I’ve been publishing my writing here each week for the past nine weeks, and I shared three essays prior to this current streak, making this piece my lucky number 13 on The Goal is to Eat.
This week, I struggled to get my words out. Counting the number of essays I’ve sent here might seem pedantic but I’m always keeping track, always in competition with myself. I knew that as soon as I congratulated myself for publishing writing that I’m proud of, I would stall.
I’m also weary – as we all are. There’s a lot happening in my professional and personal life, I’m over-attached to my phone and over-committed to constant stimulation. This, compounded with our suffering as a human race and the ever-worsening atrocities of the world, left me wordless. I aim to deliver something thought-provoking and illuminating, something which doesn’t feel totally trivial, so what can I say when our spirits are being crushed? When we’re being manipulated into ignoring the genocide happening in Palestine? When we collectively focus on the commercial, the beautiful and the “good” instead?
We must find light in our day-to-day of course - London’s sun is helping with this - else we’re wasting our privilege of being alive and free. But how do we help to make any sort of difference? We make sure to never accept today’s fucked up world as normal.
Nothing is normal and nor should it be. Where during the pandemic the words A New Normal were bandied around a lot, this time we must fight for the abnormal. For change and revolution, for a different way of thinking and living. Because as we are now, doesn’t suit mother nature struggling to thrive around us, nor does it do our own human nature any favours, leaving the majority of us hopeless, frazzled and afraid.
Onto three hospitality-related digestions.
Salone del Mobile in Milano
One day soon I will be invited to work and/or attend Salone - I can feel it, or more so, I wish it to be true - but for now, I’m observing from afar, online.
I’ve already seen two stories of toilets/bidets with a geo tag of Milano (cool) but the Belmond x Apartamento dinner last night featured a very good guestlist.
Depending who you ask, Salone is either the very best or very worst time to visit the city, but if you are there:
Luxury hospitality investment guru Nadine from The Stanza has given her Milan recommendations in a format I enjoyed a lot on Miscellaneous Good.
As of Friday, I’m now a paid subscriber to The Stanza, and I listened to the very first episode of Nadine’s podcast over the weekend. She’s seen so much growth of her content and platform since that episode from August 2023, and it was fun to experience a snippet of her past. It’s a candid episode and she suggests that we should always Embrace the Cringe.
Ananas Ananas, a creative culinary studio based in California - and one of my favourite of these types of food designers, thanks to their clever work with stainless steel - is presenting their new collection of experimental tableware objects called TRACE at Alcova Milano, with only 10 editions per design.
Although Gohar World is on its way to becoming a parody of itself, they shared their Milan restaurant map with novel categories, and I will still be paying attention to what they get up to this week.
I would be attending the Miu Miu Literary Club at Circolo Filologico, especially the conversation moderated by Lou Stoppard on Simone de Beauvoir and The Power of Girlhood. Simone was the first author who totally blew my mind when I studied her work as a teen. There are lots of brands jumping on Girlhood these days – future clientele on the one hand, tapping into nostalgia of their current core audience on the other.
My friend Anna Cafolla is in conversation with Shivas Howard Brown of Friendly Pressure - restorer of vintage and creator of bespoke sound systems - at Capsule Plaza, Spazio Maiocchi tomorrow.
More Men of Food are on Substack
After Ed McIlroy launched his Substack this past week, I realised I’m clocking a lot more Men of Food on here than women. When I say Men of Food, I mean working chefs who also love to write.
There’s Ed, who debuted with a piece on the financially gloomy situation of restaurants today, and offered a solution that I’m all for: all we need to succeed is the people of the city to continue to revel in this golden age of restaurants. There’s Gareth Eoin Storey, whose piece on haunted hospitality spaces this morning, I enjoyed a lot. Alex Jackson has Garlic, Mint & Sweet Basil, while Thom Eagle writes leaf / notes. I re-read and loved Thom’s piece from a while back in Vittles, on hospitality and what restaurants can learn from Homer. Thom also has a new collection of essays out called psychogastronomy, which I’d like to read. And then there’s my friend Jago Rackham, with his publication Greed, and all the good stuff that comes with it each week.
We’ll be seeing more London chefs on here - women too, I beg - as the UK catches up on this app, and as chefs move away from lyrical Instagram captions to longer form essays. I hope more chefs talk about food and hospitality culture in general - and not just recipes - as there’s so much to be explored. And I selfishly pray that it’ll have a trickle down effect into the world of books too, so that we don’t have endless cookbooks as the only entry point into food literature.
I don’t have a Yonder, but maybe I should
A poor photo of a fantastic dinner last Tuesday, a mere two hours after I’d landed back in London. Dara Klein and Seb Myers at Planque for the second part of a three part series on cooking with nostalgia, sponsored by points-based credit card Yonder. There were so many industry people in the room, and I wonder whether Yonder might just be our answer to Resy or Amex sponsored hospitality events that the US have been lucky to have for so long. More soon I hope.
