FTWeekendMagazineJune112022

JUNE 11/12 2022 Who
wants
to own
a hotel
now?







June 11/12 2022

FEATURES

18.

Checking in
A little-known, fast-growing
American hotel chain aims to
change the future of the industry.
Can it? By Brooke Masters

24.

American odyssey
What photographer Jim Dow’s road
epic captures about the US

36.

▶ Positively medieval

An ancient manuscript yields
delectable secrets. By Polly Russell

ALBA YRUELA

INTELLECT 14 Simon Kuper APPETITES WIT& WISDOM
Sport’s meritocracy vs
9 Tim Harford politics’ chumocracy 33 Tim Hayward 44 Robert Shrimsley
Learning to think Discoveries from a funky cellar The key to happiness: effective
requires the heart 16 Gillian Tett advance planning
The Tao of train travel 34 Recipe
10 Leo Lewis Spaghetti vongole 45 Games
Our household is 46 The Questionnaire
hopelessly deadlocked 41 Jancis Robinson
Cinemas paradiso Edward Carey, author and artist
12 Gallery
Gareth McConnell’s flowers

Issue number 975 • Online ft.com/magazine • FT Weekend Magazine is printed by the Walstead Group in the UK and Marginalia by ON THE COVER
published by The Financial Times Ltd, Bracken House, 1 Friday Street, London EC4M 9BT © The Financial Times Ltd 2022 Nadine Redlich Illustration by Lisa Sheehan
No part of this magazine may be reproduced in any form without the prior express permission of the publisher
Publishing: Daphne Kovacs, head of advertising, FT Weekend Magazine – [email protected] @FTMag
Production: Danny Macklin, advertising production – [email protected] or [email protected]
5
FT.COM/MAGAZINE JUNE 11/12 2022

Letters

Fine dining’s reckoning We all need to move more and ▶ JUNE 4/5 by increasing their electrification
somehow mimic what our ancestors Copenhagen’s culinary demons with safer design and managing
by Imogen West-Knights did to promote better health. The congestion through pricing. All
I had wanted to go to Noma for chair was first recorded about TO CONTRIBUTE means of transport have a place
years. During Covid times, they 3,000BC when people were much You can comment on our articles online in providing mobility for certain
pretty much fired their entire smaller and lighter, and had a life or email [email protected]. purposes at the right place and time.
“family” with little notice. A lot of expectancy of perhaps 35 years. Please include a daytime telephone
poorly paid young people with no They sat in them not to work, more number and full address (not for Increase of personal and freight
savings whose identity was built likely to rest briefly. Yet somehow publication). Letters may be edited. mobility is a condition for increased
around the prestige of Noma got this simple object has morphed prosperity. Spatial monopolies
broken that day. into the accepted default postural are only broken by improving
solution for the human race. transport. If we reduce mobility,
The email I got about it was StevieD123 via FT.com we fall prey to monopolistic
such a load of PR waffle that any employers, shopkeepers or
half-intelligent person could read Nitrous oxide, madness and landlords. That was the condition
between the lines and see what Roget’s Thesaurus in the Middle Ages and it only
they really thought of their staff. improved with industrialisation
I’m not interested in going there by Thomas W Hodgkinson and more effective transport.
any more, especially after reading An excellent piece with a splendid Marcial Echenique,
this article. cartoon to illustrate Humphry University of Cambridge
AndyKaufmann via FT.com Davy’s loss of “all connection with
external things” following his Can augmented reality take off
My experiences as a kitchen experiments with nitrous oxide. where VR has failed?
seasonal worker in Cornwall years
ago – long hours, poor or illegal I recall a master at school telling by Tim Bradshaw
pay rates, abusive conditions – us about Davy and the clerihew: We live in a world of too many
are encapsulated by the memory people, too much carbon. Tech such
of the waiter who regularly, with Sir Humphrey Davy as virtual reality can help people
unanimous kitchen staff approval, Abominated gravy to experience things that would
spat on the restaurant owner’s He lived in the odium otherwise not be affordable, either
evening meal before serving it. Of having discovered sodium for them or for the planet.
I doubt much has changed. Alastair Conan, Coulsdon
RB, Cornwall So bring it on, these snap glasses
Even when you do succeed, sound cool!
This is an important story sometimes it pays to try again Secret Lemonade Drinker
especially for all of us “foodie” via FT.com
tourists and champions of work by Tim Harford
of chefs. Tim Harford’s piece brought to Salad cream days (May 28/29)
@om via Twitter mind music producer Jim Steinman
(of Bat Out of Hell fame), who after by Tim Hayward
The best chair for work might not a successful take would say, “That I love you, Tim Hayward. Your
be the one you think was perfect. Let’s do it again.” articles are informed, dogmatic,
John Kelly, Little Raveley full of peppy joie de vivre.
by Harriet Fitch-Little
Sitting in a chair is a learnt The cheap, green, low-tech My prawn cocktail (cold water
behaviour and thus probably solution for the world’s megacities prawns only) has been transformed
unnatural for human beings. according to your strictures by the
This is why younger kids will do by Simon Kuper use of home-made salad cream
anything but sit in them properly. I agree that cars pollute, generate made using a small springy whisk.
So all chairs challenge human congestion and cause accidents but
musculoskeletal behavioural they increase personal mobility By the way, I was reliably told
norms. Mind you, so does spending enormously, which leads to by the local postman that Madame
40+ hours a week at a desk. increased prosperity. The solution Cradock could not make a decent
is not to abolish cars or lorries, but cup of tea. Tea gown? I’m sure you
to make them less contaminant wear it well.
Yvonne Bristow, Carnyorth

Quiz answers
The link was nouns in Hamlet’s “To be or not to be” soliloquy
1. The Finkler Question 2. Mind 3. Red Arrows
4. John Fortune 5. Red Sea 6. The Troubles 7. Heartache
8. Rub(-a-Dub-Dub) 9. Death Valley, California
10. Calamity Jane
Picture quiz
Enda Kenny + Ruth Rogers = Kenny Rogers
Did you know FT Weekend has a podcast? We explore today’s
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live a good life. Join us for inspiring conversations, in-depth
storytelling, a bit of escapism and a lot of fun. Search
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6 FT.COM/MAGAZINE JUNE 11/12 2022





IntellectInside:Whatpoliticscanlearnfromelitefootballp14

Undercover Economist

TIM HARFORD
Intellectual virtues to help
sharpenyour thinking skills

What does it mean to “learn how to think”? Is it a matter of
learning some intellectual skills such as fluent reading, logic and
clear expression? Does it require familiarity with some canonical
texts or historical facts? Perhaps it’s all about correcting certain
biases that cloud our judgment?

I recently read a thought-provoking essay by the psychologist
Barry Schwartz, best known for his book The Paradox of Choice.
Writing a few years ago in The Chronicle of Higher Education,
Schwartz argued that one of the goals of a university education,
especially a liberal arts education, is to teach students how to
think. The trouble is, said Schwartz, “nobody really knows what
that means”.

Schwartz proposes his own ideas. He is less interested in cogni-
tive skills than in intellectual virtues. “All the traits I will discuss
have a fundamental moral dimension,” he says, before setting
out the case for nine virtues: love of truth; honesty about one’s
own failings; fair-mindedness; humility and a willingness to seek
help; perseverance; courage; good listening; perspective-taking
and empathy; and, finally, wisdom – the word Schwartz uses to
describe not taking any of these other virtues to excess.

One only has to flip the list to see Schwartz’s point. Imagine
a person who is hugely knowledgeable and brilliantly rational,
yet who falls short on these virtues, being indifferent to truth,
in denial about their own errors, prejudiced, arrogant, easily ▶

FT.COM/MAGAZINE JUNE 11/12 2022 ILLUSTRATION BY GUILLEM CASASÚS 9

Intellect Notes from the Cutting Edge

◀ discouraged, cowardly, dismissive, narcissistic and prone to LEO LEWIS
every kind of excess. Could such a person really be described as I regret toinform youthat
knowing how to think? They would certainly not be the kind of thefamilygames debate is
person you’d want to put in charge of anything. still a stalemate

