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Bill Prince, editor-in-chief Doubtless, it’s a bad idea to cast one’s mind back too often to those desultory days immediately post-Covid, but sometimes it can be a salutary exercise. I first met Phil Winser, co-founder of the Public House Group of hospitality outlets in early 2021, shortly after his return to London from New York, where he’d arrived in his early twenties with designs on the restaurant scene there. No pressure. Partnering with a schoolfriend, he swiftly launched a succession of scene-y dining rooms, later on parlaying a reputation for running low-fuss, high-quality operations into a highly successful private catering business. But now he was back, staring into the abyss of a catering industry decimated by stay-at-home orders, and barely kept afloat by Rishi Sunak’s Eat Out to Help Out campaign. The fact that we met in Chelsea’s Cafe Colbert, recently reclaimed from its visionary operator Jeremy King by new owners, offered cold comfort. Whatever Winser did next was going to be a trial. And yet… Thanks to that sense of industry and derring-do that seems to come with the mail in NYC, Winser and his business partners shortly thereafter established a bridgehead in Notting Hill with a shrewd rehab of a neighbourhood pub, The Pelican, and followed it with another upscale gastro pub fit-out at The Bull in Charlbury. No matter that Jeremy Clarkson mithered that he’d rather eat a curry in the Cotswolds than another grass-fed burger, it once again proved Winser – responsible for design – as a master of the modish drinking den/dining room mash-up. Since then the Public House group has struck again, rehabilitating a boozer in Maida Vale long popular with musicians (Maida Vale Studios is just around the corner) that now serves as a destination bar in an area otherwise low on glamour.
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Now comes the Fat Badger, a first-floor dining room in Notting Hill that has been eating up the same plaudits as its predecessors, and proves once more that in the hospitality business, if you truly build it they will come (good luck landing a table anytime soon). Few post-Covid operators have carved out a clutch of must-do venues as swiftly as Winser et al, which is why we asked writer Tom Howells to investigate the secret sauce that has allowed the Public House group to grow and grow (next up: The Hart, on the corner of Chiltern and Blandford Streets, promising to breathe life back into Marylebone that’s much needed after the demise of the Firehouse earlier this year). Full disclosure: I’ve still to make it to the Fat Badger, but I – like you – can take a virtual tour in Tom’s article below. In other news, this week we announced the results of our annual Smart Space Awards, a place where technology, style and an increased element of mobility all meet in the celebration of innovative design that can improve everyday life, and Craig McLean conducts a rare interview with Thom Yorke about his latest venture into the art world alongside longtime collaborator Stanley Donwood.
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From The Fat Badger to The Bull: How Public House is redefining the British pub |
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It may be Notting Hill’s hottest dining ticket, but you’d be forgiven for ambling straight past the Fat Badger. An unprepossessing door down a Portobello side street hides what is perhaps the most garlanded opening yet from Public House: the newest sibling of artfully scuffed contemporary gastropubs The Pelican in Westbourne Park, The Hero in Maida Vale, and Cotswold bolthole The Bull in Charlbury. The group, inaugurated in 2022 with the opening of The Pelican, is the brainchild of Philip Winser and James Gummer. All their pubs are laughably beautiful: urban-pastoral amalgams of muted minimalism and an elegant harnessing of original and curated features. As for the food, seasonality and sustainability are paramount. The menus are as ascetic in concept as they are deft in practice, offering no more detail than things like ‘fresh cheese, pea’ or ‘cod’s cheek, curry’ – which would seem affected if the results weren’t so delicious. As Public House sharpens its vision of the modern gastropub, Tom Howells traces the story so far — and the chapters still to come. the people behind the magic.
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How Bureau Batek transformed the runway show |
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Amid the heady hedonism of the 1990s, fashion shows transcended from industry showcases to cultural touchstones. Designers became celebrities. Models became super. Fashion houses became global luxury brands. The fashion show, catapulted into mainstream culture thanks to the rapid advance of technology, was a powerful catalyst for image creation and dissemination. Against this backdrop, Alexandre de Betak founded his Paris-based production company Bureau Betak. Over three decades, he revolutionised the very concept of fashion communication. Today, Bureau Betak employs around 100 people across four offices in Paris, New York, LA and Shanghai. It is best known for the production of fashion shows for some of the world’s biggest brands, but its creative tentacles are far-reaching across events of all shapes and sizes, from brand activations and parties to exhibitions and keynote speeches. ‘We are like the fairies in the background,’ says Guillaume Troncy, who alongside Bénédicte Fournier Beckmann and Paco Raynal, now co-helms the company. ‘We make ideas happen.’ Hugo Macdonald meets the people behind the magic. |
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Thom Yorke and Stanley Donwood on Radiohead’s legendary album art
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Thirty years into a creative partnership that began when they co-created the cover art for Radiohead’s 1995 album The Bends (they snuck into Oxford’s John Radcliffe Hospital to photograph an iron lung but ended up snapping a resuscitation dummy), singer-songwriter Thom Yorke and his visual artist collaborator Stanley Donwood are still making each other laugh. Still making each other think. Still making each other step out of their comfort zone. And that includes today, with the pair yielding to something on which they’re hardly super-keen: an interview. Separately? Not likely, mate. Together, exclusively for Wallpaper*? Oh, go on then… Craig McLean speaks with Yorke and Donwood as their work goes on show in a capacious, colourful and brilliant new exhibition at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. Visit the show for the sturm und drang of impending doom rendered on album sleeves, the swashing dollops of tempera and gouache paints liberally applied to Covid-era canvases, and the black-spider scribbles in notebooks belonging to one of our greatest and most confounding lyricists. Read McLean’s interview for a treat of another order. |
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