"Back to the USA!"

Hi everyone,

I am back from an exciting trip to South Africa and the US of A.  Since it was my fifth visit to Cape Town, we spent most of our time there with my in-laws. The excitement kicked in when we landed at JFK airport in New York where we stayed for 2 weeks.  One of the highlights of this trip was the wedding of the daughter of one of my oldest girlfriend’s, whom I last saw in 1992 before I left Russia for Australia.

It was a wonderful event that took place at Midtown Loft & Terrace with a perfect view of the Empire State Building. 

Armed with New York: 50 Adventures on Foot, we experienced this megapolis from a totally different angle. The guide comprises 50 cards, each one outlining a self-guided walking tour with a detailed map on one side and insider information on the other. The majority of the walks take place in Manhattan and that - together with the position of our hotel, Le Parker Meridien on cnr W57 & 6^th Ave - made a perfect match.

It was whilst on “The Met” walk that we stumbled across Jonathan Adler’s shop on 1097 Madison Ave & 83^rd Street.  A man after my own heart, Jonathan Adler is a furniture and accessories designer with a penchant for Happy Chic. I couldn’t help myself and bought one of the many fun, funky, quirky and adorable porcelain figurines in the store, a Grey Fox.  When we finally made our choice, the salesgirl said, “I promise you will have a lot of fun with Mr Fox.” 

Well, I am not sure who had more fun because Mr Fox spent the next two weeks inside my suitcase in bubble wrap without a molecule of fresh air.  When we finally opened up the package, you could almost hear a sigh of relief from all of us including funky Mr Fox.  Needless to say, he now takes pride of place on the shelf in our living room. The two small vases on the left were purchased at West Elm on 112 West 18th St, a great destination for reasonably priced, not-so-trendy but modern and slick furniture and accessories.  I also ended up buying a cushion cover from the Allegra Hicks collection. 

To my delight, I’ve discovered that West Elm and Jonathan Adler both ship to Australia, but a quick calculation of the shipping costs proved that “reasonably priced” would no longer apply. 

However, considering the items they have, it may be a case of “sacrificing your wallet for the beauty of the purchase”. It may not be so sensible but what the heck!

On this note, I think its time to close Chapter 1 of my 2011 US of A trip. I will write some more about the trip next in the next blog.

What I ate #1

Hi again,

A promise is a promise and keep the promise I will. But first - a prelude.  When we travel we follow more or less the same routine, sightseeing (shopping) by day and entertainment by night.  My husband (likes to think he) is a bit of a food connoisseur and makes a point of dining at at least one very posh, famous, 3 Michelin star, celebrity-owned, ranked-top-in-theworld restaurants in every city we visit. Hence, when we planned to visit Copenhagen last year, we thought of Noma. As you do.

We knew Noma had a waiting list of at least 3 months and we were only going to be there for 3 days, but my husband called them from Sydney and asked to be put on the list regardless.  I continuously teased him about it, until on our second day in Copenhagen he received a phone call from the restaurant.  It turned out that someone had cancelled their booking and there was now an opening for lunch.  Needless to say, we both immediately shouted YES. As superficial as it sounds, a meal at Noma was on our “bucket list”. 

People do not go there because they are hungry and are just after something to eat; rather, it's an opportunity to dive into the amazing and unique world of a super-talented man, to feel inspired by him, to share his unique approach to food and life, to taste dishes you cannot find anywhere else - in a gastronomic sense, that is.  We were served 17 dishes in total and, whilst they were all memorable, I will recount just a few. 

When the maitre d' showed us to our table, we noticed that the waiter was trying to re-arrange some flowers in a vase on our table.  We didn’t think twice about this until she pushed the vase towards us and there in the middle of the bloom were two edible snails, one for each of us.  It was challenge #1 and we had no choice but to tackle it, and tackle we did.  I must say, the snail tasted good. 

Our next challenge was presented to us in a non-descript glass jar full of ice with the lid screwed on tightly.  When the waiter open the lid and showed us what inside, we gasped.  There, on top of the ice cubes lay two very much still-alive shrimp. 

Yet again, we summoned up our courage and reached for the shrimp.  When I took mine out, it was still wagging its tail.  The waiter saw the horror on my face and took mercy on me.  He pushed some sauce towards us and told us first to dip the shrimp in it before popping them into our mouths.  I can’t honestly tell you what it tasted like but was relieved when it didn’t jump out of my throat. The following courses were of less adrenalin-pumping but still astonishingly challenging and unpredictable nevertheless. 

At some point, they brought us raw eggs, butter, two small frying pans, a bunch of spinach leaves and a timer, and explained that we had to cook our own egg omelette. We had a lot of fun with it. 

Another dish was a plate full of soil (edible, of course) with some exotic garden vegetables, the other – a recreation of the ocean bed with seaweed, shells and the like, every piece looked so natural that we had to ask a waiter for guidance as we couldn’t determine what was edible and what was just part of the setting.