“My list was meant to start the conversation, not end it,” At the end of this month, house- Japan supplies have thus been
Schwartz told me. So I sent his list to some people I respect, both hold negotiations over buying a unusually thin and, since the start of
in and adjacent to academia, to see what they made of it. The reac- PlayStation 5 will enter their 600th the year, there have only been three
tion was much the same as mine: almost everyone liked the idea day of deadlock. Arrival at this mile- weeks where Sony sold more than
of intellectual virtues, and almost everyone had their own ideas stone may well bring all parties back 30,000 units here. In one extraor-
about what was missing. to the table, but a breakthrough still dinary week in May, Sony sold only
feels a long way off. 2,693 PS5s in Japan – an indication,
The Cambridge statistician Sir David Spiegelhalter raised the Part of the delay is that global say analysts, that the supply crisis
idea of intellectual variety, since working on disparate projects economic forces are playing havoc could actually be getting worse.
was often a source of insight. Hetan Shah, chief executive of the with stock, of course. But this is by Those Japanese gamers determined
British Academy, suggested that this variety, and in particular the no means our first version of the to secure a machine are left relying
ability to see the connection between different parts of a system, argument. As each enchanting gen- on store lotteries, luck or a second-
was the most important intellectual virtue. He also argued for a eration of console (particularly ary market where “as new” used
sense of humour: if we can’t play with ideas, even dangerous ideas, those of Sony and Nintendo) has PS5s trade at 70 per cent above the
come along, the question of the new official retail price.
Dwe are missing something. machine’s cost-to-justifiability ratio This absurdity has killed the
ame Frances Cairncross has chaired several nota- blazes around several talking points. debateinourhouse.Sinceitslaunch,
ble academic institutions. She suggested that if Is it really that much better than the PS5 has sailed through two
one accepted the premise that intellectual vir- the one you’ve already got? (Abso- Christmases and multiple Lewis
tues were also moral virtues, a greater one was lutely, yes, the existing model is family birthdays both hotly desired
“humanity… a sympathy for the human condition now decade-old tech and just look and defiantly unpurchased.
and a recognition of human weakness”. at game X.) OK, but is it worth $500 It may be that Sony has an interest
She also suggested the virtue of “getting stuff done”, noting the when the games also cost $60? (Well, in keeping its Japan sales low. Calcu-
line from the Book of Common Prayer, “we have left undone those yes. See previous answer.) Really? lated globally, it makes little money
things which we ought to have done.” True enough. What would And yet you whinge on the hardware
be the value of having all these intellectual virtues if we did not about the cost of the sales of PS5 units –
exercise them, and instead spent our days munching popcorn and kids’ trainers. (Yes, In one week in May, no problem, given
watching TV? but that’s totally Sony sold only 2,693 that the real money
Tom Chatfield, author of How To Think, mentioned persua- different.) And so units in Japan – a sign is made on the soft-
siveness. What is the point of thinking clearly if you cannot help on. The support, that the supply crisis ware. In Japan, says
anyone else to do likewise? This is fair, although persuasiveness this time, of a naggy could be getting worse one analyst who has
is perhaps the intellectual virtue that most tempts us into the 12-year-old in my covered the com-
vices of arrogance, partisanship and an unbalanced treatment lobbying effort has pany for decades, it
of the facts. been useful, though not decisive. is probably making a loss of about
Almost everyone raised the omission that was much on my But the core difference between ¥2,000 on every machine sold.
mind: curiosity. Curiosity was not on Schwartz’s list, except per- this and previous iterations of the Pelham Smithers, another vet-
haps by implication. But curiosity is one of the central intellectual argument has been the PS5 itself. In eran Sony-watcher, suspects the
virtues. Curiosity implies some humility, since it is an acknowl- Japan, Sony’s home turf, its games spew of red ink could be even more
edgment that there is something one doesn’t yet understand. machine has been very difficult to severe, with material costs rising sig-
Curiosity implies open-mindedness and a quest to enlarge oneself. buyfromamainstreamretailer.Nor- nificantly amid global inflation and
It is protective against partisanship. If we are curious, many other mally, there is an initial post-launch high energy prices, and with the yen
intellectual problems take care of themselves. As Orson Welles put stampede and ensuing shortages plunged to a 20-year low. That com-
it about the film-going audience: “Once they are interested, they that all form part of the hype (and bination, says Smithers, could mean
understand anything in the world.” fun). Within a year, though, the that Sony is losing about ¥15,000
Very good. Range, systemic thinking, humanity, humour, casual buyer can generally find one on every PS5 it sells in Japan. That
getting things done, persuasiveness, curiosity. Other plausible without too bruising a quest. could be an incentive for it to ensure
virtues were suggested, too; alas, this columnist must also display Not so with the latest PlaySta- that stores and online retailers are
the virtue of brevity. But one of my correspondents had a sharply tion. Launched in November 2020, not flooded with machines. Sony’s
different response to Schwartz’s emphasis on explicitly moral despite the well-known headwinds gaming chief did recently announce
intellectual virtues – tellingly, the one most actively involved in of a global semiconductor shortage, “a significant ramp-up” in PS5 pro-
teaching. Marion Turner, professor of English literature at Oxford it has been buffeted by supply chain duction this year, but for now, I’ll
university, put it frankly: “I’m not trained to teach students how to difficulties. Sony, which has a real have to make do with our PS4 – itself
be good people, and that’s not my job.” battle on its hands against Micro- the result of a successful round of
It’s a fair point. It is very pleasant to make a list of intellectual soft’s Xbox, has been funnelling its household negotiation.
virtues, but why should we believe that academics can teach stu- machines to particular markets,
dents courage, humility or any other virtue? Yet if not academics, principally the US, where it believes Leo Lewis is the FT’s Asia
then who? Parents? Primary school teachers? Newspaper column- victory will be decided. business editor
ists? Perhaps we should just hope that people acquire these virtues
for themselves? I am really not sure. FT.COM/MAGAZINE JUNE 11/12 2022
Barry Schwartz is on to something, that is clear. Facts, logic,
quantitative tools and analytical clarity are all very well, but the
art of thinking well requires virtues as well as skills. And if we
don’t know who will teach those virtues, or how to teach them,
that explains a lot about the world in which we now live.
Tim Harford’s latest book is “How to Make the World Add Up”

10



Intellect GALLERY Flowers have been a subject
12 Photograph by in Gareth McConnell’s work for
more than 20 years. The first
GARETH McCONNELL such photograph by the London-
based artist, from 1998, was of a
‘Dream Meadow XXI’, 2021 plastic funeral wreath in a disused
undertaker’s parlour. It was taken
in McConnell’s hometown of
Carrickfergus, Northern Ireland,
in the aftermath of the Good
Friday Agreement. Flowers have
since recurred abundantly in his
ongoing series Night Flowers and
The Dream Meadow. He has honed
a signature style that plunges us
into a dreamlike universe where
colour is saturated and intensified.
“To take something like flowers
and really try and make the subject
matter your own is difficult,”
he says.

A solo show of McConnell’s
recent flower works is on display in
London. It is the second in a series
of exhibitions called The Troubles
Generation, which invites artists
who grew up in Northern Ireland
to present work that sheds light
on life in the shadows of sectarian
conflict. McConnell speaks of
formative coming-of-age moments
through the language of flowers,
unravelling personal memories of
a time where widespread violence
was the backdrop, but when
rave culture was simultaneously
bringing divided communities
together on the dance floor. His
flowers are symbolically layered
with meaning, emotion, joy
and sorrow.
By Vivienne Gamble. Gamble is the
director of Seen Fifteen, London,
where McConnell’s “The Brighter
The Flowers, The Fiercer The Town”
is on until June 19

FT.COM/MAGAZINE JUNE 11/12 2022



Intellect

World View

SIMON
KUPER

Elite football is a meritocracy.
Why can’t politics be?

I know many readers are sick of me bang- physically almost by the month. Coaching staff many levers to steer several hundred thousand
ing on about Oxford, but I promise this have to keep innovating. When Barça stopped civil servants, whereas a football coach manages
column is about a bigger question: are doing that, they collapsed, culminating in the 8-2 20 or so people whom he sees daily.
political and educational elites in coun- thumping by Bayern Munich in 2020. Every political leader will confront an array
tries such as the UK, the US and France Contrast this with the highly educated political of problems about which they know little – for
genuinely elite achievers? elite. If you’re born into the right caste, selection instance, Ukraine, climate change and Covid-19.
In the past year, I’ve published two books isn’t very rigorous: elite US universities in 2017 They therefore need the humility and listening
about elites. The first, Barça, is an inside look at admitted more students from the top 1 per cent of skills to act as conveners, hearing out experts.
FC Barcelona, the football club, and the second, the income distribution than from the bottom half. The worst possible leader is an egomaniac who –
Chums, a dyspeptic account of the mostly male And elite universities rarely kick out underper- perhaps encouraged by his CV, caste and gender
Oxford-educated Conservatives who rule Britain. formers. Boris Johnson’s classics tutor at Oxford – imagines he knows best.
A response I often get is, “Surely the best-educated recalled that “Boris rubbed along In fact, little brilliance is required
people should be running the country?” But on no hour’s [work].” At Har- anywhere in the governing process.
whereas the sporting elite is a high-performance vard, a study in 2019 found that Elite networks lead to Ideally, government specialists are
meritocracy, the political elite isn’t. 43 per cent of white students thebestjobs,including themselves reliable conveners who
To play for a top-class football team, such as admitted were either recruited in government, where distil the latest consensus of their
Barcelona until about 2019, you had to be one of athletes or children or other rela- leaders like to recruit fields, because that is more likely to
the 200 or so best footballers on earth. All players tives of alumni, donors or faculty chums and relatives be right than the blue-sky thinking
have trained for the job since childhood, amid con- and staff. Most of these students of some maverick who may or may
tinuous selection. After each season, eight to 10 wouldn’t have got in otherwise. not be the next Einstein.
boys in every team at Barça’s youth academy, the Yet they almost all manage to sail through college. A football team has to win matches, but a gov-
Masia, are replaced by newcomers selected from In short, Harvard is not the Masia. Elite universi- ernment has to please voters. That has little to do
among the millions who want to be professional ties have other priorities besides excellence. They with good policymaking. An energy transition or
footballers. The average kid lasts only three years often retain elements of their past as gentlemen’s educational reform can take decades to judge and
in the Masia. finishing schools, teaching upper-caste presenta- sometimes longer. The core job of government is
In football, quality trumps CV, looks or skin tional skills. to avert catastrophes, but voters rarely reward
colour. The day a tiny 16-year-old Argentine with Graduating from one of these places gives you politicians for things that don’t happen. Instead,
a flowerpot haircut trained with Barcelona’s first a life-long entrance ticket to the top, which is why governments generally get voted out because of
team, Ronaldinho, then the world’s best foot- someFrenchelitemembershavetheiralmamaters poor presentational skills, trumped-up culture
baller, remarked that the kid, Leo Messi, should be inscribed on their tombstones. Networks lead wars or global recessions.
playing for the firsts already. to the best jobs, including in government, where I’ve spent my journalistic career toggling
But players must keep performing. Once Ron- leaders like to recruit chums, caste-mates and rela- between sport and bigger things. I used to worry
aldinho declined, he was kicked out, his brilliant tives. Selection in politics is chiefly for clubbability that football was a lower subject than politics.
CV an irrelevance. Failure in sport is clear-cut and electability, not governing skills. Many politi- I don’t any more.
and gets punished. Even retaining your level isn’t cal leaders have zero prior experience of running
enough, because football improves tactically and even a government department. Nor do they have [email protected] @KuperSimon

14 ILLUSTRATION BY HARRY HAYSOM FT.COM/MAGAZINE JUNE 11/12 2022



Intellect

American Experiment

GILLIAN
TETT

The banker who fell to Earth
and boarded a train

A couple of weeks ago, I had has now ebbed, it would be hard to replicate his him concluding that “tutorial cultures in tahfiz
breakfast in New York with a tripatpresentgivenChina’squarantineregimeand madrasas, Oxbridge colleges and ancient Tibetan
Malaysian accountant-turned- rising tensions between Russia and the west. temples perhaps have more in common than
banker named Azman Mokhtar, Indeed, in a world of growing geopolitical strife commonly thought”. In Russia he stumbled on
who I first met years ago when and uncertainty, it seems increasingly naive to unexpected beauty in the Moscow metro system
he ran the Khazanah sovereign assume that borders will remain open, even when and, as a devout Muslim, was thrilled to discover
wealth fund. He arrived carrying a fat photo book the pandemic is over. In a deglobalising, uncertain that the Saint Petersburg Mosque “was the largest
entitled KembaraKretapi:AroundtheWorldinTrains age, travel opportunities need to be grabbed. in Europe” when it opened in 1913.
of Thoughts. It was the memento of an epic journey Mokhtar’s journey demonstrated something In Sweden he had a less pleasant surprise:
he took in 2019, boarding exactly 77 trains over 77 else, too: the power of putting your feet on the the trains were badly delayed, and another pas-
consecutive days as he circumnavigated the globe. ground. During much of his later career, he worked senger swore at him. He viewed this as a sign of
in the Petronas Towers in Malaysia, “a turbulent upside down world”,
The idea, he explained, was to celebrate some- the tallest of their kind in the world. where “developed” countries no
thing known as kembara in Malay (probably best This was an elevated perch, both Financiers often work longer seemed quite so advanced.
translated as “wanderlust”). Planes are not well in towers that leave
suited for kembara, since being 30,000 feet above physically and metaphorically. But themfeeling asifthey In America he faced more delays,
the ground detaches you from, well, the Earth. it also symbolised a problem: finan- and despaired that “the nation that
Train travel, by contrast, enables you to better ciers and executives often work in have a right to float gave us the great transcontinen-
experience the places you’re travelling through. places and ways that leave them above everyone else tal railroad… just won’t upgrade its
feeling as if they have a right to float infrastructure”. But after he got the
Mokhtar had dreamt of this pilgrimage for above everyone else. To counter last seat on the 2,500km journey
40 years while working in finance, so when he that, Mokhtar says that he often urged his staff to from Perth to Adelaide in Australia, he marvelled
finally retired in 2019, he took off. “The world engage in kembara in their jobs, by walking incog- at the beauty of the Nullarbor Plain and the “pretty
is both small and large, and life is both long and nito around the companies and places that the garden city” he found in Adelaide (Day 73).
short,” he writes in the book. “Live it.” fund invested in. His long-planned trip was a way To hardened explorers, such observations might
to counter the detachment he felt after years spent seem mundane. But after looking at Mokhtar’s
It is a sentiment that most of us might usefully in an office tower. book, I felt not just inspired but also embar-
ponderrightnow.Foronething,itshowsthe power What he encountered along the way was not rassed about how we used to take globetrotting for
of escape fantasies as a way to sustain our imagi- necessarily shocking; the value came from numer- granted in our pre-pandemic age, when nobody
nations during long careers. For another, kembara ous tiny surprises. In the rail carriages of Vietnam worried about the type of labour shortages and
seems like a doubly precious commodity today. he was stunned by the entrepreneurial spirit of flight cancellations that we are currently seeing in
Back in 2019, when Mokhtar boarded his first train, the other passengers and the fact that so many Europe. Today, uncertainty is the new certainty.
he assumed that the world would always be open people smoked “peace pipes” on board (“Things So, if you, like Mokhtar, have secret travel dreams,
for anyone who wanted to explore it. they don’t teach you at Harvard Business School!” the message is simple: act on them now or soon.
he joked in his Instagram posts). With or without trains.
So did most people whose careers had been built On a stop in Lhasa he saw Tibetan monks
on the back of globalisation. If you had a travel teaching their students in a manner that left [email protected] @gilliantett
dream, there seemed no reason to rush.

