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    Washington DC restaurants suffer sharp drop in diners since Trump crackdown

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    The number of people eating at restaurants in Washington DC has plummeted since Donald Trump deployed federal troops to the city, according to data, as the president’s purported crackdown on crime continues.Research by Open Table found that restaurant attendance was down every day last week compared with 2024, with the number of diners dipping by 31% on Wednesday, two days after Trump ordered the national guard to patrol Washington.Trump announced the move on 11 August, claiming that Washington had been “overtaken by violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals, roving mobs of wild youth, drugged out maniacs and homeless people”. His claims contradicted official statistics which show that violent crime in the capital is at a 30-year low.Data from Open Table shows that the number of people making online reservations dropped by 16% on Monday compared with the previous year. The number fell by 27% on Tuesday and 31% on Wednesday, as military vehicles and armed troops were deployed to the city.Metropolitan Washington Summer Restaurant week in 2024 was from 12 to 18 August. The 2025 edition of the event, during which diners are generally offered premium experiences at more affordable prices than usual, began on Monday. The data did not immediately make clear to what extent that may have factored into the year-to-year drop.On Friday, Democrats introduced a joint resolution to end what they described as “egregious attacks on DC home rule”, stating that Trump was overreaching in his actions in Washington.The Democratic US congressman Jamie Raskin of Maryland issued a statement saying Trump’s decision to send the military into the nation’s capital was meant to distract the public from the president’s “close friendship” with the late convicted sex offender and disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.Raskin’s statement also alluded to broken promises from the Trump administration to fully divulge all files pertaining to the prosecutions of Epstein and his associate, the convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell.“The only emergency here is a lawless president experiencing a growing public relations emergency because of his … stubborn refusal to release the Epstein file despite his promise to do so,” Raskin’s statement said.Other Democrats echoed the sentiment that Trump’s move was an attempt to distract from criticism over Epstein and an economy that was struggling amid the passage of his congressional agenda bill, which included a historic $1tn cut to Medicaid.“What’s happening here in Washington DC is just a stunt. Donald Trump didn’t like the fact that the walls were closing in on him, that his own base was questioning why he wouldn’t release the Epstein files, why he was protecting very powerful people,” Chris Murphy, the US senator from Connecticut, told NBC on Sunday.“He didn’t want to talk any more about the fact that our healthcare system is about to collapse because of the cuts that they have made, that premiums are going to go up by 75% on Americans. And so true to form, he just decided to create a new news cycle.”Murphy added: “He’s just trying to distract from the stories he doesn’t want Americans to be talking about.” More

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      Talking politics has bartenders on edge in Trump’s Washington DC

