The TMH Edit: five ways to beat the January blues
2023 is here – and so is a whole host of brilliant things to start the year on the right foot. Bat away any hint of January blues by filling this potentially dreary month with plenty of cultural and culinary delights. From a new 20th-century Nordic design gallery and showroom opening on Pimlico Road to a collaborative Italian feast at Bocca Di Lupo in Soho, here are our musts for the month ahead.
Harriet Mansell’s new bakery at Robin Wylde
Harriet Mansell is known for her sustainable and seasonal approach to cooking, which makes the most of wild, foraged ingredients that grow along the Dorset coastline where she’s based. We fell in love with her Lyme Regis restaurant, Robin Wylde, when we visited last year – and we’re delighted to hear that Harriet is now opening a bakery under the same roof. Naturally, it shares the same ethos, with its goods including nettle and wildflower pinwheels and gorse-infused Danish pastries.
In part, the new bakery is a way to navigate the cost-of-living crisis and expand the restaurant’s offering. Although Robin Wylde will still offer its eight-course tasting menu on adhoc evenings, the bakery will give locals and visitors alike a chance to pick up bread and tasty treats to cheer up the everyday – just what we need in January. Open to the public on Fridays and Saturdays, it will also have an online shop for pre-orders, as well as supplying baked delights to Robin Wylde’s sister restaurant, Lilac, which is also in Lyme Regis.
Retan x Renegade Winery
If you’re the sort to abstain, can we suggest opting for a dry February rather than January? Because you won’t want to miss Retan, the roving supper club founded by sommelier Cameron Dewar and chef Josh Dallaway (fresh from a three-month takeover at Louie Louie in Elephant and Castle), popping up at Renegade Winery in Walthamstow this month.
Kicking off their residency on 4 January, the duo will offer their take on French classics with a three-course menu plus pre-snacks for £33 per person. Dishes include trout crudo with winter citrus and urfa chilli, and pollack with Mayan gold potatoes and sauce Américaine. Cameron, meanwhile, has paired each course with a natural or low-intervention wine hand-picked from Renegade’s cellar. Wednesday’s plat du jour is particularly thoughtful: diners can enjoy a creamy blanquette de poulet and a glass of wine for £15. Just the sort of comfort food that January calls for, we say. Visit Retan at Renegade Winery until March 2023.
An A-Z of Italy: Jacob Kenedy x Rachel Roddy at Bocca di Lupo
Bocca di Lupo, the Soho restaurant founded by Jacob Kenedy (whose home kitchen you can tour here) is a firm favourite, so we need little temptation to book ourselves a table. That said, we’re particularly excited to visit this month, when the chef is joining forces with food writer Rachel Roddy on a set menu that takes cues from areas she describes as “hidden gems” of Italy.
Inspired by the name of Rachel’s recently published cookbook, An A to Z of Pasta, the menu embraces five lesser-known regions of Italy, which spell out ‘An A to Z’ with their first letters: Ancona, Alba, Trapani, Ostuni and Zafferana Etnea. Expect a platter of the kind of fried snacks that are a staple in Ancona – think anchovies sandwiched between sage leaves and crema fritta; a slightly sweet, lemony fried custard, and busiate con pesto Trapanese, a classic pasta from Trapani, consisting of a tomatoey-almond sauce and spirals of corkscrew pasta. The menu runs throughout January.
Modernity on Pimlico Road, London
High on our list of must-dos this month is visit Modernity, a gallery and showroom specialising in 20th-century Nordic furniture, lighting, art, ceramics and textiles, which opens the doors to its first permanent London space on Pimlico Road on 24 January.
Modernity was born in Stockholm, where it still has a home, but thanks to temporary stints in Marylebone and Notting Hill over the past three years, it has garnered a legion of followers in London too. The new 200sqm space forms part of Newson’s Yard, a former Victorian timber works turned design destination, which includes four other showrooms and two restaurants. Look out for post-war pieces by the likes of Hans Wegner, Finn Juhl, Arne Jacobsen and Alvar Aalto, all of which will sit seamlessly against a backdrop of Victorian brickwork, exposed steel beams and textural oak floors.
The New Bend at Hauser & Wirth, Somerset
Over in Bruton, Hauser & Wirth will host ‘The New Bend’, a group exhibition showcasing the quilted creations of 13 contemporary textile artists, including Ferren Gipson, Anthony Akinbola, Eric N. Mack, Tuesday Smillie and Sojourner Truth Parsons, to name a few. Having first been displayed at the gallery’s Los Angeles outpost, it will run in Somerset from 28 January until 8 May 2023.
The exhibition, curated by Legacy Russell, approaches the art form through a political, socioeconomic and cultural lens, by paying homage to the Gee’s Bend quilters. The 20th-century group of African American women – many of whom were descendants of enslaved people – originally lived in the isolated town of Boykin (also known as Gee’s Bend) on the Alabama River and worked on its plantation. The pieces on show, which explore the topics of abortion, the digital landscape and environmental justice, respond and build on the work of the Gee’s Bend quilters, who made crucial contributions not just to African American visual culture but to modernism as a whole.
Pictured: Tuesday Smillie, Sequin Light (Orange, with Kjerstin Rossi), 2021. Photography: Thomas Barratt
RELATED ON THE MODERN HOUSE
Cover Stories: five new architecture, art and design books for your shelf
Five things to do and see this September
Five things to do and see this August
Five things to do and see this July
Five joyful things to do this June
Six standout things to see and do this May
Five things to do and see this April
Six things not to miss this March
Five uplifting things to do this February
The TMH Edit: five wonderful ways to fill December