But soon after Mokhtar finished his 77th train
ride, Covid-19 erupted. And while the pandemic

16 ILLUSTRATION BY CRISTIANA COUCEIRO FT.COM/MAGAZINE JUNE 11/12 2022





Suite dreams

An upstart hotel chain thinks it’s cracked the code to post-
pandemic travel, from room designs that soothe germaphobes to
the melding of work and leisure time. If it’s right, the future of the

hotel business may look very different. By Brooke Masters

Illustration by Lisa Sheehan
Portraits by Timothy O’Connell

ne September afternoon in 2020, sold off. Same story at Hilton and InterContinen- RMR exhibits little
Vera Manoukian received a call from tal Hotels Group; each owns or directly leases less to no glitz, no
a recruiter on behalf of a hotel chain than 1 per cent of its properties. The rest are mostly wacky branding
making ambitious expansion plans. split between high-profile locations the companies gurus, not even one
Would she, the caller inquired, want manage for outside investors and a much larger and celebrity heiress
to be chief operating officer of Sonesta growing group of hotels that is owned and operated
International as it ramped up from just by franchisees, who must comply with brand stand- OPPOSITE: SONESTA INTERNATIONAL CHIEF
58 properties to more than 1,100, with ards on decor, service and staffing. OPERATING OFFICER VERA MANOUKIAN AT THE
upwards of 100,000 rooms? COMPANY’S WHITE PLAINS HOTEL
That means when you walk into a brand-name BELOW: RENDERINGS OF A ROOM AND OUTDOOR
Manoukian, a 30-year veteran of hotel today, no matter whether your room costs AND INDOOR GUEST SPACES PLANNED FOR
$50 or $500, chances are it is the hospitality equiv- REFURBISHED SONESTA PROPERTIES
O the hotel business who was then head alent of a McDonald’s. In the US, just 5 per cent of
of the Hilton brand, was intrigued. hotels are owned or directly managed by chains,
It was a grim time to be in hospitality: stringent while 53 per cent are franchises, up from 47 per
lockdowns and international travel bans had dec- cent a decade ago, according to hospitality data
imated demand, and a vaccine still seemed far off. provider STR. As it did for so many industries, the
At Hilton, echoing lobbies and empty rooms tes- pandemic laid bare diverging agendas. While the big
tified to a 90 per cent drop in revenue, suspended hotel brands drew public attention and sympathy to
dividends and mass furloughs. the hospitality industry’s struggles, they sloughed
off much of the financial pain on to owner-operators
Manoukian, 58, is a fast walker and a faster who still had to maintain buildings and pay staff.
talker. Leaving Lebanon for the US as a teenager,
she studied chemistry in college and stumbled into Sonesta’s expansion has its genesis in an earlier
hospitality after seeing a “help wanted” sign. She crisis where these power dynamics played out sim-
rose rapidly, becoming Sheraton’s youngest hotel ilarly. The company is owned by The RMR Group,
general manager at the age of 29. By 2020, she had a Boston-based real estate investor with $37bn in
worked for huge players, including Starwood and assets under management. RMR exhibits little to
Hilton, and watched as the industry bounced back no glitz, no wacky branding gurus, not even one
from 9/11, the financial crisis, recession and more. celebrity heiress. Its bread and butter has been
But to be planning a post-pandemic expansion in property management. In fact, it only got into
the depths of the pandemic was something else. the hotel business when one of its trusts bought a
batch of senior-living properties from Marriott in
There was only one problem: “What is a Son- the early 1990s. When RMR sought to buy more,
esta?” she asked. the hotel chain instead offered some Courtyard
by Marriott and Residence Inn buildings instead.
Founded in 1937, Massachusetts-based Sonesta RMR’s portfolio gradually expanded from there, as
once owned luxury hotels such as New York’s Plaza it struck management deals with other big chains.
and Washington’s Mayflower. When I was in college
in the 1980s, the group’s pyramid-shaped Cam- RMR’s move into hotels was spearheaded by John
bridge hotel was a hot place to take visiting parents Murray, a 61-year-old Long Island native with an
(and their credit cards) for brunch. But as large accounting degree and earlier stints at EY and Fidel-
hotel chains transformed into managers and mar- ity. As I was reporting this story, he was promoted to
keters of stables of carefully delineated brands become Sonesta’s CEO. Murray is affable and matter
ranging from posh to bare bones, Sonesta withered. of fact when we speak. He tells me it all started with
In 2011, it was acquired by a little-known real a slap in the face. After the 2008-09 recession, Mar-
estate investor and had, since then, flown so far riott and IHG dealt with their cash flow problems
under the radar that it was practically invisible. by refusing to pay RMR more than $100mn of what
they owed for use of its buildings until the economy
Sonesta, Manoukian realised, was a unique improved. As its experience in the hotel business
chance to redefine post-pandemic travel on behalf was limited to real estate, RMR seized their security
of a very different kind of hotel company. At a deposits but then had no other option but to renego-
time when industry profits were down more than tiate the contracts and wait.
95 per cent and the biggest US hoteliers were on
the defensive, the real estate moguls who owned When a local hotel brand that had seen better
Sonesta planned to steal a march. It was already days came up for sale two years later, Murray
becoming clear that domestic travel would recover pounced. “We said, we’re going to buy Sonesta so
much faster than far-flung trips, and the spread that if we are ever in that predicament again, the big
of remote working had the potential to funda- brands can’t say, ‘We will just stop paying them,’” he
mentally reshape business travel. Here also was a says. By the time Covid-19 hit, Sonesta was operat-
chance to rethink both the business model and the ing nearly 60 hotels and had successfully launched a
principles of hotel design in ways that would help new sub-brand, Sonesta ES Suites. In 2020, Marriott
coax germaphobes back out on the road. Shocking and IHG again stopped making some promised pay-
some of her former colleagues, Manoukian became ments and said the money might not start flowing
Sonesta’s COO in November 2020. The chance to until 2025. This time RMR was ready. It cancelled
start from scratch was too unusual to pass up. their management contracts and handed over more
World-shaking events aside, the hotel business than 200 hotels to Sonesta. The plan, Murray says,
isn’t what it used to be. Over the past couple of dec- was simple: “We’re going to make Sonesta into a
ades, the biggest chains have steadily gobbled up major hotel company.”
smaller ones, while simultaneously selling off their
actual hotel buildings to concentrate almost exclu- Overnight, signs that read Courtyard, Candle-
sively on marketing and operations. The biggest, wood Suites and Holiday Inn Crowne Plaza came
Marriott, has 30 different brands encompassing down, replaced by newly invented brand names
more than 8,000 hotels. But you can count the and signage. The hotel buildings themselves and
number of properties this nearly $60bn company on-the-ground staff remained the same. At a
owns on your fingers and toes – most were spun out former Kimpton in Washington DC, the removal
into another company in 1993, and the rest were of that brand’s colourful prints left guestrooms

20 FT.COM/MAGAZINE JUNE 11/12 2022

$37bn feeling generic and half-empty. Some 250 miles
north at a former Crowne Plaza in the New York
Assets managed by the suburbs, the general manager Monika Henry and
Boston-based RMR about 100 workers were grateful they still had jobs.
Group, Sonesta’s owner But “we sort of wondered what a Sonesta was”, she
says. “We didn’t know who we were.”

Customers were equally confused. Gil Marsden,
a documentary-film director, found himself and his
crew booked into three Sonestas over a short period
of time. One was a bare-bones, extended-stay
hotel, while the other two were full-service proper-
ties with snazzy ballrooms and room service. The
only thing they seemed to have in common was
a name he hadn’t heard of. “They don’t feel like
they are big enough to have different brands,” says
Marsden. “It’s a crapshoot.”

Murray and RMR agreed. So they shelled
out $90mn for the parent company of Red Lion
Hotels in March 2021. That not only added more
than 900 franchised hotels, mostly midscale and
economy properties in the west and midwest,
but also gave Sonesta the expertise to sign other
hotel owners to its chain. “They’ve become a real
player in the market,” says Alam Pirani, execu-
tive managing director of Colliers Hotels, which
advises hospitality investors. “I think they are
going to be aggressive.”

Manoukian, Sonesta’s new COO, charged in,
hiring a former colleague from Starwood as mar-
keting director and someone below her to focus
on branding. They brought in consultants to develop
slogans and standards and to sketch out new room

Iand lobby designs. Her goal, she says, was: “I want

to go from ‘What is a Sonesta?’ to ‘I want a Sonesta.’”
n large markets like the US, a hotel’s brand is cru-
cial because travellers have many options and
relatively few sources of reliable advice beyond
online booking sites. Guidebooks and listicles
about Paris are a dime a dozen; the same is less
true for Cincinnati, Ohio or Richmond, Vir-
ginia. A branded hotel may be sterile, but it’s a
safe bet. “For most people, this is the pinnacle
of discretionary spend. They want to lessen the

chances of disappointment,” says Robin Hutson,
co-founder of the UK’s Hotel du Vin and The Pig,
both of which managed to combine the recognisa-
bility of a chain with boutique sensibility.

