Page 81 – A Little Bird

11th April 201925th October 2021

Alex Hely-Hutchinson founder of 26 Grains

26 Grains has become the go-to breakfast spot in Neal’s Yard, serving up bowls of delicious porridge with even more delicious toppings. The vibrant cafe also serves lunch, and its next venture is to open for supper too, just a very simple set menu to be enjoyed in the sunshine on Wednesday-Saturday evening’s from 1st May. Here we catch up with founder, Alex Hely-Hutchinson:

Where did the inspiration for 26 Grains come from?

I was studying in Dublin where I was given the opportunity to take a year abroad. I sadly can’t speak any other language so I had to go somewhere that taught Economics in English. So in 2012 I headed to Copenhagen and I didn’t realise what a big effect it would have on me. It was a whole new way of thinking about food, appreciating and celebrating the seasons and local produce and making beautiful food from really simple recipes and techniques. So I wanted to do something simple and casual with a daytime offering in Neal’s Yard.

How has it evolved since you began the company?

Gosh, I only had a little industry and cooking experience, so it has transformed a lot a lot. Everything from understanding what hospitality is about (service and the people you serve and the people you work with), learning about business, about cooking in a kitchen and the limitations vs cooking at home, understanding how we position our values and deliver on them.

What was behind the decision to open for dinner from 1st May?

We’ve got such a great spot in central London and the sun lands on us at the end of the day. We often find ourselves sitting out after service for a drink and so we wanted to develop a menu that is quick and easy, but seriously delicious, that people could come and enjoy at the end of the day.

Where’s home?

Clapton, East London

What do you like about your area?

It’s quiet, it’s low key, there is access to lots of green space, the shops are wonderful and the food is divine.

What does the average day look like for you?

Usually, it involves cycling in early to the shop, having breakfast there, discussing how the menu is working both for food and drinks, any additional training for team that might be needed, considering new dishes for the breakfast or the lunch menu. After lunch I usually will have meetings with upcoming collaborators, site visits for new potential locations, recipe development and research, any marketing queries, a bit of everything.

Favourite thing about the job?

The people I work with, our customers and developing recipes.

Do you have a work uniform and if so what is it?

I do in that it needs to be functional! There’s nothing worse than wearing nice clothes and staining them if you’re cooking, or trying to cycle from one place to another in flares. I mostly wear straight cut jeans, a white t-shirt and trainers.

What’s the easiest way to make porridge a bit more summery?

Simple fruit compotes, like a three ingredient blueberry compote – maple, lemon, blueberry or roasted honey and bay peaches – no fuss, easy cooking. I also like to add fresh yogurt in the summer, particularly nice with some elderflower cordial.

What are you listening to at the moment?

I am always listening to something:

My favourite radio: Radio FIP

Podcasts: Alice Waters on How I Built This

Songs: Whitney (the band) are pretty dreamy

What’s your favourite place in London for a date?

I had such a great date at Bright recently, great food, great people working there. I also love Leroy, lovely records playing all night long.

Who are your heroes?

There are so many people I’m in awe of, people in my industry, people I work with, people I meet at the shop, my sister who has just had her first baby. I think so many people are doing wonderful things.

What’s the last book you read?

My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh

How will you be spending Easter?

In Rio for a wedding, SAMBA.

26 Grains will be open for dinner from 1st May serving a set-menu with just one starter, followed by one fresh homemade pasta dish, a selection of red and white wine and a seasonal cocktail from Wednesday to Saturday from 6pm.

10th April 201927th October 2021

Brand new collaborations that make our hearts sing

We love it when two of our favourite brands/designers partner up and this Spring, there are some great collaborations about. These are a few of our favourite.

Shrimps x Warehouse

Hannah Weiland from Shrimps’ faux fur coats and intricate beaded bags didn’t make her the most obvious candidate for a summer collection with Warehouse but the 40 piece collection is gorgeous. ‘I was inspired by striped umbrellas, Campari Spritzes, scrabble boards and the beach scenes in the film Overboard…” Weiland says of the collaboration. “Then I drew prints inspired by beautiful paintings of sea beds and what I imagined under the water to look like in my dreams,”

The collection features broderie anglaise, daisy print shorts and shirts, silky jumpsuits and colourful crochet. 50s Seersucker swimsuits, straw bags embellished with daisies, embroidered espadrilles and wide brimmed straw hats decorated with ribbon. Launching April 18th at Warehouse, the collection starts from £15 and we’re sure it will be flying off the shelves.

