Home Builder Developer - Interior Renovation and Design

Bjarke Ingels, Danish founder of the architectural practice BIG (short for Bjarke Ingels Group), bridles at the suggestion that he is megalomaniac. I made a mistake at the dawn of time when I named my office BIG, he tells me, speaking from the converted car ferry in the port of Copenhagen that is one of his homes. It felt sweet when we started off in Denmark. Now it means we always get re-interpreted as megalomaniacs.

Well yes, maybe, but his new book, Formgiving: An Architectural Future History, does place the work of his practice in the context of a timeline of the creation of absolutely everything that goes back via the evolution of life to the big bang. It also introduces the concept of Masterplanet, whereby the Earth and its climate would be put to rights by the sort of plans that architects sometimes prepare for neighbourhoods and large-scale development proposals. The magic of form the architectural technique whereby BIG can, for example, give a twisting shape to an art gallery outside Oslo or a tower in Vancouver is in this view continuous with problem-solving for a whole planet.

Its partly a guy thing. Ingels, 46, doesnt seem troubled by the striking gendering of Masterplanet. The practices website address is Big.dk, which, however droll it might have seemed 15 years ago, has surely outlived its welcome. But he has his answers to the accusations of megalomania: You can dismiss the desire to deal with a very important issue or you should believe that youre going to intervene for the better.

Its fair to say that Ingels is a can-do sort of person. BIG is now big, with more than 550 employees in its offices in Copenhagen, New York, London and Barcelona. He has made his name with monuments for the Instagram age CopenHill, the Copenhagen power plant that is also a ski slope; or West 57th, his courtscraper in Manhattan a giant off-kilter pyramid punctured by a garden courtyard. He has designed (with Thomas Heatherwick) headquarters for the mighty Google, now rising in London and in Silicon Valley.

In BIGs world you can have it all. Yes is more, to quote the title of one of his earlier books. Opposites can be reconciled into what Ingels calls oxymorons or bigamy. You can have a power plant and a ski slope. The courtscraper, says the official blurb, combines the density of the American skyscraper with the communal space of the European courtyard. He speaks of pragmatic utopianism and hedonistic sustainability, which means you can save the planet and still have a good time. The Dryline, his plan for combining flood defences for lower Manhattan with public parks, encapsulates the idea.

Ingels cites as inspiration The Rational Optimist (2010) by Matt Ridley, the British viscount, self-described climate lukewarmer and former chairman of Northern Rock bank. I recognise a lot of the vibe, says Ingels of Ridleys book. He makes the claim that optimism is not a question of naivety. Its empirical. You can see that things tend to evolve in a good way. And this is part of the thesis of Formgiving. There is an ever-increasing ability to collaborate, of doing better and better. Where others get nervous about such things as artificial intelligence and the replacement of crafts by robots, Ingels gets excited.

In the world of architecture, Ingels presents a challenge. Hes prolific, hes rich. He turns the cherished tropes and dreams of other architects into smash hits. He makes the visionary physical. For the Burning Man festival he designed a structure in the shape of a giant orb. His Oceanix project proposes a floating city. His Google Bay View building puts a multiplicity of human life under a great oversailing roof. All seem to owe something to visionary architects of the past respectively to the 18th-century French revolutionary tienne-Louis Boulle, to the 1960s Japanese metabolist group, to the 20th-century American Buckminster Fuller.

Most obviously he has learned from his former employer Rem Koolhaas, with whom he shares a love of crashing together seemingly incongruous uses and forms a WTF fondness for puncturing piety and pomposity, an attitude that says lets embrace the modern world for all it is, in all its extremes of beauty and ugliness. Like Koolhaas, Ingels has a prodigious publishing habit: Formgiving is the last of a trilogy.

Koolhaas, however, comes with a certain amount of existential angst, which Ingels discards, which doubtless makes him more attractive to clients. He more generally dispenses with the difficulties and complexities and sometimes the social issues over which other architects agonise. He rinses out the problematic. Instead, he offers his oxymoron, which makes complexity and contradiction into a charmingly consumable package. Which raises a question: are the angst and scruples of other architects actually important, or should we just accept Ingelss invitation to lie back and enjoy the ride?

