Lithuanian design agency CLINIC 212 has come up with a brilliant idea, Eastern European Sushi, combining traditional Lithuanian dishes and presenting it like Japanese sushi. The idea at first might seem a bit jarring, especially when you see an entire fin fin sitting on top of the smoked mackerel, but that’s entirely the fun of it. The presentation of these dishes entirely changes the context and the preconceived ideas of what you’d expect from these dishes. I think it’s also pretty great that all the liquids you see on the boards are actually dark beer or vodka… that’s definitely keeping it real.
I discovered Julie Lee’s gorgeous food collages on Instagram. Vibrant, spare, and beautifully arranged, she shoots them after visits to various farmers markets in Los Angeles or before tackling a recipe. She often includes tips and tidbits to inspire her followers, too: “To keep your kitchen game tight, buy food that you aren’t familiar working with. Today, for me, it’s celeriac & pineapple guava.”
Aside from her collages, Lee seems to be adept at making tomato jam, ginger-molasses ketchup, and various forms of popcorn with toppings like pulverized miso seasoning powder and guava smoked sea salt. She also assembles quick bites and describes the ingredients so you can recreate them at home. Her Instagram account seems to be her most active blog. Thus, here’s hoping we see more how-tos or step-by-step photos on how to make potato mole chilaquiles. Follow her @julieskitchen.
I sometimes feel like calendars are slowly going more and more digital but then I see gems like the one above and I start to change my mind. Created by Liz Carver Design, this calendar serves more than just the function of telling the date but also gives you a clever recipe to try out. The execution of the calendar is done extremely well, with beautiful photos and wonderful typography to really make it stand out.
Recipes include:
January—Pesto Pasta with Portobello Fries
February—Chocolate Creme Cookies
March—Homemade Granola
April—Mango Mojitos
May—Tyler’s Famous Salsa & Guacamole
June—Chinese Chicken Salad
July—Watermelon Salad
August—Grilled Pesto Pizza
September—Soft Ballpark Pretzels
October—Chicken Tortilla Soup
November—Cornbread Stuffing
December—Grandma’s Cranberry Dressing
You can grab a calendar for yourself by clicking here.
There seems to be more and more of these restaurant projects where the ceiling becomes an expansive, undulating surface. Maybe it has something to do with acoustics or maybe it has something to do with creating spatial variety, or maybe it has nothing to do with either and is just something a few restaurants have in common.
The three restaurants above are designed by Office dA, LMarchitects, and SO Architecture. They aren’t necessarily the best examples of this trend, but rather these are just three examples showing a variety of how these ceilings appear. So do these ceilings help acoustics? It depends on how they’re built, but it very well could, and this is nothing new.
Alvar Aalto used a similar strategy in the lecture hall of the Viipuri Library built nearly 80 years ago. So maybe these ceilings are better understood as ways to build variety into a space without building walls. In restaurants where tables can be endlessly configured and reconfigured to accommodate hungry folks, isn’t it better to keep walls out of the way? Maybe these ceilings are trying to do both or maybe these are projects more interested in something else entirely, like fabrication. Either way, eating under malleable surfaces may become more commonplace, or it may be another flash in the pan.
If, like me, you’ve always wanted Willy Wonka to exist in real life, you’re in luck, he does. But he’s actually split into two gentlemen and prefers jelly substances over chocolate. Sam Bompas and Harry Parr are the modern day equivalent of the chocolate factory impresario, and since 2007, they’ve been turning the wildest of culinary dreams into whimsical reality as the duo Bompas & Parr. What began as a business constructing architectural gelatin sculptures (which we’ve raved about before), has since morphed into immersive wonderlands that defy imagination.
Teaming with big brands and singular artists alike, they’re always keen to challenge both the palate and the imagination. In the last year, they’ve created everything from a London landmark mini golf course made of gigantic cakes to a neon green, sugar-substitute river with working rowboats on the roof of Selfridges department store. For Mercedes Benz, they offered their take on the American drive thru complete with “Big Merc” burgers sandwiched between doughnuts and salmi-scented air fresheners designed to dangle from rear view mirrors.
Bompas & Parr have also been working with artists to bring otherworldly visions to life. Their collaboration with Ryan Hopkinson involved the exploding of gelatin which, when photographed, resemble intergalactic jellyfish. But lest you think they starting to veer too far astray from Willy Wonka’s candy-based legacy, let me assure you that not only have they designed a chocolate waterfall, they constructed a chocolate climbing wall, too. And their latest endeavor, the cookbook Feasting, lets you bring their magic into your own home. Who wouldn’t want to sip a complex cocktail next to a towering cityscape of ambrosial delights?