Birkenstock x Hotel Il Pellicano

Birkenstock have definitely upped their style stakes recently with collaborations with Rick Owens, Valentino and now Marie Louise Scio from the classic hotel Il Pellicano in Italy. Scio, who also curates the hotel gift shop packed with Jacquemus, APC and Masur Gavriel with special bespoke pieces by brands like Olympia Le Tan, is known for her exceptional taste. We’ve particularly got our eye on the raffia sandals but there are bright reds and navy too. Available from Birkenstock, Matches Fashion and Hotel Il Pellicano in May.

Matilda Goad x Matches Fashion

You’ll already know that we love Goad’s lampshades, planters and candles and now she has teamed up with MATCHESFASHION for a new collection of interiors. There are colourful rainbow lacquered trays with a brass wave edge, circular table mats with inlaid wood, table clothes in two sizes and soft scallop edged linen napkins in blue and pink. Buy now before they sell out!

10th April 201927th October 2021

Spring Guide to the Tulip Fields

Spring is the most beautiful time to visit Amsterdam, not only for the sunny canal-side cafes but also for the tulips. Book a weekend break and spend a day freewheeling through the tulip farms and out to the sea past colourful fields of flowers. Here’s how:

Keukenhof and around

For most tourists wanting to see the tulips, Keukenhof is the main draw. It’s a vast park where 7 million bulbs are planted each year resulting in a dizzying spectacle of technicolour flower beds filled predominantly with tulips, narcissi and hyacinth. The varieties are labelled so that you can discover the ones that you like and note them down for ordering bulbs for your own garden. If you can divert from the swathes of crowds there are some beautiful things to see – a river of thousands of tiny blue muscari winding through the trees for example.

That said, the crowds are a problem and you’re up against coach-loads of tourists lagging behind flag-waving tour reps. Get there as the gates open or later in the day (from 2pm) to avoid the rush and book tickets in advance. keukenhof.nl

Cycling around Lisse

After a morning at Keukenhof, or even instead of going inside the park itself, hire a bicycle from Van Dam who have a stand in the car park. There are hundreds of bikes and you don’t need to pre-order, including tandems, children’s bikes and baby seats. From there head towards the sea cycling through the flower fields – it’s a truly awesome sight of stripy tulips the colour of Skittles sweets. You aren’t on roads but on specific cycle routes through the fields so it’s peaceful and you can pedal at a relaxed pace. The tulips flower from early April to early May and are staggered so exactly what you see depends when you’re there.

Make sure to stop for lunch or a drink en route at Como & Co on the lake, an outdoor paradise where children can swim and mess about in the boats out front. Langs Berg en Dal is another good lunch option with an outdoor terrace. If you have time follow the longest cycle route out to the beach and wind your way through the Dutch dunes to the vast yellow sands.

Hortus Bulboren and around

For a much smaller garden where you’ll find more specialised tulips including historic varieties head north of Amsterdam to Hortus Bulboren. In the typically Dutch town of Limmen the garden attracts far fewer visitors than Keukenhof and is run by volunteers – the tea room is lovely too. Get the train from Amsterdam Centraal to Heiloo or Alkmaar where you can rent bicycles and cycle to the Hortus Bulboren as well as through all the flower fields in the area and out to the sea.

Where to buy bulbs

The Tulip Museum is a tiny museum in the Jordaan where you can learn about the history of tulips in Amsterdam – where once a single bulb held the same value as a townhouse. There’s a small selection of bulbs for sale here too. For a wider selection, avoid the touristic floating flower market, and if you can visit the Monday morning market in Amstelveld Square like the locals, and pick up plants and a wide variety of bulbs.