As for desserts (my favourite part of the meal), there were several: berries in snow, chocolate buns in the shape of a huge snail and white chocolate in the shape of a bone, the role of bone marrow being played by salted caramel. 

Message In A Bottle

Hi All,

I know I promised to tell you the story about the bottles but then I become extremely busy and for a fantastic reason.  Last week I graduated from ISCD with a Diploma in Creative Visual Arts in Interior Styling, so from no on I hold an official licence to kill!

Back to the bottles.  It all started when we were visiting Bali a few years ago. We were driving along a bumpy dirt road when I spotted something unusual: in the middle of nowhere was a shop with a jumble of glass objects strewn around the ground out the front: bowls, glasses, plates, sculptures of animals and flowers, of all possible shapes and sizes. I spotted a tall, black bottle and immedaitely fell in love. Although it cost thousands in the local currency and less than 100AUD, we bargained long and hard in the best tradition of the free market.  The next question was how we were going to bring this baby back to Oz.  Luckily we were travelling business class, so we just bubble wrapped it and my long-suffering husband took it with us on the plane.

From that moment on, the quest for more bottles began.  I am always on the lookout for them wherever we shop and it is very rare that we return from an overseas trip empty-bottle-handed.  The round, brown bottle in the picture above came with us all the way from South Africa and it now graces the wine rack in our dining room.

This cute little bottle was found in a small antique shop in one of the many fishermen villages along the coast of Cape Town.  I found a place for it in my younger daughter’s bathroom together alongside a small frog bought in Park Guell in Barcelona.

I am sure we all love travel and we all have different reasons why we love doing it.  I do not even want to start naming those reasons because soon I will be out of cyber space, I just want to say briefly that for me travelling is a constant search for inspiration no matter how unconventional it might be, whether it is a Louis Vuitton window display, or the colours and vibrancy of a Venetian fruit market, or it is my lunch served to me at Noma on a piece of thick round felt instead of a traditional plate. And although my home is not so big and I’ve just finished re-decorating it, I always manage to find one more inch of space to place my latest acquisition.

Denmark is not only famous for having the #1 restaurant in the world, it is also known everywhere for its classical and unique and beautiful Scandinavian wooden toys.  No wonder then that when I saw these in a shop, I immediately fell in love. The monkey with the long arms that also act as hooks is very cute while the smooth round-shaped mother and baby birds have interchangeable heads and bodies. These lovely creatures now share a space on the bookshelf beside my older daughter’s favourite reads.  Oh, those Danish!

 

Before I go, I would like to share with you my latest conquest, this time I didn’t have to go anywhere, except to fetch my credit card.  This little lamb is made out of cardboard by Karton.  I saw a picture of it in the Sydney Morning Herald Good Living lift-out and just couldn’t resist. This curly creature now leaves on the top of an antique hat box and although at least half a century separates them, they match each other perfectly, wouldn’t you agree?

Now I can go and when I return, I would like to share with you more memories from Noma.

Until then

Ciao

From Africa With Love

Hi All,

My name is Anna Marcus and I am an interior styling addict from Sydney, Australia. Although I've been living in this beautiful country since my early thirties, my roots stem from the oh-so-exotic country of Uzbekistan, formerly part of the USSR.

A few years ago my day job as an accountant was beginning to leave me dissatisfied. I started dreaming about leaving it all behind and turning my hobby of decorating my home with knick knacks from around the globe into something a little more full time.

Finally I took the leap from the corporate world and signed up for a Diploma in Creative Visual Arts specialising in Interior Styling.  In the course of my studies I came across the names of several theories that I had been using intuitively for years.

I find inspiration in the cultural artefacts I come across on my travels. I believe in mixing textures, looking at everything from a different angle, and finding a sort of eclectic unity in mismatched objects brought from the four corners of the globe. And although my friends keep telling me how lovely the house looks like, I quite often ponder “When should you stop using the word eclectic and start calling it by its true name ie tasteless?”

I like to reinterpret pieces and make them into artworks of my own, for instance, from my last trip to Cape Town’s craft markets I brought papier mache bowls made out of tin paper wraps. They are very colourful but cannot be used for anything except maybe peanuts or paperclips, so I decided to turn them into art and voila!

My husband left South Africa 30 years ago but my in-laws are still there so every year we pay them a visit.  This year will be my fifth trip there.  I love going there; Cape Town is such a beautiful city, its position between the mountains and the sea makes it so unique in so many ways.  My trip starts with a visit to the local craft market and I never leave empty-handed.  Our home is full of African artefacts -masks, wooden figurines, plates, hand-painted tablecloth, etc. In fact, the entrance hall in my home is decorated entirely with objects from South Africa and is a tribute to African art and craft, including the beautiful storage cabinet made of precious yellow wood unique to that continent, as well as the dining display unit in our dining room.  Both pieces belonged to my husband's ancestors, he shipped them over here when leaving Cape Town 30 years ago.

I love the wooden figurines above. The one in the hall is called "The colonial guy" and the one in the dining room is "A lawyer".

I will tell you the story about the bottles above the unit in my next post.

Until then

Ciao