Canal plus
Conservatorium, De L’Europe, Traverse City MI properties, Marcel, GIFTSHOP, La Concha, MORE
ABOUT FOUND • Help Wanted
We’re newly on the search for an editorial assistant. It’s a fractional job requiring 5-10 hours per week, and includes organizing FOUND’s editorial calendar, communicating with contributors, updating FOUND’s website, and if you please, some writing. The position is remote, though the ideal candidate will be based in a FOUND city.
Speaking of, the wheels are turning on new FOUND cities. We’re looking for contributors based in Chicago, New Orleans, Hawaii, plus Sydney and Melbourne. These are very flexible freelance roles that don’t necessarily require a professional writing background — mostly passion about FOUND categories along with impeccable taste. Is that you, or a friend?
We need a paid social guru to manage a small spend.
If any of these opportunities excite you, drop us a line at found@itsfound.com and tell us a little bit about yourself.
GOODS & SERVICES • Big Ticket
Select answers to the FOUND Routine query, What’s a recent big-ticket purchase you love?
→ HASUNG LEE, head chef & owner, Oyatte (NY, above): I recently purchased Cook the Mountain by the three-star Italian chef Norbert Niederkofler. His narrative and philosophy on sustainable cooking are fascinating and have been a great source of inspiration lately.
→ ARASH HASHEMI, creator, ShredHappens & Kaizen Food Company (Miami): Hiring an AI coach. As both a creator and consumer packaged goods co-founder, I’m beginning to understand that leveraging AI and integrating it into what I do day to day isn’t optional anymore. I wanted to go beyond surface-level experimentation and understand how to build systems around it so I can operate more efficiently and ultimately serve my community at a higher level. It’s taking some adjustment, but I’m already learning a ton.
→ PAULINE GAUTHIER, head of food, drinks & agrifoodtech, Business France – UK & Ireland (LDN): I bought my electric bike from Compton Cycles, where the team is brilliant. To me, cycling is the best way to travel across London – you don’t get crushed on the tube and you discover new corners of our city every day.
GETAWAYS LINKS: Anticipated St. Regis Costa Mujeres, Cancun sets 06/25 opening, reservations now open • Nobu planning country escape on 185 acres in English countryside • Morocco’s Waldorf Astoria Rabat-Salé opens in Africa’s third-tallest skyscraper • Farm-fresh hotels • 50 details that make a hotel so f’ing good.
RESTAURANTS • New York
Concrete jungle
The base of the staircase to the subterranean dining room at 945 Madison — the famous Breuer Building on the Upper East Side — is (like most of the building) fashioned from concrete. It’s a grand entrance into one of New York City’s very best dining rooms, which as of last month is home to the new restaurant Marcel.
Walking down that staircase for the first time since 2019, when chef Ignacio Mattos operated the terrific Flora Bar here, I was struck anew by the room itself: double-height ceilings framing windows looking out across the building’s unique moat and up to Madison Avenue. This time around, the restaurant space is in the hands of the design group Roman and Williams, who own and operate Marcel in partnership with Sotheby’s. Here, they’ve applied their luxurious style with lots of new dark walnut for the bar area, dining room, and the ceiling that overhangs about half of the room.
Still, no amount of wood can win out over the brilliance of the brutalist concrete structure, the work of architect Marcel Breuer, who designed the building for The Whitney in the ’60s (Sotheby’s bought the building in 2024 as its new headquarters).
Seated at a banquette situated just outside the perimeter of that wood ceiling on Saturday night, our group of four soaked up the menu, a very fancy, mostly French affair. Besides their design aesthetic, Roman and Williams have brought Marie-Aude Rose uptown (from their straight-ahead French restaurant La Mercerie in Soho), to cook in the open kitchen tucked into the restaurant’s rear corner. Here, she’s doing more sophisticated work. –Lockhart Steele
GOODS & SERVICES • Paris
Memory cabinet
Tucked just off the Palais-Royal across from France’s Ministry of Culture, the new boutique GIFTSHOP is easy to miss. There’s no flashy storefront, just a discreet door marked with the name. Ring the doorbell and climb the beautiful old staircase to the second floor, where the boutique subtly reveals itself.
