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A French Hotel With Mediterranean Views, Minimalist Interiors and a Storied Past
By Alexander Lobrano
“It’s beautiful here. The sea outside our balcony doors crashes against the rocks. The rooms are refined and pleasant,” the German writer Thomas Mann wrote in 1933 during a stay at Les Roches, a hotel in Le Lavandou, France, that was then known as Les Roches Fleurie. In the decades since, the property welcomed everyone from Jean Cocteau and Christian Dior to Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. This month, it reopened after a renovation that highlights its original Modernist architecture and the exhilarating sensation the French describe as pieds dans l’eau (“your feet in the water”), or being right on the edge of the sea. Every room has the same spectacular view over the turquoise waters of the Mediterranean, and most include a terrace. Inside, the décor is inspired by the minimalism of Japanese ryokans, ’30s ocean liner cabins and the Riviera itself, with oak parquet or terrazzo floors, blond wood headboards and accents of petroleum blue. The chef Anthony Gras, who holds a Michelin star at Les Barmes de l’Ours, Les Roches’ sister property in the Alps, serves a contemporary seafood menu at L’Oursin, the hotel’s restaurant, which also features a wine list focused on varietals from the South of France, many of them natural or organic. Other amenities include a bar, a gym and a spa with an indoor pool. Rooms from about $920, hotellesroches.com.
In Season
The Salty Italian Plant That’s Inspiring California Chefs
By Emma Leigh Macdonald
Wild agretti is a small green plant that comes from the same family as both spinach and succulents. It thrives in coastal regions and is known in its native Italy as barba di frate (or “friar’s beard”) for its appearance, which can range from resembling the branch of a pine tree to looking more like a bundle of broccolini. Historically it was harvested as a source of soda ash, used for making glass and soaps. Now agretti’s salinity is prized by chefs. Over the past decade, California farmers have popularized the vegetable stateside — particularly in the Bay Area, where coastal conditions and mild winters can mimic a Mediterranean environment. The chef David Nayfeld gets his supply from County Line Harvest Farm starting in mid-May, when the first agretti is harvested. At Che Fico, his restaurant in San Francisco, Nayfeld and his team will lightly cure the plant’s green leaves — this year, about 75 pounds of them — in olive oil, salt and vinegar to allow for use beyond its season. This summer, Nayfeld is pairing agretti with stone fruits in a salad. At Flour + Water in the Mission district, agretti from Bryan Jessop, a forager based in the region, is served in a rock cod involtini pasta from mid-June through early July. The produce distributor Natoora sources agretti from California, upstate New York, Pennsylvania and Vermont, which is how the chef Jess Shadbolt has ensured a regular supply for her menu at King in Manhattan’s West Village. She says it has “a marshy, almost aquatic flavor, with a great texture that’s unctuous and has a nice bite.” She blanches the plant in lightly salted water, then dresses it with oil and lemon. This month, she served it with asparagus, fava beans and bottarga.
Covet This
Designers Embrace Ceramic Tabletops
By Monica Khemsurov
In the late 1940s, the ceramic artist Roger Capron set up a workshop in Vallauris, France, with a mission to democratize his craft, devoting part of his practice to serially produced functional objects and furnishings. His vibrant tile-topped tables, in particular, became his legacy and, nearly a century later, a new generation of designers are reviving the style for modern homes. The New York-based designer Tyler Hays makes hand-painted ceramic tiles and says he looks for “any excuse” to put them on furniture. In 2020, he made his first tile-topped coffee table and released new versions set in chunky, cylindrical wood frames this spring. Julia Eshaghpour and Kevin Hollidge of the New York studio Sunfish recently debuted a coffee table whose top is made up of glazed sardine forms. They were inspired in part by Capron, and in part by Eshaghpour’s father, a mosaic artist. The New York designer Danny Kaplan also cites Capron as an influence for the tables he recently tiled for the furniture brand Stillmade, as does the French interior designer Dorothée Delaye, whose new Levant tables are a collaboration with the young ceramist Diane Fekete but have the same mottled, painterly feel as midcentury French pottery. The Marrakesh studio Lrnce’s tables are based on the founder Laurence Leenaert’s drawings — she commissions local artisans to recreate them with zellige tiles. The Spanish artist Fran Aniorte paints directly onto his ceramic tabletops, like he would any other canvas. He considers the pieces a reference to his childhood home of Alicante, where the street benches and fountains are wrapped in tiles. His interpretations, he says, are a testament to how artisans have always brought beauty into everyday objects.
