Last Friday I headed to Palma. It was for a mission: to bring the partner and hound to London by car, ferry and train. They had been there for several weeks, enjoying a very nice life while I scurried around to the likes of Jakarta for The Chiefs conference. Now, however, the band needed to be reunited and the dog had to see her oncologist (yes, all is OK).
That evening, ahead of the Saturday morning ferry, we drove out of the city and through the mountain tunnel to Sóller before weaving along the wriggly road that takes you up the valley’s side. This route eventually deposits you in the town of Deià. But just before you breach the brow of the hill, there’s the Hotel Corazón. This was our destination.
The hotel, run by fashion photographer Kate Bellm and her partner Edgar Lopez, attracts a crowd that’s a little hippy, a little arty, dresses easy cool and can still pay a decent bill. But I’ll write about this properly another time. The point of today’s story is more about that funny thing that sometimes happens – “the moment”. That odd, magical fusing of the elements that just sneaks up on you.
There were only a few occupied tables when we arrived unfashionably early – well, 20.00. A couple of hotel guests were still finishing off their novels in silence as the sun set. But we were oblivious to everyone as we had a spot on a cocooning curved sofa where the view was of the slowly blackening valley below, of the firefly-like flashes of car headlights blinking through the dusk-draped trees.
There was a warm wind racing up the valley side, rattling the piles of menus. It should have been annoying but it lent the evening a special quality – plus we were nicely sheltered by that enveloping upholstery. The food was delicious, the wine perfect. The waiter could have been cast as Jesus in a movie – his long hair frantically dancing in the wind like the tendrils of a sea anemone in a buffeting ocean current. Even the music added to the moment – there was something of a Shazam-fest taking place on my phone. And at our feet the dog dozed, occasionally opening an eye to clock the precise location of the resident cats.
As we drove back towards the city, I knew that we had had a perfect moment. But why? Of course, there’s the place and the food – but it wouldn’t have happened without the wind, without our Christ-like waiter, without Tom Paxton and Gram Parsons whispering from the sound system. You can plan fancy dinners to the nth degree and rehearse every second of an encounter but sometimes the perfect moment appears unexpectedly on the breeze.
Saturday was spent on a Baleària ferry heading to Barcelona. There were very few cars on board but a lot of trucks. It wasn’t Hotel Corazón but there was wi-fi. As the ferry came into the city, a thick mist wrapped around us and so the captain repeatedly blasted his foghorn to ensure our presence was known. A night then followed at the home of friends who have been in our lives for decades. The dog crazy to see them, howling with delight.
And then the road trip. I get to be DJ and I have a playlist of songs netted with the aid of Shazam that are all markers of moments, of places, of fleeting encounters. An audio scrapbook on my phone. There was “Dale Comba” by Canelita, harvested from a taxi ride in Palma, and Elvis Martínez with “Tu Secreto”, snatched from a bar in Barcelona on the drive down a few weeks before. A reminder of Milan and Salone came care of Ermal Meta and Giuliano Sangiorgi’s track, “Una Cosa Più Grande”. There was Michel Sardou from Paris. Clara Luciani from a party at D90 in Zürich.
But it was Tom Paxton’s “The Last Thing on My Mind” that was played repeatedly, its simple folk melody offering a return to the mountains – my other half becoming increasingly suspicious that I might be about to apply for a pot-washing job in a certain hotel.
A few years ago I had dinner at a trendy, much-hyped Helsinki restaurant and was served a solitary carrot. It was a steamed carrot, cooked to perfection, but with nothing on the side and no sauce. “This is peak New Nordic,” I thought, referring to the food movement that belaboured hyperlocal ingredients and elevated long-forgotten and highly esoteric Nordic staples, from wild herbs and foraged berries to obscure mushrooms. At its best, it was brilliant. But it was often a little pretentious.
In hindsight that carrot probably was peak New Nordic. So influential was the movement that restaurants from Singapore to New York, which had little to do with the cuisine’s roots, described themselves as New Nordic-influenced. Usually, that meant obscure regional ingredients cooked in an ambitious fine-dining style, where plates were presented like abstract art and chefs had an obsession with tweezers and microherbs. Luckily, it seems that the Nordics are beginning to move on.
