Table of contents for June/July 2021 in Robb Report

Cheriss May A portrait photographer, May is a frequent contributor to The New York Times and an adjunct professor at Howard University, her alma mater. She shot chef Erik Bruner-Yang for the dining section of Best of the Best at his restaurant Maketto, in Washington, D.C. (p. 182). “Maketto feels like a haven for the community, a unique meeting place for creatives,” she says. “A beautiful mix of restaurant, café and retail, and the chai tea was on point!” Her work is featured in In Conversation: Visual Meditations on Black Masculinity, a permanent exhibit at the African American Museum in Philadelphia. Jason O’Bryan O’Bryan has been managing cocktail bars for 12 years, first in Boston and now in San Diego, and has contributed a weekly cocktail column for Robb Report’s…

The events of the past 12 months have made us all reappraise our definition of “essential.” In the earliest days of lockdown, we were pressed to consider what we truly needed and what we could live without. Cocktail hour? Hard yes. Double-breasted suit? Not so much. In times of crisis, fashion often seems, understandably, inconsequential. But then again, getting dressed is essential. It may not have been the time for daring sartorial statements, but style is still fundamental. Despite the shifts in how we shop and dress, the appeal of beautifully made classics is stronger than ever. Rather than answering with austerity, this year’s best menswear homed in on items that are as essential to one’s wardrobe as salt and flour to a well-stocked pantry. That’s not to say that…

Just four years into launching their company, watchmakers Gaël Petermann and Florian Bédat have enjoyed significant success. While both men are under 30 years old and the Petermann Bédat brand has only one watch under its loupe, its 1967 Dead Beat Second took home the Horological Revelation prize at the biggest watch awards of last year, the 2020 Grand Prix de la Haute Horlogerie. True success, of course, is measured in dollars: After releasing the watch in June of last year, in a limited run of just 10 pieces in 18-karat white gold and 10 in 18-karat rose gold (both priced around $66,000), they sold out in two weeks. Petermann’s and Bédat’s pedigrees include stints at A. Lange & Söhne and restoration work for Christie’s Geneva. When they set up…

Travel is emerging, reshaped and reimagined, with a newfound focus around one idea: time. Today, travel is about taking time, with longer trips and fewer breakneck pit stops, lingering and exploring with greater leeway. Plenty may have vacationed in 2020 but often to easier, closer destinations: St. Barts, perhaps, or Mexico. The chance to explore again has inspired travelers to prioritize extra time they just never considered before. In 2019, 21 percent of trips booked by Asia specialist operator Remote Lands were longer than two weeks; now two-thirds are 15 days or more. Greaves Tours, which focuses on India, has seen the number of stops on itineraries halved, to just two or three compared with six or more two years ago; trips now lean longer, with far fewer one-week requests.…

The wave of lockdowns last March left even the most successful bars and restaurants seeing vultures circling overhead. Takeout, once a small fraction of the average restaurant’s income, was suddenly expected to keep the ship afloat, and with to-go cocktails prohibited in many municipalities, bars were facing an even more dire fate. Half of all restaurants fail within three years even under ideal circumstances. So it was with no small relief that states such as California and New York quickly loosened restrictions on alcohol sales, allowing bars and restaurants to sell beer, wine and cocktails to go. Eventually, more than 30 states would allow takeaway alcohol sales. Necessity being the mother of invention, the result has been an extraordinary showcase of ingenuity by the creatives behind our nation’s bars. Many…

When Janelle Reiring and Helene Winer opened Metro Pictures in New York’s SoHo in 1980, Cindy Sherman and Robert Longo were among the artists in the inaugural exhibition. More than 40 years later, when the partners jolted the art world with their decision to close the gallery, now in Chelsea, at year’s end, Sherman and Longo were still on the roster, along with other stalwarts, including Louise Lawler, Isaac Julien and Olaf Breuning. To say such mutual loyalty is a rarity in the art world is a severe understatement. But Winer and Reiring are old-school dealers who hold that “a gallery is only as good as the artists it shows,” Reiring tells Robb Report. And Metro Pictures’ artists were more than good; they were exceptional. Before teaming up, Winer had…

