Bag (0)
Looks like you haven't found anything yet!

Let's get you started...

United Kingdom (GBP £)
In Praise Of...

Italian Breakfasts

by Giada Mariani

Colazione all’italiana, breakfast the italian way, a joyful, sugar-filled, and chaotic affair. One that always starts with coffee. Whether at the bar or home, mornings for Italians means coffee, first and always. The bar is an institution. Step into an Italian cafè in the morning and you’ll see people crowding at the counter, chaotically but very specifically ordering their drink: caffè ristretto, macchiato, macchiato doppio, in tazza grande, in vetro. You’ll lean against a polished marble counter and savour a pastry, watching uniformed baristi whip up endless cups—spoons in different positions silently indicate the type of coffee they have to make. 


Sugar dominates. Pastries rule the bar offering—from the plain cornetto, to the filled version with cream, nutella or honey, to the local versions that differ from place to place. In Rome you have maritozzi alla panna, in Tuscany budini di riso, in Naples sfogliatelle. 


At home, a traditional Moka coffee maker is queen.  No coffee beats the Moka for me, not even at the bar. It is a joy—an object I love not just for its purpose but its design: the Bialetti branding (of the original Moka machine) will forever be my favourite branding. The little man with the raised hand in the logo brightens my every morning. Somewhere between dreaming and lucidity, I try to not to forget any of the ritualistic steps to start the Moka (if too sleepy, I tend to burn it): water first, coffee, lock, fire, five minutes, wait. The smell of the bubbling coffee wafts throughout the house. 


On most Italian breakfast tables you’ll find biscotti—cookies, usually simple ones, to dip into caffèlatte or tea. Dipping pastries into your coffee and milk is seen as very rude by many countries abroad, but it’s such a typically Italian way to enjoy it. I cannot recommend it enough. 


If you have a caring old school mamma, nonna or tata, you’ll find a crostata di marmellata on the table, otherwise there’s fette biscottate, a kind of rusk, or bread with jam. My chicest friends have pane toscano—tuscan saltless white flour bread, something few people understand—with butter and anchovy paste. There is little room for protein in Italian breakfasts, and little for fruits—a fresh orange juice is enough. And while you won’t find any of the healthy ingredients so many other countries prioritise in the morning, what you will find is ritual and sugar and joy. 

More Praise...

Mediocrity

by Tim Wu

I’m a little surprised by how many people tell me they have no hobbies. It may seem a small thing, but — at the risk of sounding grandiose — I see it as a sign of a civilization in decline. The idea of leisure, after all, is a hard-won achievement;...

Read More

Train Travel

by Praachi Raniwala

Confession: I haven’t been on a long-haul train journey for close to a decade now. Somewhere between the red-eyes and the fastest route(s) available, I became a co-conspirator to a culture that thrives on instant gratification, missing out on the pleasures of...

Read More

Community

by Olivia Squire

There’s a caustic irony in writing about the beauty of community when you’re alone (or in the suddenly casual parlance of the quarantined, “self-isolating”). A fortnight ago, I would have told you about the specific joy of threading together stories spun in the chaotic charm of city squares;...

Read More

Chai

by Lucy Laucht

My visit to India was of the work rather than spiritual variety but nevertheless, I was pulled along by the tide of energy that flows through the subcontinent. I didn’t know it at the time, but that journey would mark the beginning of a profound two year period...

Read More

Feasting Alone

by Cat Sarsfield

Since the dawn of time, food has been a social act. It has signalled gathering, a coming together. To break bread is to resolve conflict amongst friends and enemies. The disciples tucked into wine and loaves at The Last Supper. The best part of a wedding – and...

Read More

Unmagical Crystals

by Vicky Gu

I don't remember much from childhood summers. I'm sure they were fun. I only remember more summer schooling than languid lounging. The closest beach to Dallas was six hours away, beaches were for lazy people according to my dad, and our industrious family culture thus carried on.

Read More

Lady Martins Beach

by Hannah-Rose Yee

The first thing you have to do is check the tides. I feel like an explorer— like someone who knows the names for various different knots—every time I log onto tides dot willyweather dot com dot au to find out if a trip to Lady Martins Beach in...

Read More

Hot Chips

by Georgie Meredith

It’s not just OTB chips that make me fuzzy with nostalgia. It’s literally any kind of hot chip. Because these little wedges of joy are the ultimate symbol of community. Food has long been known as a way to bring people together. Hot chips go beyond that, by...

Read More

Personalised Stationary

by Hannah-Rose Yee

The time before I was last in Venice was in the claustrophobic heat of June, when I willingly paid [redacted] euros for the use of a hotel swimming pool, just to cool down. It was on this trip one afternoon when I found it: Gianni Basso Stampatore.

Read More

Sausage McMuffins

by Cat Sarsfield

Before the advent of Google, smart phones and touch screens, there was the hotel concierge, who would happily point us in the direction of the closest McDonald’s (welcome to America). Weaving through the streets of some anonymous city (Boston, Los Angeles, San Diego, Phoenix, if...

Read More

Oranges in the Bath

by Imogen Dewey

An orange fits in your palms like the golden ball in the fairy tale. Dig your thumbs in at the crown. Feel your nails slice into the hard peel and the bright, tender sting hit your nostrils. Pull away the dimpled skin and thick, clean pith. Dig...

Read More

Ferrero Rocher Naans

by Jonathan Nunn

In his 1983 travelogue Sans Soleil, the filmmaker Chris Marker advocated for “those memories whose only function was to leave behind nothing but memories,” the moments in our lives which may be banal, perhaps meaningless, but leave their after-image imprinted on us.

Read More

Feasting Alone

by Cat Sarsfield

Since the dawn of time, food has been a social act. It has signalled gathering, a coming together. To break bread is to resolve conflict amongst friends and enemies. The disciples tucked into wine and loaves at The Last Supper. The best...

Read More

Crime Docs

by Ella Quittner

There was a time I consumed media other than pulpy thrillers replete with unreliable narrators who have undisclosed identical twins, triplets, secret sons, and step-daughters who step out of the woodwork, the shadows, and the literal shadowy woods, typically with a vengeance, and often to commit patricide.

Read More

Celebrity Breakfast Quirks

by Trey Taylor

Of all three-act productions that mealtimes inevitably stage, breakfast—not dinner, lunch nor afternoon tea, if you take it—is the most capricious and intimate. Menus, waitstaff, courses: none are as surprising as when they appear at breakfast, a repast that can range wildly from corner-of-toast...

Read More

Birdsong

by Laura Bannister

Listening to birds, really listening, is meditation akin to cloud watching. The object of one’s attention is slippery, evanescent. It is new, new, still new again with each subtle modulation. My presence is irrelevant to the warblers’ morning performance, a reminder of my relative smallness.

Read More