The Nordic restaurant scene has undergone a profound transformation in recent years. Most of the popular places that have opened in my native Helsinki, such as Maukku, Jason and Mat Distrikt, are casual bistros with chalkboard menus that serve hearty, down-to-earth food, often inspired by either French, Japanese or Italian cuisines. Gone are the days when top restaurants in Stockholm opted for tasteless Swedish truffles instead of their clearly superior counterparts from Piemonte.
The decline of New Nordic cuisine is related to the waning popularity of fine dining. It’s a trend across the Western world that is related to both the downturn in our economies and the move towards a more relaxed working culture. But diners have also started to reject New Nordic’s dogmatic and fussy approach to food. With naming names, I have eaten in Michelin-starred New Nordic restaurants where presenting the menu felt more like a lecture than a treat.
When a cuisine becomes a movement, it can sometimes lose sight of the basics. Dining out should be a fun and social experience. People like food for its taste, not for its intellectual or philosophical underpinnings.
My favourite restaurant in Helsinki, Nolla, is case in point. It’s a relaxed bistro with fun and interesting owners who are full of stories and laughter, and the menu is a wonderful mix of Serbian, Finnish, Portuguese and Catalan flavours. It also happens to be a world pioneer in zero-waste cooking, which isn’t even trumpeted on its menus. Why? Because that’s not why people eat in restaurants.
Another Helsinki example is French bistro BasBas. It has been voted the city’s most popular restaurant so many times that you now need to book your table weeks in advance. The restaurant floor contains so much energy that your spirits are lifted as soon as you walk through the doors. The menu isn’t conceptual or stuffed with the names of wild herbs that no one knows. Not all of the food comes from within a radius of five kilometres either – and that’s okay because people still eat here.
The New Nordic movement had its place and will have its legacy. It put Scandinavia on the culinary map. Copenhagen’s Noma, the epicentre of the movement, was doubtlessly one of the world’s best restaurants for many years. Yet, for all of Noma’s influence, Nordic diners now crave something different – and their appetites are taking them elsewhere. As for me? I’ll skip the carrots for now, thank you.
1.
Massalia
Amsterdam
Named after the French port city of Marseille, which was founded by ancient Greek settlers, chef-restaurateur Angelo Kremmydas’s new brasserie bears more than a hint of his Hellenic sensibilities. Massalia has been attracting a steady stream of eastern Amsterdam’s creatives in search of abundant produce and herbs from across the Mediterranean.
It comes off the back of Kremmydas’s success with Gitane, a contemporary take on the city’s brown cafés, designed by Dutch firm Studio Modijefsky. Gitane has lured plenty of western Amsterdammers into its wood-panelled interiors over the past year; Massalia is on course to be equally popular. Dig into salted-cod beignets with skordalia dip, octopus terrine with a burnt-pepper salsa and whole grilled artichokes. Finish off with a fennel granita with ouzo foam and grapefruit.
restobarmassalia.nl
2.
Au Rêve
Paris
Café Au Rêve opened its doors in Paris’s Montmartre area in the 1920s, quickly becoming a popular haunt of French literary and musical icons. In 2019, however, it closed down. Now, thanks to the work of studio Atelier Saint-Lazare (ASL), it is reprising its role as a neighbourhood institution. “We revealed more than we renovated,” says ASL co-founder Antoine Ricardou. “We restored the bar with Burgundy stone, breathed new life into the floor and moleskin booths, rediscovered the 1930s embossed wallpaper and gave the Murano chandeliers their rightful place.”
Since the quiet reopening, film editors from the nearby Pathé cinema offices, journalists from newspaper Libération, comic-book artists and Montmartre residents have started to mingle again at the café’s tables. Mathieu Renucci, who took over Au Rêve after its previous owner Elyette Ségard retired in 2008, serves bistro classics such as croque-monsieur and charcuterie, as well as great cocktails. “Our vision is meant to be modernist, not nostalgic,” says Ricardou. “Above all, Au Rêve is a living space, not a museum.”
