Home Life The T List: Five Things We Recommend This Week

The T List: Five Things We Recommend This Week

by Mary Sewell

A London Lunch Spot That Keeps It All in the Family

After stints at such storied culinary destinations as the River Café and Spring, the 31-year-old chef Max Rocha opened his own restaurant, Café Cecilia, serving breakfast and lunch in a gleaming new space overlooking Regent’s Canal East London. The name is a tribute to Rocha’s Chinese paternal grandmother, Cecilia, “who saved up money with her poker buddies to send my dad to London to study fashion,” he says.

Inside, it’s a family affair: Rocha enlisted his father, the fashion designer John Rocha, to consult on the minimalist interiors, and his sister, the designer Simone Rocha, created the staff’s outfits. Rocha’s food is an unfussy riff on the meals his mother, Odette, made for him and Simone when they were growing up in Dublin: homemade Guinness bread; a pork, apricot and pistachio terrine; deep-fried sage and anchovy fritter; slow-cooked rabbit ragù with tagliatelle; and, for dessert, a version of Odette’s famous chocolate pot, a rich concoction of chocolate, eggs, and cream served with a sprinkling of sea salt and a buttery shortbread biscuit. cafececilia.com.

The T List

Shortly before the death of her friend Lee Radziwill in 2019, Tory Burch released a series of handbags in tribute to the socialite and fashion icon’s “extraordinary personal style.” The Lee Radziwill Double Bag was the standout, its casually elegant folds meant to evoke the layers of a trench coat. Now, to mark the opening of the new Tory Burch store on Mercer Street, the brand is releasing a customizable version of the bag in a limited edition of 150.

Options include two sizes, three artisanal woven straps, and three colorways in shades of mossy green, warm tan, or linen white. The bag can be further personalized with a monogram and date and will be available exclusively at the new boutique — which, decorated with Burch’s “found pieces” and located just a few minutes’ walks from the location of her first store, feels, the designer says, like a “homecoming.” toryburch.com.

When Modernism Made a Home in the U.S.

The Hungarian-born mid-20th century architect and designer Marcel Breuer, responsible for the former Whitney Museum of Art on Madison Avenue, is known for his Bauhaus furniture and monumental architecture. But he also built a slew of modernist houses up and down the East Coast, including half a dozen for Rufus Stillman and Andrew Gagarin, competing for corporate titans who lived in Litchfield, Conn.

“Breuer’s Bohemia,” a documentary streaming on Vimeo On Demand by James Crump, whose films include “Troublemakers: The Story of Land Art,” tells the story of the close friendship and collaboration among all three amid a racy Haute-bohemian milieu of infidelity and pool parties spanning East and West coasts, with cameos by Alexander Calder, Paul Newman, Arthur Miller, and Robert Redford. The accompanying book from Monacelli Press is out on Sept. 14. breuersbohemia.com.

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