Menorca dreams
Menorca, Merriman’s, Timberyard Edinburgh, La Ligne, Baby Grand, Cynthia, The Polo Room, Le Cyrano, MORE
The FOUND 45s are our lists of favorite restaurants across the FOUND universe. FOUND Global paid subscribers can access them all:
GOODS & SERVICES • Big Ticket
Notable responses to the FOUND Routine query, “What’s a recent big-ticket purchase you love?”
→ CAROLINE MCKAY, founder, Caro: The Demi from Terra Kaffe: a bean-to-cup super-automatic machine, design-forward, makes your apartment smell great, and saves you so much on going out for coffee. And for the ladies, the La Ligne Colby Pants in satin: best clothing purchase I’ve made all year.
→ JOHN FULTON, writer, The Eastside Rag (LA): I bought a pair of Aaron Levine’s double-pleated pants and I’ve been wearing them everywhere. His sweatshirts are great, too.
→ JAY PATEL, founder & owner, Legare, Luna & Five Feet (LDN): Two single-zone Swisscave wine fridges for our home kitchen. I don’t drink much these days, but I’ve collected wine throughout my career. My wife and I love hosting, so it’s always nice to have a few special bottles ready to open when friends come over.
GETAWAYS • Weekend Routine
Aloha life
PETER MERRIMAN • chef & owner • Merriman’s
Neighborhood you work in: Hawaii
Neighborhood you live in: Hawaii, all over
It’s Friday morning. How are you rolling into the weekend?
I’m making beef bourguignon, developing the recipe for our Honolulu restaurant. With the price of beef going through the ceiling, I’m trying to find ways to use more affordable cuts of meat while maintaining the quality of the dish. In the morning, I’m heading up to Okoa Farms in Makawao to shop for ingredients and stopping in at Marlow for a coffee.
Where are you drinking or dining this weekend?
I own so many restaurants, I tend to eat mostly at those restaurants, because I have to do quality inspections. So, whether it’s Merriman’s in Kapalua or one of the Monkeypod Kitchens by Merriman, or even Ulu Kitchen, that’s where you’ll most often find me. You can also find me at Jeff Sheer’s Marlow (again) or Zach Sato’s Havens Harborside for lunch or dinner. When I have guests in town, I always enjoy taking them to the Old Lahaina Luau. And the Pukalani Superette is great for a bento lunch.
How about a little leisure or culture?
The Parker Ranch rodeo on the Fourth of July! Nobody does cowboying like the paniolo (see esp. Ikua Purdy). Also on the Big Island, horseback riding at Nalapa Stables in Waimea or Hawaii Forest and Trails, both excellent. On Maui, Maui Cyclery for bicycle rentals and guided trips. For Hiking, Helewai Tours is great. On Oahu, The Bishop Museum is a fantastic way to spend the day. Hawaii Land Trust is on all the Hawaii Islands.
Any weekend getaways?
Kamuela Inn on the Big Island, in the heart of Waimea town. It’s walking distance to Merriman’s Waimea and some coffee shops. The stay includes breakfast, and folks are always so gracious. When I’m on the Big Island, I always try to make it to the Hilo Farmer’s Market and Two Ladies Kitchen in Hilo for mochi.
What was your last great vacation?
Solvang, CA. While we were there, we did a tour at Melville Winery, one of our partners, and really enjoyed hearing from the winemaker himself, Chad Melville. Merriman collaborates with several premier wineries each year to produce a special blend of wine in eco-friendly packaging, a shift that prevents more than 20,000 glass bottles from entering our landfill every year.
What’s a recent big-ticket purchase you love?
Merriman’s recently took all of our chefs on a chef’s trip to Osaka. While we were there, we had a knife workshop at Sakai Ichimonji Mitsuhide. I purchased several knives from their store in Osaka and have been using them ever since.
What store or service do you always recommend?
When I’m on the mainland, I really enjoy flying JSX Airlines, especially in California.
Where are you donating your time or money?
Hawaii Public Radio and the Polynesian Voyaging Society.
GETAWAYS LINKS: Espying the renovation at the reopened Danieli Venezia • First look at the new Trailborn Jackson Hole • Checking into 21 Carpenter Singapore • Why Cathay Pacific’s renovated The Wing, First at HKG might be its best lounge yet • Department of minor travel regrets • The good travel secret.
GETAWAYS • Scotland
Foraged and found
Timberyard is so cool you might assume it’s a new addition to Edinburgh’s dining scene. But the restaurant, run by the city’s Radford family, has inhabited a former 19th-century warehouse since 2012. It’s evolved over the years under different chefs, but its current mastermind, Bart Stratfold, has further channelled Timberyard’s vision for local, hyper-seasonal ingredients and Nordic-inspired techniques.
The restaurant is best experienced with the full tasting menu, which spans everything from raw Scottish seafood and forest-driven pickles to culled roe deer and locally farmed mushrooms. It offers a taste of the country’s best flavours and products, all of which are carefully curated by Stratfold and his team.
