Rick Owens – Shadowman (Metropolitan)

When the inevitable biography is written, Rick Owens’ life story will read like one of the dark, sensational and glamorous works of literature that he’s such a fan of: an art student from a small town becomes a druggy, bisexual, noir-nailed goth within the LA demi-monde of trannies and hustlers. He studies pattern cutting and hooks up romantically with fabulous, diamond-toothed celebrity restaurateur cum stripper cum lawyer, Michelle Lamy. Spotted by Anna Wintour, he takes New York Fashion Week by storm and moves to Paris, to become the most influential designer of the 21^st century…

Rick Owens, Paris © www.markcoflaherty.com

Right now, Rick Owens is the overlord of high and dark fashion. His collections sell out at record speeds and Rizzoli have just published a coffee-table-sized coffee table book on his work. He’s attracted a cult following for his severe, often sinister, monochrome, draped jersey and leather aesthetic. This afternoon, when he walks into one of the vast, whitewashed, concrete-floored rooms of his 7^th arrondissement HQ – its shelves littered with skulls and Kaiser spiked helmets – one might expect an accompanying soundtrack of 5am Berghain Berlin techno, and perhaps for the temperature in the room to drop. Instead he carries a tiny espresso cup and plays Dorothy Squires Live at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane on his iPhone. “I like Dusty, but I really burnt out listening to her,” he says. “Now I listen to Dorothy Squires all day long. She has that whisky and cigarettes tone to her voice and I find her really moving.”

His fixation with the late Welsh songstress – and one time Mrs Roger Moore – is far from contradictory. Everything in Rick Owens’ universe fits perfectly into place: the gothic tendencies, the transgressive sexuality, the austere, monastic, concrete aesthetic now translated into limited edition furniture, and the camp… Everything has its purpose. Like the high heels he designs for men, inspired by “the virility of Kiss in concert”. And the bumper-car hi-top sneakers inspired by “gangs in LA using their shoes to anchor huge basketball shorts, in an almost kabuki way.” But there are unusual interests too. He loves the BBC sitcom Nighty Night so much that he sold the DVD in his stores in London and Paris and he’s a huge Gary Numan fan. “I think of Gary when I’m working on every collection!” he says.

Still very much the anything-but-quintessentially American in Paris (he refuses to learn French, believing it’ll take far too long, and he likes the “layer of privacy” it provides), he frequently Channel hops and finds the contrast with London fascinating. “In London the kids are so much cuter,” he says. “There’s a scruffiness that the Parisians just won’t allow themselves. In Paris it’s about APC jeans, white button down shirts and a blazer, and in London it’s all wittier and cheekier.” Owens is drawn to the often acidic and subversive nature of British culture, from early 20^th century socialite Stephen Tennant to the 80s “queer” filmmaker Derek Jarman. “It’s that British dry wit I love. I’m reading a lot of Beverley Nichols from the 1920s, which has a lovely Cecil Beaton quality. There is an imperturbability about the British, while the French make a big thing about pretending not to be perturbed, but they are. They’re always indignant.”

When Owens travels to London with his partner Michelle, they stay at Claridges – although if he’s travelling alone, he’ll stay at the Savoy “because the deco is more severe, and darker” – and spend their time exploring galleries and museums. “I always return to the Joseph Beuys room at the Tate Modern,” he says. “And I loved the Whistler show at Tate Britain. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t been in love with him before. He belonged to the most exciting of times.”

Rick Owens, Paris © www.markcoflaherty.com

Owens studied to be an artist, but turned to fashion because “art seemed like entering the priesthood, and I’m too frivolous” – though he now adores the pomp of the contemporary art scene. “I was at the Bermondsey White Cube opening recently and it was like Hollywood, all neon bulbs and epic proportions. And as we were leaving, there was a crowd of people behind the velvet ropes. It was so Day of the Locust, I wallowed in it.” He also moves in offbeat London circles: Lamy backs the designer Gareth Pugh, so there are strong links between the Pugh and Owens labels. “There’s a group around Gareth that have a great allure and mystique,” he says. “That crowd from Ponystep and Boombox are so talented, sharp, fun and sweet.”

When Owens and Lamy are out in Paris and London, they are the ultimate ambassadors for his brand: Michelle in a ton of jewellery and Owens’ clothing, looking like a vampiric Egyptian priestess, and Rick with the poker-straight black locks that have become as iconic in fashion as Lagerfeld’s ponytail and Menkes’ quiff. And of course, always clad in black or grey, “even on the beach”. So committed is he to the palette that on the counter of his London and Paris stores there are bowls of M&Ms in varying shades of grey. Monochrome is the only thing that makes sense to him. “It sends a message,” he explains. “It says  ‘don’t look at my outfit, I’m presenting my face to you. You don’t have to look at anything else, I’m not trying to capture your attention with an interesting shoelace’.”

Owens spring 2012 collection is a development of his black and white aesthetic, with dresses for men and prints for women that hark back to the deco of the 20s. “I love that linear modernism,” he says. “It’s aspirational with a simple elegance. And I think it’s quite melancholy, because it’s looking for a perfection that will always be out of reach, forever.” And the future? Before that inevitable biography and the museum retrospectives? More furniture, perhaps a move into colour, but with a promise that it will “never be banal, or Marks & Spencer’s…” And then perhaps a hotel, finished with raw, bunker-like textures and fur bedspreads. “I’d love to create something on a nice coastline, somewhere remote. Maybe in North Africa, which is close enough, but far enough too. And on the top floor I’d create a Gary Numan suite.”

Amanda Harlech’s Perfect Weekend (FT How to Spend it)

Lady Harlech has been working closely with Karl Lagerfeld at Chanel since 1997. She divides her time between a suite at the Ritz in Paris and her farmhouse in Shrawardine, Shropshire…

“The first joy of Saturday is walking out through the back door, across the grass, through the dew, opening up the greenhouse and picking something for breakfast; perhaps some strawberries. I love cooking with fruit: apples and raspberries and a couple of pears. Delicious. I might have that with porridge with my son, Jasset, and daughter, Tallulah. Jasset is a very good cook too and likes to make eggs and bacon. It’s so beautiful here. I have always looked for a view, wherever I have lived. The house is really nothing. It’s a little strip of a building but it sits in the circumference of the hills that divide England and Wales, with the River Severn at the bottom.

Lady Harlech, Shropshire © www.markcoflaherty.com

If I want a Turneresque romance of sky, mountain and sea I can find it just an hour towards the coast. I’m awake at 5.30am because of the birds screaming outside my window. I like to do a lot in the morning. I light a fire. I do yoga. It makes me feel present in my own body. It’s really good to take even a single minute to listen to what your body is telling you. I might reread something I’ve written, or play Bach on the piano that Karl gave me. Like anything, it requires practice. It’s a beautiful Steinway with legs designed by Karl. They connect up in a rectangle, which alters the sound.

There are wonderful shops to visit in the Shropshire countryside. I discovered Ashmans Antiques & Old Lace 20 years ago and was on first name terms with the owner, Diane, immediately. It’s an Aladdin’s Cave, a treasure trove of wonderful clothes. I’ve bought Imperial Russian outfits, linen nightshirts from the 18th century and a collection of 20s wedding dresses. Tallulah likes to shop there but prefers more dramatic pieces, with black lace and dark purple velvet. Close by is F.E Anderson & Son, where you can find the most amazing Irish Georgian antiques. I like jewellery and jewellers but I also like overalls, uniforms and dishcloths. Wherever I go I like to visit the local ironmongers. C.R Birch & Son has the best doormats, rat traps, floor mops and buckets. If you go to what I call a fashion homestore, the things are made of plastic and you get silly broom heads. I want things that have evolved over hundreds of years. It’s a bit like a Chanel suit – the perfectly evolved brush. I don’t want a cheap copy or imitation. Wilstone sells incredible firebowls; really beautiful hand-beaten bowls which you barbecue on, which I might do in the evening. There is a very good Indian restaurant, Enigma, but I like my own food too much and I’d like to have six to eight friends over for dinner. I might barbecue some lamb, stabbed with garlic and rosemary and thyme with a slosh of olive oil and black pepper. All it needs is some peas from the garden, new potatoes and mint. I have two wooden tables and some chairs in the garden and you can sit outside and look at the swallows and swifts and hills.

Karl has never been here but the invitation is always open. He would only come by private jet so that would mean finding an airport that has got a runway long enough for it to land. I would love him to come. I have all kinds of ideas: I’d put up a great big white marquee and have waitresses in white aprons serving Diet Coke. I’d get a horse to jump over the table. To shop for dinner I go to the Farmers Market in Shrewsbury, which is great. You can get fantastic fish, amazing rabbit, delicious eggs and ham, local asparagus and samphire. You can sample oysters with Guinness. I buy spelt bread from the Shrewsbury Bakehouse, which is delicious and very good for you, made from ancient Roman wheat. It’s great to see people passionate about bread, and they are at the Bakehouse.

