east of Berlin’s city center on the banks of the River Spree, and despite the August heat, an invite-only crowd of local and international creative types arrived just before sunset, by land and by
water, to enjoy the latest in a series of “Jackie O” outdoor parties. Their host, the Berlin-based developer Christian Rosche, is known for bringing together interesting artists, collectors, investors, DJs,
chefs and scenesters to help cultivate an active, creative community in Berlin. As Rosche says, for him, it’s all about “catalyzing magic moments, where people are so happy and grateful to come together, be
themselves and share their talents, and truly connect.”
The party took place at the recently dubbed Spreestudios, an artist enclave on 25,000 square meters of reclaimed waterfront, slated to house studios, ateliers, workshops, a restaurant
and a marina over the next few years. Rosche has already developed multiple spaces for the local creative community through his company, the Kunstfreunde (Friends of Art), though none quite so ambitious in scale as Spree.
He fell in love with the land a decade ago, and broke ground two years ago, inspired by the site’s unique history: From the 1920s to the ’40s, it hosted massive public baths that attracted nearly 10,000 visitors
a day; from the ’50s to the ’90s, it was the German Democratic Republic’s customs department. When the Berlin Wall fell, the land was deserted and returned to wilderness. While Spree comes to life,
the riverside parcel — mostly grass and trees, except for the few buildings currently under construction — will be home to a series of artist installations, pop-up events and the seasonal Jackie O Bar, named
for Rosche’s boat. Moored at the Spreestudios dock, the 1968 Vertens Comtesse 55 was once owned, in fact, by Jackie and Aristotle themselves. Read more…
In the mossy birch forests of Sweden’s rural south, raspberries and currants sprout wild from the bramble; near the sea, vacationers fill the modest plank-wood houses that dot the countryside. The old timber-frame cottages,
some with their original thatched roofs intact, are by and large painted a warm brick Falu red, a color that seems designed to accentuate the greens of Scandinavian nature.
Here, in the idyllic outskirts of the small town of Hörby, Mikael and Birgitta Hallström have forged a passion project with the past that began with the preservation of these old houses. Twenty-five years ago, the
couple, both trained actors from outside Stockholm, moved to this remote area with a brood of six kids to raise. Birgitta began mixing traditional-style paint; Mikael learned to restore the antique windows and doors of
the local houses. On their 19th-century farmhouse property, they converted an old stable into Färg Från Förr (“paints from the past”), a hardware store for nostalgics, conscientious restorers
and preservationists: In it, they sell vintage brass knobs and hooks, hand-forged nails, decoratively embossed keyholes and of course, the paints. “We fancy the old times,” explains Mikael, a theatrical man
with round spectacles and a penchant for fedoras and waistcoats. Read more…
From left: Aubry and Kale Walch; vegan smoky ribs on a kebab.Credit From left: Ryan Strandjord;
Jonathan Armstrong
Kale and Aubry Walch launched the Herbivorous Butcher, a line of small-batch meat alternatives, last year, after recognizing a demand for vegan food that doesn’t taste
like vegan food. When the brother-sister duo from Minneapolis, Minn., first brought their locally sourced, protein-rich products — smoky BBQ ribs, maple-glazed bacon, spicy chorizo, all made from creative blends
of wheat gluten, beans and flavorings — to the local farmer’s market, they caused a small sensation. “One person said, ‘I’m a food scientist, and I swear I can taste fat marbling in that
sausage,’ ” recalls Aubry. After appearing at a series of pop-ups across the Midwest, they’re now opening a brick-and-mortar location in their hometown. Says the aptly named Kale, “Our
goal is to fool people into saving the planet.”
At the newly opened Elements restaurant, the chef and co-owner Scott Anderson, top left, will keep things local with produce from a nearby farm — and these Japanese Shirohana flowers, which he grows on site and serves as an amuse-bouche.Credit Adam Robb
Earlier this summer, the New Jersey chef Scott Anderson opened the doors to Princeton’s Mistral Bar, the spirituous neighbor of his year-old Witherspoon Street bistro
Mistral. Inside, university professors and foodie types congregate for effervescent cocktails fizzy with homegrown kombuchas and irreverent bar snacks like beef tendon chicharrones dappled with marrow creme. And this evening,
in a hidden corner of Mistral Bar, a newly installed elevator will deliver diners to a relocated Elements, the acclaimed haute seasonal restaurant Anderson and co-owner Steve
Distler had operated on nearby Bayard Lane since 2008.
