Candles that Capture a Day at the Beach, Down to the Hot Dogs

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Visit This

Last month, the English Cotswolds welcomed another pub hotel, the Fox, which, fittingly, is the sister property of the Wild Rabbit, a traditional country inn in Kingham. Both are owned by the Bamford family, which also operates nearby Daylesford Organic Farm and the accompanying groceries and cafe outposts across London. The new six-room spot is set in a 19th-century building nestled on the bend of the high street in Lower Oddington, a postcard-pretty parish three miles northwest of Kingham and a mile west of the farm. For its renovation, Carole Bamford adopted a “zero to landfill” policy, meaning she partnered with suppliers that recycle any waste produced by their work, and the hotel itself will run entirely on renewable energy. Local sheep, including her own Lleyn flock, provided wool used for insulation, and for the mattresses. She enlisted local craftspeople from Gloucestershire to create the four-poster beds and comfy armchairs, and rounded things out with antiques sourced from across England and Wales. Finally, there is a rooftop garden that’s been planted with British wildflowers and annuals to create an abundant paradise for bees and butterflies — and with herbs for the chef Alan Gleeson’s pub menu, which includes wood-roasted violet artichokes with salsa verde and Aperol spritz jelly with raspberries. Guests at the Fox, like those at the Wild Rabbit, can book appointments at the famed Bamford Wellness Spa, which is housed in a white barn at Daylesford and offers treatments and wellness classes. And who wouldn’t want to finish a day spent ambling around the countryside with a massage? Rooms from around $275 (breakfast included), thefoxatoddington.com.

After the Seoul-based entrepreneur and fashion designer Jong Min Baek had her first child in 2019, she searched extensively for a detergent gentle enough for newborns. Whatever she found, however, left her doing separate loads, as there wasn’t anything that was mild enough for her daughter yet effective enough for her own clothes. So she started developing her own detergent, Laverée ($9-$45), which she launched this spring after over a year of research. It’s free of toxic dyes, endocrine disrupters and skin-irritating enzymes, and is packaged in recycled-plastic bottles. There’s an unscented version for those also looking to avoid fragrance. Otherwise, try the Forest formula, which was inspired by Seattle, where Laverée is made, and has notes of cypress. For another gentle but capable option, try the Laundress’s new Summer Fridays offering ($25), which is dermatologist tested and free of petroleum, phthalates and parabens — and smells of oak moss, sweet water, jasmine and warm ambergris. Finally, Dirty Labs, an E.W.G.-certified clean brand founded by the chemist Dr. Pete He and the entrepreneur David Watkins, produces an eco-friendly detergent ($14-$22) that uses Phytolase, the brand’s proprietary 5-in-1 enzyme-driven cleaning technology, and not toxic petroleum-based surfactants. Starting this month, it will be available at Whole Foods.


Eat This

Next week, the popular Paris restaurant Mr. T, which is named after its head chef, Tsuyoshi Miyazaki, who applies classic French techniques to dishes inspired by street food found in cities all over the world, will open a second location on Sycamore Avenue in Hollywood. To design the new space, which is larger than the original but retains the intimate feel of a bistro, the restaurateur and owner Guillaume Guedj worked alongside the architect Richard Altuna, who died last year before the project was complete. “We wanted to utilize as many natural materials as possible,” Guedj says. Hence the raw stones like white quartz used on the bar and counters, and the furnishings, sourced from artisans outside Mexico City, made largely of tzalam wood. As in Paris, music — and more specifically a soundtrack consisting of ’90s hip-hop and R&B — will help set the tone. Cocktails include the Can’t Knock the Hustle (Japanese whiskey and amaro flecked with smoked cinnamon) and the Mr. T (vodka, blackberry and mint with St.-Germain foam), while the food menu features roast lamb kebab; Comté mac and cheese with mimolette flambé; and koshihikari rice and confit egg yolk with sea urchin crème. Go soon to enjoy summery specials, such as a Caprese salad incorporating heirloom tomatoes and fresh peaches, made with produce sourced from a combination of local purveyors and the on-site herb garden. instagram.com/mrtlarestaurant.


Across the country, speed rails and home bar carts are filling up with bottles from brands using unexpected ingredients to make classic spirits new again. For a sustainable alternative to mezcal, which relies on slow-growing agave plants in high demand, the Greenport, N. Y.-based Matchbook Distilling offers Late Embers Sunchoke + Honey, a smoky spirit derived from locally grown and then fermented roasted sunchokes, which are so hearty they’re borderline invasive. Good Vodka was launched in 2015 by Tristan Willey and Mark Byrne, who met at Brooklyn’s Kings County Distillery. It’s made not from the sugar from potatoes or grapes, as is often typical, but from that of coffee cherry pulp, 15 million tons of which are discarded during the roasting process each year worldwide. Using would-be discarded fruit reduces water waste and carbon emissions, while providing another revenue stream for Colombian coffee farmers. “There’s a bit of a peppery note that comes through on the back of the profile, which is reminiscent of the flavor of ripe coffee fruit, if you were to bite into it,” says Byrne. Another new vodka is on the horizon thanks to Voatka, a soon-to-launch brand and spirit from the founder Rebecca Robertson that’s made from organic oats. “Vodka is so clean, and using oats gives it a layer of warmth with a deeper base of creamy flavor,” says Robertson, who’s partnered with Matchbook Distilling for production. Consider it a kind of alt-alt-milk.

Janie Korn started out as a ceramist but traded clay for wax a half-decade ago in hopes of prompting more interaction between her work and the viewer. Now, she makes sculptural candles that often reference pop culture and, because of the very nature of candles, are a way to mark the passing of time. That’s especially true of her latest collection, “Have a Nice Summer,” which launches today. It was commissioned by the New York-based, artist-led design studio Fort Makers and perfectly captures the carefree, languid spirit of August, along with the accompanying blues brought on by the knowledge that the season will soon come to a close. “You can feel it’s a temporal experience — we have X amount of summer left,” says Korn, who modeled the offering’s 10 pieces after a bottle of Water Babies sunscreen, a hot dog squiggled with mustard, a cassette-ready boom box, a “Jaws” (1975) movie poster and other nostalgic staples. A neon tennis ball balances on a racket, and a family of Bic lighters in various colors and sizes promise to burn as if by flames of their own making. For her part, Korn, who lives in Manhattan, will spend the next few weeks not at the beach, but upstate in Hudson, N.Y., where she’s renting a place and plans on rereading fairy tales, which are the focus of a forthcoming collection. Perhaps, though, come nightfall, she’ll work by candlelight. From $125, fortmakers.com.


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source: nytimes.com