room with a view

It's the strangest feeling.. we're back home in London (a lovely city, don't get me wrong) but I feel like our ghosts are still haunting room 205, at the Hotel Vittorio (on Maronti Beach, Ischia, as previous post).

Our deck - as with all the other guests - was large, big enough for deck chairs and a table, lots of space to sunbathe, but we were always in water: the sea, the warm natural pool, the hot hot pool - all natural mineral spa water, no chlorine (I will never again consider any other 'spa' the real thing, because it's not).

Our view, from left to right. That's one of the guests, the lovely Miriam from Milan, waving. She always wore orange and hot pink - one of my favourite combinations - and became a kind of muse.

Second in my Vittorio series.

in my life: venetian pool

It was the year the Beatles first came to America, and they had just been to Miami for the first time. For those lads from Liverpool, I've seen the shots of them in the warm sea, and I know they'd not known anything like this.

I know, because it was the first trip I remember to Miami: I was just old enough to have memories, that stay with me, like songs, all my life.

We spent day at the Deauville Pool, guests of a man (a friend of my dad's?) who was staying in the same suite the Beatles had just vacated. Telling stories of girls knocking on the door, crying, kissing the walls.

But of all those memories, staying with our friends who are like family still, and trips to Monkey Jungle, Parrot Jungle - kids stuff - there are none that compare with Venetian Pool, in Coral Gables. And going back with my husband, after all these years, seeing a little girl who looked like me, who was exactly my age when I was there, playing with her brother being watched over by her father.. swimming in the same natural spring waters (it's the largest man made natural pool in America). Knowing it hadn't changed - that these were the same coral shapes that my father, living, had touched, and the joy that it was every bit as beautiful as I remembered it - a Hollywood vision of Italy, created from a coral quarry, dug to create the homes in this incredible place, just south of South Beach, Miami. It opened in 1923, the Gatsby era, and the ghosts of that time - and of my family, as children - haunt it today.

I have mixed within my photos, two shots by my father, Art Carin, the top shot, and the one of my sister in her blue swimsuit. His legacy - his eye - watches over me, informs everything I do.




And this is a song that has played ever since, which I offer to you, as the sound track to my life.

easy street

I found East Street by mistake. The plan was to meet my friend Andrea Mann for lunch on Charlotte Street. It was a simple plan, which got more complicated that morning, because she had a meeting (Andrea is the comedy editor for the HuffPost, and she's very funny. I don't know which came first, it's a chicken/egg thing). Actually, I made it complicated, by giving her the 'I don't use this email on my phone, once I leave this is my email so it's better to text' and we were also talking thru facebook, which I also don't use on my phone.. and since I was coming to her office part of town, Tottenham Court Rd area, I also offered that if it wasn't a great day for her, because of the meeting, we could make it another day, so of course, I didn't get the email reply that yes, please, she'd like to make it another day. This is what's wrong with the world, I feel: too many modes of communication. Too much can slip thru the cracks.

So I emerged from the Tube station into the blinding sunlight, and she felt really bad, because I'd travelled all that way. Which I didn't mind at all, because it was an excuse to explore. And besides, I was feeling a bit peckish. And that's where I stumbled on Easy Street. East Street isn't even ON East Street: it's on Rathbone, which, ironically, coincidentally, serendipitiously, just happens to be the extension of Charlotte Street, where I was meant to meet Andrea. 

East Street is the first London outpost of a brilliant restaurant concept, fresh, well made, totally yummy 'street' food from Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia and Singapore, Indonesia, Philippines, Japan and Korea, in a very cool setting. It was post lunch crowd when I was there, so the staff were relaxing before the post work drinks/dinner crowd, but the few people that were scattered about were cool and stylish, which in itself is bizarre, as we're talking Oxford Street/Tottanham Court Rd area, not Shoreditch. But that's what's so magic about it: once you're inside, you're in this whole other world.









I ordered the Malaysian noodles with chicken and greens. While there's a great basket on each table of all my favourite sauces, which I fully expected to use, I didn't touch them. This was just the right balance of heat and sweet. I ate til I was full, and asked to take the rest home, and this is where they won my heart. I wasn't handed a plastic dish. Oh, no. Milly, my waitress, took my plate away with a smile, and emerged with the cutest aqua paper shopper (I'd love to keep it as a handbag), with my food tucked into a proper, old fashioned, white Chinese food carton. Which then became, with the addition of more bok choy, my dinner for the next two nights.

Everything about this place strikes just the right notes. They'd be crazy not to open more branches, and I'm sure that's the plan. But it felt special, that beautiful day last week, the first sunny summery day of the season, to be here.

This is global food at its best. It's the kind of place you want to come with a crowd, order everything on the menu, and share. It's got a magic about it, and that's down to the staff. Everyone, from the guys cooking behind the counter to the wait staff to Dale, the manager, have that.. joy.

Next time I meet Andrea for lunch, that's where we're going. For sure.