In theory it shouldn’t be that hard to get hotel
branding right, Hutson says. “Basics will go a long
way. The minimum you want from a hotel is a
really great mattress, enough water pressure in the
shower, and you want it to be dark and quiet and
the pillow to be soft. It is not rocket science.”

Yet when Sonesta executives started running
focus groups with guests and potential guests, they
discovered that many of them found travel inher-
ently stressful, a feeling only exacerbated by the
pandemic. Booking a hotel was particularly nerve-
racking because so many places failed to live up to
photos posted online. To the new chief marketing
and brand officer Elizabeth Harlow, who started in
hospitality as a front-desk clerk in The Mayflower,
that unease seemed like an opportunity. “Guests
were hungry for a sense of calm and things to help
them offset anxiety. So how do we create spaces or
experiences that fulfil those needs?”

At Sonesta’s budget, extended-stay properties,
the answer was pretty straightforward. Guests
there are often workers – in construction, say, or
nursing – on extended assignments that might last
for months at a time. These conditions mean ▶

FT.COM/MAGAZINE JUNE 11/12 2022 21

◀ small irritations can eventually loom large. The The designs people referred to that cookie,” Harlow says. “It’s
hotels offer few amenities to boast about, but the incorporated the such a simple gesture, but people remember it.”
staff quickly become familiar faces. So the brand- latest research on
ing team boiled down the proposition for the range germaphobic Sonesta’s search for similar gestures is being
of properties, called Simply Suites, to offering travellers, such as shaped by the pandemic. For the full-service
rooms that have “everything you need and noth- keeping corners Sonesta hotels, management aimed squarely at
ing you don’t”. That means free laundry facilities, visible and using post-Covid travellers. Surveys show that 60 per
kitchens, WiFi and a fitness centre as standard, light-coloured cent of customers are looking to meet new people on
though no spas or restaurants. “Everyone relies bathroom surfaces vacation and 79 per cent see travel as part of “self-
on our guests, so they can rely on us,” Harlow says. care”. So those hotels will roll out bar carts stocked
“We are not going to tell you it’s one thing, and Anyone who has sat in on a similar session with ready-to-drink cocktails in their lobbies. The
when you get there it is something else.” knows marketing speak can quickly get abstruse. chain also plans to offer organised group hikes,
But when talk of a “powerhouse” customer-type – walks and runs in areas where appropriate, and is
Finding an identity for the group’s full-service a demanding business traveller who might tack on negotiating a partnership that will allow guests to
Sonesta Hotels and Resorts was a lot harder. The some leisure time – comes up, some of the White download the mindfulness and sleep app Aura for
properties are a motley collection of urban bou- Plains staff immediately perk up. They have a spe- free. “There’s a fundamental rethinking of travel
tiques, standard business hotels and beach resorts. cific customer who always wants Room 1202 and and how important it is to our sense of wellbeing,”
Sonesta turned to Catch, a New York-based brand- makes her displeasure clear if it is not available. “So says Max Buccini, Sonesta’s new brand leader.
ing agency, to come up with ideas. Digging through now it’s in her profile. For the powerhouse, we pro-
the focus groups, they found that almost everyone, vide solutions, not excuses,” says Tonya Inman, the The more budget Simply Suites is focusing on
even business travellers, was seeking a way to local sales director. “Now that Sonesta has outlined helping to counteract the loneliness that long-term
take the edge off. “We heard the word ‘relax’ what each brand represents, it makes it a lot easier guests may experience. This includes offering free,
across all of the traveller categories a shocking how we sell to each target customer.” freshly popped popcorn in the lobby at 6pm daily,
amount of time,” says Douglas Spitzer, Catch’s co- twice-monthly visits from local food trucks and
founder. “We never really heard that outside of a As the staff raise plastic flutes of sparkling cider a grill on the patio to encourage guests to congre-
vacation in the past.” to toast the changes, Manoukian sums up the task gate. “The hotels are simple but not basic,” Harlow
at hand: “You are the ones who are going to bring says. “There’s no pool, no spa. [But] every prop-
As a result, Sonesta’s full-service hotels adopted a the brand to life.” erty will have a grill. It’s like coming home from
slogan –“Checkoutthemomentyoucheckin”–and work every day. You can gather around the barbe-
are gearing their services around “discovery”. How But rallying the troops will not be enough. cue and have a beer.”
well this works is arguably the biggest test of Sones- “Hotels should offer a bit of fantasy that you don’t
ta’s marketing plans. While domestic leisure travel get when you walk through the front door of your What is certain to matter day to day are the hun-
has rebounded, business travel remains profoundly own house. There is something exciting about that dreds, even thousands of standards that will come
depressed. The Global Business Travel Association little thing that is ‘free’ that you aren’t expecting,” to define Sonesta’s brands. These range from the
predicts that total corporate travel spending, which Hutson says. Perhaps the most famous effort along operational (the size of pillows and how long they
plunged 53 per cent in the first year of the pandemic, these lines started in the 1980s at DoubleTree, now can be used before being discarded) and the expe-
will climb back to $1tn in 2022 but won’t recover to owned by Hilton. The chain first put freshly baked riential (the genre of music playing in the lobby and
2019 levels until at least 2024. And room usage has chocolate-chip cookies in VIP rooms as part of its volume) to design (the colour of the carpets in
shifted. While business hotels used to be full from nightly turndown services, but it eventually shifted the corridors). As “asset light” hoteliers, Hilton,
Monday to Thursday, travellers are now focused on to handing them out to everyone at the check-in IHG and the other big chains use such standards
what the industry calls “bleisure”, a combination of desk. The chain’s 600-odd hotels now give out to ensure guests receive a uniform experience. But
business travel or remote work around a personal 65,000 every day, or more than 25mn a year. “In expansive requirements – particularly for physi-
weekend. So Thursday to Monday are now busy our focus groups, you would not imagine how many cal standards, known as ADC (architecture, design
days, and travellers want a lot more information and construction) – can and do lead to resentment
about the hotel’s surroundings. among building owners and franchisees who have
to foot the bills.
The same trends are also prompting larger
hoteliers to rethink their offerings. Accor, which Murray and his colleagues think they can turn
has 5,300 hotels and 40 brands, has long been their real estate pedigree to their advantage as
stronger among business customers. But it recently Sonesta grows. They aim to woo other owners to
launched a string of all-inclusive resorts in Turkey convert their existing hotels to Sonestas through
and Egypt because “people want to have meeting a new franchising arm, unveiled last September.
spaces, entertainment and water sports in the same “The large brands have no skin in the game. They
venue”, says Patrick Mendes, Accor’s chief com- don’t own hotels. When they say, ‘You have to rip
out your tubs and put in showers, or you have to
Omercial officer. “They want to be able to work and have 24-hour room service, even if you have an
empty hotel’, franchisees don’t like rules that don’t
go with their family at the same time.” make sense,” Murray says. “When we come up with
n a snowy February day, Manoukian brand standards… we have to live with them. We’re
strides to the front of a big ballroom in putting our money where our mouth is.”
White Plains, New York to the sound of
INXS. “Need You Tonight” is blaring, and Staci Patton, a Chicago-based interior designer
the assembled hotel staff are cheering who specialises in hotels, can certify that is true.
loudly. “Let’s bring down the house, guys,” Hired last autumn to reimagine the Sonesta Select
she says, grabbing a Sonesta-branded brand as a mid-price boutique, she was handed
clapper and shaking it. “I love your energy pages and pages of specifications about the 60-odd
and passion. I’m going to bottle it.” existing hotels, along with warnings about what
could and could not be changed, from the fin-
Her visit is the culmination of a week-long train- ishes in the bathrooms to the location of the hotel’s
ing session meant to get Sonesta employees around restaurant. Her original idea of putting local ele-
the country enthused about their new brand and ments in each hotel was scrapped in favour of a
about growing the company. Reception agents, more generic, and less expensive, theme: “Neigh-
housekeepers and maintenance workers alike have bourhood hotels made personal.” Lighting aimed
been deluged with Sonesta swag, offered meals at making the hotels’ outdoor space more welcom-
usually reserved for guests and invited to discuss ing was toned down from fancy lanterns to string
how the company’s various slogans would apply to lights. The designs also incorporated the latest
their jobs and their hotel’s target guests. research on germaphobic travellers: wood floors

2 2 FT.COM/MAGAZINE JUNE 11/12 2022

ABOVE AND ABOVE RIGHT: CHIEF MARKETING AND BRAND and lacquered furniture rather than fluffy carpets it easier to book. A relaunched loyalty programme
OFFICER ELIZABETH HARLOW AND GLOBAL BRAND LEADER and soft surfaces. Keeping corners visible and using is due in the autumn. In the meantime, it has signed
MAX BUCCINI AT SONESTA WHITE PLAINS light-coloured bathroom surfaces help reassure up 20 franchise hotels and expects to hit 50 by
guests that rooms really are clean. June, crucial to getting its name in front of more
25mn people. It re-entered the New York City market in
In the lobby, the hotels will use colour and fix- April by purchasing a majority stake in four Man-
The number of chocolate-chip tures to create visibly different areas for dining, hattan boutique hotels. “If you don’t have a hotel
cookies the Hilton-owned working and sitting, so they feel less cavernous in New York, you don’t really have a brand,”
DoubleTree hotel chain gives when only partly full – a familiar problem during says Murray. This isn’t hubris: meeting planners
guests every year the pandemic. That means a blue stained-wood and big corporate travel departments won’t do
area between reception and the restaurant, and a business with a chain that doesn’t have several
FT.COM/MAGAZINE JUNE 11/12 2022 bright yellow booth for making private phone calls. New York options. He is looking for deals in Miami
“Guests really want to come into a space where and Los Angeles, two huge markets where Sonesta
they can be in the open but also in their own nook,” lacks a presence.
Patton explains. “Together, but alone-together.”
Sonesta’s rethink of post-pandemic travel looks Sonesta remains 50 years and many billions
a lot more like a series of tweaks than a wholesale behind the big names in corporate hospitality. Mar-
shake-up. And compared to some of the edgier riott, Hilton and IHG each have more than 5,000
offerings at the bigger chains, the branding is rela- hotels and dozens of brands among them. Not that
tively vanilla. That’s on purpose. Harlow, Sonesta’s it seems like much of a deterrent to Murray. In early
marketing chief, argues the chain is putting owners April, the company convened its new customer
and guests first. “This is what they’re looking for in advisory board, composed of guests and business
their physical spaces. This is what they need,” she partners, in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Murray showed
says. “Rather than having things that might be per- up to make a personal pitch on the chain’s behalf.
ceived as radically different, we wanted to develop “Our goal is that when somebody says, ‘Where
things that our guests were asking for. Crazy stand- are you going to stay?’, they’ll answer, ‘I’m debat-
ards are one thing, but unless we deliver the best ing’, [and] we want to be in that conversation.” He
guest experience we can, based on what our guests was delivering his speech to a meeting room in a
are telling us, they don’t mean a whole heck of a lot.” recently refurbished, luxury Sonesta.
Brooke Masters is the FT’s US investment and
To that end, Sonesta recently revamped its web- industries editor, and an associate editor
site and launched its first smartphone app, making

