Town & Country Travels Home
It seems like everyone in the world except us Californians experiences
June as a harbinger of sunny summer days to come. But here, the
notorious June Gloom represents the grayest month of the year,
including drizzle, fog and other dreary conditions uncharacteristic of
sunny California. So what better time to head to the desert to check
out some of the most buzzed-about new hotels, spas and restaurants?
Here, our picks and pans from a recent foray into the desert.
The Grey-Lady loved (and L.A. Times-lambasted) newcomer to the desert is the Colony Palms Hotel,
a former brothel-turned-boutique with 56 Moroccan-mod themed rooms,
eight adorable casitas with private plunge Jacuzzis and a handful of
suites and deluxe rooms.
My friend and I arrived on a quiet Thursday afternoon...
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Everyone complains about the flight to St. Barth's. Someone recently described it to me like this: "You come over a mountain, the pilot cuts the engine, and then you drop to the tarmac"—which is true, but the journey is a little less scary than it sounds (the "mountain," for one, is a very small, scruffy hill). The requisite knuckle-whitening puddle-jump to arrive on this rugged tuft of seaside real estate, however, delivers you far from the hustle of so many other Caribbean retreats. Here, the food is taken seriously (this is a part of France, after all) and the shopping is equally as memorable. Casual chic is the dress code everywhere from a boat ride along a deserted beach to dinner at ever-popular Maya's.
So, it was with great anticipation (and a slight case of nerves) that I set out for St. Barth's to spend three glorious days at the Eden Rock, in the newly opened Villa Nina...
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Design is to the Danes what food is to the French: a national pride, a
sense of purpose and the consummate “everyday” subject matter. So
enmeshed in design-thought are the Danes, they’ve festooned their
alphabet’s letters with slashes, rings and other sexy-making
diacritical marks. So during my first visit here to interview a new
crop of the city’s chefs, it was apropos that I bunked down at the hip
five-star First Hotel Skt. Petri, Copenhagen’s sole member of the Design Hotels group and Mecca for modern-design aficionados, architects and savvy
travelers who know a thing or two about Functionalist fenestration.
Danish design aims to capture the essence of hygge, which is a
sort of Scandinavian feng shui and loosely translated means “cozy, and
the snug state of mind coziness creates.” The Skt. Petri — a department
store transformed in 1993 by Danish designer Per Arnoldi (who also
produced the logo for the sparkling new Copenhagen Opera House)
— is exactly that.
Empty-nest jet setters and Europe’s spectacled
belle-monde standing underneath early modernist chandeliers in the
light-flooded lobby seem genuinely content to be taking in the room’s
literal brilliance, just as I did while lingering over my coffee,
organic yogurt and Hallegaard Farms salami at the adjacent in-house
restaurant Bleu, now serving a popular Sunday-afternoon gastro-brunch.
On June 19th...
Given the intense heat wave that left New Yorkers running for A/C wherever they could find it this week, it may seem like an odd time to be thinking about snow (unless it's the variety that comes in a cone). But I was reminded of winter today when I came across a press packet I got last month at an event for Vail Resorts. I attended their party in New York to hear all about what the resorts have coming up for the 08/09 ski season; I get out to Colorado to snowboard quite frequently in the winter, so my interest wasn't just professional.
The most impressive offering -- one that I jumped on, and one skiiers and snowboarders should take note of -- is brand new for the 08/09 season, and available only until November 15.
Read MoreThe New York City Waterfalls, a new public art installation by Olafur Eliasson, will be a "spectacle to rival The Gates," the Central Park installation by Christo and Jeanne-Claude that capitivated New Yorkers in 2005, predicts New York Magazine. Eliasson, a Danish-Icelandic artist, has erected four 90- to 120-foot man-made waterfalls along the shores of Brooklyn, Manhattan and Governors Island that will add an impressive new vertical element to New York's waterways from late June through Oct. 14 this year. We're planning to go see it ourselves, and will be posting about the trip here in a few weeks.
The city's hotels and tour operators are rolling out packages in conjunction with the event.
Read MoreOne of the questions that comes up a lot when we're kicking around ideas for what stories is, "Is this location safe enough for our readers?" There's only so much information you can glean by reading the State Department's Travel Advisories, and oftentimes, you'll get conflicting information when you talk to friends who have recently visited countries on the list. I have friends who've recently visited Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia -- all of which are on the list. They all came back in one piece (but some of the stories they told convinced me that I won't be running off to Riyadh anytime soon). It's something that's always on the mind of travel editors, and something that was considered before publishing recent pieces on Tel Aviv and Kenya, among others.