Sunday starts with the church bells of St Mary’s ringing. I live right next door to the vicarage. It’s a very stripped down church, with a pale blue stained glass window and worn flagstones. I like hearing the bells in the morning. There were very violent battles between the Royalists and Roundheads in the fields next to me. Apparently there is an underground passage from my house to the ruins of Shrawardine Castle. A friend of mine told me he sensed the house had been full of men either discussing or playing music; full of ghosts, but happy. These borders are both haunting and haunted. I have a four year old Irish racehorse called Roy. It’s great to ride down to the river or up to Rodney’s Pillar – the 18th century monument to the victory of Admiral Rodney over the French in the West Indies – where they say on a clear day you can see Ireland. I want to take up falconry. The birds don’t frighten me at all. I think perhaps I’m a throwback to the 17th century and I have a romantic idea that I may die in my house and the boldest of the animals move in. I like the idea of a fox curling up on the sofa next to the piano. If it’s a hot day it’s lovely to swim in the Severn, or lie in the garden naked on a carpet reading a book. I do a bit of gardening. I get my plants from the Dingle Nurseries and Derwen Garden Centre. I go there for seeds, bulbs and trees. I have an orchard with quinces that I have planted from there. They were little whips when I bought them. If I am lucky I will see them grow a little bit taller than me. It’s putting something back: “create a library and plant a wood”. On Sunday evening the best thing to do is go to bed with a book. I love all sorts of books, they just have to be well written. 10pm is the time to go to bed because I like to make the most of the next day. Of course sometimes you can stay up dancing in the kitchen until two or three, but that doesn’t happen often. Although when it does, it’s great.”

ADDRESS BOOK

ASHMANS ANTIQUES & OLD LACE, PARK LANE HOUSE, HIGH STREET, WELSHPOOL SY21 7JP (01938 554505). C.R BIRCH & SON, ROUSHILL, SHREWSBURY, SY1 1PQ (07074 272472). DERWEN GARDEN CENTRE AND FARM SHOP, GUILSFIELD, WELSHPOOL SY21 9PH (01938 553015). ENIGMA, SHOTATTON, RUYTON XI TOWNS, SHREWSBURY, SY4 1JH (01691 682666). F.E ANDERSON & SON, 5 HIGH STREET WELSHPOOL SY21 7JF (01938 553340). SHRAWARDINE ST MARY THE VIRGIN, 15 BROOKSIDE, BICTON, SHREWSBURY SY3 8EP (01743 851310). JACKIE JONES YOGA (BY APPOINTMENT 01743 367186). SHREWSBURY BAKEHOUSE, 7 CASTLE GATES, SHREWSBURY SY1 2AE (01743 248384). SHREWSBURY MARKET, THE MARKET HALL, CLAREMONT STREET, SHREWSBURY, SY1 1QG (01743 351067). WILSTONE, HEATHER BRAE, LEEBOTWOOD, SHROPSHIRE SY6 6LU (01694 751747)

Fine dining detail (Aston Martin magazine)

On the way to The Herbfarm, a 45 minute highway trip out of Seattle into a rural Martha Stewart fantasia, your driver will ask you what time you want to be collected. If you suggest any period shorter than four hours later, he’ll correct you: you simply won’t be finished. An evening at The Herbfarm is an epic performance, from the pre-cocktail tour around the herb garden to the velvet curtain that pulls back on the kitchen for the introduction of every staff member. And all this before the amuse bouche. The milieu may be classic country cottage, but the evening is a study in contemporary dining, where the food is but a single component in a far bigger event.

“It’s a myth that restaurants are all about food,” says Jennifer Sharp, one of the UK’s most celebrated restaurant critics. “Just as important is the space and ambience, whether it’s balletic luxury at Le Louis XV in Monte Carlo, the cramped, noisy cheerfulness of the Swan Oyster Depot in San Francisco, or in Madrid, nearly 300 years of roast suckling pig from the wood-fired ovens at Botin. Every meal, every service, is a performance and the diner is both actor and audience.” Sometimes the elements are obvious, but sometimes they are more offbeat, like the smell of woodsmoke that Mathias Dahlgren traps beneath serving bell jars at his restaurant in Stockholm to evoke childhood memories of nearby forests, or the way fellow Swede Magnus Nilsson has his staff saw shinbones in half in the centre of the room at Fäviken before serving up the marrowbone.

Sur Mesure, Paris

The slick ambience at Vue du Monde, the dining room that relocated 55 floors up the Melbourne skyline this summer into the Rialto building, and which remains perhaps the greatest restaurant in the Southern Hemisphere, is the antithesis of the bucolic twee of The Herbfarm, but it has a similar attention to detail. There’s a radical, molecular, Willy Wonka-goes-classical-French kitchen here, but it’s also decidedly Australian, from the ingredients to the service and the sense of humour. There’s a “post-bushfire regrowth smoking balcony”, as chef Shannon Bennett puts it, with surfaces made from charred and lacquered wood, while the toilets are refined versions of the “outback dunny” and the tables are covered in kangaroo hide.

Design is integral to the way the dining experience works, as anyone who has suffered an evening in an ill advised “pop up” venture knows. The frisson of excitement that you get from a guerilla operation can’t compete with the sense of occasion that, say, a Friday night at the Ritz in London can still deliver. There remains a world where jackets are required and septuagenarian couples foxtrot, while elaborate salads and tartares are crafted at table side, flanked by the kind of refined, charmingly unreconstructed Belle Époque grandeur most frequently seen these days in an episode of Doctor Who just before something explodes.

If there’s one dominant “new look” for fine dining, it’s a return to heavyweight, moneyed, tony glamour. Designer David Collins is a master of it. Restaurateurs who can’t afford him frequently rip off his look with lashings of marble mosaics, croc-textured banquettes and deco-meets-disco flourishes but they just can’t pull it off: it takes a master stylist to get it right. Massimo, the restaurant at the new Corinthia hotel in London, is a largely monochrome, maximalist space that’s a paradigm of the Collins canon: theatrical pillars, sparkle, slightly steampunk jazz-age lighting details and an overall sense of The Special. The charismatic, bespectacled Massimo Riccioli, celebrated for his muscular, boldly prosaic Italian seafood, loves how the space works with his menu. “It’s a great mix, because my food is quite stripped down,” he says. “And the room gives it a balance.” The detail is ravishing, from the oyster bar to the wall lights based on oars – a near subliminal nod to rivers and oceans. It’s a big-budget Busby Berkeley musical of a dining experience, with subtlety restricted to the kitchen.

Massimo, London

“If something is difficult, expensive or heavy, it’s usually very good,” says LA-based restaurateur Mr Chow, and that’s a truism for eating out. It’s difficult to get a reservation at Marcus Wareing at The Berkeley, it’s certainly expensive, and before you get into the inner-sanctum of its dining room, you pass through a door with theatrical heft that keeps the inside invisible from the hotel bar outside. It makes you feel as if you’ve passed into Narnia, albeit a dimly lit one designed by the aforementioned Mr Collins. It’s grand, intimate, and terribly grown-up, yet playful at the same time – just like its chef patron’s revelatory cooking, which remains among the most masterful in Europe. “I like warmth and darkness,” says Wareing, “So David created an interior to feel like being inside a bottle of Bordeaux.” This is where Chris Bailey, creative director of Burberry, dines with his partner after his show, rather than celebrating in the throng of London Fashion Week. It’s a destination dining room but also a casual canteen for the stratospherically successful.

Marcus Wareing at The Berkeley, London

If Wareing’s dining room is a bottle of Bordeaux, then Alain Ducasse at the Dorchester is a flute of Champagne. From the silver in the colour palette and the effervescent circular gaps in surfaces – as if caused by bubbles – the room is cool and sharp. It’s thawed a little since its opening, but when it launched it was almost conceptually glacial – waiters wore eyeliner and seemed to glide around the hushed space, arranging forks face down.

ADAD – as Alain calls it – is one of numerous Ducasse restaurants designed by Paris-based designers Patrick Jouin and Sanjit Manku. For the 540 seater, 43^rd floor miX in Las Vegas, the couple produced something suitably super-flashy, but were also inspired by the organic nature of a place that, as Jouin says, “inhabits the space between desert and sky”. At Ducasse’s Plaza Athénée restaurant in Paris – totally refurbished last year – the starting point was the idea of freezing time while acknowledging the OTT palace status of the hotel. It’s a grander room than at the Dorchester, but with similar touches of futurism. If pushing the door into Marcus Wareing’s restaurant at The Berkeley lets you in on a plush, dark and textural secret, then making your way through the larger door at the Plaza Athénée is like a trip through the looking glass. Painstakingly hand-embroidered panels surround the space which is dominated by an immense “exploded” crystal chandelier, hundreds of its tears suspended by invisible means around the main structure, as if in mid-blast. When Ducasse decided he want to “simplify” the menu with a relatively reductionist approach to ingredients, he wanted the room to change with it. The table setting is at first stark, and then slowly builds up and up, until it’s time for the tea trolley to come around, with potted plants from which your leaf of choice is cut. “We wanted magic to happen,” says Manku. “We suspended time with the exploded chandelier, so you wonder how long you’ve been within the space… it could be one or four hours.”

