Well appointed
The Vineta Hotel, Valleponci, Westerns Laundry, Lynx, Ritz-Carlton Key Biscayne, favorite Paso Robles hotels, MORE
ABOUT FOUND • Help Wanted
New FOUND locales are coming. We’re seeking contributors based in Chicago, Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, New Orleans, Hawaii, Barcelona, Rome, Sydney, and Melbourne. A professional writing background isn’t required — mostly, we’re looking for passion about one or more FOUND categories (real estate, restaurants, shopping, culture & leisure, getaway travel & the modern workplace) along with impeccable taste. Is that you, or a friend? Interested candidates, drop us a line at found@itsfound.com and tell us a little about yourself.
More FOUND Objects are on the way. We’re looking for contributors to write about goods & services that bring them (and their friends) joy — from sunglasses to swimsuits, watches to high-end appliances, and more. Send us your one-sentence pitches at found@itsfound.com.
We’re seeking a freelance social media manager to give life to FOUND’s accounts on Instagram and potentially other platforms. The ideal candidate has experience managing social for a media brand or creator, is fluent in Canva and/or Illustrator, can adapt newsletter content into sharp, on-brand social posts (feed, stories, reels), and understands and enjoys neighborhood-based storytelling. If you’re interested, please send your portfolio, relevant social handles, and a short note about your availability to found@itsfound.com.
GETAWAYS • Palm Beach, Florida
Sweet dreams
The pool at The Vineta Hotel Palm Beach is like something out of my sweetest dreams. The tidy marble-clad rectangle is lined underwater with wavy green mosaic tile lanes, giving the pool the effect of constant motion. The stainless steel ladder and railing emerges from the water in a candy swirl. To keep the whole scene wiggling like a mirage, the pool deck is striped in wavy gray and cream mosaic tile. The work of art is framed with a single row of scallop-edged umbrellas and lounge chairs with pink bolster pillows, and set inside a courtyard flanked by lush green hedges, palms, and fuchsia bougainvillea. It’s an utterly sublime scene to behold.
There’d been sunshine all week, but on the late spring afternoon I hit the pool deck, piles of grey cumulus clouds darkened the sky and the temperature dropped. A front was approaching, but nevermind. An attendant greeted me with a retro Polarbox cooler filled with a bottle of mineral water, and a tray with a glass and my own personal mini SPF spray bottle.
I had enough time to enjoy a beautiful caprese salad with burrata and heirloom tomatoes before the sky fell out. That’s when I dashed over to a table on the covered patio of the Pool House to finish my Champagne and lazily watch the rain fall into the pool. Soon, the attendant returned with the bottle and said, “I can’t give you sunshine, but…” he could refill my glass. Later, the chef appeared with a simple question: “Do you like ice cream?” and then reappeared with two scoops of strawberry-rose gelato in a metal coupe, my favorite. That was the moment I decided I’d stay in Palm Beach and never work again.
Situated on the corner of Cocoanut Row and Australian Avenue, just two blocks north of Worth, the 41-room boutique hotel opened in March inside the historic Mediterranean Revival space previously occupied by the Chesterfield. It’s the first U.S. property from Oetker Hotels, the venerable hospitality group behind Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc in Antibes and Eden Rock St. Barths.
Oetker’s revamp renders the property completely unrecognizable from its dark and dated predecessor. The Vineta is all fresh whites and cornflower blues, with refined upholstered furniture, mosaic, terrazzo and marble finishes, all with a subtle sheen reminiscent of the inside of a seashell.
Rooms and suites, designed by London-based Tino Zervudach, are decorated in the same white and blue color palette as the common areas in a style that’d be equally at home in an English country cottage as seaside in Palm Beach. My room was outfitted with a petite sofa, armchair, and pedestal table topped with fresh hydrangeas, plus a full closet with wooden hangers and desk alcove. All en suite snacks and non-alcoholic drinks are complimentary. There’s no gym, but a trolley carrying workout equipment can be delivered to the room.
Bathrooms are clad in Italian stone walls in a dramatic sand and cream-striped diamond pattern. A mirror covers the entire wall behind the sink with its vast counterspace and residential touches, like a ring dish and pretty porcelain vessels for vanity products. The enormous rainfall shower is state-of-the-art with incredible water pressure, and the most sumptuous Santa Maria Novella products in full-size porcelain and metal bottles.
Dining solo at Coco’s one night, the hotel’s plush Mediterranean restaurant imported from sister property Hotel du Cap, I wasn’t sure if my French waiter was in love with me, or just as disarming and bashfully attentive with all of his guests. He approved of my order, a Caesar salad and paccheri pomodoro (“simple, but classic”), and was careful that the bar didn’t rush my second martini. Dinner reaffirmed Palm Beach as one of my favorite places to be a fly on the wall. And by the time I’d finished my profiteroles for dessert, maybe I’d fallen a little in love with the waiter, too. –Shayne Benowitz
→ The Vineta Hotel (Palm Beach, FL) • 363 Cocoanut Row • Summer rates from $713/night.
GOODS & SERVICES • Big Ticket
→ RICHARD HART, baker, Claridge’s Bakery, Hart Bageri et al (LDN): I’m hankering after a Polaroid camera. I’ve been reading Patti Smith a lot lately, and she and Robert Mapplethorpe are always taking Polaroids, so I got a mini-Polaroid one. I love it. I’m pretty obsessed. I want the top-of-the-range i2.
→ MYLES PRICE, founder, Myles Price (LA): The Nix Spectro 2 Spectrophotometer. Color is one of the most subjective things in design, and this brings some objectivity to it. In production, I’ll use it to hit lab dips more accurately and keep them consistent with the color story. And when I see a color in the world, a wall, a piece of fruit, a tile, I can scan it and drop the exact value into a future collections file. It’s just something that captures inspiration and starts the conversation.
