02: Does taste = paying attention?
02: Does taste = paying attention?
Spigariello, George Nelson, and pottery from Seagrove.
Welcome to Dinner at 10. Every few weeks, I’ll share snippets of interesting conversations I’ve had over meals, a wine or beverage that has moved me, recipes that have filled me up, products or ingredients I’m using in everything, and what I’m setting my table with. Cheers 🍷
I’ve posed a version of this question to several people since it came up at a recent Shabbat dinner. During a conversation over fresh spaghetti and kale pesto that started with the ask of “Can you teach taste?”, my friend Sean—an opera singer-turned-landscape architect—turned the sentiment on its head. “Can you teach taste, or can you just teach someone to pay attention?”
It’s been stuck like a worm in my ear since. I don’t think you need me to tell you that the concept of taste is subjective. To each their own, right? Yet everything we think is good is shaped by someone or something else. The objects we surround ourselves with, the music we listen to, the food we enjoy. In the case of my own taste (good or not, it’s mine), I credit moments of understanding how small the world we construct for ourselves can be, and how staying open—staying malleable, as I put it to my therapist—is a gift we can continue to give ourselves, and others.
I didn’t grow up in a family that prioritized interiors in the way people I write about do. But as a child of the ‘80s-’90s in the Midwest, my parents took me to museums, historic homes, and old hotels across the U.S. There weren’t a lot of beach vacations, and we didn’t travel overseas (that just wasn’t in the budget). But that didn’t matter—I loved these kinds of places so much that I thought I would spend my professional life working in them. And what caught my eye, as a teenager in the ‘90s and ‘00s, surprised even myself. I fawned over the leather and fabric wallpaper at the Biltmore, and the upholstery in the parlor of a suite at the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island. The brick facades of places like Wisconsin’s American Club and Frank Lloyd Wright homes. The candlelit dining room of Kings Arms Tavern at Colonial Williamsburg. Charleston singles and their front porches on the side. The color of Puebloan cliff dwellings in Arizona’s Mesa Verde national park.
In time, those interests came into focus. I realized that I had never been to Ikea as a kid because my father had made every piece of furniture I owned, and his mother was a brilliant cook (her shrimp salad was magnificent). There was also a strong craft tradition handed down from my grandmother (a quilter) to my mother (a basket weaver). I studied journalism in college, but also art history, and I credit both with teaching me a very useful skill in my current work: how to pay attention. Interviewing permaculture experts and business owners was buttressed by looking intently at memento mori in Flemish 15th century still life artworks; memorizing the curves of Borromini’s Sant’Ivo alla Sapienza; learning the carved masks of Mossi peoples in Burkina Faso; being arrested by Kenneth Noland’s color field paintings; finding connections in Ana Mendieta’s Silueta series.
When I was 19, I became obsessive over artists like Jan Van Eyck and Piero della Francesca—primarily because of the materiality and layers present in their work, but also because they were stone cold weirdos and ahead of their time. Thanks to Piero, I found myself in Italy at 21, selecting to study with a particular program because of a trip to Tuscany, Umbria, and Puglia to see his works in person.
Just last week, my friend and fellow editor Julie Vadnal and I texted ferociously about the idea of taste, thanks to a pair of just-published stories exploring the concept in different ways: one, written by the inimitable design historian Sarah Archer on “moralizing” interior design, and the other about Athena Calderone and the double-edged sword of influence. Archer speaks with a number of people across the design sphere for her report, each of whom, unsurprisingly, have different opinions on what makes good taste. I, for one, particularly appreciate this comment from writer Jason Diamond: “Having good taste means you care.”
But after a volley of thought that involved Jay-Z, John Waters, copycats, and failed pitches on the concept, Vadnal put her flag in the ground: “Ultimately, people with good taste are curious people.” And, for me, something clicked.
While I don’t think of them as one and the same, I do believe that curiosity, defined as having a strong desire to know or learn is a characteristic that tells people: I don’t know everything. Teach me. Shouldn’t even the most confident, studied, or stylish admit that that’s the case?
In the glorious book How to See: Visual Adventures in a World God Never Made by George Nelson (I do prefer the first edition cover, see above) there’s a sentiment on focus:
We see what we are looking for, what we have been trained to see, by habit or tradition. The notion that we come upon a scene and see everything has no truth in it. You can test this by looking hard at an unfamiliar room or a shop window for two minutes, which is a long time. Then turn away and check what you remember, whether items, shapes, colors.…We see what interests us.
This humble statement is an abstract invitation to consider a different way of seeing, a broader concept of what can be good. It opens the door to a richer look at what taste could be, connecting the past and the future, across cultures, and outside the bounds of money, class, or the limits of our own perspective.