Manku and Jouin serve as choreographers as much as decorators. “You can sculpt emotions,” says Manku. “You can have a vast space and make it seem intimate.” Their latest project is the interior of Sur Mesure at the new Mandarin Oriental in Paris, now HQ for chef Thierry Marx. Marx does sublime things in terms of taste while deconstructing and arranging ingredients into visually dazzling concepts, adorned with edible flowers and bold brush strokes of colour. Sur Mesure is spacey, in a 2001 way. It’s dressed entirely in white cotton fabric, with abrupt folds and eruptions in strategic points. “You enter through a curved passageway, which slows you down and makes you unsure about what’s around the corner,” says Manku. “We wanted to create something celestial, not above or below the earth; avant-garde – to reflect the food – but comfortable. Conversation has to be possible. Too often restaurants are hyper-focused on the cuisine, so if you laugh too loudly or drop a fork, it makes you tense. We wanted to create the Parisian palace hotel dining room of the 21^st century. Remember, when Versailles was created, the Hall of Mirrors was radical and audacious.”

Alain Ducasse at the Plaza Athénée, Paris

A visit to the Lecture Room & Library at Sketch, London’s most ambitious art/theatre hybrid warren of bars and restaurants for over a decade, is an operatic and multi-layered experience. The maitre d’ leads you up the now iconic faux molten-chocolate staircase in her fetish-high heels, past staff in retro black and white French maid’s uniforms, into a room that blends a lavish MGM Hollywood sunrise setscape with contrasting Moorish aspects. Then Pierre Gagneau’s exquisite tasting menu starts rolling out: warm stone bass carpaccio; veal and morels with pear and gorgonzola sorbet; five lavish desserts all at once… The most fabulous thing about Sketch – food aside – is the undercurrent of the sci-fi sinister, or even macabre, along with the glamour and haute cuisine. There’s a Peter Greenaway, or perhaps Matthew Barney, element to all the costume drama, and an ethereal tone too – two huge portraits of a boy and a girl hang at either end of the room, painted white on white, appearing blank at first, and then slowly appearing as the aperture of your eyes adjust.

The Lecture Room and Library at Sketch, London

At the other end of the style spectrum, there’s a very self-conscious kind of modernist movement in certain kinds of dining, championed by the likes of Fergus Henderson and typified by his first St John restaurant. A stark, whitewashed ex-smokehouse with connotations of unprepossessing artisans and the Bauhaus, St John fits neatly with the cult of Labour & Wait styling and Gil Sans typography, while Viajante, another east London fashion and art crowd destination, follows the same food-first philosophy but takes a more rarefied approach. Like Henderson, chef Nuno Mendes has attracted a slavish following, but his food is more alchemical, throwing together offbeat combinations (mackerel and cherry granita served in a cloud of dry ice) and emphasising curious textures (“skin”, generally, is a fixation) for often amazing results. Viajante is 21^st century modernist and fabulously Bethnal Green: Mendes himself has arms tattooed with mysterious dots and lines “to represent all the lives I’ve lived while travelling”, while his staff wear black denim and present a wine list glued roughly into a copy of Stuart Pigott’s Planet Wine. The kitchen at Viajante is fully exposed and the focal point of the room. “We don’t like to show people a menu,” says Mendes. “We like to take them on a journey. And the building we’re in, the old town hall, is luxurious in itself, so I created a room that’s minimal. In terms of the way the food looks, I start with the product, the dish evolves and then we find the perfect layout. We use simple plates, so it’s like a blank canvas, and I like to work with negative space, and texture.”

The final, and perhaps most important detail of any restaurant is the corps of diners that actually keep a restaurant ticking over. They can make for quiet background ambience or show stopping entertainment. At Daniel Boulud’s three Michelin-starred Manhattan restaurant, Daniel, the room is posh beyond posh and arranged like a sunken theatre in the round, with tables for two on a balcony encircling the outside. From here, many guests enjoyed the sight, one evening, some years ago, of a man and woman dining in the middle of the room, getting steadily drunker, until mid-meal when the latter dropped facedown into her fish course. The man carried on eating as if nothing had happened. Sometimes, the most memorable kind of dinner-theatre has nothing to do with design, service, ceramics or background music because ultimately, dining out is all about people watching.

New London restaurants: JOE’S (Elle)

I didn’t try chef Maria Elia’s food at the revamped Whitechapel Gallery when she cooked there. This was largely because the gallery’s opening exhibition – a retrospective of sculptor Isa Genzken – was so bloody dreadful that it put me off ever going back. But anyway, here she is, taking over what used to be Joe’s Café and, for a period in the in the late 80s and early 90s, a space so highly charged with monochrome flash, fashion and cool that my best friend called her first born son Joe in tribute. Actually, it wasn’t just the Café she loved. Her christening decision was made in homage to owner Joseph Ettedgui’s whole empire: his boutiques (the flagship opposite the restaurant was a place of pilgrimage for first-wave Alaïa fans), his “it” fragrance, Joseph Parfum de Jour, and his swish way with typography. I never named a child after the restaurant, but it was always a favourite – and largely successful – third-date location.

Joseph himself sadly passed away in 2010 and JOE’S (as it’s now been reinvented and capitalised as), looks very different these days. The bold, silver and black Eva Jiricna interior that was immortalised in Patsy and Edina’s “Champagne for Lulu!” lunch in Absolutely Fabulous has been torn out, with only a stair rail and portholes in the doors downstairs left to remind us how beautiful it was once. It’s a less intimidating space now, with breezy, chatty service, warm leather and wood and weirdly chilly mushroom walls, but promise of more framed David Bailey photography to fix the latter. I miss the old look, but I don’t miss the old menu. What Elia has brought to Brompton Cross is largely fantastic, and should attract an infinitely more discerning, foodie crowd.

The menu is arrestingly modern with buzzwords and buzzier ingredients: Carpaccio; pearl barley; marinated beetroot… it just doesn’t get more au courant than beetroot these days. Amongst the starters there’s slow-braised octopus, mackarel with gooseberry chutney and a haddock (carpaccio, natch) with crème fraiche, lemon and chilli that’s the bees knees. It’s light but sharp, with a lot of spark.

Elia goes out of her way to create splendid plates for veggies. Her book, the Modern Vegetarian, is Quorn-free food porn for the meatless and her most interesting dishes at JOE’S are alternating “Textures of…” platters of one veg done several different ways. I shared the Textures of Peas, which included a soup, a mousse, pods and an orrechiette; each emerald green, each delicious and when grouped together, pretty enough to warrant reaching for the Hipstamatic. Monkfish with preserved lemon cous cous was similarly wonderful, although I found her strawberry risotto with bitter radicchio (something I make at home from a very different Guy Grossi recipe) overly complicated with too many ingredients in the mix. Many will love it though. Puddings are appealingly small, and big on fresh fruit. Elia’s cooking gives an overall impression of being offbeat but gently so, and full of lightness and freshness. It’s bringing culinary chic back to JOE’s, and one of London’s most enticing fashion districts, in a big way.

 

Food 9

 

Ambience 6

 

Service 9

 

Value 9

 

JOE’S, 126 Draycott Avenue, London SW3 3AH, 020-7225 2217

www.joseph.co.uk/joes-cafe/locations/

 

9am-11pm Tue-Sat; 9am-6pm Sun-Mon

 

STYLE OF FOOD: Contemporary British/European

 

PRICES

 

AVERAGE PRICE PER PERSON FOR TWO COURSE MEAL WITHOUT WINE: £23

SET MENU: Lunch Mon-Fri, £15 (two courses) or £17 (three courses).

 

PRICE OF BOTTLE HOUSE WINE: £21, Rodero Arneis, Vigne Sparse (white); £19 Cabernet/Malbec, Finca Los Prados (red).

PRICE OF GLASS HOUSE WINE: £5 (as above).

PRICE GLASS HOUSE CHAMPAGNE: £11, Olivier Collin.

PRICE BOTTLE HOUSE CHAMPAGNE: £50 (as above).

No private dining.

No garden/al fresco dining.

Bar for cocktails.

BEST TABLES: The tables in the back area have less noise from the street, but can feel cut off on a quiet evening.

WHO GOES: A very international Chelsea crowd, and of course Brompton Cross “ladies who lunch”.

NEAREST TUBE: South Kensington

 

GOOD FOR:

 

Quick bite after work

Pre theatre

Special occasion

First date

Group dinner

Work lunch/dinner

Houses of fashion (FT How to Spend it)

If it’s mid-April, it must be Milan. The annual Salone del Mobile furniture fair now rivals the prêt a porter and couture shows for scale, influence and glamour. The grandest hotel in the city, the Principe Di Savoia, sells out all of its rooms for the week – €17,000 a night penthouse included – six months earlier, while Twitter’s timeline scrolls at an excitable pace with design discoveries and party gossip. The boundary between fashion and furniture has been blurring, and this year it became almost imperceptible. Sales of “designer furniture” are growing faster than sales of clothing, and some of the most exciting interiors pieces showcased in April were from profoundly forward-thinking Paris-based couture houses. The notion of investment dressing is yielding to investment interiors – £15,000 sofas and limited edition armoires that will age beautifully and hold their value, aligned with the most prestigious names in the clothing industry. It’s a difficult, design sorcery: the product has to be simultaneously au courant and timeless.