This is partly about detail. His projects tend to come with loud clunks, where his ambitions of his ideas and shapes are imperfectly reconciled. In those of his works that I have seen, there is often a lack of joy in the way cladding panels and Planar glazing enable the transition from computer screen to physical reality. At the 8 House, an early housing project on the outskirts of Copenhagen, many of its residents have furnished their flats and terraces from Ikea: combined with BIGs construction they conjure a dizzying feeling of just-stuck-togetherness, of coalitions of convenience between processed sheet materials.

Its also about politics. In January, Ingels met Brazils forest-wrecking, racist and homophobic president Jair Bolsonaro, in order to discuss a plan (as the countrys tourism minister put it) to change the face of tourism in Brazil. For this, Ingels was accused by a leading architecture critic of lacking a moral compass, and the controversy may have contributed to office space company WeWorks decision soon afterwards to cease employing Ingels as their chief architect. Id like to raise this with him, but the publicists for his book rule it out: there is no direct link to Formgiving with regard to politics, they say beforehand; please strike the question from the interview. Ingels, however, has previously expressed himself on the subject: criticisms of his Bolsonaro visit, he said, were an oversimplification of a complex world.

He also pushes back at critiques of detail. He cites his recent museum for the Audemars Piguet watch company, a grass-roofed spiral in the Swiss Jura. Its hard to complain about detail with that, he says. The 8 House was a very inexpensive project. It was finished in the middle of the biggest financial crisis in my lifetime. Every cost that could be reduced was reduced.

Its probably clear that Im what Lord Ridley might call a BIG-lukewarmer. I believe that much gets lost in Ingelss blithe renunciation of the complex and the particular. But those of us who would curl our lips and wrinkle our noses should answer his challenge. A project such as CopenHill makes a powerful and direct appeal to almost all the non-professionals who see it, as the Dryline in New York probably will. What can more fastidious beings offer to match them?

Continued here:
Bjarke Ingels: the BIG-time architect with designs on the entire planet - The Guardian

anchor

CAMH Research Centre, by KPMB with TreanorHL - Canadian Architect Award of Excellence winner.

Winners have been announced for the 53rd annual Canadian Architect Awards of Excellence. The awards are considered the highest recognition for Canadian architects and projects currently in the design and construction phases. This year 132 entries were submitted and reviewed by the jury.

The awards program shared that the entries themselves "show that Canadian architects are still amply producing innovative designs that are sensitive to their physical, social and environmental contexts."

View this year's winners in all five categories and select project images below.

2020 CANADIAN ARCHITECT AWARDS OF EXCELLENCE

2020 CANADIAN ARCHITECT AWARDS OF MERIT

2020 CANADIAN ARCHITECT STUDENT AWARDS OF EXCELLENCE

2020 CANADIAN ARCHITECTPHOTO AWARDS OF EXCELLENCE

2020 CANADIAN ARCHITECTPHOTO AWARDS OF MERIT

Award-winning projects will be featured in the December issue of Canadian Architect. To learn more about the winners and their projects click here.

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The annual Canadian Architect Awards of Excellence highlights its 2020 winners - Archinect

MONROE, CT Michelle Kaplin was on remote leave as a nurse at ACES Wintergreen Interdistrict Magnet School last the spring, when the COVID-19 pandemic forced educators to close the building. But, rather than stay home, Kaplin chose to join her colleagues on the front lines, taking a job at The Watermark, a continuing care retirement community in Bridgeport.

Kaplin, who now works at David Wooster Middle School in Stratford, served on the medical team at The Watermark, treating residents on the COVID floor, and witnessed the heartbreak of seeing some patients dying alone.

I just felt this calling to go, Kaplin said. I just couldnt imagine sitting home. Its not about the money, its about helping people. I needed to do something about the pandemic.