Top florists in Amsterdam

There are simple flower stalls all over the city on street corners where the array is as good as you’d find at many decent florists in London. But it is worth poking your nose into their top flower shops to see how their floral designers work with the flowers, the results are extraordinary. Pompon by the Noordermarkt (who also do the flowers at the Rijks Museum) always has a wonderful display including blossom branches over 6ft high and contemporary, airy arrangements. Menno Kroon goes completely Christmas decoration-mad from about September onwards, but in the springtime it’s a wonderland of fresh stems – take inspiration from their wonderful planted pots. And perhaps the best of all is MC Bloom on Beethovenstraat where the flowers are breathtaking.

10th April 201910th April 2019

SoulCycle to open in London

Big news for fitness fans this week as cult New York spinning studio, SoulCycle announced that it’s going to open in London this June. Promising a workout like no other, the classes – in which you burn up to 700 calories in 45 minutes – take place in dark studios to high-energy music and are an immersive experience for the body, mind and soul. As an American company expect high-five-ing, motivational quotes and intention-talk from their ‘rockstar’ trainers. Celebrity fans include Beyonce, Victoria Beckham and Michelle Obama who likes to spin with her daughters. With 60 bikes, the new studio on Great Marlborough Street will no doubt be a major hit. Put you name down here to be the first to hear when they’re taking bookings.

10th April 201917th April 2019

TOAST’s Creative Residency

We named TOAST as one of our favourite labels this spring, and it’s fast becoming our go-to at a time when most of the high street is uninspiring. Influenced by their spring-summer collection ‘The Unknown Path’ TOAST are running a new three-day creative residency over the May bank holiday. The thoughtful programme of creative workshops will encourage women to try their hand at something new; there’s Natural Dyeing & Potting with Christine Lewis; Block Printing with Georgia Dorey; a Weaving Workshop led by the renowned Sue Lawty, who previously held the role of Textile Resident at the V&A; a Canapé and Tablescape class with supper club host and author Alexandra Dudley and Mindful Creative Writing with Elaine Kingett. There will also be a cafe serving up delicious homemade food. Book now.

10th April 201912th April 2019

Letters from the Easter Bunny

The Polar Post seems to add an extra sprinkling of magic to our favourite children’s traditions. The company, founded by Charlotte Wood, sends out thousands of letters from Father Christmas every December. New this spring is their Letter from the Easter Bunny service. Scribed by bunnies at the Burrow and stamped with Easter seals, leave the letters out just before the egg hunt gets under way on Easter Sunday. Addresses do not have to be literal, as shown here; ‘The Primrose Children, Daffadowndilly Cottage, Leaping Lamb Lane’ and ‘Master Magnus Thornbird, The Spring Chick, Sitting-in-his-Nest’. Let your imagination run free, and receive a personally addressed letter with a message from the Easter Bunny all about his adventures hopping about and leaving a trail of Easter eggs. The last day for UK orders is this Sunday, 14th April.

4th April 20197th April 2019

March Book Review

We’ve had the privilege of not only meeting David Nott at his Chelsea surgery but also being operated on by him. The calm, kind person that we met, however, belies a far more complex, brave and driven character that we’ve since discovered in his fascinating book, War Doctor. For in his holidays, Nott is a surgeon operating in some of the most dangerous war zones in the world. Indeed, he seems to have a peculiar need for the adrenaline that comes when he is operating in these terror spots. He reflects on this attraction to high-risk situations, saying “it is undeniably addictive. It is a physiological reaction, as well as an emotional one. The trick is knowing when to stop, as any ex-junkie will tell you.”

In one incident recounted in War Doctor from his first humanitarian mission in Sarajevo, he tells how he found himself operating on a teenage boy with a metal fragment from a mortar stuck in his abdomen. After making an incision into the anaesthetised boy’s stomach to inspect the damage, he heard an almighty crash and the lights went out. The hospital had suffered a direct hit and Nott was left to try and stem the flow of blood from the boy’s body. No one answered when he called out. When the lights came back on, he realised that the anaesthetist, a scrub nurse and an assistant who had been working with him to save the boy’s life had all fled the room. He was alone with the boy, who had now died. The experience changed him profoundly as he realised he needed to be tougher and to protect himself –he would be no use as a surgeon if he was not alive.