OTBeach News's ProTraveller tackled this issue in its recent story "6 Upcoming Countries Worth Visiting Now the Conflict is Over," which gave its take on the wisdom of traveling to some of the same destinations we've covered recently, including Cambodia, Indonesia and Croatia.
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Last summer, I had the pleasure of attending an Outstanding in the Field dinner when Chef Jim Denevan’s culinary roadshow landed in La Plaza Cultural Community Garden,
a pastoral patch of nature in New York City’s East Village. For years,
I’d been deeply impressed by Denevan’s project, which hosts enchanted
al fresco meals in fields, ranches, dairies, vineyards and farms all
across the country in an effort to reconnect diners with their food and
the people responsible for producing it.
Alas, when I tried to purchase a seat for one of the events in my area this year, they were all sold out. So I was especially delighted when I discovered that Denevan’s long-anticipated cookbook, "Oustanding in the Field: A Farm to Table Cookbook," is now available.
Featuring more than one hundred seasonally-inspired recipes, this lovely compendium is full of appealing dishes — Corn Chowder with Marjoram, Wilted Dandelion Salad with Pancetta and Poached Egg, Grass-fed Beef Skirt Steak with Artichoke and Asparagus — that put summer’s bounty to brilliant use. While I wait for the tomatoes to ripen so that I can prepare Tomato Water, an elixir as perfectly pure as its name, and Green Tomato Marmalade, I’ve been baking up a storm, most recently Chocolate Rosemary Cake -- which came out of the oven a dense, decadent flourless disc perfumed with herbs.
Get the recipe after the jump:
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Town & Country's July issue features a great piece by T&C Travel Editor-in-Chief Heidi Mitchell on traveling to Beijing, along with practical tips for those heading to the Olympics this year -- including our top picks on where to stay (the Peninsula Beijing, the Park Hyatt Beijing and the Commune by the Great Wall Kempinski), where to get tickets to Olympic events, top outfitters (Remote Lands), and
where to enjoy the best nightlife.
There's much new to be seen in Beijing, Mitchell reports:
"Still, the show—or more like the coming-out party—must go on. In preparation for the Games, Swiss architectural firm Herzog & de Meuron and the China Architecture Design Institute have erected the 80,000-seat National Stadium, lovingly nicknamed the Bird's Nest for its webbed-steel tentacles. The Netherlands' Rem Koolhaas and his team will unveil their gravity-defying CCTV Headquarters, which some are describing as a twisted doughnut. British starchitect Norman Foster's futuristic new Terminal 3 at the international airport has just opened. Even more impressive, every single Olympics project is on track to be completed ahead of schedule, not to beat timetables but to help clear the dust clinging to carbon emissions in the air. Factories will work in slow motion for weeks before the first starting gun is fired on the auspicious date of 8/8/8, and cars will miraculously be swept off the streets—all in the name of blue skies and beautiful photo ops..."
Beijing is a city of 17 million people, and getting around town can be tricky -- best to read up before you go.
Anyone else have tips to share on new, can't-miss locations in Beijing?
I can't count the number of times I've been on the road and was unable or too inconvenienced to print out my boarding pass for the return flight. A new story from the Associated Press shows how flyers can now get those pesky boarding passes automatically sent to their phone or Blackberry and can board without the printed pass.
Speaking of Beijing, Boston.com's The Big Picture blog has a great roundup of photos taken during preparations for the Olympic games in Beijing.
Above: a Reuters shot of a member of the Olympic Rescue Dog Team in training in Beijing; the gallery has many more images of (human) athletes and improvements being made in and around the city.
Through four mayors, financial boom times and downturns, Seinfeld, Sex and the City and Gossip Girl, the classic Italian fine-dining spot San Domenico, located on New York's Central Park South, has endured.
But all good things must come to an end. (Especially when landlord negotiations get ugly.) Thus, San Domenico is shuttering its location in midtown and moving to Madison Square, turf presently dominated by restaurant impresario Danny Meyer. Plans call for San Domenico to reemerge at 19 East 26th Street next spring. The new space, promises SD owner Tony May, will be significantly larger, and with a much more contemporary décor than its predecessor. The way New Yorkers dine out has changed much in the past twenty years, becoming more casual, says May, and the time has come for San Domenico to hew to that evolution.