Kaplin, who lives in Monroe, was recently recognized as aHeartthrob Hero in MDF Painting and Power Washings campaign to show appreciation to health care workers during the pandemic.

Michelle Kaplin, an R.N., at work at The Watermark in Bridgeport.

We all know someone who is working at the front lines of this virus, the company website says. Whether it is a friend, family member, or significant other, those who work in healthcare are appreciated now more than ever. To say thank you to those who are working for us, were going to work for you.Nominate the frontline hero that you love for a chance to win them painting services worth up to $6,000. Say thank you by giving them one less thing to worry about.

The campaign is named after the Sherwin Williams paint shade, Heartthrob, which inspired it.

Kaplin said she doesnt have a clue who nominated her, adding she was surprised to receive a phone call about being awarded the free painting services from the Heartthrob for Heroes campaign.

I thought it was a spam call and asked her to stop calling me, she said of the woman from MDF. Then she emailed me to say, were not kidding.'

Painters from MDF Painting & Power Washing, from left, Renaldo Lima, Alceu Neto and Edson Santos, carry supplies into Michelle Kaplins house in Monroe Thursday.

Who would nominate me? Im a nurse from Monroe and youre in Greenwich, Kaplin thought. Its nice. Im just shocked. There were a lot of doctors and nurses in the ICU doing far more than I was. I was just doing my part in COVID land.

On Thursday morning, a white van pulled up on Kaplins street and three painters from MDF emerged, carrying painting supplies.I cant believe theyre here and Im not paying for this, she said.

She expressed her appreciation to whomever nominated her, calling the painting services a nice gift.

Perfect timing

Kaplin and her wife, Karen Widdows, recently paid Basement Systems to waterproof the walls and floors of their basement, and install a drainage system with a sump pump, after two flooding incidents at their Monroe home.

The guy left and said we should really get it painted. We couldnt afford that, Kaplin said. I got cancer in December. My son was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes in February. Then COVID struck. No one was thinking about paint.

Because of the pandemic, Kaplin said her radiation treatment was delayed by eight months and her first session was in August.

Michelle Kaplin, right, with, from left, her son Shalom, 14, daughter, Emma, 10, and wife, Karen Widdows.

Kaplin and Widdows have a daughter, Emma, 10, and their 14-year-old sons name is Shalom. Kaplin also has another daughter, Hadassah, 16, who lives with her grandmother, while going to high school.

Emmas bedroom will be painted a blue color called Wave Top.

Aside from type 1 diabetes, Shalom has Autism and a broken femur. The basement is set up like an apartment for him with a medical bed. His area will be painted a green color called Fern Canopy.

Hes into Army and nature now, Kaplin explained.

While working in the living room, Widdows, a human resources professional, was seated on the couch with her laptop and phone in her lap.

I think its fantastic, she said of her wife being honored as a Heartthrob Hero. She deserves it. She worked hard. She has a good heart. When this was happening, she wanted to help out.

Widdows said Kaplin would come home from work and sanitize herself inside their garage, before entering the house to make sure no one would get sick.

I would spray Lysol and get undressed in the garage, Kaplin said. I kept my work clothes in there.

I would bring her clothes and she would come in and shower, Widdows said. The next day, we would take the work clothes from the garage.

While treating patients, Kaplin said she never worried about catching COVID. One time, a woman with the disease checked in and was within inches of Kaplin, who said she was fortunate not to contract it.

She said she probably received 12 COVID tests, while working at The Watermark, where staffers were tested weekly.

Sad goodbyes

The Watermark did not want to risk spreading the coronavirus by having too many visitors coming and going, so Kaplin said families could not visit their loved-ones, until they were at deaths door.

She said family members would either arrange for a video call or sit on a chair in the parking lot to look at their loved-one from their window, while talking on the phone.

When patients were near death, relatives could be suited up with protective gear and go in the room to hold their hand.