23

24 FT.COM/MAGAZINE JUNE 11/12 2022

FT.COM/MAGAZINE JUNE 11/12 2022 TO LIA’OVMOEEKGROFIOCNRAE

Photographer Jim Dow spent the
1970s criss-crossing the country in a

bid to capture the unfamiliar

25

I used to think of photography
in illustrative terms, and my
time as a design student solid-
ified that notion. Images were
secondary to text, which was
intended to sway a person to
favour a product, idea or story.
But when I enrolled in the grad-
uate programme at the Rhode
Island School of Design in 1965, under the
photographer Harry Callahan, I was sur-
rounded by people who saw photographs as
extensions of their internal, thinking selves.
Trying to catch up, I employed different
approaches and explored a variety of sub-
jects:streets,buildings, some portraits. I even
took pictures for the yearbook.
Late in the fall of 1965, I met Walker Evans.
I had no idea who he was or anything about
his work. But his book American Photographs
completely changed the way I thought about
photography. The pictures were descrip-
tive, literate and distinct. They could be
read slowly; information was packed into
every square inch. They were intense but
not dramatic. Rigorous in their making, they
demanded attentive scrutiny. It was clear that
I had a template for my education through a
classic method: at first emulate, then lease the
space and ultimately own the process, until
taking pictures was no longer a re-enactment.
I began to travel when I could. I went to
new, unfamiliar places, looking for subjects
that struck a chord of familiarity. I was learn-
ing, figuring out what was me and what was
someone else.
After graduating I bought a larger view
camera, which allowed me more freedom to
use the full range of the mechanisms to adjust
perspective and focus. I began to accumulate
different lenses, coming to understand that I
could achieve a kind of respectful middle dis-
tance, neither so close as to eliminate context
nor so far away as to complicate with excess
information. Done carefully, the framing of
the picture gave fresh life to what was in front
of the camera and, as time went on, I was no
longer replicating anyone.
My interest in photography has never been
driven by an assumption that the present is
somehow damaged goods and the past a more
honest ideal. Nor is it to assume my superior-
ity to the subject by employing any form of
I WENT TO NEW, “nudge-nudge, wink-wink” irony. I’ve always
UNFAMILIAR done straightforward, sharp-focus, very slow
PLACES, LOOKING photography. Although I don’t take pictures
FOR SUBJECTS of people, I constantly interact with people.
THAT STRUCK A Conversations can be long, exposures often
CHORD OF take minutes, and getting permission and
FAMILIARITY, setting up also require time. One’s think-
FIGURING OUT ing about the image itself frequently evolves
WHAT WAS ME during the process, even while the shutter is
open. A car might pull up and park, a person
walk through and sit down, the light can
change, all potentially adding to or detract-
ing from the final picture.

These pictures were made on numerous
trips around the US between 1967 and 1977,
a 10-year span not quite in alignment ▶

26 FT.COM/MAGAZINE JUNE 11/12 2022

FT.COM/MAGAZINE JUNE 11/12 2022 ABANDONED TRUCK STOP, US 61/AR 150, NEAR NUMBER NINE, ARKANSAS, 1970
PREVIOUS SPREAD: ‘HEATED POOL’ SIGN AT MOTEL, US 99, BAKERSFIELD, CALIFORNIA, 1975; DIVING LADY SIGN, NEAR US 19, BLAIRSVILLE, GEORGIA, 1973

27

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: BOWLING PIN WITH ARROW, US 1, BRANFORD, 0, 1971; FT.COM/MAGAZINE JUNE 11/12 2022
‘FORTUNE TELLER’ SIGN, US 79 AND 80, GREENWOOD, LOUISIANA, 1975; PAPIER-
MÂCHÉ ELEPHANT, US 202, GWYNEDD, PENNSYLVANIA, 1977; HARDWARE STORE
PAINTING ON WALL, NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE, 1977; HORSE PAINTING ON SIGN,
RANCH ENTRANCE, US 87, BILLINGS, MONTANA, 1972; REAR OF SCREEN, VAN NUYS
DRIVE-IN THEATRE, OLD US 101, VAN NUYS, CALIFORNIA, 1973

28

FT.COM/MAGAZINE JUNE 11/12 2022 29

MY INTEREST IN ◀ with the oft-disparaged 1970s but close
PHOTOGRAPHY enough. Commencing with the later unful-
HAS NEVER BEEN filled hopefulness engendered by the civil
TO ASSUME MY rights movement and the Great Society leg-
SUPERIORITY TO islation, the period came to be characterised
THE SUBJECT BY by stagflation and gas lines. Jimmy Carter’s
EMPLOYING ANY presidency was a run-up to the Awful ’80s
FORM OF ‘NUDGE- of Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, “Just
NUDGE, WINK- Say No”, the beginning of the end for Pax
WINK’ IRONY Americana and, in due course, burgeoning
Boomer self-involvement.
COPYRIGHT JIM DOW; GIFT OF THE HALL FAMILY FOUNDATION, 2018.51.5; GIFT OF JIM AND JACQUIE DOW, 2018.55.2
During that decade, I got a grant from
the National Endowment for the Arts and a
Guggenheim Fellowship and worked for the
Seagram Corporation’s bicentennial project
photographing courthouses. I criss-crossed
the country in two different cars and a van
six times and made countless smaller east-
west and north-south journeys.

From the first, my plan was to travel by
US- and state-numbered highways, getting
on interstates only when unavoidable. The
result has been an encyclopedic roll call of a
number of routes: US 2, 6, 11, 20, 41, 51, 61,
62, 80, 90, 99 (old), 119 and 301 are favour-
ites. Some go north to south, others east
to west, and a few run diagonally. Many of
them follow old Native American trails or
19th-century rail lines, often twisting and
rambling, dictated by river bends, mountain
ranges, politics, even serendipity.

At last count I’ve driven up and down US
11, in full or in part, more than 10 times over
half a century. The old two-lane, three-lane,
sometimes four-lane highway has proven a
bonanza. In the medium-sized and smaller
cities and towns, the road itself is a Main
Street with no bypass or alternative. It is a
horizontal, visual strip mine sometimes
running for a mile or two. I’ve taken more
than 60 different pictures along or hard by
the right-of-way. Among the subjects are six
minor-league baseball parks and five drive-
in movie theatres. There are restaurants
that serve breakfast, BBQ, pizza and hot
dogs. There are signs for coffee, Dr Pepper,
parking, motels, hamburgers and political
candidates. There is the Big Pencil, an arrow
into the front of a stationery store. There
are grocery stores, beer and juke joints, a
defunct guitar shop and abandoned gas sta-
tions. There are windows for a beauty salon,
shoe repair, dance studio and lunch. And
there is a pawnshop, a “sno-ball” stand and
a taco truck. Roads like these have been a
rich and continual source for pictures, but
the most fruitful has been US 11.

I never travelled around the US to find
myself. I went to find people, places and
things I didn’t know about. Leaving famil-
iar confines is an outward-facing process
best done by car on older two- or three-lane
roads, stopping, looking and listening every
step of the way.
Thisisaneditedextract from “Signs:Photographs
by Jim Dow” published by the Nelson-Atkins
Museum of Art, Kansas City. An exhibition of the
same name runs at the museum until October 9

30 FT.COM/MAGAZINE JUNE 11/12 2022

FT.COM/MAGAZINE JUNE 11/12 2022 LOTT’S GROCERY STORE, US 11, BESSEMER, ALABAMA, 1968

31



Inside: An ancient manuscript’s tasty recipes p36

Appetites

The Gastronome I sometimes think you people don’t get how whinge. As John Gregory Dunne memorably put
tough this job is. You think it’s all fawning it: “A writer is an eternal outsider, his nose pressed
Tim maîtres d’s and complimentary champagne. against whatever window on the other side of which
Hayward Let me disabuse you. A few weeks ago, I found he sees his material.” So I did. My face was a mask of
myself in London’s Spitalfields. What estate agents passive aggression against the glass as I pondered
From hell to heaven undoubtedly refer to as a “vibrant quarter” was the unlikelihood of something like this happening
in Spitalfields truly hopping on a post-lockdown Thursday, which to someone more famous. I sought consolation in a
is the new Friday, apparently. I was to attend an nearby shopfront marked Wine Bar.
FT.COM/MAGAZINE MJUANREC1H1/1192/20222022 awards ceremony and thought I might slip in a swift
meal beforehand. Something to line the stomach The place was empty apart from the queue,
for the inevitable gallons of Krug. I used an app to several small groups which, one after the other,
book a table for one at a quite famous restaurant at pitifully entered their urgent petition with the only
the unfashionable hour of 5.30pm. staff member on the empty floor. “Is it OK if we just
have a couple of drinks?”
I arrived to find the door locked and a note on
the window. A Christmas party, no less. Obviously They say it is impossible to translate duende, but
postponed from lockdown and full of cheery people I think the waitress’s combined look of hauteur,
having a well-deserved good time, so it was hard to sadness and pitiless scorn as she contemptuously
dismissedeachgrouptoatablewasafineexample.▶

ILLUSTRATION BY R. FRESSON 33

Appetites

◀ “The wines are all low intervention,” she spat as she cast the FUNKY CELLAR
wine list on the table like a challenge. Since I’d already waited
20 minutes for her attention, I felt it was too late to act on the 10a Lamb Street
new information and wearily ordered a large glass of something London E1 6EA
I thought I recognised. I was mistaken, though I had another 020 7247 7437
20 minutes to think about it until the staggering bill arrived. funkycellar.co.uk
I was the first to leave, the other groups watching enviously, as if I
was crossing the exercise yard to early release. FT.COM/MAGAZINE JUNE 11/12 2022

As I limped, cursing, around the perimeter of the once-great
market, I passed what appeared to be one of those supremely
arch hipster London junkshops attempting to create interest in
1970s electrical goods as objets de vertu. It had dodgy French
movie posters, lights spun from flame orange fibreglass, a near
mint 1972 Binatone Worldstar radio and – oh happy day! – a fully
stocked cheese cabinet. The place was called, and you’ll have to
bear with me here, Funky Cellar.

I ducked inside to be met by a bloke who looked like the result
if you’d image-searched “classic gorgeous French boy”.

“You have food?” I blurted.
“Of course.”
“Wine?” It was almost too much to hope.
Within seconds, I was whisked to one of several unmatched
tables in unfortunate Formicas. You know, the kind that
became extinct when stripped pine was discovered. The menu
was a bigger collection of comfortable clichés than The Archers
omnibus. But it was perfect. You know how you need a rhino-
slayer of a hangover to really appreciate a fry-up? I reckon you
might need to be dumped by an important restaurant and
duped by a natural wine bar to appreciate a French brocante/
fromagerie/bistro.

W orking quickly, I slipped in an order for pork
rillette and a non-binary croque. My strat-
egy here was that my modest order would
leave some budget for a glass, or possibly two,
of a good looking premier cru Chablis. Of course, no strategy
survives contact with the menu, and I was tempted by an addi-
tional “Funky Board” of mixed cheeses and charcuterie. Then
I remembered the wine bar and, as my lips puckered, ordered
the Chablis anyway.