There are extraordinary stories of trauma contained within War Doctor and at times, his experience of working in war zones for 25 years seem harrowing whilst he is also honest about his own struggles with mental health. But there is lightness in the book, too. He is able to laugh at himself and is candid about his spartan bachelor life (post his first marriage) and prior to his relatively recent second marriage. He also writes movingly of being brought up as a very young child by his Welsh grandparents in Camarthenshire. And he tells a wonderful anecdote about him returning from working in Aleppo, on the verge of nervous collapse and going to Buckingham Palace to have lunch with the Queen. When she asks him about his experiences of Aleppo, he finds himself unable to speak. She instinctively asks a courtier to hand her a silver box which contains biscuits for her corgis. She passes Nott a biscuit and they proceed feeding the dogs and stroking them. The Queen says “so much better than talking”.

Nott gets a happy ending: he falls in love again and is now married with two children, all of whom he is clearly besotted with. He and his wife Elly have set up a the David Nott Foundation to ensure he can teach essential skills to surgeons in “austere and hostile environments worldwide”. In an afterword written by Elly Nott, she explains that “surgically treatable conditions kill 17 million people each year; more than tuberculosis, malaria and HIV/AIDS combined” so the training that the Foundation offers is vital.

War Doctor is a brilliant, life-inspiring story but it’s the icing on the cake that it is also utterly thrilling to read about.

What did you think? Please leave your comments below. And find details about our April book club here.

3rd April 20194th April 2019

April Book Club

We hope you’ll have a little time over the Easter break to settle down with our April book club choice, Madeline Miller’s Circe. Much like her award-winning first novel, The Song of Achilles, the book is a feminist retelling of a Greek myth, this time Homer’s Odyssey. Something of an outcast within her family, Circe turns to mortals for company before being banished by Zeus to the remote island of Aiaia when she discovers a power forbidden by the gods: witchcraft. As an independent and isolated woman Circe draws the wrath of men and gods alike – to protect what she holds dear she must decide whether she belongs with the deities she is born from, or the mortals she has come to love.

A Sunday Times Bestseller, a New York Times Bestseller and Longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2019, we have three copies of Madeline Miller’s Circe to give away as part of our April Book Club. Please do read along with us and add your comments to our review when the Book Club reconvenes on 2 May.

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3rd April 201927th October 2021

Blooms: Contemporary Floral Design

This fascinating, beautiful book, co-edited by one of our former contributors, Clare Coulson and published by Phaidon, will make you fundamentally rethink the term ‘florist’. It examines the work of 86 contemporary floral designers from around the world whose groundbreaking work is pushing the boundaries of floral art. The designers were each chosen by a board of editors, stylists, writers, designers and master florists (including Amy Astley, John Derian, Alex Eagle, Luke Edward Hall, Aerin Lauder, John Pawson, Ben Pentreath, Sarah Raven, Rose Uniacke and Axel Vervoordt) who were all invited to nominate a florist who they thought had been producing outstanding work in the last decade.

From JamJar in London to Tableau in Copenhagen and Tulipina in NY and San Francisco, the work is incredibly diverse. Whether it’s Flora Starkey creating a tableaux of flowers for Alexander McQueen that echoes 17th century Dutch paintings; Flower Flashes in NY where Lewis Miller reuses flowers from an event to decorate a public area such as a bus shelter or subway entrance, constructed by a small team in 15 minutes or the creator of one of the world’s most popular Instagram accounts for florists, Gabriela Salazar from La Musa de Las Flores in Mexico. These florists are redefining the very idea of what a traditional florist can do, pushing the genre to the outer limits and all the while embracing ecological ideas and sociological tenets. It’s an astonishing, informative tome that we highly recommend.