Book This
A Revived Hotel With Garden Bungalows in Ojai, Calif.
By Dana Covit
Hotel el Roblar first opened its doors in Ojai, Calif., over 100 years ago, in the spring of 1919. Now, after a careful restoration, the 50-room property is welcoming guests again. Set across from the newly revived Ojai Playhouse, a 1914 movie theater, and the neighborhood favorite restaurant Rory’s Place, the hotel sits on two lush acres featuring giant ponytail palms, dragon trees and Spanish-style fountains. It’s also home to two special guests: Aldabra giant tortoises visiting from the nearby Turtle Conservancy (Eric Goode, the organization’s founder, is one of the hotel’s co-owners). Inside, the common spaces have Mission Revival and Monterey-style details, like a stacked-stone fireplace and wrought ironwork, while the rooms feel airy, with custom millwork and private terraces. “We wanted to do something with a sense of timelessness and community that feels like it did over a century ago,” says the co-owner and Ojai resident Jeremy McBride. The hotel’s 11 private bungalows, tucked into the gardens, are named after native plants and animals, each marked with a hand-painted tile. There’s also a cozy lobby bar serving coffee and cocktails, a pool, a forthcoming spa and two dining venues (one just for guests, the other open to the public) run by Brandon Boudet, the chef at Little Dom’s in Los Angeles. For dinner, Condor Bar (named for the protected California Condor) will serve Mexican fare and dishes cooked in a wood-fired grill. From $495 a night, theroblar.com.
Read This
Queer Fiction to Read This Summer
By Jameson Montgomery
This summer’s queer fiction travels from Milan to Lagos, spanning decades from the 1970s to 2044. Some explore horror: Yigit Turhan’s debut novel, “Their Monstrous Hearts,” tells the story of a young writer who inherits his grandmother’s Milanese estate and collection of taxidermy butterflies, only to discover danger lurking within the house’s walls. “It’s Not the End of the World,” by Jonathan Parks-Ramage, confronts the very real horror of climate change from the perspective of a stubborn gay couple who refuse to cancel their upcoming baby shower in the face of mounting catastrophe in Los Angeles circa 2044. Other new works consider themes of selfhood and romance. Lori Ostlund’s “Are You Happy?” is a collection of nine short stories, set across the United States, that touch on American themes like loneliness, invented identities and guns. The sprawling metropolis of Lagos, Nigeria, provides a backdrop to Eloghosa Osunde’s book “Necessary Fiction,” where a cast of queer characters become emotionally entangled. Benedict Nguyen’s first novel, “Hot Girls With Balls,” follows two trans athletes juggling unspoken desires as they gear up for a post-pandemic volleyball championship. And Joe Westmoreland’s novel, “Tramps Like Us,” which details a gay romance across 1970s New Orleans and San Francisco, is being reissued with a new introduction by the poet and writer Eileen Myles almost 25 years after its release in 2001.
Go Here
A New Destination for Vintage Italian Design in Florence
A decade ago, the lifelong Londoner Bec Astley Clarke stepped back from her namesake jewelry business and transplanted her young family from Bayswater to a remote village south of Orvieto, Italy. She planned to live a slow country life, harvesting olives and restoring her family farmhouse. But then, while exploring a Roman antiques market, she spotted an unusual 1960s Murano perfume bottle that was made using a technique known as quatro sommerso, in which four colors are submerged inside one another. “I’d never seen anything like it,” says Clarke. “It sparked something in me that I wanted to share.” In 2019, she launched the Italian Collector, an online curation of antique and vintage one-offs, including glassware, furniture, lighting and decorative baubles sourced across her adopted country. Now, Clarke has opened the Bottega, an elegant by-appointment gallery space inside the former carriage house of a restored 18th-century Florentine palazzo in the artisan district of Oltrarno. Its stucco walls and reclaimed oak parquet floors are offset by an array of FontanaArte mirrors, Gio Ponti sketches, Pucci ceramics and furnishings by designers including Gabriella Crespi, Osvaldo Borsani and Romeo Rega. Clarke’s eye for midcentury Italian design draws everyone from Californian collectors to Parisian interior designers to brands including Bottega Veneta. One recent listing, a giant decorative Parmesan, sold almost instantly. theitaliancollector.com.
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