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      Deke Dunne relocated to Washington DC from Wyoming in 2008 to pursue a career in politics. Though a progressive himself, he worked as a legislative aide for the Republican senator Mike Enzi and spent many nights at local watering holes, guzzling $10 pitchers and eating wings with fellow broke staffers from both sides of the aisle. Long before he began moonlighting as a bartender, he learned that talking politics in DC bars was always a recipe for disaster.“When I used to work in politics, I would spend a lot of time in bars near Capitol Hill,” said Dunne, “so I was exposed to more political professionals. In those spaces, you often find yourself witnessing knockdown, drag-out arguments about politics.”Today, Dunne is one of DC’s most influential mixologists, having abandoned politics almost a decade ago for a hospitality career. Serving drinks in a city that is more ideologically divided than ever, Dunne says he exercises more diplomacy behind the bar now than he ever did working in politics.There has always been an unspoken rule among Washington DC bartenders, according to Dunne, that political conversations across the bar should be avoided at all costs. It is generally understood that maintaining neutrality is critical to ensuring that guests of all political persuasions feel welcome. But the partisan rancor in Washington during the early stages of Donald Trump’s presidential encore has created palpable tension in hospitality spaces, placing undue strain on staff to manage the vibes.“It’s always been an accepted truth in DC that every four to eight years, you get a whole new swath of people in from a different political ideology and if you want to have a strong, viable business, you don’t talk politics,” said Dunne. “Trump broke that rule.”According to local bar professionals in the nation’s capital, the “tending” part of bartending has never been more challenging. “Politics in DC is not only something that a lot of people care about, but it’s also a lot of people’s livelihoods,” said Zac Hoffman, a bar industry veteran who until recently managed the restaurant inside the National Democratic Club near the Capitol. “When you’re talking about work, you’re talking about politics. That’s just the reality of where we live. It’s a company town.”At Allegory, where Dunne oversees the beverage program, the bar has always taken a progressive approach, which occasionally provokes more conservative-minded guests who stay in the Eaton, the boutique hotel and cultural hub in downtown where the bar opened seven years ago. Its aesthetic and cocktail menu reimagines Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, but featuring a young Ruby Bridges, the iconic civil rights activist who faced a jeering mob when she desegregated a Little Rock elementary school.“Our very presence as a mission-based bar has sparked many conversations surrounding our concept, but also gender-neutral bathrooms, provocative art and advocacy,” he said. “We’ve had people that are clearly uncomfortable with our concept leave and then post a negative review but frame it about something else.”The resurgent, and often strident, brand of conservatism that dominates the political sphere in Washington today has many of the city’s more progressive bar owners on edge. At The Green Zone, a Middle Eastern cocktail bar in Adams Morgan on the city’s north side, politics have always been integral to the bar’s identity since it opened in 2018. Bar owner Chris Hassaan Francke, whose mother is Iraqi, has earned a reputation for being outspoken about political conflicts, especially those in the Middle East.But since Trump’s return to office, he admits to having toned down some of the rhetoric. “We changed the name of one of our most infamous cocktails [which contained an incendiary reference to the current president],” said Francke. “It kills me that I can’t always say everything I want to say, but ultimately the safety and wellbeing of my staff [are] more important than that.”While the city may be under Republican rule at the moment, DC itself is still overwhelmingly liberal (Kamala Harris won over 90% of the vote in the 2024 election), which means that a majority of its hospitality workers are liberal, too. “I know some bartenders who will say the opposite of what they believe around customers they don’t agree with politically,” said Hoffman. “There are plenty of socialists who make great tips talking shit about liberals with Republicans.”It isn’t only the more progressive venues around town that have become targets. After recent articles in the New York Times and Washington Post championed the upscale Capitol Hill bistro Butterworth’s as a haven for Maga sympathizers, backlash ensued. According to chef and co-owner Bart Hutchins – who, like Dunne, also left a career in politics to work in hospitality – being perceived as pro-Trump has attracted crowds to his fledgling restaurant, which opened last fall. But it’s also created some unwanted operational challenges. For one, a serial provocateur with an air-horn routinely disrupts his weekly dinner service by sounding it through the front entrance, often multiple times a week.Despite Butterworth’s reputation for being a sanctuary for high-profile Trump supporters such as Steve Bannon, not every political conversation at the bar is peaceful. “I’ve broken up at least three political arguments since we opened,” said Hutchins. “It always starts with somebody who’s really, really insistent that everyone agrees with them, someone who’s watching way too much cable news who’s really determined to have their Sean Hannity or Rachel Maddow moment.”View image in fullscreenAnother unfortunate byproduct of being known as a right-leaning restaurant in a left-leaning town, Hutchins says, has been difficulty hiring and retaining staff. “There have been times where it’s been really hard to hire people,” he said. “Early on, we had some servers self-select out and say: ‘I don’t want to serve these people.’ But a lot of those people have moved on.”Over time, the staff has found ways to put their political convictions aside for the good of the restaurant. “Our No 1 rule that’s written on a door in the back is: ‘Everybody’s a VIP,” said Hutchins. “We’re not interested in using politics as a measuring device for whether or not someone deserves great service.”For DC bars, proximity to Capitol Hill has historically increased the likelihood that the conversations inside them will revolve around politics. And while some bars on the Hill may welcome these spirited conversations, many older, legacy bars prefer that patrons leave their partisanship at the door.View image in fullscreenTune Inn, a well-loved dive bar that originally opened a few blocks from the Capitol in 1947, outwardly discourages political conversations of any kind. “You can always tell the newbies because they want to come in and immediately start talking about politics,” said Stephanie Hulbert, who has worked as a bartender, server and now general manager at the bar for more than 17 years. “They get shut down very quickly.”To keep the peace and maintain non-partisan decorum inside the bar, she and her staff regularly intervene and admonish guests to keep their politics to themselves. These interventions occur at least two or three times every week, according to Hulbert, which is why the TVs inside the bar are deliberately set to sports channels rather than news outlets. “I’ll argue about sports all day long with you,” she said. “But I won’t argue about politics.”Despite the heightened anxiety in Washington, Dunne is optimistic that healthy dialogues in more progressive bars including Allegory can effect positive change. In January, Trump’s inauguration drew conservative revelers to the Eaton, where inclusivity and multiculturalism is essential to its brand and mission. That led to some uncomfortable conversations with Republican patrons about the bar’s progressive ethos.“I don’t know how effective the conversations were, but they were constructive,” he said. “We found middle ground about the fact that what Ruby [Bridges] went through was tragic. It’s common ground you don’t find very often around here any more.” More

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      ‘I’m scared to death to leave my house’: immigrants are disappearing from the streets – can US cities survive?

