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Mamani Dallas, best Paris cassoulet, Telluride ski chalets, Sqirl dinner, Sole Uno, Bottega Caruso, Hwaro, Malka, MORE
RESTAURANTS • Dallas
Paris, Texas
If ever there was a city poised to become a capital-D destination for serious dining, it’s Dallas. Case in point: Mamani, a new French restaurant in the chic Uptown neighborhood. Since opening in September, it’s emerged as one the most compelling new restaurants not only in the city, but in the country.
Mamani boasts an all-star team led by executive chef Christophe De Lellis, who most recently spent over a decade at Joël Robuchon at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. With additional alumni from Eleven Madison Park (NYC) and Saison (SF) rounding out the brigade, this is a team with a deep understanding of high-level fine dining.
The à la carte menu draws inspiration from both the French and Italian Rivieras. Standout dishes include a decadent Maine lobster, butter-poached and paired with a flawlessly executed sauce au poivre and crisp pommes frites.
The To Share section proved particularly memorable, highlighted by my favorite course of the evening: veal cordon bleu, carved tableside and served with silky pommes purée, Mornay sauce, and a bright Bibb salad.
For dessert, a simple, satisfying Madagascar vanilla gelato with chocolate sauce and candied pecans.
Unpretentious and deliberate, Mamani delivers refinement without excess and appeal without compromise. It’s one of Dallas’s brightest stars on an increasingly impressive culinary stage. –Lee Pitofsky
→ Mamani (Dallas, TX) • 2681 Howell St Ste BU4 • Mon-Thu 5-930p, Fri-Sat 5-10p, Sun 5-9p • Reserve.
GETAWAYS LINKS: The world’s best bars: a personal list • Inside Six Senses London, opening this week • Checking in at the new Loire Valley Lodges • Admiring the sea-worthy design at the new W Algarve • Five secret hotels in Japan recommended by a Japanese designer.
REAL ESTATE • American Rockies
Three properties currently on offer in the mountains of Telluride, CO.
→ 140 W Serapio Dr (Telluride, CO) • 6BR/4.2BA, 6910 SF house • Ask: $7.75M • cul de sac setting with 300-degree mountain views • Agents: Aric Maloy & Adam Black, Telluride Properties.
→ 167 Adams Ranch Rd (Telluride, CO, above) • 5BR/5.1BA, 5891 SF house • Ask: $11.9M • mountain contemporary set on open land and Telluride Golf Club • Agent: Ana Bowling, Compass.
→ 126 E Colorado Ave #126R (Telluride, CO) • 4BR/6.1BA, 4989 SF apartment • Ask: $18.9M • penthouse above Telluride’s downtown, with multiple terraces and hot tub • Agents: Lars Carlson, Liv Sotheby’s and Bill Fandel, Compass.
ROUTINES • Goods & Services
Select answers to the FOUND Routine query, What’s a recent big-ticket purchase you love?
→ LAUREN DUDLEY STEPHENS, CEO & co-founder, Dudley Stephens (NY): I just bought this new DeMellier brown suede tote. It’s very well made and fits a ton of stuff — my laptop, kids snacks, and all of my work stuff. It’s so chic and goes with any outfit. I absolutely love it.
→ CAITLIN GUNTHER, writer & creator, The 75 (Paris): My Sandro leather bomber jacket. I left my beloved Calvin Klein bomber (purchased when I was 16) at my ex’s apartment in Paris, and he never returned it. Long and weird story. Purchasing this for myself for my most recent birthday felt like a vindication.
→ LAUREN MAKLER, co-founder and CEO, Cofertility (LA): We just bought our first house and my sister (who has the most incredible taste) is leading the charge on a renovation before we move in. First purchase for the new house is an Eight Sleep Pod 5 and I can’t wait to not fight over the thermostat anymore.
RESTAURANTS • Los Angeles
Sqirl dinner
Los Angeles is built on false hope: “I’ll be there in 20,” “we’re just getting your table ready now,” “we’ll call you about the role.” And for a minute, it seemed Sqirl’s much-talked-about after-dark turn would be joining this lineup. But last week, at last, the Virgil Village daytime favorite opened for its first dinner service. I stopped in on Saturday night.
The crowd was buzzy and buzzing, but not overwhelming. (Nancy Silverton was in later that evening, and a Sweetgreen founder sat two tables down from us.) Service was practiced for this early run in prime time.
Sqirl chef and owner Jessica Koslow has been publicly tuning the menu for a while now, previewing ingredients on Sqirl’s Substack and posting on Instagram about Sqimps, grilled squid stuffed with shrimp-chorizo. If the purpose of all research and development was to make it almost impossible to narrow down an order, Koslow was more than successful. –James Royce
SPAS • Switzerland
One and only
Living in the Rhine region, I’m surrounded by thermal baths, from Alsace to the Black Forest and across the Basel area. Yet, since discovering Sole Uno, no other spa in the region has quite measured up to the quality of its spaces and the intelligence of its design.
Suspended between water and landscape, you float in the outdoor pools while taking in the view, then drift toward bubbling loungers and powerful shoulder jets that energize the body. Swim beneath a delicate veil of falling water and suddenly you’re in a more intimate pocket of calm, where time slows and you can lie back, relax, and gaze up at that sole uno above.
A tropical rain shower, bathed in dimmed, colored rings of light, is an experience I could linger in endlessly. Just beyond it, the alpine shower delivers a sharp contrast: a dramatic room of dark stone where, at the press of a button, an icy cascade crashes down like a true mountain fall, bracing and reviving.
My favorite space, though, lies underground, in what feels like a bat cave: rough concrete walls, soaring ceilings, near darkness pierced by red neon light. At the center of the pool runs a narrow corridor beneath a single skylight. Here, the water is enriched to mimic the density of the Dead Sea, allowing you to float effortlessly in barely 40 centimeters of depth. With no effort required, all tension releases. Submerge your ears and listen to the Indian raga or soft jazz playing beneath the surface. Push gently off the edge and glide slowly beneath the skylight, weightless and suspended, a cinematic travelling. –Candice Chemel
AROUND FOUND • Other Notable Intel & Recs
→ LONDON: You might expect to find Madonna’s favourite Italian restaurant in New York, but the spot outed by the Material Girl last month is on the other side of the Atlantic in Margate, a town she calls her ‘idea of heaven’. Tracey Emin took the popstar for dinner at Bottega Caruso, a tiny Italian restaurant owned and run by chef and front-of-house couple Simona Di Dio and Harry Ryder. It’s rooted in the flavours and folklore of Di Dio’s hometown, the hillside village of Foglianise in Campania, an hour from Naples.
→ NY: Ambitious modern Korean chef’s counter Hwaro opened in Times Square at the tail end of last year. The restaurant is located inside its sister restaurant, Gui Steakhouse, hidden away in a discreet private room upstairs. It’s an important addition to the city’s high-end Korean food scene.
→ MIAMI: A kosher-certified restaurant by Israeli chef Eyal Shani (with outposts in Tel Aviv and New York City), Malka opened in December, dishing out modern Mediterranean cuisine with an emphasis on local produce in downtown West Palm Beach. I went the vegetarian route (an easy feat here) on my visit and enjoyed the hummus, beetroot carpaccio with horseradish, and the delicata and butternut squash steaks, salted for 24 hours and then roasted on burning oak.
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RESTAURANTS • Paris
Cassoulet
The Nines are FOUND’s distilled lists of the best of the best.
D’Chez Eux (7th arr), long-running bourgeois bistro popular w/ politicians
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