Jean Paul Gaultier/Roche Robois

Every year since the launch of Armani Casa in 2000, the most influential labels in the world have expanded to encompass a lifestyle universe. Armani – like Calvin Klein and Fendi – is known for restrained luxury with a sharp sense of lounge-friendly texture and minimalism. Armani’s celebrated “greige” palate is a custom fit for the modern interior and has expanded from cushions and lampshades to whole Armani-branded hotels. But the new names heading for the living room floor are more intriguing.

A few years ago, seeing anything by Maison Martin Margiela outside of the most esoteric of fashion stores was, to the initiated, nothing short of shocking. Here is an aggressively “insider label”, known for a self-consciously intellectual approach to design: its stores are roughly whitewashed and all of the workers at its 11^th Arondissement HQ wear lab coats. At its latest couture show, models wore flesh-coloured transparent belted Macs with unsettling black masks. In 2009 it began working with furniture manufacturer Cerruti-Baleri on two items that had appeared already as purely conceptual pieces: the Emmanuelle Chair (£1,750) and the Groupe sofa (from £5,060). This year it expanded the range with the Undersized sofa (from £5,000), Sbilenco coffee table (£1,500), trompe l’œil monochrome adhesive wall murals of distressed wooden doors (£290) and blank white Matriochka dolls (£130). The pieces are arresting and bordering on sinister, their skewed proportions reminiscent of Dutch designers Droog, or in the case of the Groupe sofa, mismatched (it resembles three odd armchairs) but unified by Margiela’s trademark raw snow-white cotton toile covering. “By clothing the furniture, the intention is to offer some history and past life, or vécu as we say in French,” explains one of the Maison collective. “The cotton is treated so it doesn’t appear brand new. But these are still luxury items. They are delicate and sumptuous.”

The appearance of Hermès’ La Maison line at this year’s Salone in Milan shouldn’t be surprising. The house was producing furniture with Jean-Michel Frank 80 years ago, and the 1980s Rene Dumas-designed capsule Pippa trio of folding leather chair, console and stool, as well as its tableware, are much loved classics. But it was the scale of the presentation in Milan that was dramatic: wallpapers, chairs, carpets, tables, sofas, glass and ceramics, all echoing the classic prints and the irresistible, boldly-seamed chocolate and orange leather that the brand is known for. The launch followed last year’s reissue of its Jean Michel Frank pieces, in collaboration with B&B Italia. “Those pieces were the starting point,” says Hélène Dubrule, the MD of Hermès’ La Maison department. “Then we brought the range up to date with new work from Enzo Mari, Antonio Citterio and architect Denis Montel.” Hermès is a house that is acutely aware of progressive design (Martin Margiela was creative director from 1997 to 2003), and the La Maison pieces unveiled this spring have a bold sense of modernity as well as stately, masculine tradition. Antonio Cittero’s Meridienne for Unwinding (£17,670) is a chaise longue with elements of Dumas apparent in its crossed safari-style legs. Mari’s Table Ovale (£20,460), in marble with smooth calfskin legs, has the gorgeous, elegant, tapered 1920s sweep of deco designer Émile-Jacques Ruhlmann, while Montel’s leather Sellier dining chair (£4,650) is, as Dubrele says, “quintessentially Hermès”. “We liked the idea of a saddler working on something to sit on,” she says. “It adds a touch of fantasy to the collection and we hope it will become an iconic signature object.”

Hermès: La Maison

Like Hermès, some of the most directional fashion designers working on furniture lines are harking back to the 20s and 30s. The attraction should be obvious – the era of arch-modernism and muscular deco was the pinnacle of avant-garde design in the 20^th century. No contemporary fashion designer has a stronger, or more influential aesthetic than Rick Owens, and while his work is synonymous with washed leather, asymmetry, monochrome and a blend of sci-fi, Berlin techno, the industrial and the occult, it’s also rooted in the early 20^th century. He creates furniture for himself, and for limited editions selling (price on application) next to Prouve and Corbusier originals at Galerie Jousse Enterprise in Paris. They have a disturbing but artful and angular heft to them, exaggerated with animal antlers and offbeat materials: an alabaster bed looks like a sacrificial altar, and a stained black Curial chair resembles a pagan chalice. But then there are sofas and tables with a deco delicacy to them. “I like blunt rational simplicity in raw simple materials,” says Owens. “And every once in a while, a slightly ridiculous flourish. I oversized and simplified the silhouettes of Ruhlmann, Mallet Stevens and Jean Michel Frank with a hint of California skate parks and leather bar interiors. This furniture is my version of couture, it’s time-consumingly artisanal in a mix of base and rare materials.” He’ll be unveiling a new range of pieces – mixing prosaic blackened plywood and rarefied alabaster to striking effect – in London during Frieze week and in LA in December.

Rick Owens

Stockholm-based street fashion and creative brand Acne looked to mid-century Swedish design for inspiration for its furniture line. Creative director Jonny Johansson took Carl Malmsten’s 1958 Nya Berlin sofa, warped its axis, stretched it and upholstered the result in denim to create a selection of pieces (from €4,000–€15,000) that make a distinctly Scandinavian style statement. “These are pieces that need their own space,” says Johansson. “We called this project a study, because it’s a perspective play and the search for something very Swedish. Furniture isn’t just functional today. It’s more of an object, perhaps a sculpture.”

While there is a tendency for fashion designers to veer towards the conceptual, some of the new pieces appearing are more straightforward and literally comfortable translations of celebrated silhouettes and prints. Jean Paul Gaultier’s aesthetic couldn’t be further removed from the fabulously austere menace of Rick Owens, or the Scandic ascetism of Acne. The limited edition range of furniture he has produced with Roche Robois draws from thirty years of Breton stripes, sailors’ tattoos, Horst P Horst corset lacing and breezy Gallic bon chic, bon genre. The hand-stitched Mah Jong modular sofa (units from £895), with navy and white horizontal lines, kissing couples and Pierre et Gilles-style florals couldn’t look more Gaultier unless Jean Paul himself was sitting on it. “I started, as I do with all my collections, with the idea of dressing someone,” says Gaultier. “Except in this case it was furniture. And in the end, designing furniture is not that different – you have to think about the human body and how it will react to its environment.” For all the humour in his work, Gaultier is a deeply serious, master designer. His couture shows send critics into raptures, and he was design director of Hermès for seven years after Margiela’s departure. Amongst the Roche Robois collection is an elegant tattoo-motif wardrobe (£11,500) with internal mirrors that are part magic act and part old Hollywood, and two leather-upholstered sets of drawers (£4,995-£7,935) in the shape of a stack of suitcases – witty, but still exceedingly beautiful.

One of the most appealing parts of Gaultier’s furniture line is his bed, with screens and linens, in Lace, Sailor and Boudoir styles. A bedroom can lend itself to unbridled fantasy in the way other rooms cannot, which is why many fashion designers focus their attentions on it. Diane von Furstenberg launched a full range of homeware this year and along with the plates and cushions there’s an array of bedware ($150-$300) in bright mosaics and heavily inked lines that could be taken straight from one of her iconic wrap dresses. A black-on-white butterfly silhouette print, meanwhile, demonstrates her incredible graphic strengths. At the same time, high-end lingerie brand Agent Provocateur has, under the auspices of creative director Sarah Shotton, unveiled a collection of striking bed linen, from 550-threadcount white sheets with baby pink piping, to 100% silk black covers and lace-print textiles. Like Gaultier’s Breton stripes, it’s a look taken straight from the label’s DNA. “We’ve applied similar textures and detailing,” says Shotton. “And we’ve translated the craftsmanship and playful irreverence too.”

Maison Martin Margiela

The kitchen and dining room represent the bread and butter of high fashion homeware. Designers known for their prints – like Missoni and Zandra Rhodes – translate hugely successfully to tableware. As with bedroom sets, practical ceramics allow for flights of fancy: You might not want to change your sofa every month, but when it comes to supper, you can choose from a collection of plates according to mood. The market is growing fast: this autumn Bruce Oldfield has produced a range of 14 pieces with Royal Crown Derby while Diane von Furstenberg has a vast range of pieces covered in painterly single brush strokes and her pop arty Miro Flowers. A strong pattern can be taken on a grand tour of the house: Missoni produce stacks of cushions and towels, and Vivienne Westwood has an extensive range of wallpapers with Cole & Son, including her seminal squiggle print from her first catwalk collection in 1981, Pirates. Basso & Brooke, known for their wild, often risqué, digital prints, have taken things further, by offering whole-wall murals, made to order rugs, silk lampshades and chairs and decoupage consoles.