Ariella Flowers (Ariella Chezar, New York): bridal bouquet of tulips, peonies, fringe tree and poppies from a peony workshop. Picture credit: courtesy Ariella Flowers / Photograph by Corbin Gurkin

Scarlet & Violet (Vic Brotherson, London): Townhouse staircase dressed with cherry blossom, foxgloves, delphiniums, ‘Maiden’s Blush’ lilac, Solomon’s seal and poppies. Picture credit: courtesy Scarlet & Violet

3rd April 20194th April 2019

Win a copy of Bazaar by Sabrina Ghayour plus a new recipe to try

There are some cookbooks that you look at a few times, try some recipes and then store at the back of a cupboard. We have Sabrina Ghayour’s books, particularly Feasts and Persiana, right at the front. They are books that we go back to time and again, particularly for her stews and delicious cakes. So we were intrigued to see if her latest cookbook with only vegetarian recipes would be as enticing.

In the introduction, Ghayour makes it clear that this is not a book solely directed at vegetarians but also meat-eaters too, in fact all cooks who are hoping to make vegetables more at the centre of their diet and also – this is key – more tasty. We were particularly taken by her smaller dishes such as the Carrot, halloumi and dill balls, the broad bean and ricotta dip and the aubergine and carrot couscous and there is a wide choice on offer with the recipes are really well organised, listed under titles such as Soups & Bowl Comfort and Store-Cupboard Sustenance. As always, the recipes are straightforward with easy to get ingredients (in fact Ghayour positively encourages substituting anything that you don’t have already). We’ve already been going back to this book again and again and suspect it will sit at the top of the pile for a long time to come.

If you like the sound of the book and want to try one of the recipes for yourself, then try this one below for the delicious Spiced apple, thyme and hazelnut cake. Plus we have two copies to give away, just fill out the form and we will announce the winner after 5pm, 6th May 2019. Good luck!

Spiced Apple, Thyme and Hazelnut Cake with Cinnamon Cream

Apples are so plentiful, and their delicate sweetness is delicious in salads. In a cake, I feel they need a nut element to complement them. This thyme-scented cake can easily be made a day in advance, as the apple keeps the cake moist. The hazelnut element complements the apple beautifully and adds a lovely crunch.

Serves 8-10

3 large eggs

225g caster sugar

2 teaspoons vanilla bean paste

1 tablespoon thyme leaves, finely chopped

1 heaped teaspoon ground cinnamon

1 teaspoon ground ginger

225g plain flour

1 heaped teaspoon baking powder

225g unsalted butter, melted

100g whole or halved blanched

hazelnuts, lightly toasted in the oven (reserve 1 handful)

2 apples, peeled, cored and cut into 1cm cubes

For the cinnamon cream

300ml double cream

1 heaped teaspoon ground cinnamon

3–4 tablespoons icing sugar, sifted

1 teaspoon vanilla bean paste

Preheat the oven to 180ºC (160ºC fan), Gas Mark 4. Line a 23 or 24cm springform cake tin with baking paper.

Beat together the eggs, sugar, vanilla bean paste, thyme, cinnamon and ginger in a large mixing bowl, until evenly combined. Add the flour and baking powder and mix well, then beat in the melted butter until the batter is smooth. Stir in the hazelnuts, then carefully fold in the apple. Pour the batter into the prepared cake tin and use a spatula to smooth over and flatten the surface. Now scatter over the reserved hazelnuts. Bake for 1 hour and 10 minutes, or until golden brown on top. Remove the cake fromoven and leave to cool in the tin. To make the cinnamon cream, whisk the ingredients together in a mixing bowl, using either a balloon whisk or an electric hand whisk, until the mixture is relatively stiff but still light and not overly dense. Serve the cake with a generous dollop of the cinnamon cream.

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3rd April 20193rd April 2019

Lots of Lovely Art workshop for children at Molly Meg

We’ve written about Lots of Lovely Art (or LOLA) before – the wonderful creative art boxes for children. This Easter sign up to their Fantastic Flowers workshop at family concept shop, Molly Meg. In the one-hour class, children aged 4+ are invited to get creative and have fun with three projects inspired by some of the box’s featured artists, Georgia O’Keefe, Andy Warhol and Marimekko. Do wear comfortable clothes that you don’t mind getting messy in.