Kaplin said some relatives declined to visit, saying that was not how they wanted to remember their loved-one. She remembers talking to a woman, who was incapacitated, telling her that her family loved her, wanted to be there, but it was hard. Kaplan hoped the woman could hear her and feel comforted.

People were scared to go in there. The longterm care facilities were hit the hardest, Kaplin said. Thats why we went into nursing. It was a calling. I was a school nurse on leave and I just couldnt fathom sitting idly by, while people were dying.

Kaplin said people at The Watermark were kind to the medical staff, providing lunches for them every day, adding, those three months were perhaps the most rewarding of my career.

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Hero of the pandemic: Diagnosed with cancer, a Monroe nurse answers the call - The Monroe Sun

Nikola Badger Is Dead Before It Was Even Born

Nikola had conceptualized the truck, but it was to be brought to life by General Motors.

Earlier this week, Nikolas meeting with the auto giant resulted in a new Memorandum of Understanding that had no mention of GMs commitment to build and validate the Badger. The company said in a statement, As previously announced, the Nikola Badger program was dependent on an OEM partnership.", "Nikola will refund all previously submitted order deposits for the Nikola Badger,". Well, its confirmed that Nikola doesnt want to partner with any other automaker.

Back in June when the company revealed details about the Badger, it also said that the truck would debut at the Nikola World 2020 event that was to be held on December 3 and 4, 2020. Here we are on D-Day, mourning for the truck instead of being all excited about its launch. Well, some things are not meant to happen.

Did you have your hopes pinned on the Nikola Badger and were looking forward to its debut, or did you think it was too good to be real? Also, hypothetically speaking, if Nikola went scouting for a new partner-automaker, who would its first choice be to build the Badger? Share your thoughts with us in the comments section below.

Source: Cnet

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The truck had a lot of potential, but GMs move to back out of building it has resulted in its death - Top Speed

National Review

As Democratic Senate Candidate Raphael Warnock tries to assure Jews that he is a friend, new video has surfaced of the Georgia Baptist preacher again linking Israel to apartheid.In the video, purportedly from a Palm Sunday sermon in 2015, Warnock also likened Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to former segregationist Alabama governor George Wallace.Warnock made the statements shortly after the 2015 Israeli elections, won by Netanyahus Likud Party. On the final day of the campaign, Netanyahu announced his opposition to a two-state solution between Israel and Palestine, walking back previous support.In his sermon, Warnock described the Israeli and Palestinian region as a land of violence and bloodshed and occupation, and said he heard a very clever politician running for re-election as prime minister suddenly announce No two-state solution, he said.Thats tantamount to saying, occupation today, occupation tomorrow, occupation forever, Warnock said, using phrasing mirroring Wallaces racist call in 1963 for segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.> During his 2015 Palm Sunday Sermon, Dem. Raphael Warnock explicitly called Israel an Apartheid State, describing it as a land of violence and bloodshed and occupation and he referred to Israeli leaders as clever politicians, and accusing them of being racist and vicious. pic.twitter.com/jfdkOUzung> > -- Caleb Hull (@CalebJHull) December 10, 2020Warnock urges his parishioners to consider the Middle East demographics. There are more Arabs in the region that Jews, he said. Without a two-state solution, the Jews in the region would need undemocratic apartheid-like policies, or risk being overwhelmed at the polls.The state will either be Jewish, or it will be a democracy, he said. It cant be both if you dont have a Palestinian state. You would have to have apartheid in Israel that denies other citizens, sisters and brothers, citizenship.Warnock also took aim at a statement Netanyahu made in the lead-up to voting when he warned that his right-wing government was in danger, and urged his supporters to vote because Arab voters are heading to polling stations in droves. Warnock described Netanyahus statement as kind of racist and vicious language.Warnock is one of two Democrats in Georgia trying to defeat Republican incumbents in a January runoff election. If both win, Democrats will take over the Senate.This wasnt the first time Warnocks past statements about Israel have come back to haunt him. Last year, Warnock was part of a group of African American church leaders who toured the Middle East and released a statement accusing Israel of engaging in tactics similar to those previously used by apartheid South Africa and communist East Germany patterns that seem to have been borrowed and perfected from other previous repressive regimes.In a 2018 sermon, after a Hamas terrorists stormed the Israeli border, Warnock accused the Israeli government of shooting down unarmed Palestinian sisters and brothers like birds of prey like they dont matter at all.As a Senate candidate, Warnock has attempted to walk back his apartheid allegations, and released a position paper asserting that he is a friend of Israel.I will stand with Israel and the Jewish people to protect their interests, advocate for the human dignity of the Palestinian people and their position in the world, promote peace, and ensure the U.S. remains economically strong, safe, and secure.