So alluring is the world of interiors that some designers now focus on it exclusively. Russell Sage gave up a successful career in womenswear to become one of London’s most in-demand interior designers, and approaches each interior with mood boards and back stories as he would any collection; and Rifat Ozbek – who created some of the most desirable clothes for women throughout the 80s and 90s – has retired from fashion to create wonderfully ornate, exquisitely bright cushions under his Yastik label. The embroidery is wonderfully, classically Ozbek, mixing central Asian patterns, including the Turkish, cartoonish good luck motif of the Nazar Boncugu. “I’ve also designed the interior of Mark Birley’s new London club,” says Ozbek. “It’s a cross between an opium den, a turn of the century Parisian music hall and a Tibetan temple. I’d never done an interior before, and now there’s talk of me creating a furniture line.” The attraction for the talented designer is clear. If 15 minutes on a catwalk tells the story of a collection, then an interior – whether piece by piece or an entire space – has a quite transcendent sense of permanence. It tells an infinitely bigger story.

 

STOCKISTS

 

Acne, 13 Dover Street, London W1 (020-7629 9374; www.acnestudios.com).

 

Agent Provocateur, 675 Madison Avenue, New York 10065 (+212-840 2436; www.agentprovocateur.com).

 

Diane Von Furstenberg at Selfridges, 400 Oxford Street, London W1 (0800 123 400;  www.selfridges.com) and at www.dvf.com.

 

Hermès, 155 New Bond Street, London W1 (020-7499 8856; www.hermes.com)

 

Maison Martin Margiela at Cerruti Baleri, Via Felice Cavallotti 8, Milan 20122 (+39-02 7602 3954; www.cerrutibaleri.com).

 

Rick Owens at Galerie Jousse Enterprise, 18 Rue de Seine, Paris 75006 (+33-1 53 82 13 60; www.jousse-enterprise.com)

 

Roche Robois, 421-425 Finchley Road, London W3 (020-7431 1411; www.roche-robois.com).

 

Yastik by Rifat Ozbek, 8 Holland Street, London W8 (020-3538 7981; www.yastikbyrifatozbek.com)

 

Tailors of the unexpected (FT How to Spend it)

The relaunch of the Mugler menswear label this year was a typically excitable Major Fashion Event. The autumn/winter show in Paris mixed dark pantomime with self consciously edgy high-shine glamour. Male models’ faces appeared to be dipped in black, Satanic, glossy tar and – with Lady Gaga’s stylist on board as new creative director – there was an avalanche of fashion blog hyperbole and frantic trending on Twitter. For anyone disinterested in such things, it represented a parallel universe that will never have a sense of its own ridiculousness. Eyes rolled… And yet, while there were bald-headed men with sinister full facial and cranial skull tattoos stalking the runway, there were also, quietly strolling behind them, some of the sharpest, most appealing suits that you can buy right now.

Mugler A/W 2011

For all of high fashion’s most outré theatrics, many of the world’s directional designers – many of them better known for their paparazzi-baiting womenswear – also have some of the very best, most luxurious and smartest men’s tailoring. While showtime is intended to grab the attention of the most jaded of the world’s fashion editors with a nosebleed soundtrack, when it comes to what the buyers order, the edit is credible and commonsensical. What these designers bring to the cutting table – and what makes them worth considering as an alternative to Jermyn Street and Savile Row – is a touch of irreverence and a strong sense of body consciousness that can inject the business wardrobe with individuality and power.

Some directional designers have developed entirely separate lines to hone their men’s tailoring, like Comme des Garçons’ Homme Deux range, which designer Rei Kawakubo describes as ‘suits for the handsome mind – where casual becomes smart and smart doesn’t have to mean stiff.’ The Homme Deux range represents a mix and match collection of jackets and trousers that would be the perfect capsule wardrobe for a less formal business trip.

Maison Margiela’s 14 label is focused on relaxed, classic tailoring. If anything, it looks more reassuringly ‘old fashioned’ than what many brands are striving for at the moment with their kooky truncated lengths – kickstarted by New York’s Thom Browne – or painfully narrow cuts (a hangover from a decade of super-skinny Dior Homme). When even the high street wants to be breathlessly avant-garde, it’s bolder to go back to the classics. ‘We recently introduced Margiela 14, alongside the more fashion forward 10 line,’ says Browns menswear buyer Mei Chung. ‘It has luxurious tailored pieces in handsome fabrics, and the silhouette is cut in a very defined way that falls beautifully.’ Within the 14 line this autumn is the most classic, meticulously constructed grey double breasted suit (trousers £1274, jacket £1352) with peaked lapels. It’s a suit that will never date, and will take you from office to evening engagements for years to come.

When Alexander McQueen launched his menswear line in autumn 1996, it was shown as part of his groundbreaking Dante collection at Hawksmoor’s iconic Christ Church in Spitalfields, London. ‘Classic with a twist, that’s the only way you can do menswear,’ McQueen said some weeks before the show – and he was, as ever, right. While still enjoying a meteoric rise to fame with an aesthetic defined by psychotic-looking models storming down catwalks with their eyes blacked-out by contact lenses, his developing menswear was a sober nod to his Savile Row roots. A year after his death, the menswear continues in the same vein: jacket lengths are longer than the current norm (76cm rather than 72cm), eschewing the aforementioned trendiness of Thom Browne et al. The McQueen man’s trousers break on his shoes, not above the ankle. Yes, elsewhere in the collection there are flamboyant prints and a sharp ‘McQueen shoulder’, but at the core there is simple, fully canvassed, precisely structured tailoring. Stand-out pieces for autumn include double breasted blazers in exclusively woven plaid English-milled wools (from £1215) and a one-button single breasted suit in a soft two-colour check (trousers £495, jacket £1215) with sharp peaked lapels.

McQueen’s tailoring is distinctly British, playing on notions of the gentry and the gentleman’s outfitter. So are the suits in the MAN range by the grand dame of showmanship, Vivienne Westwood. For some years now Westwood has been a very reliable place to go for suits with a subtle but seductive twist. This autumn there’s an elegant charcoal three piece with amber buttons (£779) and a chic, black, single-breasted suit with a double pocket detail on the right of the jacket (£885). Fashion insiders will clock them immediately as Westwood, but everyone else will read them as straightforwardly smart and luxurious. Many men find that the strong shape and broader lapel is just the thing for them, and go on to buy nothing but Westwood suits. ‘We work a lot with small details,’ says Westwood menswear designer Francis Lowe. ‘We may have higher placement of notches on the lapels. We also develop a lot of our own fabrics, and play with traditional patterns, like Prince of Wales checks and pin stripes, changing the colours and scale of the design, remaining true to our British roots, but with a slight twist.’

For those who like a little more edge (and we’re not talking about the dressing-up box here), there is tailoring at Westwood with a slightly lower than usual crotch and asymmetric fastenings. It’s offbeat, but far from ridiculous. There is also the aforementioned ‘McQueen shoulder’ at Alexander McQueen. Shoulder shapes can define a period in fashion: as David Bowie once remarked, ‘The shoulder pad is the flared trouser of the 80s.’ Contemporary high fashion menswear isn’t defined by one single shape, but as Roland Mouret, celebrated for his glamorous red-carpet womenswear says of Mr., his nascent menswear line, ‘I like a jacket with a bit of a shoulder pad because while a woman’s strength is in her waist, men’s is in their shoulders.’

Rick Owens A/W 2011 from www.luisaviaroma.com

Certainly the shoulders at the reborn Mugler label are strong, as indeed they were when the house’s originator Thierry Mugler first launched at the end of the 1970s. ‘The Mugler way of tailoring is sharp, with no compromise,’ says its current designer Romain Kremer. ‘It’s about masculine shapes, more of a shell than a second skin. It’s powerful.’ There are the fiercely angular, collarless, single button jackets that defined a lot of men’s dressing in the 80s, but within the autumn collection there is also a sleek, midnight blue single button double breasted suit (trousers £175, jacket £750) that, taken off the catwalk, makes for a simple, but killer, outfit.

Roland Mouret’s tailoring for men is deeply elegant and, for autumn, focuses heavily on texture. He is designing for himself rather than for the catwalk, and there are few men who wouldn’t want to look like Mouret, oozing mature, confident, Gallic chic. ‘I am about to turn 50,’ says Mouret. ‘With my menswear I asked myself what I wanted to wear now. I want clothes that define a man without being in your face or outrageous. They shouldn’t create a new experience for you, because you have the experience already.’ The men’s department of his Mayfair boutique (trousers from £325, jackets from £765) contains what may be the perfect modern wardrobe for the ‘real man’. His autumn menswear collection is as sophisticated as his celebrated Galaxy dress, taking in elements of the softer, tweedier, more luxurious side of the 1980s. Softness and texture is something that he thinks men should explore, and exploit much more than they do. ‘I wear cashmere to my more annoying meetings because the hardness of the meeting is balanced by the softness of what I’m wearing. It’s very important for men to use their clothes as a language.’

Mouret is developing his tailoring because, as all designers know, a suit in some shape or form is key to every professional man’s wardrobe. ‘A suit for a man is like armour,’ says Maria Cornejo, known for the intellectual, asymmetric, architectural womenswear of her Zero + Maria Cornejo label, based in New York City. One of the strongest menswear pieces in her autumn collection is the Paco blazer ($1,495) with matching trousers ($550), in dark herringbone. For Cornejo, the new season suit represents a ‘counter point to fluidity’. Her tailoring is fresh, relaxed and modern.

