Did you ever notice how books breed? It’s a well-known fact that when you’re re-doing your bookcases – with me, that means once every 18 years – the books seem, overnight, to reproduce. Books have babies. Old books, even. Young books also produce offspring, often bigger than themselves. I don’t know how this happens.
The only solution is to employ a really great carpenter who understands the problem of the book boom. I have one. And I’m keeping him against the odds, because he …[Read more]
In seafood shacks, at gourmet tables, and especially during a stomach-defying live-fish auction, Reggie Nadelson discovers the true—and a new—Hawaii.
It's 5 a.m. at Honolulu's fish auction, and I'm eyeballing a quivering Hawaiian opah, a pink and silver moonfish, round and flat as a plate. Nelson Aberilla, a quality-control manager at the auction, cuts the tail off a tuna, sticks in his hand, pulls out some flesh, squishes it in his fingers: Is it firm enough? Fatty enough? He offers me a fistful. …[Read more]
For her latest culinary escapade, pays a visit to Ron Ben-Israel for tips on crafting a dessert almost too pretty to eat.
"Elton John’s people just called and asked me to make his birthday cake—what should I do?" says Ron Ben-Israel when he calls to postpone my cake-decorating lesson. For Elton, I let him off the hook. A few weeks later I’m in Ron’s Manhattan loft where he designs and makes voluptuous, witty works of edible art—bowers of flowers, replicas of designer shoes. In the sunny …[Read more]
Florentine master perfumer Lorenzo Villoresi lets Reggie Nadelson in on the secrets of his art—and his city
"Luxury is having something no one else has, "Lorenzo Villoresi says, sounding a bit like a Renaissance prince handing down a proclamation on the nature of things. In his case, the nature of things is in the scent. Come to his atelier in an ancient Florentine palazzo, and Villoresi—one of the last great artisanal perfumers of Europe—will design for you a couture fragrance that no one …[Read more]
She’s a peripatetic gourmet, an epicurean, and a culinary bon vivant—but she didn’t know how to cook. Until now. In the first column of an ongoing series, Reggie Nadelson seeks help from a real master of the kitchen. Early in the morning the foggy sunlight glints off the Thames through the large …[Read more]
This time around, our peripatetic gourmet, Reggie Nadelson, travels over theriver to Weehawken, New Jersey, to learn how to roast pork Latino-style. It's very simple, easier than roasting a turkey," says Maricel Presilla, pointing to the pig on her kitchen counter. There are some who think it's grandiose, …[Read more]
It has politics, history, architecture, Clinique and Calvin Klein - not to mention 80 percent of the wealth in Russia. Reggie Nadelson reports on The New Moscow. There's a shopping mall in the middle of Moscow, right under Manezhnaya Ploshchad—the massive plaza where serried ranks of Soviet tanks …[Read more]
Reggie Nadelson looks for the fur of her dreams with a little help from J. Mendel. BY REGGIE NADELSON Fur is the new pashmina," says Gilles Mendel, wrapping me up in a sky-blue knitted mink shawl. Mendel, perhaps the best fur man in New York, is an old-fashioned artisan, a fifth-generation …[Read more]