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Michael Hughes Arrested After Shots Fired In Direction Of Several Police Officers In Fountain - Yahoo News

A hometown bar. A living room. A non-French French restaurant. A place for long conversations. These are just some of the words that Mona Poor-Olschafskie and Christian Perkins use to talk about Fin Du Monde, their just-opened restaurant and bar at 38 Driggs Avenue, at Sutton Street, in Greenpoint. The duos vision for the restaurant is multifaceted, but their first priority is to create a place where residents in the neighborhood feel welcome.

We wanted to open a place that we would want to go to ourselves, says Poor-Olschafskie, a hospitality industry veteran who lives a few blocks from Fin Du Monde. A place that was accessible, not a place with a huge super-expensive wine list or lots of ingredients nobody knows how to pronounce.

To note, neither Poor-Olschafskie nor Perkins have much experience working in those types of restaurants, despite each having been in the hospitality industry for more than a decade. Before opening Fin Du Monde, Poor-Olschafskie worked at several of the citys leading breweries, including Threes Brewing in Gowanus and two spots in Carroll Gardens, Other Half Brewing and Folksbier Brauerei. Beers from her old haunts have made their way to the menu at Fin Du Monde, which in addition to a few bottles of wine serves a lager from Folksbier and an IPA from Threes on tap.

The restaurants food menu is loosely French-American but strictly local, a pairing that Perkins picked up while working for restaurateur Andrew Tarlow at hit restaurants such as Diner, Marlow and Sons, and its offshoot butcher shop Marlow and Daughters. Most recently, he helped open Annicka, a brief but well-received Greenpoint restaurant that focused on seasonal food and local craft beer. Theres a similar ethos behind Fin Du Monde, according to Perkins, which aims to serve locally sourced produce and meat without charging more than $30 for an entree, which isnt uncommon at many upscale restaurants in the city.

Its a tightrope walk, but its possible, Perkins says. You have to create a very, very tight menu that isnt reliant upon luxury ingredients.

All told, the food menu at Fin Du Monde is 10 items long, desserts included, and Perkins keeps things simple. The restaurant serves a big French salad topped with fried walnuts and funky Roquefort cheese ($13). Further down the menu, theres a roast chicken and pepper risotto ($22), along with a braised boeuf bourguignon that comes with buttery noodles ($24). These dishes are meant to invoke a French bistro or a Parisian natural wine bar but only sort of.

Its a non-French French place, Perkins says. It has a French name, but we like the goofiness of it.

Like countless other restaurant owners, Poor-Olschafskie and Perkins had been planning Fin Du Monde long before the start of the pandemic in March. In July 2019, the duo launched a GoFundMe campaign to help open the restaurant and assist with construction costs. More than a year and nearly $20,000 in donations later, Perkins likened Fin Du Monde to a train rolling down the tracks that couldnt be stopped. We had no choice but to keep going, and we wouldnt have wanted to stop anyway, he says.

As for the name translated as end of the world in French Perkins says the restaurant is the kind of place you want to be at the end of the world, which he quickly adds is, thankfully, not right now.

Fin Du Monde has roughly 20 seats for outdoor dining and six seats inside at the state-mandated 25 percent capacity. The restaurant is open Tuesday to Saturday from 5 to 10 p.m. and closed Sunday through Monday.