Rick Owens is, like Cornejo, a designer known for his unstructured, loose, but extreme style. Owens has fashioned for himself a rough, gothic, colourless aesthetic that’s so arch and all encompassing that there are even grey M&Ms in a bowl on the counter of his Paris store. His work is immediately identifiable, and has a cult following. Within his racks of drapes and folds and washed and skewed leather, there are comparatively conservative, pared down pieces of beautiful black and grey tailoring (jackets from €1785, coats from €1900), still very much informed by Owens’ thoughtful approach to proportion. ‘I’m trying to get the armhole as high as possible and the sleeve length as long as tolerable,’ he says. ‘I want a long slim line without getting too gimmicky. I use interior pockets as opposed to welt pockets for one less layer of fabric and a reductive smoothness.’ Practicality has not been sacrificed for style: ‘Every man’s jacket I make comes with zippered interior patch pockets big enough for your phone charger, a magazine, a ChapStick and your passport.’

The misperception of many of the world’s more progressive designers is that they don’t offer credible clothes for the modern, working man. The reality is that they are laboratories for proportion and textiles that also produce garments that just might flatter and suit you more than your tailor can or is prepared to. They could be infinitely more ‘you’. Go forth and experiment.

 

 

STOCKISTS

 

Alexander McQueen, 4-5 Old Bond Street, London W1 (020-7355 0088; www.alexandermcqueen.com) and stockists.

 

Browns, 23 South Molton Street, London W1 (020-7514 0038; www.brownsfashion.com).

 

Comme des Garçons Homme Deux at Dover Street Market, 17-18 Dover Street, London W1 (020-7518 0680; www.doverstreetmarket.com).

 

Mugler at Dover Street Market, as above and Harvey Nichols, 109-125 Knightsbridge, London SW1 (020-7235 5000; www.harveynichols.com).

 

Maison Martin Margiela, 22 Bruton Street, London W1 (020-7629 2682; www.maisonmartinmargiela.com) and branches/stockists.

 

Rick Owens, 64 South Audley Street, London W1 (020-7493 7145; www.rickowens.eu) and branches/stockists.

 

Roland Mouret, 8 Carlos Place, London W1 (020-7518 0700; www.rolandmouret.com).

 

Vivienne Westwood MAN, 18 Conduit Street, London W1 (020-7478 2060; www.viviennewestwood.co.uk).

 

Zero + Maria Cornejo, 807 Greenwich Street, New York (+1 (212) 620 0460; www.zeromariacornejo.com).

 

New London restaurants: José/Cut (Elle)

 

JOSÉ

104 Bermondsey Street, London SE1 3UH

An unwillingness to share food has marred many an experience of tapas until recently. So… my new coping strategy? Over-order and hope for the best. Which was easy at José Pizarro’s new sherry bar in Bermondsey, because I wanted everything, in large amounts. Having had it, I want it again soon.

Pizarro co-founded the tapas restaurant offshoot of Borough Market’s Brindisa deli, and this is his first solo venture. Another, larger restaurant, will open nearby shortly. It’ll definitely be larger because it couldn’t be any smaller. At José you perch by a ledge by a window, wall or bar, or stand around a barrel. This isn’t somewhere to linger for hours, it’s for grazing, in authentic Spanish style. You pop in (you can’t book and it’s consistently full), have a glass of sherry and a couple of plates, and move on. It’s also the last place in London that anyone with any consideration would think to wheel a large pram with a screaming baby, but the day I went, someone had clearly taken leave of their senses. Fay Maschler took a seat as we were leaving, and Joe Warwick visited twice in the same day, which is of course far more significant than the actions of an entirely deluded yummy mummy. But still… Anyway: out with anger, in with lovingly prepared tapas.

I know it’s wildly fashionable, and all, but sherry really hasn’t been my thing until now. A soft, wonderfully caramel Valdespino Viejo Palo Cortado, however, was just what the Jamon Ibérico called for. Here was a plate and a glass that were clearly so much more than good friends. José imports his own Jamon Ibérico, and this is the best you’ll taste in London, enhanced by that aforementioned sherry no end. The Ibérico is an intense red, slightly sweet, and comes almost imperceptibly warmed – as it should do – to enhance the streaks of fat. It’s utterly sublime. Even better was a special of Pluma Ibérico, which is the missing link between the flavour of pork belly and cured leg. It’s a rare (in both senses) cut from the armpit of the pig, and it’s one of the most sumptuous things we’ve eaten in years.

Apparently they change the croqueta regularly at José, and on our visit it was a delicate and moreish blue cheese variety. Good though it was, I’d also like to visit when the crab and basil one is back on. A bowl of small, soft and rich chorizo sausages in red wine was exemplary. (Supermarkets take note: ‘chorizo-style’ doesn’t cut it.) Technique aside, Pizarro’s genius is in sourcing the very best produce in Europe. These are simple small plates, with no alchemy or molecular shenanigans. The other plate I fell wildly in love with was a mix of peas and chorizo with a poached egg and little bits of bread fried, seemingly, in chorizo oil; an easy and accessible dish, but powerful and entirely fantastic. The only thing I didn’t enthuse entirely about was a hake dish in aioli. The fish itself was more than fine – big chunky flakes of flavour – but with its slightly spongy coating, it was so slightly airline. Still, it was very posh, turn-left-on-boarding airline; not scratch-card Ryanair.

This stretch of Bermondsey has been a more sophisticated sibling to Shoreditch since long before Hoxton happened, thanks to its early colonisation by the likes of Andrew Logan and Zandra Rhodes. Now, with José Pizarro joining Zucca, the Garrison and Village East, it’s established itself as one of the best quarters for casual but world-class dining in the capital. If you don’t know it, go and discover it at the earliest opportunity.

 

Food: 10

Ambience: 4

Service: 9

Value: 8

 

CUT

45 Park Lane, London W1K 1PN

There’d been every chance that Wolfgang Puck’s first UK restaurant, at the new deco-styled 45 Park Lane hotel, was going to be a critical car crash of Ballardian proportions, particularly as he’d chosen steak as his medium (half-baked, not-quite-pun unintended). It hardly needs to be pointed out that London has some of the world’s most exciting chefs right now, as well as some of the best steakhouses, so to import a celebri-chef best known to UK travellers from an appearance on Frasier and his name on American fast food outlets in airports seemed arrogant in the extreme. “It’s a bit of a kick in the teeth for London”, confided one of the UK’s most famous chefs to me while doing the rounds of his tables at his own restaurant a few nights before my visit. “And because it’s a Dorchester production, he’s been given resources and an amount of staff that no start-up restaurant could possibly afford.” So – Cut could have been given a quite unprecedented kicking by the heavyweight critics. Many were lined up, steak knife and fork in hand, to bury, not praise Puck. And yet – it’s all gone rather well.

First impressions confirmed that ruinous fortunes have, indeed, been spent to make Cut happen. There is an army of ladies and gentleman – all in architectural, sharp, noir-tailored outfits by Dorchester Fashion Prize winner Thomas Tait – manouvering their away around a slightly cramped, narrow dining space, to a distinctly un-Mayfair soundtrack of the Rolling Stones and David Bowie. At times it feels like there are more staff than diners. The room itself is handsome enough, lit with a flattering amber glow, but it’s not user friendly for service – a cheese trolley had to be abandoned by one waiter as he tried to wheel it past a table of four. Also, for all that service going on (and most of it fawning and informative, right down to a presentation of the raw meat with a description of its diet and travel history), it’s something of a surprise to sit down at 7.30pm and start eating at 9pm. Things will, no doubt, improve here, but I left at close to midnight. Which is quite late for a school night. And a friend who’d lunched the week before reported similar gaps. I’ve had the most elaborate tasting menu at Sketch faster than that.

I dined with Philip Stephens, the designer behind the Unconditional fashion label.  I don’t eat carbs and yet I take a 54 suit (virtually a plus-size in fashion terms). So a steakhouse is an easy indulgence for me. Philip eats everything and makes Dior Homme models look chunky. Some pre-dinner sliders with cheese were a delight. I could eat a dozen of them (having carefully removed their buns, of course). We ordered three starters – Australian Wagyu steak sashimi, a scallop carpaccio and Dorset Crab and Lobster “Louis”. The last dish was a creamy, moreish, ultra-souped-up prawn cocktail. The scallop plate was good, with a blast of wasabi, and the raw steak was nothing short of fantastic. For a main I had the Wagyu/Black Angust Beef filet mignon and Philip had a Wagyu Chilean rib eye, ordered fearlessly – as only the skinny or morbidly obese can – with chips. The chips were, he announced, a waste of time – limp and overly salted. The steaks, however, were as good as steaks can be. Better than that even. There is major science going on at Cut – each steak is grilled over hard wood and charcoal and finished with a trip to a 650 degree broiler. The result is a moist, juicy cut, with a wonderful, flirty, barbecue crust. I preferred my fist sized, 6oz £85 (yes, we know!) Wagyu/Black Angus, but the Chilean rib eye had a more complex flavour from its fats. For afters, I had some cheese and Philip had a Caramilk Chocolate Bar, which tasted like it was on a “base made with chocolate rice crispies”. Good, but if you’re coming to Cut to have a deluxe evening of protein and greens, then it wasn’t, by all accounts, worth the calories. Apparently. As for Cut itself – is it worth it? Well, it’s expensive. Very. A glass of Cabernet Sauvignon Duckhorn from Napa is £20. But then that’s a pretty sublime wine, and you’ll pay north of fifty quid a bottle for it on the high street, if you can find it in this country. Likewise, £27-£85 for a steak (most cuts hover over the £40 mark) is a fortune. But you aren’t going to eat here every night, and it doesn’t cost as much as it would if you tried to fit your kitchen out with the technology and trickery required to make it taste as good as it does here. So all credit to the Dorchester for doing it for you.

