The Silver Lining: Volume 004
Musings on living the good life: food, culture, art, and products designed to inspire. Top picks from me to you, every Thursday.
Welcome to the fourth issue of The Silver Lining! Thanks for being here.
If you’ve been enjoying following along thus far, would you consider sharing this newsletter with someone you love?
This is a meaty one — let’s get right to it!
Top Track(s)
This week I bring you When You’re Near from Guru’s iconic album Jazzmatazz Volume 1:
My cousin Mike introduced me to Guru, who in 1993 created a full-length album experimenting with mixing hip-hop and live jazz instrumentation.
Featuring great Jazz musicians like Branford Marsalis and Roy Ayers, Guru struck a cord with Jazzmatazz, receiving rave reviews that ultimately spawned 4 volumes over 20 years.
Here’s Guru reflecting on his work later on in 2009:
"I was noticing how a lot of cats were digging in the crates and sampling jazz breaks to make hip hop records. I wanted to take it to the next level and actually create a new genre by getting the actual dudes we were sampling into the studio to jam over hip hop beats with some of the top vocalists of the time. The whole thing was experimental, but I knew it was an idea that would spawn some historic music.”
When was the last time you played an album start to finish? Guru’s work deserves that consideration: play Volume 1 in its entirety this Sunday morning over (several) cups of joe.
If the album gives you the itch to see some live Jazz, the Blue Whale in Little Tokyo is my vote for best in the city. Peak their calendar for upcoming shows.
Artist Date - c/o Julia Cameron
Say Cheese! Photography fans rejoice, there’s a myriad of fantastic photo-focussed exhibits on display all throughout the country. Below are a few that caught my eye.
Los Angeles
The Annenberg Space for Photography is an overlooked jewel in LA’s arts and culture landscape. A gift to the city by the Annenberg foundation, admission is always free, and the programing is often provocative.
That’s very much the case with current exhibit Vanity Fair: Hollywood Calling, featuring the work of portraitists like Annie Leibovitz and Jonathan Becker as they’ve captured the the glitz and glamour synonymous with Hollywood’s A-list talent over the last 40 years.
Justin Bishops photo features Lady Gaga and Mark Ronson toasting their Oscar win for “Shallow” from the 2019 film “A Star is Born”.
New York
Fotografiska just opened its New York outpost as a destination for photography and culture in the Flatiron District. Executive Director Pam Harris describes the new museum in her own words: “[It’s like] Soho House, but for arts and culture. And more accessible for everyone to be a part of.”
On display through the end of March is Ellen Von Unwerth’s Devotion! 30 Years of Photographing Women. After you finish touring the exhibit, grab drinks and a snack at Verōnika, the museum’s European inspired restaurant which has me wanting to book a flight to JFK stat.
Hats off to AD100 designers Stephen Alesch and Robin Standefer for their latest hospitality endeavor. AD highlighted the project in their January issue, and for good reason.
The entrance to Veronika’s main dining room. Two words: chandelier goals.
The bar at Verōnika features stained glass windows alongside custom lighting. We’ll drink to that.
Barefoot Contessa Bootcamp
If you’re like me — your relationship with cookbooks goes a little like this:
Eagerly purchase beautiful new cookbook; flip through all the pages the second it arrives; place said cookbook on bookshelf collecting dust without having cooked any of the recipes. The photos were pretty to look at though, right? The irony!
Every once and awhile, a book motivates you to roll up your sleeves and execute a favorite new discovery. That was the case for me and Stacy Adimando’s Piatti, a tome focussed on Italian antipasti — small plates that usually greet you before a meal.
I knew Stacy was my kind of people the way she described her love of antipasti to NPR’s David Greene on Morning Edition:
"It's the best moment of a party. Everyone is hugging and kissing and there's catching up and clinking of wine glasses and it's just the best moment and I think when those first platters of food start to roll out of the kitchen, it's just a celebration."
A celebration indeed.
Try your hand at Stacy’s Eggplant Parm, a time consuming but rewarding dish that’s pretty straightforward to make, and it tastes just as good as it looks:
You can assemble and refrigerate the whole dish a day ahead of time: Prep on Sunday for a showstopper Monday meal.
Table for 2
It’s not terribly uncommon for a chef to import ingredients from international locales. Case in point: Pizzana in Brentwood flies their Fior di Latte fresh from Italy several times a week and their San Marzano tomatoes are grown exclusively for the restaurant in the Naples countryside. (There’s a method to the madness — the Pizza is devine).
But the story behind taqueria Sonoratown’s flour sourcing is truly bonkers, captured beautifully by Javier Cabral in his piece for Taste:
On a recent Sunday afternoon, at the crossing checkpoint for the border between Arizona and Mexico, Jennifer Feltham’s Ford F-150 idles under the relentless Sonoran sun. As the co-owner of the popular Los Angeles restaurant Sonoratown, she’s traveled 278 miles to acquire two precious 44-kilogram sacks full of pure, unbleached Sonoran wheat flour from the Bonfil flour mill, which are now piled neatly in the bed of her truck.
American flour, she says, just doesn’t cut it. Unlike the hard, red wheat that is grown all over the United States, Sonoran wheat is soft, white wheat, resulting in a sweeter flavor and lighter, stretchier tortillas without resorting to additives.
Every 12 days, the co-owner of Sonoratown drives to Mexico to source the flour for her tortillas! Talk about dedication to your craft. Bottom line: get your butt to Sonoratown stat, and enjoy the fruits of their labor:
Sonoratown tacos, a must try in DTLA.
Zagat is back, baby
Zagat, the beloved restaurant guide created by Tim and Nina Zagat in 1979, is having a moment. After being sold to Google for $150M in 2011, the service floundered and lost most of its mojo. Enter The Infatuation, led by Chris Stang and Andrew Steinthal, who purchased Zagat from Google in 2018.
After a 3 year hiatus, they brought the little red book back to bookshelves with the re-launch of the New York City guide. *Some* folks were pretty damn happy about it:
Calling Angeleno foodies — the LA Zagat guide is coming, and we’re all encouraged to participate in their survey. Responses close March 17th.
Social Starlette
A lighter moment during an uneasy time for us all. Stay safe and take care of yourselves.
SKU of the Week
I’ve had exactly 1 facial in the entirety of my life. It was at the Massage Therapy Center on Sawtelle, and it was a delightful experience. S/o to buddy Jack for the recco.
The single best feedback I got from the facialist that day was to commence a skin regimen in earnest, anchored by a daily habit of applying sunscreen. The catch: with facial hair I found myself spending 10 minutes each morning trying to fully rub in the sunblock. Lee looked at me like she’d seen a ghost.
Enter TIZO’s Tinted Ultra Zinc Body & Face Sunscreen. The tint removed my ghostly white halo, and the SPF 40 has kept my skin looking dewey ever since.
Social Action
We have a family friend who recently learned they need a bone marrow transplant, and through that experience I realized just how easy it is to join the bone marrow registry.
Be the Match will send you an at-home swab kit to get added to the registry. Roughly 1 in 400 volunteers go on to donate and help save lives! I hope you’ll consider adding yourself to the list.
That’s it for Volume 004. New issues of The Silver Lining drop weekly on Thursdays.
Email me your feedback at scott@thesilverlining.la — I love hearing from you!