A fresh generation of brilliant women are steering the wine industry, from small houses to the world’s most respected estates. This past year especially has seen exciting young, new executives and winemakers taking the lead. In Bordeaux, Saskia de Rothschild has become the first female chair of Domaines Barons de Rothschild (Lafite), with eight industry-leading properties on three continents. At 34, she’s the youngest person now heading up a Grand Cru Bordeaux estate (you might have heard of it: Château Lafite Rothschild). She’s already making changes, such as farming completely organically this year for the first time. She’s also dusting off age-old practices for the Bordeaux region, shifting the 2019 en primeur tasting to a virtual one for select critics and buyers, but also using her background as a journalist…

When Nicholas Lieou debuted his brand, Mr. Lieou, in 2019, his designs spoke with such confidence and clarity that Sotheby’s Diamonds promptly tapped him to create a collection, a prestigious role originated by James de Givenchy. Lieou came out swinging, and since then, the Hong Kong–based designer has articulated his own distinct vocabulary: clean lines and graphic silhouettes primarily rendered in a muted palette of black, white and gray. While that may sound rather stark, Lieou’s ability to make simplicity sing is what makes him so impressive. It helps that he honed his skills at some of luxury’s biggest names, including Louis Vuitton and Tiffany & Co., where he was responsible for the vaunted Blue Book collection and custom commissions. “I loved what I did for Blue Book, but even…

By Richard Carleton Hacker The cigars we’re smoking are becoming more buff. Just look at this year’s Best of the Best winners: Full- and medium-full-strength smokes dominate, with the Montecristo 1935 Anniversary Nicaragua the lone representative on the podium for the medium-strength category. Absent entirely are any cigars from the mild or even medium-mild segments. Meanwhile, a number of popular smokes, such as the J. C. Newman Diamond Crown Maximus and the CAO Vision, have debuted intense new versions that not only grabbed our attention but made our list for the year’s best cigars. That means so long candela cigars, with their ultra-mild yellow-green wrappers, and hello to the flavors of Jalapa and Estelí, two of Nicaragua’s most popular regions for producing the dark, muscular tobaccos used in many of…

The beach club became mainstream on yachts around 20 years ago, when designers realized that the lowly tender garage would make a nice oceanside cabana instead. Beach clubs have since evolved into far more sophisticated spaces, thanks to open-hull sides and deeper enclaves, with gyms, spas, bars and, on larger yachts, even dive centers. That desire for more private ocean access has moved beyond supersizing beach clubs to actually reshaping the stern. “There’s been a slow burn of bringing the inside out,” says J. David Weiss, an American designer who has created superyachts for Heesen, CRN and other builders. “The desire for access at the stern is important to owners, who want both openness and privacy.” Weiss recalls designing what was initially a small pool inside the beach club of…

La Mamounia MARRAKECH The sprawling, palatial La Mamounia underwent a major upgrade of its public spaces last year, just in time for its centenary in two years’ time. Parisian designers Patrick Jouin and Sanjit Manku were unleashed on the interiors, carving out a brand-new cinema for the 209-key hotel, as well as reimagining the Churchill bar as a 20-seat caviar-championing tasting room. Doubtless gourmand Winston would approve: He came here regularly to paint in the winters before and after World War II. The main changes, though, revolved around the restaurants, where two superstar French chefs now tag team. Pâtissier Pierre Hermé will offer macarons and more at Le Salon de Thé, as well as throughout the property; check out the tiny satellite patisserie in a kiosk in the leafy gardens.…

A year into the pandemic, the butcher’s bill for restaurants in the US was grim. In 2020 alone, an estimated $240 billion in revenue vanished, nearly 2.5 million restaurant workers lost their jobs and over 100,000 dining establishments closed temporarily or permanently. Perhaps the bleakest stat of all is that, according to a study by the University of California, San Francisco, the most dangerous jobs during the pandemic, outside of health care, have been in the food and agriculture industries, with the risk of dying increasing 39 percent. Since March 2020, the only “hot new trend” in dining was finding a way to survive. By their nature as businesses built around gathering people in one place, restaurants were caught in an impossible position: City and state authorities had to shut…

In 2016, Fawn Weaver ventured to Tennessee with the plan of researching a book about Nathan “Nearest” Green, the former slave who taught Jack Daniel how to make whiskey. Her ambition, after she arrived, grew exponentially. Weaver, a real-estate investor, bought the land where Nearest had passed down his distilling lessons in the 19th century; later in 2016, she founded Uncle Nearest Premium Whiskey to celebrate this important but overlooked figure in the spirit’s history. Ever since, it has been a meteoric rise for the brand, which creates its Tennessee whiskey using what’s known as the Lincoln County Process, a maple-charcoal filtration method which Green helped perfect. Part of Weaver’s mission with Uncle Nearest was to get Green’s descendants involved with the brand. Victoria Eady Butler, Green’s great-great-granddaughter, retired from…