Food: 9

Ambience: 5

Service: 4

Value: 5

The menswear that fell to earth (FT Weekend)

“Fa…fa…fa…fa…fashion!” Jaded front row guests frequently ponder just how many times they’ll sit through a catwalk show soundtracked by that familiar 80s new wave stutter, while designers continue to plunder David Bowie’s early-70s wardrobe. Last spring, Balmain’s strong-shouldered metallic blue and gold women’s blazers led the way, followed by Bella Freud’s Aladdin Sane lightning bolt knitwear. From Ziggy Stardust to Zoolander, David Bowie is the most referenced musician in fashion history.

David Bowie in The Man Who Fell to Earth and Lanvin A/W 2011

It’s Bowie’s wardrobe from the post-glam, second half of the 1970s that is inspiring the most interesting fashion right now, particularly menswear. The silhouette is a tailored mix of svelte on top and voluminous below. Trousers are generously pleated, shirts are slim-fit, crisp and white. David Bowie made the Lanvin and Dior Homme aesthetic his own even before it had been invented.

For his autumn collection, Dries Van Noten sent his corps of slicked, henna-haired men out to the beat of a 2 Many DJs remix of ‘Golden Years’, modelling an A/W collection that took inspiration from the Bowie movie Just a Gigolo. “The Thin White Duke is one of my favourite periods”, says Van Noten. “Bowie has proven to be timeless and relevant in a moment where many musicians fade into oblivion. Of course I love the Ziggy Stardust era too.”

It’s easy to pull together a Halloween approximation of Ziggy’s Kansai Yamamoto glam-rock robes and Pierre Le Roche’s make up, but when Bowie moved on to his soul-inspired Young Americans period in 1974, he moved the goalposts. The kimonos and jumpsuits stopped. His wardrobe became more subtle, more subversive and ultimately more influential. “He was wearing suits by Derek Morton from City Lights,” says Paul Gorman, author of The Look: Adventures in Rock & Pop Fashion. “Derek went on to become Paul Smith’s tailoring main man, and Smith provided the white shirts for the Thin White Duke”.

A Terry O’Neil image of Bowie from the Young Americans period appeared in the inspiration book left on the seats at Phoebe Philo’s Celine show this season. In it, Bowie holds tailor’s scissors, wearing a rake-thin yellow suit with exaggerated cuffs, shoulders and a rounded collar. If the suit was black, it could easily be edgy new season Todd Lynn for either gender. It has a sharp, modern insouciance. “I think that every menswear designer has referenced Bowie at some point,” says Lynn. “After he all, he made the trench coat rock and roll.”

This season, Roland Mouret identified Bowie’s character in 1983’s Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence as a strong influence in his menswear, while for spring, he’s looked to the swagger and relaxed tailoring of the 1976-1979 era, when Bowie was based in Berlin. “That was a transitional period for him,” says Mouret. “He left glam behind and was absorbing a new culture in Germany. He mixed the art scene with the leather of S&M and mixed it up with a British elegance. It was decadent and cinematic.”

The wedge-cut flame-red hair and platforms were strong signifiers, but Bowie’s trump card was repositioning the man’s suit in high fashion. He did it in a confrontational way that Bryan Ferry and Antony Price couldn’t match. He made it a postmodern fashion statement. “His Thin White Duke seemed conventionally masculine,” says Glenn Adamson, co-curator of the V&A’s current Postmodernism exhibition, “but it referred to the cabaret styling of Weimar Berlin.”

Bowie demonstrated that the suit could be outrageous and expressive as much as it was smart or a slightly dandy uniform. Emaciated but beautiful, living – infamously – on a diet of cocaine, coffee, cigarettes, red and green peppers and milk, The Man Who Fell to Earth persona he created was the visual blueprint for the fedora-clad men that appeared at Lanvin this season, as well as a precursor of the female supermodel of the 21^st century – androgynous, angular and goth-white. “A lot of people have said they identified Bowie in our autumn show”, says Lanvin’s menswear designer, Lucas Ossendrijver. “It wasn’t intentional, but there’s certainly a graphic purity and crispness in that look that’s very modern again – the wide pants, the crisp white shirt and waistcoat and the hat. It’s a return to elegance. And I like Bowie best when he’s very natural, androgynous and mysterious.”

Before Madonna, and long before the cynical fancy dress of Lady GaGa, David Bowie was busying himself as much as a performance and visual artist as a musical one. He was ahead of every curve. When Bowie appeared on Saturday Night Live in 1979 he wore a skirt, six years before Gaultier showed men in skirts in Paris. In 1996, he commissioned stagewear from Alexander McQueen, in the same year that London’s most directional designer reciprocated with a collection inspired by the Bowie/Deneuve movie The Hunger. Like his 1970s work with Kansai Yamamoto and Derek Morton, there’s more to Bowie’s fashion influence than just providing an image – he’s constantly collaborated. The shame is, of course, that Bowie has gone quiet. Every designer wishes that he would return, but the signs aren’t positive. Bowie biographer Paul Trynka recently said that he has “most likely retired”. But as Todd Lynn says: “Although he hasn’t released a record since 2003, we still think of him as an artist who might perform something new tomorrow. And if he did, we’d all want to know what his new style would be.”

The Smiths (FT Weekend)

The orange and blue lightning strike of David Bowie’s Aladdin Sane may be iconic, but the cover of Patti Smith’s debut album, Horses, has been more influential in the world of fashion. The Robert Mapplethorpe-photographed sleeve has inspired more designers than perhaps any other image in rock.

When it appeared in 1975 it was a powerful, monochrome counterpoint to the rest of punk: An androgynous Smith standing by a white wall next to a triangle of light and a soft shadow, dressed in a white shirt with a ribbon around her neck; face scrubbed, hair wild. “I’d flung my jacket over my shoulder, Frank Sinatra style,” Smith recalls in her biography, Just Kids. “I was full of references.” Camille Paglia has written of it being the most “electrifying image” she has ever seen of a woman: “Smith defies the rules of femininity… it unites austere European art films with the glamorous, ever-maligned high-fashion magazines.”

When a young Ann Demeulemeester saw the image in an Antwerp record shop in 1976, it would change her life. “I was struck by the cover,” she says. “I had an intuition that I was going to know this woman.” Which she did, going on to collaborate with Smith on a number of collections while consistently channelling Horses with her stark, black and white rock aesthetic. Today, they’re close friends and Smith wears the very clothes that she inspired in the 1970s.

Demeulemeester isn’t unique in her fixation with the Mapplethorpe image. “The Horses cover appears time and time again on the studio walls and mood boards of fashion designers,” says Robert G Leach, author of the forthcoming Thames & Hudson title, The Fashion Resource Book, Visual Research for Fashion Design. “It fits so well with the modern minimalist aesthetic favoured by designers and labels such as Jil Sander, Helmut Lang, Francisco Costa at Calvin Klein and Phoebe Philo at Celine.”

From Hedi Slimane, Balmain and Limi Yamamoto to The Gap and “the boyfriend shirt”, the stark Horses image has given inspiration to endless sets of bohemian-tinged white shirt, black jacket and pants combinations, while indie bands reappropriate it on a loop. More than an image, it’s a mood: strong, provocative and thoughtful. It has a timeless integrity and purity, which the very best fashion design is constantly striving for.

 

Venice: A moveable feast (The Independent)

If I lived within walking distance of the Rialto Market, I’d never buy groceries anywhere else. As someone who acquires cookbooks on a seemingly weekly basis, the ancient mercantile heart of Venice feels like the most visually seductive and stimulating place on earth. This isn’t a Disneyfied attraction for tourists: this is where Venetians come for their weekly and daily shop.

On a golden Tuesday morning in late summer, the sun shines through crimson flags bearing the image of the winged lion of St Mark, across stalls full of the fishing spoils of the Adriatic, laid out on ice like fine iridescent jewellery. Stallholders sip their mid-morning spritzes in the shade while fabulously wizened nonnas in elegant pussybow-collared blouses shop for still-twitching crustacea, just-fished prawns with butterfly markings, and steaks from Mesozoically vast swordfish. Multicoloured spices are plated up in Missoni-like patterns in the window of Drogheria Mascari, and in the fruit and vegetable market the sweet smell of 20 different types of tomato drifts over beautiful, deep purple artichokes, boxed like dark velvet roses.