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Greenpoints Newest Restaurant, Fin Du Monde, Brings a Touch of France With Craft Beer - Eater NY

Mina Corpuz|The Enterprise

BROCKTON Rudy Alves is tapping into his artistic background and sharing Cape Verdean culture at his new restaurant Khalil's Kitchen.

"When you come here you're going to get a good meal and enjoy the vibes," he said about the eatery, which opened about a month ago at 808 Main St.

The restaurant serves up soul food with a Caribbean twist, Alves said.The menu includes burgers, fries topped with protein, wings, smoothies and more. Some of the dishes featurelobster, like the mac and cheese.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, he closed his T-shirt business andbegan cooking at home to make money for his family. That turned into a business.

While cooking at home, Alves has been able to see his three children more. They were able to be around, which was not possible in his other jobs, like T-shirt printing and tattooing.

His middle child, Khalil, is the restaurant's namesake. At home, Khalil would come around the kitchen and Alves said he had the idea to call the kitchen his.

Since the business opened, his 5-year-old daughterChloe, 2-year-old Khalil and 9-month old son London have visited the restaurant.

Alves said he never imagined that he would open a restaurant. But everything happened so fast, starting out as a vision that he was able to manifest.

"I wake up ready to come here," he said. "I doesn't feel like a job."

Alves found the Main Street space for his restaurant in the summer and worked on it, drawing on his construction background and designing the inside.

The pandemic has been a challenging time for businesses and restaurants. But Alves said that being able to open during this time was motivational.

"If I can do all of this during this time, I can grow and more," he said.

Alves learned to cook from his mother, who wished she had a daughter. She would ask him to cook rice after school so that it would be ready when she came home from work.

Little by little, he would ask her more about cooking. She taught him Cape Verdean dishes that Alves has been able to put his own spin on and blend with other food styles.

He said she she is proud to see him open the business and do something he loves.

Now that Alves has a commercial kitchen, he said there are endless possibilities for what he can cook. He likes to create his own sauces and find his own flavors.

"I'm always trying to create things and experiment," Alves said.

Looking ahead, hewants to share his newfound love for the kitchen. Alves shares pictures on his Instagram @khalils_kitchen_ and plans to release videos that provide a behind the scenes look at the restaurant.

Opening up a restaurant in Boston is a future goal, he said.

Staff writer Mina Corpuz can be reached by email at mcorpuz@enterprisenews.com. You can follow her on Twitter @mlcorpuz.Support local journalism by purchasing a digital or print subscription to The Enterprise today.

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Here's what's on the menu at new Brockton Caribbean soul food restaurant - Enterprise News

Name of business: Salt & Pepper Taqueria

Type of business: Mexican restaurant

Location: 2901 N. Tegner Rd. in Turlock

Hours: 10 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. Monday through Saturday

Contact information: 209-427-2946

Specialty: Quesa-Birria

History of business:

When Salt & Pepper Taqueria owner Judyth Avila signed the lease for her catering companys first brick-and-mortar location in Turlock last fall, she had no idea she would be opening a restaurant in the middle of a global pandemic.

Still, despite countless hurdles along the way, the restaurant was finally able to open its doors on November 11 and has been a hit with the community in the weeks since.

I know its one more Mexican restaurant here, but I think were a little different, Avila said.

The food at Salt & Pepper, like the restaurants name, is simple, with no additives and natural ingredients. Since the restaurant opened last month, social media and Facebook pages like Turlock To Go have been flooded with mouthwatering photos of the Salt & Pepper menu, which includes tacos, quesadillas, burritos, tortas and salads made with a variety of freshly-cooked meats.

The Quesa-Birria is a crowd favorite, offering the melted, gooey flavor of a quesadilla along with the savory meat stew known as birria. Other menu items can be ordered with birria as well, and Salt & Pepper also offers keto tacos with a cheesy shell for those who are counting their carbs.

Before the pandemic began, Avila was working on opening the new Turlock location and also opened a second restaurant in Patterson in February. They were meant to be an extension of the catering company she has operated for the last eight years, but now supplement the income she has lost as events are cancelled due to COVID-19.