City dwellers experienced a once-in-a-generation collective primal urge last year: escape. Like Roman aristocrats and wealthy Londoners during plague pandemics of yore, many of us chose to head for the healthful air of the countryside. Those who lacked a well-appointed bolt-hole urged their brokers to acquire one pronto, sparking bidding wars in spacious suburbs and resort towns such as the Hamptons. Sales of South Fork homes priced at more than $2 million rose 156 percent in the last quarter of 2020 compared to the previous year, while one village, Quogue, saw an increase of 388 percent, according to Corcoran. Some ex-urbanites have enrolled children in local schools and plan to stay put indefinitely. Snowbirds who used to migrate annually to Florida hot spots such as Boca Raton are now feathering…

When Rolando Herrera starting working in the wine biz, he didn’t like the taste of vinified grapes. But that changed once he tasted from a barrel at Stag’s Leap, the vineyard where he learned so many of the lessons he carried forward to Mi Sueño, the winery he and his wife, Lorena, started 24 years ago. “Suddenly I understood this is what people are talking about,” he says. Rolando moved to Napa Valley from Mexico with his family at age eight. A few years later they moved back, but he returned as a teen, enrolling in high school and finding work. He and Lorena met in church and dated for a decade, before marrying in 1997. That same year, they purchased some grapes and decided to crush them on their…

A jet fuel derived from old cooking oil may not sound all that sexy, but it doesn’t have to. It’s already the most effective way to make business aviation greener. Winglets, aerodynamic shapes, space-age composites and avionics all contribute to reducing the carbon footprint of private jets, but they’re lightweights next to sustainable aviation fuel (SAF). Compared to fossil jet fuel, SAF in its pure, unblended form cuts CO₂ emissions by up to 80 percent, reducing polluting particulate matter by 90 percent and eliminating sulfur oxide. “We are turning trash into treasure,” says Chris Cooper, vice president for renewable aviation at Neste, one of a number of providers focused on the fledgling biofuel market for planes. Cooper notes that private jets burn 1.8 billion gallons of fossil fuel each year.…

It’s odd to consider that during the most isolating year in modern history we’ve become more familiar with each other’s personal spaces than ever. With everyone broadcasting from home for a year’s worth of Zoom calls, we were suddenly invited into the living areas of not just acquaintances and coworkers but our doctors, lawyers, architects and personal trainers. It’s now possible to tell the late-night talk shows apart just by the hosts’ basement décor. At the same time, the figurative walls within those spaces have come down, as so many homes suddenly had to be so many places at once: office, school, restaurant and bar, day care, gym. Not to mention all the actual walls coming down. (As we write this, a sustained renovation boom is still going strong, causing…

Ancient king Solomon wrote, “What has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.” Granted, coachbuilding probably wasn’t top of mind when he wrote it, but it applies. The art of custom bodywork on wheels, dating back to the chariot and nearly lost by the end of the 20th century, appears to be on a comeback. “The auto industry has failed the consumer for many years,” says Scott Wallace, cofounder of Florida-based E.C.D. Automotive Design, which builds reimagined and individually tailored Land Rovers. “Personalization of almost everything in life is part of expectations now, but I had more custom choices for my iPhone cover. The surge in coachbuilding is because of a consumer who’s bored.” In response, a number of storied ateliers have been resurrected—Touring…

The Swiss watch industry has, traditionally, not been quick to adopt modern ideas. Even e-commerce is a relatively new development for some brands. It’s been even slower to embrace sustainability efforts. In fairness, this is an industry that prides itself on building a product that can (often) last, with servicing or restoration, for many decades—in some cases even centuries. But with younger generations demanding the brands they patronize place increasing focus, and resources, on environmental efforts, watchmakers are finally tuning in to the cause. In the last three years, early tangible efforts were mostly relegated to straps. In 2018, Breitling partnered with surfer Kelly Slater on a line of Superocean dive watches outfitted with straps made from Econyl, constructed from discarded fishing nets and other repurposed nylons. They’re now available…

