People, Places, Things is a regular, essential news report on all things culture and style.
New Variations on a Classic Italian Bread
Ten years ago, a colleague told the chef Nancy Silverton, now 70, that for really great focaccia, she should go to Recco, a small town on Italy’s Ligurian coast. Until then, she had thought of focaccia as, by definition, a thick, fluffy bread leavened with yeast. But at Recco’s Manuelina restaurant, she experienced a version made from delicate, flaky pastry layered with melted cheese; it was so large that it required a separate side table. Back in California — armed with 14-inch copper pans from Piemonte — she attempted to recreate the recipe and, after many rounds of trial and error with her mozzarella maker, finally arrived at the light, gooey variation that’s now on the menu at her Los Angeles restaurant Chi Spacca.
In the time since, focaccia di Recco has proliferated stateside. In 2017, Silverton brought her recipe to the San Francisco restaurant Cotogna for a pop-up, and Cotogna’s chef-owner Michael Tusk “took the Recco and ran with it,” he says. Tusk, 60, says that he likes the “textural bomb” of warm stracchino cheese paired with the crispy top and softer bottom layer. Most of the year, he finishes it simply, with flaky sea salt and a mild Taggiasca olive oil from Liguria but, in the fall, he also shaves white truffles on top. To keep up with demand, he recently ordered an additional oven and will soon be offering a focaccia mail-order kit in collaboration with the cookware brand Hestan Culinary.
Freedom Rains, 48, the chef at San Francisco’s La Connessa, is also drawn to what he calls the “deceptively simple” bread and has served it ever since the restaurant opened last fall. And in New York, Roberto Caporuscio, 63, the Italian-born owner of Kesté, has added focaccia col formaggio (technically only the focaccia in Recco can be focaccia di Recco) to his menu, as well. “In Italy there’s a lot of different focaccia,” he says. “But focaccia di Recco is the most unique.” — Martha Cheng
Where to Go in Bangkok’s Bang Rak and Talad Noi Neighborhoods
Charoen Krung Road, Bangkok’s oldest paved thoroughfare, runs for five miles along the east bank of the Chao Phraya River. Soon after it was constructed in the 1860s, it became a central artery of the city, eventually linking the Bang Rak neighborhood and other commercial subdistricts. But over time, the shop houses along the road and its side streets became run down as development spread to other parts of the city.
In the past decade, though, a younger generation of restaurateurs, boutique owners and gallerists have given the area new life. First to arrive were the inventive shops and restaurants clustered near the arts and shopping hub Warehouse 30 — home to the vintage emporium Woot Woot, the streetwear shop Carnival and several contemporary-art galleries — in Bang Rak, followed by coffee and tea shops just to the north in Talad Noi, today best known for its street art. Then, late last year, the Corner House, a four-story building located at the border of the two neighborhoods that had most recently served as an indoor skate park, re-emerged after an extensive renovation. The space hosts design festivals, pop-ups for local artists, food vendors and a video game social lounge called Such a Small World.
Now you can easily fill an afternoon wandering the tangle of streets in Bang Rak and Talad Noi. Start in the former at the French bookstore and coffeehouse Balzac for a cafe allongé or a citronnade, then head a couple of blocks northwest to Maison Charoenkrung, which sells playful shirts made from recycled children’s bedsheets. Down the street there’s Convo, a cafe and art space, and, behind it, ATT 19, a loftlike gallery with sculptures, ceramics and objets d’art both old and new. Farther north, in one of the best-preserved parts of Talad Noi, there’s Vanich House, a new cafe, lifestyle shop and one-room hotel in a nearly 100-year-old building.
To eat, go to Samlor, which specializes in supersize crab omelets and other street food staples, or Charmgang, a curry restaurant whose young chefs smoke the fish themselves. Its sister establishment, a wine bar named Charmkrung, serves Thai classics like smoked beef with a charred eggplant salad alongside orange wine from France’s Lot Valley: another example of boundaries blurred. — Eric Wilson
All Hail the Taxi-Inspired Bag
When the first fleet of metered, gasoline-powered New York City taxicabs was imported from France in 1907, the cars were red. It wasn’t until 1968 that the city passed a law requiring licensed taxis to be painted the bright yellow known by auto-body shops as Dupont M6284 so that passengers could easily distinguish them from private livery vehicles. In the time since, the yellow cab has become a defining feature of Manhattan’s streets, and now it’s being celebrated with another French import: a limited-edition version of the Louis Vuitton Keepall Bandoulière for men. Available online but stocked only at the brand’s temporary boutique on East 57th Street in New York, the monogrammed canvas bag has been updated in taxi yellow, along with its leather trim, cross-body strap and handles. Similarly, the luggage tag has been reimagined as a New York license plate reading “LV 1854” — a reference to the maison’s founding date. — Jameson Montgomery
A Sculptural Cartier Bangle That Doubles as a Watch
More than just feats of micromechanical engineering, timepieces designed for women often suggest Modernist sculpture paired with the refined sensibility of fine jewelry. Over the decades, Cartier has played with shape and geometry like almost no other brand. One of its newest creations is a bangle called Reflection de Cartier, which, especially in this audacious yellow-gold version (it also comes in white gold studded with diamonds and in rose gold), squares the circle with a vengeance. The simple Roman numeral dial occupies one end of the open cuff; on the other, the gold is polished to a mirrored surface on which the delicate dauphine hands seem to move backward, bending reality. Rarely has the mutability of time been expressed so elegantly. Reflection de Cartier watch, $38,900, (800) 227-8437. — Nancy Hass
Photo assistant: Laura Ghezzi. Set designer’s assistant: Markos Ioannides
The post Why Crispy, Cheese-Stuffed Focaccia Is the Dish of the Moment appeared first on New York Times.