A highly curated, design-led souvenir concept that’s part boutique, part creative studio, GIFTSHOP produces objects tied to the city’s best addresses, old and new. Inside the apartment-like space, a bistro table is set with linens from La Fontaine de Mars, Café des Ministres wine glasses, and an ashtray from La Closerie des Lilas, objects that carry the memory of crowded tables and slow, sunlit afternoons. In the next room, a wooden cabinet holds bistro plates from Brasserie Lipp, Le Paul Bert, and Au Pied de Cochon, their typography instantly recognizable to anyone who has lingered late into the evening at these iconic Parisian establishments.
A polished brass luggage cart, more hôtel particulier than retail fixture, holds a varsity jacket, scarves, and colorful hats from Folderol. And the pièce de résistance, an orange bike from À la Mère de la Famille (whose craques might be among the most addictive chocolates in Paris), leans against the wall. Each item is part of the setting, yet everything is for sale. –Sam Brenzel
AROUND FOUND • Other Notable Intel & Recs
→ NY: In Midtown, Bar Chimera is the latest brainchild of restaurateur Simon Kim. Coming off the juggernaut that is Cocodaq, Kim’s viral fried chicken restaurant, it must be said that the man knows how to give the people what they want. In this case, it’s martinis.
→ MIAMI: San Juan’s historic oceanfront resort on Condado Beach, La Concha, completed an extensive $80 million renovation last year, including a guestroom redesign, three new restaurants, and a new spa and salon. Puerto Rico knows how to party, and this is especially evident on La Concha’s pool deck, with three infinity-edge pools, and late nights at the oceanfront Fifty Eight nightclub. The people-watching is superb.
→SF: Chef Christopher Kostow, who remains on an extended, fire-related hiatus from his lauded Napa spot Restaurant at Meadowood, got into the bagel business in 2022 with the opening of Loveski Deli at Napa’s Oxbow Public Market. His modern take on Jewish deli fare — in particular. the Montreal-by-way-of-Cali-style bagels — became a hit spawning a Larkspur location, and in March, an outpost in the heart of San Francisco’s Jackson Square.
REAL ESTATE • First Mover
Three for-sale single-family residences in Traverse City, MI, that came to market in the last 14 days.
→ 2770 Nelson Rd (Traverse City, above) • 4BR/2.2BA, 2,626 SF single-family • Ask: $2.5M • on Old Mission Peninsula w/ boat slip and panoramic Bay views • Days on market: 11 • Annual tax: $6,675 • Agent: Shawn Schmidt, Coldwell Banker Schmidt.
→ 55 S Hope Ridge (Traverse City) • 15BR/11BA, 15383 SF multi-family • Ask: $3.5M • 8 homes and 4 barns over 40 acres • Days on market: 9 • Annual tax: $NA • Agent: Matthew Dakoske, RE/MAX Bayshore.
→ 3515 Jefferson Ave (Traverse City) • 5BR/2.2BA, 5724 SF house • Ask: $3.85M • 1880 house on 10 acres atop Jefferson Hill • Days on market: 6 • Annual tax: $6873 • Agent: Jennifer Gaston, RE/MAX Bayshore.
ASK FOUND
One fresh PROMPT for which we seek your intelligence:
What’s your favorite restaurant that you’ve visited on your travels?
More answers or questions? Hit reply or email found@itsfound.com.
GETAWAYS • Amsterdam
Dutch treats
FOUND checks into two unique styles of luxe digs in the heart of Amsterdam, with rare plant-focused dining experiences.
“You can’t get away from yourself by moving from one place to another,” Hemingway once wrote. I disagree. In Rome, the gluten-phobic slurps glossy carbonara. In the Marrakech souk, the bashful traveler transforms into a cunning haggler. And in Amsterdam, a weed-shy journalist might find herself taking leisurely puffs while strolling along the canal, the sun shimmering on the water on a rare blue-skied March day.
Recently, I traveled to Amsterdam in search of a relaxing, so-called adult vacation. I had booked stays in two high-end hotels, each with its own distinct take on luxury. It was a chance to get away from the relentless, capricious Paris scene; to eavesdrop on a new language with its own melodies; to let my eyes trace the high windows and brick façades and curvy roofs of the local architectural style. I would bike. I would chill. I would embrace the city and its cultural offerings, delicious surprises and all.
In the central but relatively calm museum district (the “Upper East Side” of Amsterdam, as one staffer put it) sits Conservatorium, a former bank turned music conservatory turned luxury hotel, recently acquired and recast by Mandarin Oriental.