For summer 2021 in Greece, party like it’s 1976. The country is celebrating its own independence bicentennial, a mood-improver only boosted by the infusion of excited international tourists from nations that include the USA, welcomed in April with Covid protocols in place. Greece has been prepping for this moment for the last year: Hotels like the storied Grande Bretagne in Athens have reopened with significant overhauls; the new alfresco lounge in the inner garden there will be a buzzy spot. New hotels have popped up all over the islands, too, with three notable standouts. KALESMA Mykonos It might look like an old Mykonian village, on the top of a hill on the southwest of the island above Ornos Bay, but the whitewashed stone buildings here are an ultra-luxury retreat owned…

Mandarin Oriental Ritz MADRID, SPAIN Mandarin Oriental snapped up this site (100 rooms and 53 suites) when longtime operator Belmond off-loaded the erstwhile Hotel Ritz six years ago. It invested in a three-year renovation by architecture firm Rafael de la-Hoz and design duo Gilles & Boissier to restore the Belle Époque building’s somewhat faded glory, while also adding a little contemporary flair. Gone are the thick carpets and gilt drapes, replaced with pared-down, neutral-toned textiles, exposed oak floors and minimalist four-poster beds. The glass ceiling above the afternoon-tea-serving Palm Court has been reconstructed, and the public areas of the hotel are now festooned with artworks, a nod to the hotel’s location at the apex of Madrid’s Golden Triangle of Art, between the Prado and the Thyssen-Bornemisza. Doubles from around $785…

For more than a decade, when a catastrophe has hit somewhere around the globe, José Andrés and his World Central Kitchen (WCK) have sprung into action. The chef at the helm of the expanding restaurant empire ThinkFoodGroup (which includes Michelin two-star Minibar in Washington, D.C.) launched the WCK nonprofit to feed people after the Haitian earthquake in 2010. Since then, he has kept going, arriving on the scene of numerous humanitarian crises, from hurricanes and wildfires to the Beirut port explosion last August, tapping into existing infrastructure to produce and deliver meals in a more effective way than most governments can manage. And many times you’ll see him there personally, on the front lines, advocating for those in peril and cooking some of the 50 million meals the organization has…

It was a rocky year for the art world. The pandemic forced museums and galleries to close for months on end. Long-planned exhibitions were delayed. Revenues from ticket sales, galas and membership dues were lost. When museums did reopen, they operated with reduced attendance. But the novel coronavirus was only one culprit in the institutions’ illness. As the death of George Floyd ushered in Black Lives Matter protests in cities large and small, night after night, pent-up frustrations over racial inequality in virtually every facet of American life erupted. And the great art museums, which fancy themselves bastions of progressive values, were no exception. Many museums have recently made strides in diversifying their exhibition programs and collections. (In this space last year, we applauded those efforts.) But paradoxically, staff members…

Paul Scialla has quietly been developing Delos, his real-estate wellness company, for eight years, but it’s only now that we are beginning to pay attention. His creed, that our health can be ameliorated by improving building design, has been powered by the pandemic, going from, in his words, “a nice-to-have to a must-have” in just one year. Pre-Covid, Scialla tells Robb Report, “one out of 100 people in the world had an awareness of indoor-air-quality issues.” Now that we’re all suddenly fluent in the patois of particulate matter, HEPA filters and respiratory aerosols, “that number is 99 out of 100 people.” Scialla, 47, left Goldman Sachs in 2013 to set up Delos, convinced sustainable building could apply as much to the wellbeing of its occupants as to the green credentials…

While centuries-old inspirations, serious stones and classic settings have a perennial place in the high-jewelry landscape, this past year has seen establishment houses experimenting with new techniques and bleeding-edge designs, pushing the industry in fresh directions. The boldest foray into untouched territory came courtesy of Boucheron. The 163-year-old French maison delivered a high-jewelry collection that included a necklace created via a computer algorithm and sprinkled with thousands of diamonds that appear to float in the air around the neck. The “stone” pendant of another was molded from aerogel, a material that’s comprised of 99.8 percent air and 0.2 percent silica and was previously used by NASA to capture stardust and insulate the Mars Exploration Rover. Similar themes of weightlessness and of diamonds that appear to levitate took center stage at…

Last year we learned anew how to live in our homes. We had to: For long periods everywhere else was closed. The extra couch time caused us to rethink our abodes. A residence was no longer just a place to bookend the day, where a sofa was for show rather than sitting, a desk a spot to pay the monthly bills. It became the place, where we worked for hours, spent all our leisure time and took many, many Zoom calls. The home office took priority. “I did a self-survey of how many hours a week I was in different rooms,” says one tech executive. “I was spending 40 to 60 in the office. So if I’m just looking at where my time is going, it made sense to spend…