Making French Desserts and Pastry Is Child's Play

Recipes and drawings by 28-year old father of three, Michel Oliver, 1966

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Who invited all these tacky people?

New artwork/ potholders from "Now! Designs", San Francisco, circa 1977.

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Vintage Hartstone Wine Tote

The coolest stoneware wine tote ever made, and how it would look in your window if you lived in an awesome converted fire house stable.

In the shop

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Luke Skywalker in Frank Gehry's Awesome Kitchen, c. 1978

Watch for young Skywalker during the mustache talk- first with an X-Wing, then with the more civilized light saber. 

I love how casual these Michael Blackwood films are.

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Tea Time in Erin O'Connor's London Kitchen

Fantastic Minton watercolour teacup wallpaper in Erin O'Connor's beautiful South London home, 

via Refinery 29 (definitely click for the full tour)

related: a favorite issue of World of Interiors, 1989, featuring Minton's watercolour books:

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This poster brought to you by the letter T and the number 5

 The fragmented, abstract, last remaining 1965 grocery store window poster, in our shop. 

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If I knew you were coming...

Pastry Bag chandelier, from the book Wary Meyers' Tossed & Found (2009)

Singin' by Eileen Barton, 1950

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Happy Thanksgiving!

David Gentleman's back cover (here's the front) from the Penguin book

Plats du Jour, or, Foreign Food by Patience Gray and Primrose Boyd

(in our shop)

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Candlelight Dinner

The worst tasting cake, beer, and hot dog you'll ever know.

Order here

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Afri Cola

Perhaps the best logo and the best bottle, ever.
From Germany.

Don't miss the Charles Wilp ad campaign:





Thanks for the video Minna Saarinen!

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Milton Glaser's Russian Tea Room matches and Maitre D' Gary Sullivan

We found these at the Elephant's Trunk flea market in Connecticut 9 years ago, attached to a big matchbook display.
Walking around with it, a man came over and said "I love your matchbook collection! I noticed the Russian Tea Room matches and wanted to tell you I used to be the Maitre D' there for years!" After a while of chit-chatting we asked him to sign our matches (it's on the inside).
Alas, he died last year, but by all accounts he was as friendly all the time as he was that one time.

more on Milton Glaser on the always fascinating Container List
more on his RTR graphics at the too-infrequently-updated blog of Tim Groen
more on Maitre D Gary Sullivan from the Fire Island News


related: our Mr. Chow matches

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Shopsin's Plate

From a Brooklyn Goodwill to our kitchen!

Shopsins.com, and

Shopsin's General Store in the NY Times

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Buon Appetito! We're in Food & Wine magazine this month

Food & Wine magazine came over for a Christmas party we had with some fabulous friends, some vintage dinnerware, a crazy bronze elk tray, and vintage Italian recipes from Linda's Nonna and Mamma. You can read all about it and get the recipes fantastica in this month's (December) issue, out now.

a couple of behind-the-scenes pics:

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today's motto:

Pin from the 1980's New York restaurant Healthworks.

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Shop Update

New additions to our shop include, from top:
An old Pouchinelle zig-zag style corkscrew; prints of a Story of O-style girl; a vintage velvet mushroom toadstool; a lot of Gunnar Cyren-designed plastic ware by Dansk; and a David Hockney Nichols Canyon Rd. exhibition poster, from his Retrospective at the Met, 1988.

The Wary Meyers Shop

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J.B. Blunk at Greens, San Francisco

Sculptor J.B. Blunk's amazing redwood masterwork in the cafe area of Greens restaurant in San Francisco, 1979. Although it could be 2011, since thankfully it looks exactly the same today as it did when it was built and opened by the San Francisco Zen Center in the late 70's. Where else can pull up an Aalto stool and have a coffee on a J.B. Blunk? Nowhere!


See also: Checks Please! Milton Glaser's Big Kitchen
From the ever-inspiring book The Interiors Book of Shops & Restaurants, 1981.

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Trick

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Checks please! Milton Glaser's Big Kitchen

In 1977 food service mastermind Joe Baum opened The Big Kitchen in the underground concourse of The World Trade Center. Baum was a visionary, and knew how important aesthetics were to the dining experience. So, like he did with Alexander Girard at La Fonda del Sol and Warren Platner at Windows on the World (opened the year before, 107 stories up), he gave Milton Glaser creative reign (or at least graphic design reign) at The Big Kitchen.

There's nothing about this that isn't awesome- the giant letter stations (I had to sit through an hour of a New School panel discussion about Joe Baum to learn they were called stations), the Memphis-y looking "fountain" station, the "Kitchen" typeface, the track lighting, the Market Bar and Dining Rooms type, the Food Market and Raw Bar menu, the aprons, etc... 

This was a really great place brought to life by two major talents. I love that Joe Baum was this fantastic restaurant guy who loved design and Milton Glaser was (is) the preeminent Graphic Designer who loves all things food. The perfect pairing.

Possible inspirations? or random coincidences:

The checked storage containers in Glaser's own kitchen, below, 

and Ettore Sottsass' Superbox.

Photos of The Big Kitchen are scanned from The Interiors Book of Shops & Restaurants, 1981.

Photos of Milton Glaser's kitchen and dining room are from Terence Conran's The Kitchen Book, 1977

Kitchen typeface page courtesy of Zachary at http://containerlist.glaserarchives.org/

Ettore Sottsass from here

A related guest post on YHBHS here

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Food & Wine (yard sale edition)

Top: Super-delicious peanut butter mash-up cookies made by two kids in front of their parent's tag sale. "The secret is to smunch the Reese's into the cookie while it's still warm." and barely leave a fingerprint. What a great idea- and so good. 5 stars!

Above: 1990 Mouton Cadet Bordeaux from the deep dark basement of an estate sale. I don't know much about wine, but this was pretty cool to find and how nice would it be to bring a dusty 20 year-old bottle of Bordeaux to a dinner party?

(accepting invitations...)

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À la table

Vintage Gucci napkins-and-tablecloth, old Gio Ponti silverware, and an early set of Julia Child, from yard sales.

And from the flotsam-filled dock undersides of Portland came the wood to make the chevronned Jean Prouve esque Tropicale (Nauticale?) Farm Table, called "Picnic Table" in Tossed & Found, only because we were watching "Manon of the Spring" when we had to come up with a name.

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