Rooms With a North Sea View
Final 12 months, when Micha Pycke, 40, and Albane Paret, 39, purchased an condominium in Ostend — a as soon as run-down Belgian seaside city that, in recent times, has change into a favourite of artists and designers — they knew they needed the place to be, says Pycke, “one thing greater than an Airbnb or vacation residence.” As an alternative, the couple, who co-own the Ghent-based arts- and design-focused communications company Membership Paradis, envisioned what he calls “a brand new form of house”: basically, a gallery the place company may keep in a single day. To that finish, they’ve stuffed the 1,000-square-foot two-bedroom, which is on the eighth flooring of a ’60s-era constructing overlooking the North Sea, with works by a few of their favourite artists and designers, a lot of whom are additionally their purchasers. In the lounge, a lacquered wooden espresso desk by the Dutch designer Linde Freya Tangelder’s studio, Destroyers/Builders, sits atop a limited-edition rug by the Swiss textile artist Christoph Hefti woven with pictures of foxes. In one of many bedrooms, a copper-colored, ruched-felt tapestry by Rooms Studio — a women-led firm from Tbilisi, Georgia — hangs above a Duo seat by the Belgian group Muller Van Severen for Valerie Objects. And in the event you like one thing, you may in all probability take it with you; a lot of the items are on the market, and Pycke and Paret are additionally joyful to attach company immediately with designers. Charges from about $305 an evening, paradisapartment.com. — Gisela Williams
The Cooks Embracing the Earthiness of Hojicha
Hojicha — the deep brown roasted leaves and stems sometimes comprised of the Japanese inexperienced tea bancha — would possibly lack the visible drama of now-ubiquitous matcha however, in keeping with the pastry cooks whipping the pulverized leaves into batter and sprinkling them on truffles, that understated look is a part of its enchantment. The Los Angeles-based chef Gerardo Gonzalez, 41, who first used the tea in a guava-and-coconut custard at his now-shuttered El Rey luncheonette in New York, finds its “gentle, claylike shade actually lovely.” Final 12 months, for a Valentine’s Day collaboration with the downtown New York restaurant Dimes, he added it to the black sesame praline filling of crémeux tarts, which have been topped with segmented citrus and lovage leaves. “The bitter, tannic notes of hojicha make one thing actually candy advanced quite than 2-D,” he says. An Vo, 32, of the West Hollywood-based online-only bakery AV Patisserie, says she likes the tea’s “hints of cacao” and “heat, toasty caramel.” She folds hojicha powder into the batter of her spongecake, which is soaked in espresso and completed with a mixture of mascarpone and whipped cream. Hojicha’s earthiness additionally pairs nicely with ice cream. Jesse, 29, and Javier Zuniga, 33, the couple behind the New York-based ice cream maker Dangerous Behavior, say it offers a smoky depth to their baked Alaska. In Chicago, throughout her tenure on the bakery Brite, the pastry chef Erika Chan, 32, doubled down on the ingredient, glazing doughnuts in a slick of hojicha-milk syrup and mixing the tea into its yeasted dough. “The flavour,” she says, “jogs my memory of popcorn.” — Lauren Joseph
Boat Footwear Get a Spring Replace, With Recent Colours and New Shapes
A Cocktail Ring That Brings to Life a Many years-Outdated Sketch
Bookended by World Warfare I and the collapse of the inventory market, the Nineteen Twenties have been a short and flamable interval of glamorous mythmaking. Living proof: the gauzy origins of the attention-grabbing cocktail rings that many a flapper wore on her right-hand index finger, supposedly to sign to a speakeasy bartender that she was on the lookout for a pour of the actual stuff. By the late Fifties, a brand new technology of Hollywood starlets and Stork Membership patrons had rediscovered the big bijoux, and the New York Metropolis-born jeweler Harry Winston, largely identified for his spectacular diamonds set in platinum, started hatching plans for coloured cocktail rings of his personal. Not too long ago, the home’s designers unearthed of their archives never-used sketches he made throughout that period; to deliver them to life, they added conventional stones like rubies, emeralds and sapphires to a confectionary explosion of contemporary hard-candy hues: Italian ice blue aquamarines, raspberry pink spinels, purplish tourmalines. This platinum ring, with a 15-carat oval tsavorite garnet at its heart, massive and juicy as a lozenge, is surrounded by peridots, diamonds and pink sapphires: pure sugar shock. Harry Winston Sweet ring, worth on request, harrywinston.com. — Nancy Hass
Digital tech: Maiko Ando. Photograph assistant: Karl Leitz. Set designer’s assistant: Victoria Novak