Recipe I Want To Cook Again
A statement I’ve probably made during other seasons, but: there’s something dazzling about fruits and vegetables this time of year. Tomatoes have yet to take center stage (I do my best to hold out until July 1 before buying one) and we’ve passed the mania of ramps. We’re in the sweet spot of tender greens, strawberries, and tiny squash; snap peas are holding on; carrots smell like candy; and fennel still dips in and out.
Before you read too many more of these, I’ll let you know that I revere vegetables in a way that can misconstrued as twee. I promise, it’s authentic. Air gets caught in my lungs at the first sign of green garlic in spring. Mustard greens show up and I’m beside myself.
We make a lot of pasta, and when I saw spigariello, an ancient form of broccoli from southern Italy akin to softer kale, at Willow Wisp’s stand at Union Square Farmer’s Market, my heart palpitated. (There’s an insightful LA Times story on the vegetable.)
I promptly planned to add it to our Friday night spaghetti and grate the lobes of bottarga sitting in my fridge like hard cheese, blooming the cured roe in hot, red pepper-flaked oil. All of it came together with some starchy water and with a smattering of breadcrumbs on top, and this is what transpired. (Plus, a pavlova with leftover egg whites joined the party. I am not above a can of whipped cream.)
NB: I was inspired by a meal I had in Rome with Alex in 2017, after the Ligurian wedding of my great friend (and excellent tour guide) Elizabeth Thacker Jones to Felipe de Filippo. We were in search of Jewish Roman food, and per Katie Parla’s retired app, we decided on Nonna Betta, where we had pasta with chicories and bottarga. It continues to inspire me, over and over, in all kinds of ways.
Bottle I’m Drinking Now
This 2019 Les Cortis “Naxide” from Bugey in Savoie, France. Shane at Rhodora, our local wine bar, recommended it to me on a Sunday afternoon, and I quickly obliged.
It’s a Chardonnay Russette blend, in which the former is aged in tank and the latter is aged in old oak barrels on the lees. Delightfully fresh, light, and decidedly tropical, it’s an ideal daytime wine, and I’ll be looking for it in stores from here on out.
The winemakers—Isabelle Coiffier and Jeremy Decoster—learned from Alice and Olivier de Moor in Chablis, and farm a small 6-hectare estate.
The Ingredient I’m So Into
A brief letter of apology to the oil I have discarded from marinated artichokes of past: I will never do that to you again. I will always save you and use you, instead of the olive oil on my counter, in the vinaigrette I’m about to make. You will be cherished, you will be loved. And then eaten.
What I’m Setting My Table With
Westmoore Pottery. The massive dish presenting our pasta in the photo above was made by Mary Farrell, who has been unloading her kiln in Seagrove, North Carolina for nearly 50 years. She makes redware, salt-glazed stoneware, and green-glazed ware, and is inspired by pottery from the 17th, 18th, and early 19th centuries, particularly what was made in North Carolina.
I had the chance to meet Mary in the spring when visiting her studio, and wanted to buy everything on the shelves. She also stocks incredible Jamestown glassware from Virigina.
The Cookbook I Can’t Wait To Get My Hands On
Speaking of vegetables: when I heard that one of my favorite restaurants in Chicago was coming out with a cookbook, I freaked. 20-year-old Lula Cafe is home to my favorite green salad (on par with Via Carota’s Insalata Verde), partially because of the Werp Farms lettuces but also because of the ideal caper vinaigrette. While many people flock to the cafe for its brunch, I’m committed to the salads and vegetable dishes, unfussy yet elevated all at once. The book arrives in early October, so I’d go ahead and pre-order it; I’ve seen a preview, and the photos will make you want to hit the market ASAP.
Something To Add To Your Playlist
My friend Isabella has a radio show called Tutto Okay, and she also uploads the playlists to Spotify. Turn one on at your next party and get ready for people to ask what it is. Ciao, ciao!
One Last Thought
I don’t often have the time to write home tours these days. When I do, I pour my whole being into them. My latest is on the Chinatown loft of architectural designer Nick Poe—a soft-spoken, multi-hyphenate artist who I truly loved interviewing. A quick preview below, but you can read the whole piece on Domino.
It’s pretty easy to end up at Sky Ting Yoga’s Chinatown location when you’re trying to get to architectural designer Nick Poe’s apartment. The elevator button is finicky, and there’s always someone on their way to the seventh-floor studio. On my third try, though, the door slid open on the right level. Bright, minimal, and flanked by towering plants that lap up the ample natural light, a series of restrained vignettes unfold—a wood armoire and stainless steel desk; a bathtub on a pedestal flanked by slippers and towels; a single yellow folding chair at the dining table.