After signing the lease for the Turlock location in November 2019, there was more construction to be done on the kitchen which continued during the pandemic. Avila said she may have cancelled the project had it not been for the building owner granting her free rent during the brunt of the first shutdown.

Now that Salt & Pepper is open in Turlock, the restaurant was able to offer a few weeks of in-person dining before the latest stay-at-home order forced them to offer takeout, curbside pickup and delivery only.

Despite the setbacks, Avila encourages others hoping to open their own restaurant to do so even though it may seem scary during these ever-changing times.

Just work every day and do your best, even if you dont know whats going to happen, Avila said. Its different times now, but Im really enjoying doing this. I don't see it as a job or money, because of course I need money, but I love the people and the people seem to like what I do.

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New Turlock restaurant thriving in face of pandemic - The Turlock Journal

ST. PETERSBURG Marlin Kaplan can picture it now.

Were standing in the middle of the first garden room, he says, gesturing to a large patch of grass.

Right here, on an empty plot of dirt, will be the main dining room a covered area tucked beneath a pergola-like structure, surrounded by lush plants and landscaping.

Over there, a smaller space abutting a parking lot, will be a circular patio, flanked by a towering live oak tree and decorated with bright lights the kind that imbue a holiday-any-time-of-year feel.

In the middle of it all will be a large fountain and a walkway. And all the way in the back, a secluded dining area shrouded by curtains will offer an intimate setting for private gatherings.

Sure, there are some things happening inside, too. But thats not the point. Kaplan is determined to open what he believes will be the restaurant of the future, where outdoor seating rather than indoor dining will be the highlight.

But right now its just a patch of grass.

Two Graces, which will open early next year, is poised to be one of 2021s most interesting and ambitious restaurant debuts. The space, next to Freefall Theatre in St. Petersburg, takes over the former Reading Room building at 6001 Central Ave., which closed in 2019.

Kevin Lane, Lauren Macellaro, Jessika Palombo and Kevin Damphouse together ran the restaurant, which opened in early 2017 and attracted widespread acclaim. It earned Macellaro, the executive chef, a semifinalist nod for the James Beard Foundations Best Chef: South award. The Reading Rooms closure was a loss for both the neighborhood and the Tampa Bay areas culinary community.

Earlier this year, Lane (a co-founder of Freefall Theatre) approached Kaplan, who together with partner Lisa Masterson runs the fine dining restaurant Grace in Pass-a-Grille as well as the gourmet goods-to-go shop Gracie Pasta & Provisions. Kaplan had dined at the Reading Room, and saw potential for a new restaurant in the space. But it was the yawning lot of grass a roughly 1,500-square-foot space abutting the theaters main building and parking lot that really piqued his interest.

Since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, Kaplan says hes noticed a big uptick in diners interested in eating outside, likely in response to reports from health experts, who have repeatedly stressed the inherent risks of indoor dining.

Tampa Bays approach to outdoor dining during the pandemic hasnt mirrored that of other cities. While other places have embraced the parklet boom erecting standalone dining partitions outside of restaurants and in parking spaces restaurants here have been more hesitant to the trend. At Grace, Kaplan has been able to take over a few parking spots and expand the outdoor space, but says its nowhere near the kind of business he can do inside. And while other parts of the country have banned indoor dining again amid a national spike in coronavirus cases, that hasnt happened in Florida at least not yet.

Still, Kaplan isnt holding his breath. Even though Gov. Ron DeSantis has repeatedly said otherwise, he doesnt trust that another restaurant shutdown isnt looming. After all, who knows what next year and a new presidential administration will bring?

I really feel like this is the future of dining with COVID, Kaplan said. The restaurant of the future is outdoors.

Since the Reading Rooms shutter, the Central Avenue space has remained vacant. In recent months, Kaplan employed local gardener Maggie Jensen to tend to the property and now the lush garden, once the highlight of Reading Rooms dining program, is once again thriving.

