The Weekend Opener
from Andrew Tuck
Why restaurant design has us all feeling like sitting ducks
Dear restaurant designer,I hope that you don’t mind me dropping you this note out of the blue but I wanted to have a word about the humble topic of seating. You see, you have…
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Bridging the gap
Bratislava played host to an urbanism conference called Start with Children this week. The Slovak capital’s mayor, Matus Vallo, had pushed to organise the event because he’s ambitious about delivering change to this city…
French fancy
It’s Thursday night and a team dinner in Paris. We’re back at Loulou, the restaurant that hosted the welcome reception for Monocle’s Quality of Life Conference in 2022. This time we are not on…
Pushing up daisies
Summer brings with it a plant-watering ritual that eases my transition from day to evening. I cycle home, open the garage door and pull out the hose (not a euphemism) and, for the pots…
Worth the wait
On Tuesday evening we landed at London City Airport just as the UK’s border-control system was going into meltdown. As we – me and editor Josh Fehnert – got to the now-kaput e-gates, the…
Top of the class
We organised a sort of school trip on Tuesday. Sadly, there was no coach hired for the day and we didn’t ask people to bring packed lunches with them. The plan was simple: anyone…
Bringing up the rear
I was in The Monocle Café getting a coffee this week when I fell into conversation with another customer about a bike ride that he’s partaking in for the owners of a brand of…
Chairs and graces
Last Sunday afternoon I flew to Milan to join the crew covering Milan Design Week. In the morning, however, I just had time to tackle a domestic task: removing a large, deceased jasmine from…
All part of the plan
“I sat next to this woman at dinner and she said…” When you hear a friend giddily retelling the life story of someone they met over a prawn cocktail the night before, you can…
Out in bloom
1Do you have a reset button? A simple thing that helps you to feel focused, well, yourself, basically? At this time of year my Sunday morning visits to Columbia Road flower market begin to…
Holding the stage
The third edition of The Chiefs, Monocle’s business and leadership conference, unfolded over two days this week in Hong Kong, wrapping up in the early hours of Friday morning (our readers are a committed…