Besides being a new home for Anderson’s restless approach to redrawing daily menus from what’s ripe for the picking at central New Jersey farms, his new restaurant will also feel like home. “I’m
not a big entertainer. I enjoy my alone time more than not,” says Anderson, who seeks solitude fishing for mahi in the Bahamas and foraging wild mitsuba on long hikes in the Adirondacks. “But making something
and watching someone else eat it is what does it for me.” To accommodate his appetite for hospitality, his dining room’s 28 seats offer unfettered views of an open kitchen, from which Anderson and his four
chefs will personally serve and walk customers through the dishes they have prepared. Read more…
Villa Lena, a 500-hectare estate with its own olive grove and vegetable gardens, invites artists to stay — and leave their mark on the hotel.Credit Sasa Stucin
While many Parisians travel to Tuscany in August to enjoy their requisite monthlong holiday, chef Guillaume Rouxel, the former head chef at Inaki Aizpitarte’s smart 11th Arrondissement bistro Le Dauphin,
has packed up his cooking knives and traveled to Italy to work. Rouxel has taken on a chef residency at the hip hotel and artist retreat Villa Lena, a sprawling 500-hectare estate perched high up in the hills, just a 50-minute
drive from Pisa.
The hotel — opened in 2013 by Lena Evstafieva, the former head of exhibitions for the Moscow art gallery Garage, and her husband Jerome Hadey, a musician — is popular among young families, fashion types and artists,
who stay in spare, apartment-style abodes dotted about the grounds. And in the summer, artists fill the 10 bedrooms of the central Villa, an impressive neoclassical building. Read more…
Georgia-Rose Fairman makes desserts that are delicious, beautiful and a little gross: a miniature human figure fashioned after the bold, imperfect beauty of a Lucian Freud
nude; a fruits de mer banquet commissioned by the French fashion label Carven. So convincing — and tasty — was the flower-festooned pig’s head that she made for the restaurant critic A. A. Gill’s
60th birthday party, that the chef Heston Blumenthal jokingly threatened to dismiss his own pastry chef. Fairman, an assistant to the sculptor Phyllida Barlow,
started baking two years ago in her London studio, when she decided to make something for her boyfriend’s birthday. Rather than the usual chocolate gateau, she got ambitious, precision-carving blocks of marzipan-covered
sponge cake before painting them with edible watercolors to create what looked exactly like a roast chicken complete with carrots, potatoes and peas. “It’s a weird cross between food and sculpture,”
she says. “The main thing for me is that they look like still-life paintings.”
Back in 2003, the Southern-born pastry chef Kelly Fields approached her boss, the beloved blue-eyed New Orleans chef and James Beard Award-winner John Besh, about opening a bakery. Then Hurricane Katrina hit, putting Fields’s
plans on hold while the city picked itself back up again. At Besh’s urging, she traveled the world in the meantime, gathering culinary inspiration in Italy, Egypt and throughout the Middle East before settling back
in New Orleans and holding the title of executive pastry chef at his culinary empire there. And finally this week, over a decade after she first conceived it, Fields opened the doors to Willa Jean, an unfussy corner bakery
and cafe in the up-and-coming South Market District. Read more…
Last Thursday, Chinatown blazed in a noontime swelter as some of the city’s top sommeliers filed into the Peking Duck House on Mott Street. Each had a thing or two tucked under his or her arm — bottles of wine
from their personal collections. Michael Madrigale, Bar Boulud’s head sommelier, entered with a 2007 Albert Boxler Riesling Grand Cru Brand ($50). Ashley Santoro, the wine director at Narcissa, came with a 1974 Francesco
Rinaldi & Figli Barolo from Piedmont, Italy (about $115 retail). Patrick Cappiello was waiting for the sommeliers — eight, in all — with a magnum of Savart Premier Cru L’Accomplie Brut
Champagne ($80). As the wine director for Rebelle and Pearl & Ash, sister restaurants on Bowery, Cappiello convenes these impromptu lunches about once a month, whenever the time allows. There are only two rules: Bring
an intriguing bottle of wine; and keep it to around $100 each. Read more…
Clockwise from top left: the outside of the new nightclub Berlin; the bar's manager, Laura Stemmer; the crowd inside.Credit Alyssa Greenberg
The East Village nightlife entrepreneur and musician Jesse Malin has a fondness for the neighborhood’s bygone, coarser days. Now, the area is filled with rising rents and Pilates studios, but the little empire of hip
haunts Malin has helped to build below 14th Street — Black Market, the Bowery Electric, Niagara, Lovers of Today, Dream Baby and the Cabin Down Below, the intimate clubhouse-like bar just off Tompkins Square Park
— pay homage to the neighborhood of 40 years ago. And Malin’s obsessive interest in creating auras of New York authenticity (or, at least, the closest approximation 2015 can offer) is likewise demonstrated
in Berlin, the small club he opened last Tuesday on Avenue A. Read more…