In case you’ve never done it, let me tell you there is something
religiously calming about the moment you simultaneously
contemplate the smooth curves of an early ’80s Vega 642 black-
and-white portable TV, take your first sip of cold white as Stevie
Wonder’s Innervisions drops on to the turntable and a waitress
presents pork paste with a welcoming smile. Symbiosis of
serendipity and glorious, comforting recognition.

Back in the ’70s, when most of the Funky Cellar’s knick-
knacks were au courant, my nan had a kind of fat, overstuffed
legless footstool she referred to as the pouffée. It was, to be kind,
revolting. It was also smaller than the croque – properly rubbish
white sliced bread so rammed with gruyère and béchamel as to
be near spherical, slouched on the plate, oozing joy and a kind
of infinitely lewd challenge. I swear it winked at me: “C’mon
handsome. Climb aboard.” If the waitress found my behaviour
over the following five minutes in any way repugnant, she had
the exceptional grace not to show it as she wheeled in more wine
and the platter.

More sober research has revealed that Funky Cellar is
independent and run by a bunch of young French people who
don’t seem to have much truck with PR. And while it isn’t actually
a cellar, it turns out to be quite funky.

You see, I know my weaknesses. I am seduced by simple
hospitality, a sense of humour and, let’s face it, cheese. But
honestly, you don’t even need a cocked up booking and some
rotten wine to make the Funky Cellar a significant find. Go.
You’ll love it.
@timhayward; timhayward

34

Recipe

Rowley
Leigh

Spaghetti alle vongole

“Vongole” is enough. Walk into SERVES SIX 3. As soon as the
any restaurant on or near the Italian spaghetti is ready but still
coast and the staff will know what The safe mode of cooking very al dente, return the
you want. You will be craving that this dish would be to cook clams to the heat and lift
most elemental of constructions, the clams in advance, the spaghetti out with
spaghetti alle vongole. Although take them from their shells tongs straight into the
we like to remind ourselves that and reunite them with the clams. Stir everything
Italian food is intensely regional, spaghetti and the juice together and let the
spaghetti with clams is to be found (strained if desired); spaghetti continue to
everywhere from Venice all the however, cooking them cook for a couple of
way down the Adriatic coast, round as below, in real time, is minutes, soaking up the
the heel and back up to Rome and quicker and more fun. clam juices as it does so.
beyond, with little variation.
• 1kg fresh clams, the 3. As soon as the
Back in Puglia a couple of weeks smaller the better spaghetti is ready, stir in
ago, it took me two days before the rest of the olive oil
I got my vongole, at Rosa’s. The • 500g spaghetti and serve immediately.
eponymous owner is no mug. • 50ml olive oil The clams should be
She is there, welcoming returning • 2 cloves garlic, finely salty enough so no
customers, weaving around the further seasoning
tables in her designer chef’s jacket chopped should be necessary.
and gold-buckled Dolce & Gabbana • 100ml white wine Wine Down in Puglia the
shoes. But the haute couture stops • 1 or 2 pinches of battle to find enjoyable,
there. There is nothing artful about fresh and temperate wines
the food from a menu set in stone. chilli flakes continues. Native grapes
• 2 tbs freshly chopped such as Falanghina can
You start with antipasti: stuffed be interesting and there
mussels, the tiella of mussels, rice parsley are endless blends of
and potatoes cooked in little clay 1. Dissolve 100g of salt in the more ubiquitous
pots, octopus in various forms, 200ml of boiling water. grapes – chardonnay
little pickled anchovies and bits Add 800ml of cold water and sauvignon blanc –
of swordfish carpaccio. Then the and soak the clams in but they rarely inspire
crudo arrives: everything raw, this brine for a couple of enthusiasm. A Verdicchio
including the red prawns from Sicily hours. This will purge from further up the coast
or Sardinia, langoustines, mussels, them of grit if they have in Le Marche is more
clams and, a little incongruously, any. Rinse the clams in likely to have the requisite
oysters. Now the pasta, which plenty of cold, running zing and freshness that
is usually the vongole. (Those water, discarding any that seafood pasta demands.
hankering towards the lobster are will not close after a tap.
discouraged on economic grounds.) 2. Bring a large pan of
And then, if you’ve got space, there well-salted water to the
is an impeccable fritto misto or boil and add the spaghetti.
a grilled fish, usually bass, bream It will need two minutes
or red mullet. Everything is as it less than the time
should be, correct and restrained. recommended on the
packet. Heat a large, wide
Unfortunately, there is a little pan with half the olive
bit too much restraint. It takes oil and add the garlic.
us about a minute to suck up the After 30 seconds, add the
small amount on our plates. Even drained clams and the
in Italy, they are feeling the pinch. white wine and cover.
The plague has pushed prices up The clams will open after
and portions down. With portion a couple of minutes.
sizes in restaurants everywhere Add the chilli and parsley
seemingly getting smaller, I am and remove from the heat.
glad that I am not quite as greedy
FT.COM/MAGAZINE JUNE 11/12 2022 as I used to be. Still, another good 35
reason for home cooking.
More columns at ft.com/leigh

PHOTOGRAPH BY ANDY SEWELL

Appetites

History cook

‘Eat the dish
salubriously’

A newlydiscovered 13th-century manuscript
revealsalostworld ofdelectable recipes

By Polly Russell

In the middle of a busy restaurant kitchen in tome is a revelation. “It will affect the way we cook
London, Sam and Samantha Clark stand contem- from now on for sure,” says Sam.
plating a saucepan filled with cooked, sprouting
broad beans. The Clarks, owner-chefs of Moro, Arabic scholars have long known of al-Tujībī’s
have been cooking with dried beans for dec- culinary masterpiece, but it was a chance discov-
ades, but it took reading an ancient recipe before ery in 2018 at the British Library, where I work,
they thought to try sprouting them first. “What’s that allowed all the manuscript’s 475 recipes to be
insane,” says Sam, pausing to taste a bean he has collated and translated. “I thought I was cataloguing
marinated in olive oil, cumin and coriander, “is three medical texts,” says Bink Hallum, Arabic sci-
how much we recognise, how much we don’t and entific manuscripts curator. “Then I noticed that
how sophisticated the recipes are.” the writing in the middle of this folio didn’t sound
medicinal. It was for food that was… tasty.”
He is talking about a newly discovered copy of a
13th-century manuscript titled Faḍālat al-khiwān A week before testing al-Tujībī’s recipes, the
fī ṭayyibāt al-ṭaʿām wa-al-alwān (Best of Delectable Clarks meet Hallum and me in a nondescript meet-
Foods and Dishes from al-Andalus and al-Maghrib) ing room in the library’s back offices, looking at the
and written by Ibn Razīn al-Tujībī. Since they oldest known copy of the original 13th-century
opened Moro in 1997, the Clarks have championed manuscript. This one was written in the 1500s,
thefoodoftheArabic-Iberian world, butal-Tujībī’s Hallum tells us. Another version, held at the
University of Tübingen in Berlin, was created ▶

36 PHOTOGRAPHY BY ALBA YRUELA FT.COM/MAGAZINE JUNE 11/12 2022



◀ in the 17th century and one kept at the Royal culture. “It is extremely significant,” says Nas- brought settlers from Syria, Yemen and north
Academy of History in Madrid was probably rallah. “Compared with other cookery books Africa, along with their customs, culture and
created in the 18th century. Hallum has placed from this time, it is the most thorough and inclu- agricultural practices. They cultivated rice, saf-
the red, leather-bound volume on two black sive of food categories and ingredients, and very fron, sugarcane, aubergines, sour oranges and
foam rests. well written and organised.” Nasrallah’s transla- grains, in addition to importing ingredients from
tion, recently published as a 900-page hardback, the Arabic-speaking world.
With the help of a couple of “snakes” – strings contains footnotes, contextual chapters and a The 475 recipes in al-Tujībī’s manuscript pay
of weights – Hallum opens the binding in the detailed glossary. It took “many, many years” to testament to this culinary and cultural diversity.
middle. The Clarks, careful not to touch, lean in complete, she says. The book is organised into 12 parts, each with
while Hallum attempts to decipher the recipe According to Nasrallah, Delectable Foods was multiple chapters. The first focuses on “Bread,
in front of him. One word in particular eludes “obviously written by a person who Tharayid [bread sopped in rich
him. “Turns out spending life reading scien- has actually cooked” and enjoyed broth], Soups, Pastries, and the
tific manuscripts means I don’t have a great food food. Almost every recipe ends with The lentils are a Like” and, among its 16 recipes,
vocabulary,” he laughs. The flowing, elegant the invocation, “Eat the dish salu- deep glossy brown is one which “Invigorates coitus”.
writing on yellowing parchment remains clear, briously”. “I can almost hear his and taste earthy and (The dish consists of a broth
despite being 500 years old. “It’s just so beauti- excitement,” says Sam Clark, leaf- rich. ‘These show up made with chicken or starling,
ful to look at,” says Sam. “It’s more than a recipe ing through Nasrallah’s translation. our recipe a bit to be flavoured with Ceylon cinna-
book. It’s a work of art.” “It’s like he’s tripping over himself honest,’ says Sam mon, coriander seed, onion juice
Hallum unexpectedly uncovered the manu- to share different versions of recipes with breadcrumbs, ginger, black
script while cataloguing the library’s Arabic because they are so good.” pepper and cloves.) A later sec-
scientific holdings. When he realised what he Born into a prominent Andalucían family in tion tackles the “meat of quadrupeds” with recipes
was looking at, he emailed Nawal Nasrallah, the prosperous city of Murcia in 1227, al-Tujībī for beef, mutton and lamb, as well as wild animals
an authority on Arabic medieval cookbooks, was described by his contemporaries as a “learned like oryx, gazelle and rabbit.
based in the US. Nasrallah happened to be in scholar and eloquent scribe”. At about the age of There are 51 recipes dedicated to food preser-
the middle of translating versions of al-Tujībī’s 20,alongwithmanyothers,hewasforcedintoexile vation such as curing fish, preserving olives and
manuscript from the copies located in Berlin. when Murcia surrendered to King Fernando III of pickling turnips. “There are so many things to dis-
Castile. When he was 32, al-Tujībī settled in Tunis cover here,” says Samantha, marvelling at recipes
“With a heavy heart, I was resigned to the and wrote the cookery book commemorating the calling for ingredients like dessert truffles, yarrow,
idea that these incomplete copies were all that culture and cuisine of his youth. “He wrote his borage, sparrows, purslane and asparagus. Dishes
was available, and I had to make the best of it,” cookbook motivated by a desire to preserve a won- like “Fried Aubergine Slices Simmered in Sauce
Nasrallah recalls via video call from her book-lined derful cuisine he grew up on,” says Nasrallah, “and and Topped with Eggs” or “Fried [Cheese-Filled]
office in Salem, Massachusetts. Hallum’s message which was in danger of being forgotten or lost.” mujabbana” (semolina dough) or “Zalãbiya” (lat-
confirming the third and more complete copy was According to al-Tujībī’s introduction, Andalu- tice fritters dipped in honey) would not be out of
“like a gift from heaven”. cíans are “advanced in creating the most delectable place on Moro’s menu.
dishes”. Arabic influence in Andalucía was greatest The Clarks agreed to reproduce four of the
One of only two cookbooks to survive from between 711 and 1492, as waves of Arab conquest manuscript’s recipes for a public event at the
the 13th-century Muslim-Andalucían world,
al-Tujībī’s manuscript details a sophisticated