→ LINDSAY REICHART & GUNNAR BURKE, owners & brewers, Springs Brewery (NY): This is going to sound ridiculous, but we recently got rid of our fancy grill and replaced it with a vintage Weber grill from the ’80s that we found for less than $100 on Facebook Marketplace. We’re restoring it now, and even with its decades of character, it’s one of the best purchases we’ve ever made.
→ REBECCA SCHWARTZ SMITH, founder & CEO, Mamala Organics (Miami): New stone for our home. We got this quite busy travertine and this viola marble that actually made me verklempt when I first saw it.
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GETAWAYS • Italy
Vino, cucina e camere
High above Finale Ligure, tucked into an ancient valley where olive trees and vines have long shaped the landscape, Valleponci presents less like a hotel and more like a home that happened to grow large enough to welcome others.
The project was founded by three friends fresh out of the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Pollenzo, who chose to create their own place: part farmhouse, part restaurant, part guesthouse. Vino, cucina e camere (wine, food and rooms), simple words that somehow manage to describe an entire way of life.
The cooking is farm-to-table, though the expression hardly does it justice. Vegetables come from the garden, olive oil from their trees, wines from their vines, with a close network of producers filling the gaps. Every ingredient arrives with a story, and every story seems to lead back to someone personally connected to the property.
The sea lies only 10 minutes away by bicycle, if the mood strikes you. Open from April until late autumn, Valleponci is redefining luxury through proximity — to the land, to the people who work it, and to the stories that emerge when food is treated as a different kind of sustenance: something worth gathering around. –Candice Chemel
RESTAURANTS • London
Ageing gracefully
Around 2017, London diners were captivated by a new aesthetic taking over the restaurant scene. Romantic, effortless, these restaurants felt refreshingly bohemian and also aspirational. They were nostalgic cottagecore without the cringe. Everyone wanted to be seen in their candlelit dining rooms, tucked between their bric-a-brac accessories, record players and small plates ‘designed for sharing’ (a novel idea in the late ‘10s, believe it or not).
One of the bastions of this alternative dining direction was the Westerns Laundry restaurant collective. The group’s holy triumvirate – Jolene, Primeur, Westerns – together presented a brave new version of how London dining could look and taste. Gone were the stuffy white tablecloths lit garishly by the Big Light. Instead, rooms of muted tones, dried wildflowers and mismatched crockery. Waiters with ostentatious accents were swapped for beautiful young people with interesting earrings and an extensive knowledge of this newfangled natural wine stuff. The flavours were just as exciting as the space: bottarga grated over sea bream, hand-rolled pasta with wild girolles and new-season olive oil, brown butter tarts.
Almost a decade on, Westerns Laundry could easily have lost its allure. Such is often the arc of establishments that lead trends. Happily, this is not the case for Westerns. In fact, it’s aged gracefully into its position as a stalwart of its quiet north London community, an area better positioned for pre-Arsenal match boozing than post-footie fine-ish dining. –Anna Van Dyk
AROUND FOUND • Other Notable Intel & Recs
→ MIAMI: After a temporary closure and $100 million revamp, The Ritz-Carlton Key Biscayne welcomed guests back last December. The new look — awash in a color palette of creams, pale pink and green with sculptural overhead lighting and a marble-clad reception area — does justice to the resort’s lofty, regal bones. The grand flow-through lobby, with a double-height wall of windows opening up to the ocean, always made a strong first impression, but now the space feels appropriately modern and airy.
→ LA: Chef Josh Skenes, notably of Saison and Angler, has returned with Lynx. After testing his mettle for a pizza and cocktails concept at since-shuttered Leopardo, Skenes is giving it another shot, though this time on a smaller, arguably more focused scale.
→ PARIS: Step out of Gare de l’Est, climb the flight of stairs, and suddenly the sky opens above the railway tracks. Café Les Deux Gare’s terrace looks onto a pedestrian street. No cars, no traffic, and no noise: just a classic Parisian bistro terrace, beneath an unexpectedly generous patch of sky.
REAL ESTATE • Houston, TX
Three for-sale properties that came to market this week asking ~$3M.
→ 945 Harvard St (Houston Heights) • 7BR/6.3BA, 6483 SF house • Ask: $2.999M • landmark estate built in 1908 w/ ADA-compliant bungalow • Annual taxes: $52,177 • Days on market: 2 • Agent: Amanda Smith, Boulevard Realty.
→ 408 7th St (Houston Heights) • 4BR/4.3BA, 6817 SF house • Ask: $3.495M • double corner lot w/ wraparound porch and gardens • Annual taxes: $65,204 • Days on market: 5 • Agent: Michelle Reyna, The Reyna Group.
→ 5615 Pine Forest Rd (North Tanglewood, above) • 4BR/5.1BA, 7463 SF house • Ask: $3.55M • Venetian-inspired Mediterranean w/ elegant formal rooms • Annual taxes: $45,127 • Days on market: 3 • Agent: Walter Berin, Martha Turner Sotheby’s.
GETAWAYS LINKS: Can World Cup darling Cabo Verde convert attention into bookings? • Banyan Tree makes European debut on Mamula Island • The Four Seasons sets sail • On the north Cornwall coast, taking the long way round • It’s not a hotel, it’s a world (these too) • Somebody fix the hotel gym.
GETAWAYS • The Nines
Hotels, Paso Robles, CA
The Nines are FOUND’s distilled lists of the best.
