City Notes
Probably not the place to go if you’re feeling fragile, Distrito is a restaurant and bar found at the Saguaro Hotel in Scottsdale, Arizona. Brought into being by Brooklyn design firm crème and its principal Jun Aizaki, this place puts the vibe...
The Edit
Gloomy? Grim? Clinically depressed? Then you must live in Britain, where the country’s weather contrives to dampen even the liveliest spirits with one of the worst examples of a summer since Noah was a lad. If you’re fed up with asking...
City Notes
Given its phonetically-incongruous name, Bar Soba is doing quite well for itself, thank you very much. The bar-restaurant-club outfit has just opened its second venue, sprouting from a successful 12-year run of its first site on Glasgow’s Mitchell...
City Notes
Dominating the skyline of Nantes, and one of France's tallest buildings outside Paris, Tour Bretagne is not exactly the prettiest of skyscrapers - but that no longer matters. Not one iota. Because, thanks to London-based French graphic designer Jean...
City Notes
Outdoorsy types: Berghaus fleeces, The North Face jackets, chintzy B&Bs and hearty bowls of porridge - it's a field that's not necessarily renowned for its design aesthetic. Enter Basecamp, a frightfully good-looking hotel concept that takes the...
City Notes
We were recently invited over to the launch of London's shiny new concept hotel - citizenM. Welcomed by waiters with painted mustaches and fabulously fruity cocktails, my first impressions were "this place is awesome". Surrounded by vibrant and...
City Notes
So, looks like hip-hostels are all the rage right now. It's just a week since we introduced Iceland's super-cool Kex Hostel, and now we're over to Germany, to introduce Hamburg's super-hip - and aptly named - Superbude (bude being German for a...
City Notes
Retro is everywhere, you can't escape it, more often than not it's a half-hearted nod to the past; a token mid-century chair, or the odd vintage chandelier. Occasionally retro is achieved with flair and grace, adding much needed warmth to modernist...
Journal
Longwood Gardens, Kennett Square, founded in 1906 by Pierre S. du Pont is a piece of heaven. Sheltering you from the hustle and bustle of the city that is Philadelphia yet only an hours drive, we'd been invited to enjoy a private dinner with the...
City Notes
I was recently very lucky to be offered a complimentary night at The Montpellier Chapter in Cheltenham in order to see what I thought of it. I love my job! Well, I can report back that it was very nice indeed. But rather than showing off about the...
City Notes
"I was looking for a small house in the area and found this place the very first day. I fell in love with it and decided to invest every drop of my energy into it", proclaims Guido Alessandro - owner of Monaci delle Terre Nere, a new Sicilian...
City Notes
Damien Hirst's ‘Cock and Bull’ (2012), at Mark Hix's Tramshed, may have redefined the fine line between the animal and what arrives on the diner's plate (it's perhaps one step away from dining in a slaughterhouse), butcher's refrigerators are...
Stuff Crush
Weirdness is a notion long entwined with the concept of creativity. Mocked by the strait-laced confined to their boxes of conformism, celebrated by the bold and the brave who pursue the outré as a means of pushing beyond the banal. In Weird...
City Notes
In Montreal’s Little Italy, a new arrival is making waves with a fresh take on Italian dining. Pasta Pooks, which opened in March 2025, is a compact five-seat takeout counter serving pasta and natural wine in a space that marries Old World charm...
City Notes
A once-forgotten 19th-century residence in Savannah’s historic district has been brought spectacularly back to life, reincarnated as The Douglas; a refined 16-room boutique hotel at 14 East Oglethorpe Avenue, where design meets old-world...
Dispatches
In a country where club floors open with Buddhist chants and Ladyboys offer dawn alms in corsets and stilettos, Elizabeth Waterman has found a world of contradictions too vivid to ignore. Over the past three years, and across four extended trips,...
Dispatches
Moving, renovating, or downsizing in a fast-growing city like Dallas can quickly become overwhelming. Between tight housing transitions, unpredictable weather, and the sheer logistics of packing up a home or office, it’s easy to feel buried under...
Dispatches
Drivers race the yellow light constantly. It's become normal behavior. Someone sees the light turn yellow and accelerates to beat it rather than slowing down. Another driver is already committed to going through. They collide in the middle of the...
Dispatches
Once upon a time, hotels were where we went to escape real life, and homes were where we returned to it. Today, that separation is disappearing. The warmth, comfort, and design sophistication that once defined boutique hotels are now finding their...
Dispatches
Moving is one of those life events that sits somewhere between chaos and reinvention. It’s stressful, yes — but it’s also a rare opportunity to start over. To touch every object you own, question its purpose, and decide what kind of person...