Month: February 2018

Categories
Architecture Hotels Luxury Restaurants Town Houses

Villa Kennedy Hotel + JFK Restaurant Frankfurt

Er | The Autobiography of Things

So: 30 up, 20 to go. Cloudbotherers. In 2017 the price of new apartments in Frankfurt rose 25 percent. Hence the haste. It’s upwards and upwards. The Goldman Sachs rush. High cost high rise high flying high living it is then on the west bank of the River Main.

This, and other flotsam and jetsam, is what LVB* are discussing in Villa Kennedy’s JFK Restaurant. Over Cape Cod Dream mocktails: yoghurt | passion fruit | passion fruit juice | vanilla | lemon (€13).

And 50 Shades of Green herbivorous superfood: quinoa patty | avocado | Tahiti dressing | pumpkin seed pesto | courgette | young spinach salad (€26).

Chocolate thins to counterbalance all that healthiness. The best since last week’s petit fours served at Ballymore’s marketing suite – over a chinwag with Sir Oliver Letwin.

LVB are putting the gnomic into gastronomic.

There really is something swashbuckingly Rhode Island mansion about Villa Kennedy. It’s one of many turn-of-last-century landscrapers on the east bank of the River Main. Château façade; half timbered staircase hall; palazzo loggia: eclecticism on steroids.

Hansel and Gretel meets Norman Shaw was seemingly the whole rage back in the day. “Architecture is more than practicalities,” Dr Tim Brittain-Catlin reminded the audience at the final European Commission talk celebrating the European Year of Cultural Heritage.

Closer to the River Main is the 1896 Liebieghaus. A “prestigious villa” no less, announces a sign on the gatepost. Baron Heinrich von Liebieg’s former home is now an a museum. Said sign sums it up, “Manor house built in a mixture of styles: Southern German; Late Gothic; and Alpine Renaissance.” And for good measure a 1908 “Art Nouveau gallery wing with Baroque influences.”

Named after the Presidential visit of 1963, the very restored Villa Kennedy has been given the full blown Rocco Forte treatment with a little art deco help from designer Martin Brudnizki.

Hey ho. Jackie Kennedy was instrumental in launching the Irish Georgian Society. Ho hum. Now LVB have been appointed the social diarist for the London Chapter. JFK | JBK | IGS | LVB. Acronyms are so very FRA.

*A design based celebration of the good things in life

Categories
Luxury People Restaurants

Medici Restaurant Frankfurt + Christos Simiakos + Stamatios Simiakos

The Italian Jobs

Popes, bankers, patrons of art – and – of late, chefs and restaurateurs. The name Medici has been synonymous with high achievers for at least 600 years. Two brothers have brought a little piece of Florence to Frankfurt. Modern Mediterranean cuisine has come to downstream downtown Mainhattan. Christos and Stamatios Simiakos may be Gummersbach born, but the establishment owes more to their Italian heritage. Make that fishfingers not frankfurters.

Medici is 14 years old. Restaurants age in dynastic dog years. That makes it middle aged, well established, past going places, arrived in life. But the Simiakos siblings aren’t resting on their laurels – which, incidentally, include a young Michelin star. Plus there’s a youthful buzz about the place. Maybe that’s the current clientele? Or perhaps it’s just the buxom Florentine belles bulging out from a fresco plastered over the dining room wall.

Who said don’t mix business (lunch) and pleasure? All two-and-a-quarter courses please. More is more. Merry hearts have continual feasts. Pleasant words are like honeycomb, sweet to the soul and health to the bones. Yes, it’s a hard job, but some people just gotta dine and do it. Decadence has a new.

Categories
Architecture

Lavender’s Blue + Frankfurt

Many Mansions

John Goodall, Country Life’s Architectural Editor, presented a talk on castle architecture, the second in the European Commission series of lectures curated by Dr Roderick O’Donnell and hosted by Cultural Attaché Jeremy O’Sullivan at Europe House, Smith Square, London. The series marks the European Year of Cultural Heritage. “The elevations of châteaux are often one third roof,” John commented. “The French were obsessed with roofs.” Pictured are houses, not castles, in Germany, not France. Nevertheless, John’s comments could still be applied. Their roofs have more slopes than Klosters, more gables than a Lucy Maud Montgomery novel. Monsieur Mansard would approve.

Categories
Uncategorized

Town Hall Hotel + Typing Room Restaurant Bethnal Green London

Indefinite Article | Our Type

Goodness. Two far east trips in one season. We’ll be in Ichinomiya by spring at this rate. Nuala was well worth the trip for midweek frolics. Hopes are riding high for Saturday lunch in Typing Room. We’re liking the name already, even minus its definite article, spending half our lives typing up storms. We’re here to snatch the three course (plus snack) set lunch menu. It’s fashionably short: two options per course. Fortunately it caters well for pescatarians:

We’re very partial to Michelin style madness and had been reliably informed to expect multisensory sensations. Cow bells ding-a-ling? No; just lively piped music towards the close of the afternoon. Surely foam at the very least? Our sense of anticipation rises. One of our carnivorous companions chooses the venison. Will it vaporise upon arrival with said guest merely left to inhale the gamey scent as if the doe was gracefully passing by on a moor? Before being shot dead? Not quite: it arrives solidly three dimensional, delicately seared, with the closest nod to starry styling being its geometric presentation (an oblong cut next to a cabbage roll). Belcanto’s fag ash butter pushed boundaries; Typing Room’s marmite butter is easier to love.

The snack is really an oversized amuse bouche, crispy and colourful, balancing on a rolled linen napkin. The crab is pure seefood. See it. Eat it. Delish. The brill is brill (sorry, couldn’t resist). Honestly, it’s as light and wholesome as our writing (we weren’t once described as “architecture’s answer to Hello! magazine” for nothing). Sheep’s yoghurt was but now isn’t on the menu. Pity. We could eat sheep’s yoghurt till the cows come home. But a colourful cacophony (pudding arrives to the beat of that lively music) of sweet meets savoury is worth writing home about. Under the aegis of Jason Atherton – City Social (his goat’s cheese fritters with honeyed white truffle oil are particularly memorable) being one of his many other forays – is Executive Chef Lee Westcott who formerly worked for Tom Aikens.

The restaurant is naturally lit by large sash windows on two sides. A central chimney breast divides it into two spaces. We’re in the larger space, overlooking the kitchen with its eight rolled-sleeve-white-shirted-navy-aproned-mostly-bearded staff. Walls are painted an inky charcoal grey. Seats look Scandinavian and must be comfortable because, afterwards, well, we don’t remember if they were or not, and you always remember uncomfortable chairs, don’t you?

Typing Room is in the same building as the five star Town Hall Hotel (lack of definite article clearly being a theme). It’s a sturdy Portland stone monument to municipality designed by Percy Robinson and Alban Jones in the final year of the Edwardian era. It was added to 30 years later in a similarly robust manner. Rare Architecture completed the recent conversion adding a daring metallic intervention. Or “abstracted veil” in the words of architect Nathalie Rozencwajg. The interiors are furnished to reflect all these eras: neoclassical antiques; vintage mid century pieces; and contemporary sculptures. Eclectic and eccentric: a doll’s house cupboard here; a dentist’s chair there. And – holy cow – a big yellow fish. Taxi!