Enrica Rocca in the Rialto Market, 2011 © www.markcoflaherty.com

“So! What are we going to make?” asks Enrica Rocca. She’s not so much a chef as a force of nature, with a mane of curly hair and several generations of Venetian blood in her. When Rocca isn’t feeding 500 guests for Venice in Peril benefit galas, she hosts intimate day-long cookery classes that start with the creamiest cappuccino in the city – at Caffè del Doge – and then move on to the market, where she’s greeted by name at each stall. She surveys what’s good, explains why that is, bags it up and then takes her students back to her state-of-the-art kitchen, fashioned out of the old laundry in her family’s palazzo. From the window, Enrica tells me, had I a rod, I could fish fantastic grey mullet from the canal below.

It’s more of a party than a class, although visitors do learn the vital importance of generosity with salt: “If you don’t eat junk food, salt is fine. And when you cook pasta, the water should be as salty as the Adriatic.” Her insider perspective on dining in the city is priceless. A one-day class is one thing, but a week’s holiday based around Enrica’s tips keeps the dreaded “tourist menu” at bay, guiding you away from the Caffè Florian and towards local favourites – although there are still some inescapable, excellent clichés to enjoy.

“The best bellini in Venice is on the rooftop of the Hilton,” she tells me over a spritz at Osteria alla Alba, a graffiti-covered bar several alleyways off the main tourist beat of the Rialto. Later that week I dutifully take the ferry across to the Molino Stucky Hilton, once a vast 19th-century red-brick flourmill, now a grand hotel, and still a powerful, strikingly industrial presence on the banks of Giudecca, and the lift up to the Skyline terrace. The view across the water to St Mark’s is glorious and the sunset painterly, but alas there aren’t any peaches. ”I wasn’t happy with them today, so we’re not making bellinis,” says Marino, the manager. Instead, I have two stupendous martinis – one fresh apple, one fresh basil – which send me floating on a warm cashmere-soft cloud back across the water to another of Enrica’s recommendations, L’Osteria di Santa Marina. My waiter rattles off the day’s specials and I order a large plate of raw seafood and the tagliolini al nero di seppia alla busara. The jet-black pasta dish with squid is complex and wonderful, the pesce crudo, too. Over several trips to Venice, I’ve developed an obsession with raw prawns, whose soft and rich texture and flavour bear no relation to their cooked siblings. And at Santa Marina – a mid-range restaurant that shouldn’t cost you more than £50 per head – they’re particularly excellent.

I get my bellini the next day at the Cipriani – the best-known hotel in the city, its rooms and gardens oozing elegant, classic, matter-of-fact wealth. This is as rarefied as Venice gets. Its bellini, first created by Giuseppe Cipriani in the 1940, is the stuff of legend. Regular guests – and the most privileged of locals – are greeted in hushed tones at the poolside by title and surname. Walter, the head bartender, has been here since the 1970s, and remembers Enrica’s father and uncle well. “Both very good customers, and big drinkers,” laughs Enrica. If you ask him nicely, Walter will make you a bellini the old-fashioned way, painstakingly hand squeezing each white peach and blending it with raspberry, lemon juice and a one-third measure of Nino Franco Valdobbiadene prosecco. At home, I make mine by adding a shot of peach nectar from a carton to whatever sparkling wine I have to hand. I’ll never do that again and dare to call it a bellini.

Some of the Venetians’ favourite bars and dining rooms are just a few steps from the main tourist thoroughfares. The Metropole Hotel, adjacent to St Mark’s Square, is a family-run hotel and one of the loveliest places to stay in the city, with a tranquil garden and romantic, antique-filled rooms, walls swathed in heavy embroidered fabrics. It also has a two Michelin-starred restaurant, MET, which locals adore. Chef Corrado Fasolato doesn’t have a single tasting menu; he has a whole book full of them, themed on ingredients from the Veneto. There’s nothing staid about the MET experience – staff wear Gucci ballet pumps and rock’n'roll frock coats – and the flavours are modern and revelatory, from scallops with a flourish of Parma violet to wholewheat bigoli pasta with sardines in oyster stew. A basil and tomato consommé prepared in a stove-top espresso-maker has the whole table in raptures: “Alchemy!” declares Enrica.

Halfway down the Grand Canal, the restaurant at the Philippe Starck-designed hotel Palazzina Grassi has, after months of residents-only exclusivity, opened to the public. You can sit at the counter while chef Luigi Frascella cooks with a mix of Japanese and Italian styles resulting in what many – including Enrica Rocca – claim is the best food in all of Venice. “I buy all my fish in Santa Margherita Square rather than at the Rialto,” says Luigi. “It’s more expensive, but it’s entirely local.” He serves up a succession of exquisite plates: a raw fish with yellow tiger-stripe iridescence that he says is “like a turbot, but exclusive to Venice”; a cuttlefish dish surrounded by ink ragu; malfatti ravioli with walnut, ricotta and aubergine. He puts an Italian spin on tempura, creating his batter with prosecco and polenta. The whole evening is inspired and destined for Michelin-starred greatness.

There are less rarefied specialities to enjoy in Venice. “You must go for mozzarella in carrozza at Rosticceria Gislon,” advises Metropole owner Gloria Beggiato, after my dinner at MET. “It’s a typically Venetian sandwich.” I find Gislon in an alleyway close to the Rialto: a bustling but largely unlovely counter-service café which reminds me of a place in Edinburgh called Café Piccante, home of the bleary, after-midnight battered-sausage supper. I try both varieties of deep-fried mozzarella “carriage” – one with ham, one with anchovy – washed down with an Aperol spritz, and they’re so greasy that afterwards I feel I could turn a palazzo wall transparent just by breathing on it. A half-sandwich would suffice.

Many of the vegetables I pass in the Rialto Market after my visit to Gislon still come from nearby islands out in the lagoon, although farming isn’t as big an industry as it used to be. Similarly, locals’ restaurants out on the islands are disappearing. Trattoria alle Vignole, on the island of Vignole, is one of the few still in business. You get a water taxi or private boat – it’s not on any vaporetto route – to the gates of its garden, and eat al fresco in the shade of its trees. Tourists seldom make it this far from the banks of the Grand Canal. On my visit, I joined a table of locals who feasted on giant horse steaks, jet black pasta dishes, razor clams and stuffed, battered zucchini flowers. The menu was a comprehensive overview of brilliant and basic Venetian cooking, and the experience of eating there was as Italian as can be. At the end of the meal the captain of my boat finished his flute of prosecco, downed an espresso he’d decanted into a glass of sambuca, and motored me back at high speed to Enrica’s kitchen.

On my last evening in the Rocca palazzo, I deep-fried tiny prawns and ate them straight from the pan, hot and crunchy. Then I prepared a fresh tomato sauce with cherry tomatoes (“so you don’t have to bother with any peeling – they boil right down”) and a risotto nero with squid. As a group of five we roasted mackerel in caramelised soy sauce, pan-fried calamari with parsley, lemon and chilli, and simmered fagioli beans with rosemary, their marbled white and fuchsia patterns making the shelled fagioli resemble the most beautiful pieces of jewellery. Nothing was complicated, everything was wonderful. “What goes in, comes out,” said Enrica. “Nothing more or nothing less.” Venice may be one of the most historic and ornate cities in the world, but the secret of its food rests in its freshness and simplicity. And, of course, the salt. Never forget the salt.

 

Travel essentials: Venice

 

Getting there

easyJet (0843 104 5000; easyJet.com) fly from Gatwick to Venice Marco Polo from £38.99 one way. British Airways (0844 493 0787; ba.com) also flies to Marco Polo from Gatwick and Heathrow. Jet2 (0871 226 1737; jet2.com) flies from Edinburgh, Manchester and Leeds/Bradford; Bmibaby (0871 224 0224; bmibaby.com) flies from East Midlands. Ryanair (0871 246 0000; ryanair.com) flies from Stansted and Bristol to Treviso airport, with a bus link.

Staying there

Hotel Metropole, Riva degli Schiavoni 4149 (00 39 041 520 5044; hotelmetropole.com). Doubles start at €244, including breakfast.

Palazzina Grassi, San Marco 3247 (00 39 041 528 4644; www.palazzinagrassi.it). Doubles start at €319, room only.

Hotel Cipriani, Guidecca 10 (00 39 041 520 7744; hotelcipriani. com). Doubles start at €930, including breakfast.

Cooking there

Enrica Rocca runs full day cooking classes on Tuesdays for €280 per person; evening classes on Wednesdays cost €180 and Monday evening wine pairings €200 (00 39 338 6343839; www.enricarocca.com)

Visiting there

Caffe del Doge, San Polo 609 (00 39 041 522 7787; caffedeldoge.com).

Osteria all’Alba, San Marco 5370 (00 39 340 124 5634).

L’Osteria di Santa Marina, Campo Santa Marina (00 39 041 528 5239; ristorantiveneziani.it/smarina).

Rosticceria Gislon, San Marco 5424 (00 39 041 522 3569).

Skyline Rooftop Bar, Hilton Molino Stucky, Giudecca 810 (00 39 041 272 3311; molinostuckyhilton.com).

Trattoria alle Vignole, Isola Vignole 12 (0039 041 5289707; trattoriaallevignole.com).

More information

en.turismovenezia.it; 00 39 041 529 8711