38 FT.COM/MAGAZINE JUNE 11/12 2022

Appetites

British Library Food Season this spring. Sprout- Above from left: tasting Lentils from ‘Best of Moro’s Lentil recipe by
ing broad beans were on the menu, along with a dishes recreated by Delectable Foods’ Sam & Samantha Clark
wafer-thin herb omelette, lentils and “soft, white Sam and Samantha
halwã” (nougat). Clark for the British Take whatever kind of lentils are • 6 tbs olive oil
Library Food Season in available to you, wash them, and put • 4 cloves of garlic, chopped
“We’ve been making what we call Syrian lentils May (clockwise from them in a new pot with fresh water, • 3 tsp ground cumin
for 25 years,” says Sam, back in Moro’s kitchen. top): herb omelette, olive oil, black pepper, coriander seeds, • 4 tsp ground coriander seeds
“But al-Tujībī’s has browned garlic, saffron and lentils, halwã and broad and chopped onion. Put the pot on • Small bunch of coriander,
vinegar, so it’s going to be different.” To tackle beans; pages from the a fire to cook.
the halwã, Sam looks up a modern nougat recipe. manuscript; the Clarks As soon as the lentils are done, add chopped and stalks set aside
“It requires such precision,” he says, with a look in the Moro kitchen salt – but not too much – a bit of • 2 red onions, chopped
of disbelief. “How they managed by eye without Previous page: a pounded saffron, and as much as you • 250g small brown or Puy lentils
thermometers is incredible.” close-up of the halwã, like of fine-tasting vinegar. Break three • Small pinch of saffron
sweetened with honey eggs into the pot, and as soon as they • 1.75l water
Meanwhile, Samantha takes four large bunches and flavoured with set and the vinegar boils, remove • Salt and black pepper
of coriander, pulverises them in a blender and walnuts and pistachios the pot from fire, empty it into a glazed • Splash of vinegar
squeezes a couple of tablespoons of vibrant green bowls and eat the dish salubriously, 1. In a largish saucepan, heat four
juice from the resulting mush. She tips this into a God Almighty willing. tablespoons of olive oil over a medium
bowl of beaten eggs and then adds coriander and heat. When hot but not smoking add
cumin powder before transforming the mixture The British Library Food Season the garlic, cumin and coriander seeds
into a wafer-thin omelette. takes place during April and May and fry for a minute until light brown.
live and online.“Best of Delectable Then add the coriander stalks and
The Clarks assemble their finished interpreta- Foods and Dishes from al-Andalus three-quarters of the onions. Soften the
tions together on a table. The lentils are a deep, and al-Maghrib: A Cookbook by onions for 10 minutes, or until sweet.
glossy brown and taste earthy and rich. “These Thirteenth-Century Andalusi Scholar 2. Add the lentils, saffron and water to
show up our recipe a bit to be honest,” says Sam Ibn Razīn al-Tujībī (1227-1293)”, the pot. Bring to the boil, and simmer
a little sheepishly. Samantha samples the ome- translated by Nawal Nasrallah, for 40-60 minutes or until the lentils are
lette. “It is subtle,” she declares, “but really nice.” published by Brill, 2021 soft and start to mush, becoming
sauce-like. Season well with salt and
The halwã, sweetened with honey and fla- pepper in the last stages of cooking.
voured with walnuts and pistachios, has a 3. Remove from the heat and stir in
texture like a chewy cloud and is impossibly the remaining chopped coriander and
moreish. “Any one of these could end up on our the remaining olive oil.
menu,” says Sam excitedly. Stretching out across 4. Sprinkle a few teaspoons of your
the centuries, al-Tujībī’s 800-year-old recipes favourite vinegar on to the remaining
are a reminder that the past is not always a for- raw onion. Fold half the onions into the
eign country. lentils and sprinkle the rest on top when
Polly Russell is a curator at the British Library. serving. Eat with a pitta or flatbread.

@PollyRussell1 the_history_cook 39

FT.COM/MAGAZINE JUNE 11/12 2022



Appetites

Wine

Jancis
Robinson
Blind Ambition’s journey
from dream to screen

E rica Platter’s surname A journalistic instinct never an up-and-coming Cape wine
will be familiar to anyone subsides, and back in 2016, Erica region, Swartland, and she invited
who knows anything contacted me with an extraor- him to visit.
about South African wine. dinary story. It was the tale of a
A journalist-turned-wine producer, small group of economic refugees His first job was as a gardener
she and her journalist husband from Zimbabwe whose upbring- working every hour he could, includ-
John launched Platter’s South ing had been devoid of both wine ing in the garden of a restaurant
African Wine Guide in 1978, a pocket and fine dining, but who were all called Bar Bar Black Sheep, whose
book unashamedly modelled on now head sommeliers at top Cape owner, Mynhardt Joubert, soon pro-
Hugh Johnson’s annual. Town restaurants. moted him to dishwasher.

The Platters’ guide was initially One of them, Joseph Dhafana, He then became a waiter and,
dismissed by the South African arrived in Johannesburg in 2009 as he later told Platter, “On March
wine establishment, and the then- as a destitute 27-year-old, walk- 7 2010, I had the very first glass of
dominant wine organisation, the ing the streets looking for work bubbly in my life, from Mynhardt
KWV, even refused to supply any and sleeping rough. He was given [the restaurateur]. It was my birth-
details for the book. But it has since shelter in the city’s Central Meth- day. I struggled a lot to finish it.
definitively established itself as the odist Church, which had become Looking in the glass, which was
bible of the blossoming Cape wine a refugee centre and was often fizzy, with my mind in the vine-
scene. It is now run by a team of featured in TV news bulletins. yards, trying to think how can
tasters who aim to keep up with the He was spotted on screen one night someone convert grapes to such a
many new developments there. by a cousin living in what was then wonderful liquid, I asked myself
dozens of questions with no one ▶

FT.COM/MAGAZINE JUNE 11/12 2022 ILLUSTRATION BY LEON EDLER 41

Appetites

‘The Zimbabwean team ◀ to answer. The wine bug followed It seemed like such a great story
broke intoan impromptu me since that day.” that I emailed everyone I could
acappella songatdinner. think of who might be interested in
This,and theirfervent Dhafana moved to Cape Town making a film about their attempt,
group prayerwere,of and up the ladder of restaurant ser- without success.
course,cinematicgold’ vice, taking wine exams and ending
up in charge of the wine list at the I n June 2017, I attended a fine
famous La Colombe restaurant. wine conference at the Ventoux
He made contact with three other estate of Xavier and Nicole
young Zimbabwean men who had Sierra Rolet, producer of
come to South Africa in the 2000s Chêne Bleu wines. The Australian
in search of a better life and whose Andrew Caillard, a fellow Master of
work ethic and fascination with wine Wine, was also there. He had been
mirrored his own. They all became an adviser on a rather successful
top somms: Tinashe Nyamudoka at 2013 film called Red Obsession about
The Test Kitchen, Pardon Taguzu how the Chinese fell for wine,
at Aubergine and Marlvin Gwese at so I tried to sell him the idea of a film
Cape Grace Hotel. about the Zimbabwean wine tasters,
hoping he would communicate
In 2015, Dhafana entered South it to the rest of the team back
Africa’s wine tasting competi- in Australia.
tion and came third, so in 2015 he
was included in the South African As it happened, producer-
team in the World Wine Tasting directors Warwick Ross and
Championships, held every year Rob Coe had been looking for a
by the French wine magazine La subject for a second wine-related
Revue du Vin de France. The South documentary and were consider-
Africans managed their best per- ing making a film about the annual
formance ever and, inspired by Oxbridge wine-tasting competi-
this, Dhafana set about assembling tion in London. Caillard scribbled a
a Zimbabwean team, to include his note about the Zim sommeliers
three friends, for the 2017 interna- on a bit of paper at Chêne Bleu in
tional competition. June and put it in the pocket of
a jacket he didn’t wear again
The only problem was the until August, when he found it
cost. Some of their employers and mentioned the idea to Ross
helped out but the team needed and Coe. They were thrilled. By
quite a lot more. We chipped in September 8 they had the financ-
with a crowdfunding drive on my ing in place and had booked to fly to
website. A total of £8,262 was Cape Town just 11 days later to film
raised, more than they needed, so the first footage, about the Zims’
by August 2017 they were set to preparations for the competition.
take on the world in Burgundy two
months later.

42 FT.COM/MAGAZINE JUNE 11/12 2022

Jancis recommends...
ONES TO WATCH
A brief history of wine movies

• Blind Ambition (2021) wine counterfeiter on the 1976 Judgment
Documentary about Rudy Kurniawan of Paris California
four Zimbabwean • Red Obsession (2013) vs France tasting
refugees-turned- Documentary about • Sideways (2004)
wine tasters China’s love of wine Drama based on
• Somm (2012) Rex Pickett’s book
• Uncorked (2020) Documentary about about a California
Drama about a young four Americans’ wine-tasting trip.
man’s desire to become attempts to become It inspired widespread
a Master Sommelier Master Sommeliers. planting of
rather than take over There have been Pinot Noir vines
his father’s Memphis two sequels so far • Mondovino (2004)
barbecue business • Bottle Shock (2008) Documentary about
Drama based (loosely) the increasing
• Sour Grapes (2016) globalisation of wine
Documentary
about the prolific

All films have been reviewed on JancisRobinson.com;
Blind Ambition will be released in the UK by Curzon Films in July;
a scripted series based on the documentary is under way

In October, my Zimbabwean- which has helped so many refugees
born colleague Tamlyn Currin everywhere get back on their feet.
and I went to Burgundy to wit-
ness the competition – and filming It would be unsporting of me to
– and were delighted to meet the say any more about the somms’
four members of the Zimbabwean performance in the 2017 and 2018
team. They were truly inspiring. wine-tasting Olympics, both of them
At dinner the night before, they filmed for the documentary, but I can
broke into an impromptu a cappella report on what the team members
song, prompting a rousing cheer are doing now. As well as working as
from their fellow competitors from a sommelier for Roar Africa, a travel
24 different countries. This, and specialist, Dhafana has his own line
the team’s fervent group prayer just of wines and gin, Mosi and Tongai.
before the wines were poured, were Nyamudoka has a range of South
of course cinematic gold. African wines, Kumusha, which
are fairly well distributed in the US.
Anyone with any knowledge Taguzu has moved to the Nether-
of film production will know how lands, where he runs the only 100
time-consuming it is but this par- per cent African-owned wine import
ticular film, called Blind Ambition, and export company in Europe.
was hugely hampered by the pan- He has also made an Austrian wine
demic. It was due to be launched in called Dzimbahwe. Gwesen is now
Cape Town in late April 2020 but group sommelier at the new five-star
has yet to be screened there. In the hotel The Cellars-Hohenort in Cape
end, its debut was at the Tribeca Town and has also begun to make his
Film Festival last June, where it won own wine, Mukanya.
the Audience Award for Best
Documentary Feature. They are all still very much
in touch with the woman they call
It pulled off similar feats at film “Gogo [granny] Ex”, after Platter’s
festivals in Sonoma and Sydney nickname Exie, and all four plan to
and this Thursday will, at last, get attend the London premiere.
a London premiere, at the Curzon More columns at
Mayfair – at a screening in aid of the ft.com/jancis-robinson
International Rescue Committee,