A favorite stop for midtowners in need of an after-work cocktail or a plate graced with the restaurant's famed raviolo (filled with soft egg yolk), San Domenico succeeded thanks to the warm Italian welcome extended by Tony and his always-charming daughter, Marisa. The Mays also had a nose for talent in the kitchen, hiring a series of chefs who would go on to make their names elsewhere, including Benny Bartolotta (presently at Osteria del Circo), Andrew Carmellini (now of A Voce), Scott Conant (of Scarpetta), Theo Schoenegger (of The Patina Group) and Marc Bianchini (who has since staked his claim with three restaurants in Milwaukee). And of course, current executive chef, Odette Fada.
We wish Tony, Marisa and Odette well as they embark on this new chapter in San Domenico's history. But we will most certainly miss having them a stone's throw from the Hearst Tower, home of Town & Country and Town & Country Travel.
(Pictured left: Odette Fada, Tony May, Marisa May and Marc Bianchini. Pictured right: San Domenico's entrance near Central Park South. Photos by Thomas P. Farley.)
Coinciding with the official start of summer, New York's restaurant Daniel, on East 65th Street, has unveiled a strawberry margarita served with a side dish of "caviar." If you're a vegan, fear not. No sturgeon was harmed in the harvesting of these beautiful beads. In fact, through the magic of molecular gastronomy, they are created from the liqueur Cointreau - right before your eyes. Daniel's head bartender, Xavier Herit, concocted the cocktail and its sidecar after much experimentation, making Daniel Boulud's signature restaurant the first eatery in Manhattan to unveil a drink using Cointreau baubles.
T&CT TIP: If you're in a celebratory mood, request that Herit start you off with a glass of Champagne dappled with red droplets of Cointreau. But be sure to get to the bar before late August, when Daniel will close down for a month-long renovation.
Daniel
60 E. 65th St.
212-288-0033
We recently wrote about some of the notable boutiques, restaurants and shops cropping up over on Smith Street in Brooklyn - a young, laid-back place to visit if you're planning a trip to New York and want to escape the constant bustle of Manhattan. Now, there's a cocktail lounge that merits a stop if you're feeling thirsty after shopping.
Whether it's a julep, swizzle or collins you crave, Brooklyn's newest cocktail lounge, Clover Club, offers clever old-school libations for aperitif aficionados and those of us who simply enjoy a cocktail with a little punch (or sour or fizz). The brainchild of Julie Reiner (co-owner of Manhattan's swanky Flatiron Lounge), the Clover Club opened in June and derives its name from the gin-based cocktail, as well as the a group of Philadelphia intellectuals who convened each month to dispel their cares over drinks and good conversation. The atmosphere is cozy and chic: a dimly lit space, with an intricate mahogany bar, pressed-tin ceilings, plush couches and oriental rugs calls on decades past, while a tucked-away stereo plays Billie Holiday.
Patrons will appreciate the comprehensive - and explanatory -- menu that differentiates a cocktail from a cobbler. I was taken with the Southside Fizz (a concoction of gin, lime, cucumber and mint), and the Improved Whiskey Cocktail, with rye, maraschino, absinthe and bitters. When hunger inevitably strikes, go for the deviled eggs topped with bacon croutons and the lamb burger with goat cheese.
Click here for a look at the full drinks menu (via New York Magazine).
Clover Club, 210 Smith Street, Brooklyn, NY (718) 855-7939
While in San Diego recently to run that city's marathon, I had the pleasure of staying at the swank Grand Del Mar, a brand-new hotel located in the Los Peñasquitos Canyon Reserve, twenty
minutes north of downtown. The property was developed at a cost of $270
million (more than $1 million per room), making it one of the priciest
California hotels ever erected.
That staggering investment is evident in every nook of the hotel, from the detailing to the doorknobs...
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After checking out of the Colony Palms, we made our way to Palm Desert, just a 15 minute drive from Palm Springs, to investigate the JW Marriott Desert Springs, a Mobil 4-star rated resort, ranked one of the country's Best Golf Resorts by Conde Nast Traveler in 2008.
I checked into the 436-acre mega-resort with reservations (of the emotional variety). Though the Marriott brand doesn't usually conjure up images of exclusivity or luxury, this is one of the chain's flagship properties with a fresh $30 million redo by nine-time Hermes Award winner and design firm extrao