But the main attraction at Two Graces will be the entirely al fresco dining experience that can seat 100 people. The so-called garden rooms are essentially patio spaces divided with landscaping. The main covered space will seat roughly 48 people, and several smaller uncovered patio areas will dot the rest of the property.

Outdoor dining is less attractive during Tampa Bays sweltering summer months, but Kaplan says there are contingency plans for Floridas often unpredictable weather patterns: misters for the hot, balmy days and heat lamps for the odd evening where the temperature dips below 60 degrees.

Inside the restaurant, the space will seat an additional 50 people. Leather banquettes line the dining area, which faces a long bar with room for an additional 12 seats. Chairs are upholstered in bright-colored velvet and a colorful mural from New York illustrator Alli Arnold decorates a wall near the kitchen where a petite chefs counter provides a few extra spots for those looking to get a glimpse of the action.

Though specials will incorporate some of what the outdoor garden has to offer, unlike the restaurants predecessor, that wont be a focal point at Two Graces. Instead, Kaplan said, the menu will feature a New American spread that will be familiar to longtime regulars at his Pass-a-Grille restaurant. Starters include a crispy Brussels sprouts dish with citrus aioli ($16), a baked burrata served with pomegranate seeds and baguette ($22), and mussels with white wine and grilled ciabatta ($15).

The restaurant inherited a large wood-burning oven, from which the likes of wood-fired pizzas will emerge. Some of the larger entrees include dishes like a roasted baby pumpkin filled with pumpkin risotto and topped with a Parmesan tuile ($26); a filet mignon with an herbed breadcrumb crust, artichoke, bacon and potato torte and demi-glace (market price); and pan-roasted sea scallops served with a crispy polenta cake, micro greens salad and a roasted beet sauce ($32).

Handmade pastas from Gracie Pasta & Provisions will be featured, including the Gracie Tagliatelle ($28) with short rib ragu and shaved truffles, and a linguine dish ($22) featuring a mushroom medley, goat cheese and herb butter. For dessert, there will be a blueberry lemon and lavender panna cotta ($8); honey almond cheesecake with amarena cherries ($8); and a triple chocolate brownie with salted caramel ice cream ($8).

Masterson is curating a wine list heavy on organic and biodynamic wines, and the cocktail menu will look to local flora and fauna for inspiration, with drinks named after local flowers.

Though a decent amount of construction and landscaping for the outdoor space remains to be done, Kaplan hopes to be open sometime in early January. He wont open without the outdoor space finished, he says.

After all, its kind of the whole point.

Link:
Could St. Petersburgs Two Graces be the restaurant of the future? - Tampa Bay Times

December 7, 2020 Restaurant/Bar News

Back in September, in the previous millennium, the folks behind Mitchel London Foods had secured their liquor license for a new restaurant in the Baked space at 279 Church, and had started construction on a full service restaurant.

They were cooking along when a fire started in the fourth-floor apartment on Feb. 15, doing minimal damage there but dousing the restaurant space and also damaging Lyons Den yoga studio (which is still operating online till studios can open, FYI). That set the schedule back, and then ran them right into covid.

Enter the pivot. What would have been (and will be eventually) a breakfast-till-late night establishment will now be an elevated grab-and-go, something closer to what the company a catering operation founded by Ed Kochs former chef at Gracie Mansion does already with their Dinner at Home program. They are also kind of famous for their crullers.

The new place is as of now unnamed, but should be open in about three weeks. The likely hours will be 8 to 8, and they are counting on locals to keep things going over the next months, fully aware that things are pretty quiet downtown. Once the world starts spinning again, they will revert to the original plan.

Pivoting is still a little bit dangerous without people going in to work in the morning, said Thomas Mikolasko, who will run the restaurant. But I liked this location to begin with and over the past five months, I really fell in love with it. I hope there are enough folks around to make it a go we dont need thousands, but we will need more than 20 people coming in each day.

More TK when they are up and running.

Read the original here:
Coming Soon: Dinners to go in the old Baked space - Tribeca Citizen