89 Rue Caulaincourt, Paris 75018
3.
Bouillon Service
Paris
Bouillon Service, a takeaway-only food spot from Paris institution Le Bouillon, has opened in Pigalle. While it might seem strange that an establishment that’s synonymous with waistcoat-clad garçons, crisp white tablecloths and art deco interiors would do away with table service, customers are queuing out of the door for Le Bouillon’s latest offering – its first opening in four years. The takeaway-only approach is an extension of the delivery system that the company established at the height of the coronavirus pandemic. The deli and takeaway space in the 18th arrondissement, located just 50 metres from its Pigalle restaurant, prepares the establishment’s hero dishes and is open until 03.00. Think egg mayonnaise, jambon-beurre (courtesy of the on-site bakery) and canard confit to go.
bouillonlesite.com
4.
Chateau Grand Rapids
Grand Rapids, Michigan
Michigan might not be well known for its French cuisine but you’ll find a dose of Gallic flair at Chateau. Husband-and-wife duo Chris and Allaire Swart have transformed a heritage shopfront in Grand Rapids into a daytime café and evening wine bar. The pair picked San Francisco’s Obata Noblin Office to design the space. Large windows allow in plenty of sun during the day but judicious lighting creates a moody candlelit feel after dark.
Green accents nod to the restaurant’s focus on natural wine and single-origin coffee. Chateau sets a new standard for Cherry Street, an up-and-coming neighbourhood in this Midwestern city. “We have taken a 100-year-old building and maintained almost all of its integrity, from tin ceilings and brick walls to slab-wood floors,” says Chris. “It was important not to shellac over history but, rather, to maintain that patina.”
chateaugrandrapids.com
5.
Domo Bar
São Paulo
Domo, a listening bar in São Paulo’s Vila Buarque area, combines first-class hospitality with a sophisticated musical experience. Designers Flávio Seixlack and Rodolfo Herrera, whose coffee shop Takkø Café is just down the street, opened Domo last year. Since then, the bar has earned a reputation for its Asian-Brazilian menu, which features fresh takes on classics such as pulled-pork sandwiches with gochujang sauce, as well as creative cocktails and an eclectic music selection that comprises everything from bossa nova to Japanese jazz. The duo brought local studio Nina Morelli on board to tackle the interiors, where soft lighting is paired with wooden accents to create an intimate, record-filled space.
“Opening Domo was just a natural next step for us, especially after visiting similar places in Japan, London and Los Angeles,” says Seixlack. “Something that had always bothered us about our native city was that there was nowhere you could go to listen to good music and talk at a lower volume. And Domo is our solution to that.”
452 Rua Major Sertório, São Paulo 01222-000
6.
Penny
New York
First, there was Claud in New York’s East Village, a French-inspired wine bar that became a big hit thanks to the delightful craft of its menu – think nutty chicken-liver agnolotti and rich tomato mille-feuilles. Now the team has opened Penny, a raw bar and seafood counter, in the space upstairs.
Designed in collaboration with Ian Chapin of Philadelphia-based practice Edsel, Penny has a quartzite oyster bar and is replete with cool, silvery tones. “The restaurants might appear different – Claud has warm, natural finishes, while at Penny there’s a blue tint – but they intersect in spirit,” says co-owner Chase Sinzer. Highlights include the Ice Box (oysters, clams and mussels), lobster and freshly baked brioche. To drink, there’s wine, saké and Suntory Premium Malt on draught.
penny-nyc.com
7.
Galipette
France
Launched in 2016, cider company Galipette champions the apples of northern France. “In a world of one-dimensional ciders, we look for diversity and flavour,” says co-founder Antti Laukkanen. The company produces cider made from bittersweet apples harvested in Normandy and Brittany, where mild temperatures and plentiful rainfall make the orchards ideal for cultivating flavourful crops.
The brand’s newest variety, Galipette Doux, has undertones of toffee as a result of its shorter fermentation process, which helps to keep the natural douceur (sweetness) intact.
galipettecidre.com