Shorter menus are available for lunch and dinner, but the scope of Timberyard’s tasting menu reveals the reach of Scotland itself. Stratfold keeps the focus on what can be found nearby, including foraged plants and herbs, and each dish is refined without feeling pretentious. Barra scallop served with pepper dulse and red fir potatoes is a particular highlight, as is the blood orange dessert, a perfect balance of citrus, sweet and bitter. Because Timberyard has a dedicated forager, the soft pairing is exceptionally creative, mirroring the textures and tasting notes of the wine list. Servers make you feel special, but not observed – a rare feat in fine dining. –Emily Zemler
GETAWAYS • San Diego
Grand style
Formerly a sleepy motel on Coronado Island’s main drag (across from the iconic Hotel Del Coronado), the 31-room Baby Grand has been remade into one of Southern California’s boldest boutique hotels, a wonderland of jungle foliage, Grecian statues, clamshell beds, mirrored bars, and enough patterned wallpaper to make even minimalists reconsider. It’s unlike anything else on Coronado Island.
Forget finding the hotel’s hidden bar; the real challenge is locating the lobby. From Orange Avenue, you’ll see a sign for the hotel, but following it leads you into what reads less like a check-in area and more like a dreamy jungle nightclub. Palm fronds tower overhead. Fire pits flicker beneath the trees. Pink velour-suited servers weave between tables carrying elaborate cocktails, while stylish 20-somethings pose for photos against waterfalls, a plunge pool, and greenery.
I felt ridiculously out of place rolling my Target suitcase through it all — I changed into a floral dress the moment I unpacked, just so I could fit the upscale tropical vibe. Which, also, is entirely the point. Baby Grand wants to feel discovered rather than announced, and once you finally stumble upon reception behind an unmarked door by the bar), it becomes clear you’ve entered somewhere genuinely novel. –Melissa Heckscher
AROUND FOUND • Bonus Intel & Recs
→ MIAMI: Palm Beach’s latest who’s-who dining destination, The Polo Room, is worth keeping in your back pocket for when season starts up again, a place where the food and overall hospitality experience are as satisfying as the people-watching.
→ LA: Chef-owners Tyler Burges and Phil Mireles built their new Arts District restaurant Bengara around genshiyaki — a 1,500-year-old Japanese cooking method that uses the radiant heat of an open charcoal hearth — but in a very Californian way. The wasabi isn’t flown in from the Izu Peninsula, but rather grown in Half Moon Bay. The soba noodles are made from scratch; the ume, aged in-house. Bengara’s approach is best represented by the agedashi tomato.
→ PARIS: Le Cyrano has stood for more than a century with its remarkable Art Nouveau and Art Deco décor almost entirely intact. Since four friends took over the address in 2022, the plates have been gently modernized, while the spirit of the place has remained untouched. It’s a place to spend the day.
GETAWAYS • Menorca
Poc a poc
My wife, Yaz, has a good eye for real estate. She spent the last three years looking for a home in Europe, an escape from Paris.
She ventured to Croatia, Portugal, Greece, and Italy, but kept coming back to Spain, specifically Menorca, the island situated off the eastern Mediterranean coast.
The popular Catalan expression in Menorca is “poc a poc.” Translation: Slow down, one thing at a time, it’ll get done. We needed patience when searching for a home. Spain has no central listing service. Listings sit with individual agents, or with no agent at all — a notice in a window, a merchant, or a cousin who knows the family. I used AI to pull listings from the whole island: agency sites, portals, and local listings, all scraped and sorted.
Mahón, where we bought (more on the house later), sits on a long natural harbor, one of the largest in the Mediterranean. It’s a port city, and ports collect artists and misfits the way Tangier and Istanbul do. It’s also high-end without being outrageously expensive.
Home prices jumped a few years ago when the island became more popular, but it’s still a far cry from comparable locations. The sea, food, art scene, and people are why you stay in Menorca. The island is cut with dozens of coves, many of which are reachable on foot, bicycle, or moped. Clothing is optional. Bring your picnic lunch, swim, sit on a rock, and dry off. There’s freedom, tolerance, and unmanufactured diversity.
Proximity to Paris is another benefit. Ninety minutes from Orly Airport (itself a civilized alternative to the insanity of Charles de Gaulle), with flights daily. The best are on Transavia, Air France’s low-cost carrier, efficient and friendly. Menorca’s airport is small and sensible, like Burbank, Santa Barbara, or Palm Springs. You walk on the tarmac.
The island works because of the community, including an affluent LGBTQ crowd that gave up on West Hollywood, South Beach, and Ibiza a long time ago. Many new residents are from Mexico City and other Latin American cities, where the allure of Miami is waning due to the U.S.’s immigration reputation.
People are from everywhere, but the locals are the key: open, warm, and giving. Simpatico. Because of them, Menorca oddly feels wholesome and friendly, like a small town in the Midwest, no overaffected elites prancing around.
The island offers several boutique hotels with more in the works. Savvy high-end hospitality investors are scrambling to get a foothold.
In this part of Spain, chefs work miracles with potatoes and tomatoes. Our three favorite restaurants: