On the Belgian Coast, a Design Gallery Where You Can Spend the Night

Final yr, when Micha Pycke, 40, and Albane Paret, 39, purchased an condo in Ostend — a as soon as run-down Belgian seaside city that, lately, has turn out to be a favourite of artists and designers — they knew they wished the place to be, says Pycke, “one thing greater than an Airbnb or vacation dwelling.” As a substitute, the couple, who co-own the Ghent-based arts- and design-focused communications company Membership Paradis, envisioned what he calls “a brand new form of area”: basically, a gallery the place visitors may keep in a single day. To that finish, they’ve crammed the 1,000-square-foot two-bedroom, which is on the eighth ground of a ’60s-era constructing overlooking the North Sea, with works by a few of their favourite artists and designers, a lot of whom are additionally their shoppers. In the lounge, a lacquered wooden espresso desk by the Dutch designer Linde Freya Tangelder’s studio, Destroyers/Builders, sits atop a limited-edition rug by the Swiss textile artist Christoph Hefti woven with pictures of foxes. In one of many bedrooms, a copper-colored, ruched-felt tapestry by Rooms Studio — a women-led firm from Tbilisi, Georgia — hangs above a Duo seat by the Belgian staff Muller Van Severen for Valerie Objects. And if you happen to like one thing, you possibly can most likely take it with you; many of the items are on the market, and Pycke and Paret are additionally glad to attach visitors immediately with designers. Charges from about $305 an evening, paradisapartment.com. — Gisela Williams

The Cooks Embracing the Earthiness of Hojicha

Hojicha — the deep brown roasted leaves and stems sometimes constructed from the Japanese inexperienced tea bancha — may lack the visible drama of now-ubiquitous matcha however, in response to the pastry cooks whipping the pulverized leaves into batter and sprinkling them on desserts, that understated look is a part of its enchantment. The Los Angeles-based chef Gerardo Gonzalez, 41, who first used the tea in a guava-and-coconut custard at his now-shuttered El Rey luncheonette in New York, finds its “gentle, claylike coloration actually stunning.” Final yr, for a Valentine’s Day collaboration with the downtown New York restaurant Dimes, he added it to the black sesame praline filling of crémeux tarts, which have been topped with segmented citrus and lovage leaves. “The bitter, tannic notes of hojicha make one thing actually candy advanced somewhat than 2-D,” he says. An Vo, 32, of the West Hollywood-based online-only bakery AV Patisserie, says she likes the tea’s “hints of cacao” and “heat, toasty caramel.” She folds hojicha powder into the batter of her spongecake, which is soaked in espresso and completed with a mix of mascarpone and whipped cream. Hojicha’s earthiness additionally pairs properly with ice cream. Jesse, 29, and Javier Zuniga, 33, the couple behind the New York-based ice cream maker Unhealthy Behavior, say it provides a smoky depth to their baked Alaska. In Chicago, throughout her tenure on the bakery Brite, the pastry chef Erika Chan, 32, doubled down on the ingredient, glazing doughnuts in a slick of hojicha-milk syrup and mixing the tea into its yeasted dough. “The flavour,” she says, “jogs my memory of popcorn.” — Lauren Joseph

Bookended by World Warfare I and the collapse of the inventory market, the Nineteen Twenties have been a short and flamable interval of glamorous mythmaking. Living proof: the gauzy origins of the attention-grabbing cocktail rings that many a flapper wore on her right-hand index finger, supposedly to sign to a speakeasy bartender that she was in search of a pour of the true stuff. By the late Nineteen Fifties, a brand new era of Hollywood starlets and Stork Membership patrons had rediscovered the large bijoux, and the New York Metropolis-born jeweler Harry Winston, largely identified for his spectacular diamonds set in platinum, started hatching plans for coloured cocktail rings of his personal. Just lately, the home’s designers unearthed of their archives never-used sketches he made throughout that period; to deliver them to life, they added conventional stones like rubies, emeralds and sapphires to a confectionary explosion of contemporary hard-candy hues: Italian ice blue aquamarines, raspberry purple spinels, purplish tourmalines. This platinum ring, with a 15-carat oval tsavorite garnet at its middle, large and juicy as a lozenge, is surrounded by peridots, diamonds and pink sapphires: pure sugar shock. Harry Winston Sweet ring, value on request, harrywinston.com. — Nancy Hass

Digital tech: Maiko Ando. Photograph assistant: Karl Leitz. Set designer’s assistant: Victoria Novak