FT.COM/MAGAZINE JUNE 11/12 2022 43

The Humourist

Robert
Shrimsley

The last Prius to freedom

Wit & Wisdom My wife had suddenly announced an hour to another Tube station on For too much of the
she did not want to take the Tube the wrong line so we could connect concert my mind
44 home after the concert. She was back on to the right and still packed was fixed not on the
fine with it on the way there, but Tube? We thought of just hanging show, which was
the prospect of being compressed around till the crowds departed. An terrific, but on the
with thousands of Killers fans for Uber was fine in principle, but I had looming nuisance
20 minutes around the station a vision of Highbury Corner turned of our return
entrance so we could then snake into the roof of the Saigon embassy
our way through another slow crush as hundreds waited for the last Prius
to the platform, just so we could be to freedom.
squashed like sardines for half the
journey home, was hardly enticing, My wife was untroubled.
even in the days before Covid-19. She was, to an irritating degree,
Mr. Brightside. “We’re in the middle
I understood her thinking, but of London; we’ll find a way back.”
this was by far the best way home. This was both true and also not in
As a regular football spectator, I am the least bit reassuring. Yes, we’d
hardened to the crush, although one find a way back, but I was hoping
always has the option of nipping for something a bit more concrete
off a few minutes before the end. than the directional equivalent of
With a rock concert, the best songs a Simon & Garfunkel song. What
are often saved until last. So this if we found the wrong way and
was annoying. Clearly, my wife was discovered that instead of heading
wrong, but the strange thing was, to south-west London we had
she didn’t see it that way. walked off to look for America? It
was not that I doubted we would
All manner of alternatives were get home, just that I did not see how
researched. Buses? Walking for half

ILLUSTRATION BY LUCAS VARELA FT.COM/MAGAZINE JUNE 11/12 2022

an unpredictable journey into the Games THE CROSSWORD
night was a superior plan. A ROUND ON THE LINKS No 593. Set by Aldhelm
by James Walton
And so for too much of the 123 45 6 7 8
concert my mind was fixed not on All the answers here are linked
the show, which was terrific, but on in some way. Once you’ve 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
the looming nuisance of our return. spotted the connection, any
Even as the hits soared over the you didn’t know the first time 9 10
stadium, Fergal Keane’s voice was around should become easier.
playing in my head: “They came for a 00 00 00
rock concert but now tired, footsore 1. For which novel did
and hungry, they are just trying to get Howard Jacobson win the 11 12
home. This man has been walking 2010 Man Booker Prize?
for 90 minutes and still can’t find 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
the right night bus. There’s a dog at 2. Which British charity was
home, and its bladder cannot hold known until 1972 as the National 13 14 15
out indefinitely.” Association for Mental Health?
00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 16
Surely, not since Scott headed off 3. Which regular performers at
to the Pole had man embarked on British national events made their 20 00 17 18 19
such an ill-fated mission. I envisaged debut in 1965 at Little Rissington 22 00 00 21 00 00
us bivouacked somewhere around in Gloucestershire? 00 00 00
Islington, only 10 miles from base 00 24
camp. “I’m just going to McDonald’s. 4. Which of the “Two Johns” 23 00
I may be some time”. who worked with Rory Bremner 00 00 00 00
died in 2013? 00
T his is why I’ve never made
it to Glastonbury. The 5. What body of water separates 25 26
ability to live entirely in the Saudi Arabia from east Africa?
moment is a skill I’ve never 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
possessed. I will always be thinking 6. What term, which originally
about the mud, the crowds, how we’ll applied to the Irish revolution 27 28
find our way back to the tent. Waking of 1912-23, was used again five
up in a sleeping bag two hours after decades later for another conflict? The Across clues are straightforward, while the Down clues are cryptic.
you finally managed to get to sleep,
just so you can trudge 20 minutes 7. Which word is missing from ACROSS 27 Come together (8) say, when
to the midden that passes for the all of these hit singles: “________ 1 Swamp, bog (6) 28 Two-shilling climbing (6)
toilet is all part of the experience I’m Avenue” (The Maisonettes); 4 Hitting (a fly) (8) piece (6) 10 Rap about
genetically coded to avoid. “________ Tonight” (The Eagles); 9 Cowboy show (5) the old regiment
“It’s a ________” (Bonnie Tyler)? 10 Fortune-telling DOWN being reorganised
While friends dive into the using the hand (9) 1 Spoil one occasion for religious
mosh pits of life, I am drawn to the 8. What’s the first syllable of 11 Virtuoso at sea (8) occasion (6, 7)
sturdy chairs by the side. These the nursery rhyme that refers keyboard piece (7) 2 Fundamentally 15 Kent town upset
concerts are primarily about the to “the butcher, the baker, the 12 Acorn recover without the scorer (9)
memories and the moment, and my candlestick-maker”? producer (3, 4) drug being put up (9) 16 Major disaster’s
memories would be of the moments 13 Donkey-horse 3 Labour gets one cut without energy
of inconvenience. I am not proud 9. Which valley is the hottest place cross (4) catchphrase (6) that’s limited (8)
of this but I also know it to be true. in the world? 14 Show up 5 Chinese design 18 Dull part of
The key to my happiness is effective once more (8) plain trowel with Worcester I left (7)
advance planning. 10. What was the nickname of 17 North California odd bits only, 20 Still cast it out (6)
the wild west woman who’s been National Park (8) perhaps (6, 7) 21 Top up faulty oil
The price of this is missing out played on screen by Jane Russell, 19 Dull pain (4) 6 Tiny drop to filters so it’s gone (6)
on the richest experiences, which Yvonne De Carlo and Doris Day? 22 Acrobat’s swing (7) deceive the 23 One to win over (5)
mostly I’m OK with since there are 24 Basic part (7) French (7)
few riches I seek which don’t involve Solution to Crossword No 592 25 Custom, 7 Bury coffin terribly?
clean toilets, coffee machines and convention (9) Not entirely (5)
a clear means of departure. In this T R I BA L AP AMPH L E T 26 Opening piece, 8 Spout about
case, the price of my inadequacies AEAYAAALAALAEAA in short (5) Surrey’s borders,
was spending too much of the AN ACOND AAC AN V AS
concert gaming through the A T AHADA T AACAE A T THE PICTURE ROUND + =
alternative routes home. MAC AR ON I ACA RR I E by James Walton
GETTY IMAGES AMA N AWA N A A R A A A F
Half an hour after leaving the AOACON F US EDAGAU Who or
stadium we were met by the cab AB L E AE AMANAV E A L what do
that we did in fact manage to secure. GAAAPRE J UDGEARA these
My wife was right. We had found a I ACARAAUAEARAGA pictures
simple way home, albeit a slow and T ERRORABOAS T F U L add up to?
expensive one. The cost of enjoying AAOAT AA I AVA I AAA
these events is not merely eternal T ASSE LAL I ONCUBS
planning, it is also a surge-priced OASAGAAEAUAAAL A
Uber. It isn’t very rock’n’roll but, as REEMERGEARE L I E F
it turns out, neither am I.
[email protected] ANSWERS ON PAGE 6

@robertshrimsley 45

FT.COM/MAGAZINE JMUANREC1H1/1192/20222022

Wit & Wisdom

The Questionnaire

Edward Carey
Author and artist
Interview by Hester Lacey

1. What is your earliest memory? the 1970s. More recently, at the desperate. In an unhappy moment, I love the Wensum too, as a Norfolk
Picking daffodils in a Norfolk start of the pandemic, we took in stalled or worried, lost or aimless, boy. I remember one weekend on
garden. There was also being an abandoned black cat with a foul nothing works better for me than a the Wensum at dusk with a couple
forbidden to go on a bumper car in temper – an appalling brimstone sharp pencil (Tombow B from of friends and seeing a strange mist
Legoland in Denmark because I was beast that we love very much. Japan) and a pad (Strathmore collect above the water. We were
too small. That smarted. 5. Risk or caution, which has Bristol Vellum), and then the pencil convinced it was a ghost. It was an
2. Who was your mentor? defined your life more? might take you off somewhere, experience to me as profound as the
I had an amazing English teacher at Sometimes one, sometimes the anywhere. It seems very modest, books of Alan Garner, which I read
school called John Flint who other. About a decade ago I came a the pencil, but I don’t think it is. as a schoolboy and made me want
inspired me very much. He taught little off the rails – writing-wise I don’t think it can ever be fully to become a writer.
us King Lear and I’m still in the – and thought I’d never write again. fathomed what the pencil can do. 12. What would you have
thrall of his classes many years on. Returning to fairy tales and to 9. Do you believe in an afterlife? done differently?
Later, I was lucky to have very children’s literature taught me to I’ll let you know. I don’t really go in for regrets.
generous support from the start all over again and to dare 10. Which is more puzzling, the I once took 15 years to write a
playwright Hugh Whitemore and myself in my thinking and writing. existence of suffering or its novel, which was probably too long –
the novelist and short-story writer 6. What trait do you find most frequent absence? I should have told myself: “You
Robert Coover. These two men gave irritating in others? Both, everything. might think about hurrying up.”
me confidence when I dearly The enabling of morons 11. Name your favourite river. My dear late father once said to me,
needed it. Things may have been or monsters. The Thames at low tide – I love “You might try writing books that
very different if it weren’t for them. 7. What quality do you find most mudlarking. Finding old bits of people would want to read.” I’m still
3. How fit are you? irritating in yourself? London in the mud each time I visit working on that.
I go running most mornings before Mind your own business. the city has always been an Edward will be at Essex Book Festival
dawn, but remain perennially stout. 8. What drives you on? incredible delight. That you can on June 25 as part of the Midsummer
4. Tell me about an animal you The next book or the next drawing. find history in the mud any day of Madness day at Cressing Temple
have loved. There has to be something to work the week – Victorian, Georgian, Barns. essexbookfestival.org.uk
There was a bulldog called Gerty in towards, or it all feels a bit Tudor, Roman – feels like a miracle.
FT.CFOT.MCO/MMA/GMAAZGIANZEINMEARJUCNHE1191//2102 2022
46 ILLUSTRATION BY LAUREN CROW