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      At Hector’s Mariscos restaurant in the heavily Latino and immigrant city of Santa Ana, California, sales of Mexican seafood have slid. Seven tables would normally be full, but diners sit at only two this Tuesday afternoon.“I haven’t seen it like this since Covid,” manager Lorena Marin said in Spanish as cumbia music played on loudspeakers. A US citizen, Marin even texted customers she was friendly with, encouraging them to come in.“No, I’m staying home,” a customer texted back. “It’s really screwed up out there with all of those immigration agents.”Increasing immigrant arrests in California have begun to gut-punch the economy and wallets of immigrant families and beyond. In some cases, immigrants with legal status and even US citizens have been swept into Donald Trump’s dragnet.The 2004 fantasy film A Day Without a Mexican – chronicling what would happen to California if Mexican immigrants disappeared – is fast becoming a reality, weeks without Mexicans and many other immigrants. The implications are stark for many, both economically and personally.“We are now seeing a very significant shift toward enforcement at labor sites where people are working,’ said Andrew Selee, president of the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute. “Not a focus on people with criminal records, but a focus on people who are deeply integrated in the American economy.”In California, immigrant workers comprise bigger shares of certain industries than they do for the nation overall. Here, the foreign-born make up 62% of agriculture labor and 42% of construction workers, according to the American Immigration Council. About 85% of sewing machine operators in garment factories are foreign-born. Fully 40% of entrepreneurs are foreign-born.Nationally, about a quarter of workers are foreign-born in agriculture and construction, according to the American Immigration Council. More than half of drywall hangers, plasterers and stucco masons are foreign-born. And in science, technology, engineering and math – the so-called Stem fields – nearly a quarter of workers are foreign-born, said the council.The current enforcement trend, Selee said, will “lead to a strategy that will have big economic implications if they continue to go after people who are active in the labor force rather than those who have criminal records”.In both California and across an ageing nation, about half of the foreign-born are naturalized US citizens – a crucial defense in immigration raids and arrests.View image in fullscreenSelee said the current strategy was launched when “the Trump administration realized they weren’t getting large numbers by following traditional approaches to pursuing people who are priority targets for deportation”.Now the threat and chilling effect from immigration raids can be felt in disparate communities from Dallas to El Paso to rural Wisconsin – among migrants and, in some cases, the employers who hire them.In the small town of Waumandee in Wisconsin, dairy farmer John Rosenow said he can’t find US citizens who can withstand the rigors of dairy work.“Fact of the matter is if you want to eat or drink milk you are going to need immigrant workers,” he said.“Yes, we want to get rid of the people who are bad actors,” Rosenow said. “But the people I know, people who are working in the dairy farms, are just hard-working people, getting things done, doing jobs Americans don’t want to do.”In California’s San Joaquin valley, rancher and melon-grower Joe Del Bosque has heard reports of US agents chasing workers in the strawberry fields south of his operation.The San Joaquin valley, known as the food basket of the world, is heavily dependent upon foreign-born workers, especially at harvest time, Del Bosque said. He currently has 100 people working for him and that number will double as the harvest picks up in the coming weeks.“They’re going to disrupt the harvest and food chain. This will hurt the American consumer,” Del Bosque said. “These people are hard workers. They come to work, especially if they have families here or in Mexico.”In a surprise pivot late last week, Trump said there would be an easing of the crackdown in agriculture and the hospitality industries. The New York Times first reported that new guidance from a senior Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) official called for a “hold on worksite enforcement investigations/operations” in the agriculture sector and restaurants and hotels. The Ice guidance, issued in an email, also said agents were not to make arrests of “noncriminal collaterals”, a key point for those who note that many detained immigrants have had no criminal record. However, the Department of Homeland Security told staff it was reversing that guidance on Monday.Some business leaders and immigrants remain scared and confused.View image in fullscreenRaids, or the threat of them, are also taking an emotional toll on families and generating protests in Chicago, Seattle, Spokane, New York, San Antonio, Dallas and elsewhere. Bigger protests are expected in days to come.In El Paso, protesters flipped the White House script that undocumented immigrants were “criminals”. They waved mostly US flags and shouted “No justice, no peace. Shame on Ice.”Among the protesters was Alejandra, a US citizen and a junior at the University of Texas at El Paso. She asked for partial anonymity for fear of reprisal against her mixed-status family.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionShe said she took to this border city’s streets to honor the sacrifice of her grandparents who migrated from Ciudad Juárez. “All it takes is for you to look at who took that first step to bring you the life you have currently,” Alejandra said.In the Dallas area, a Guatemalan worker said he had been absent from construction sites for days.“There’s too much fear, too much to risk,” said Gustavo, 34, requesting his surname be withheld because he is undocumented. “I fear tomorrow, tonight. I may be deported, and who loses? My family back in Guatemala.”Tough immigration enforcement has been the top-polling issue for Trump. But favor may be slipping. A poll released this week by Quinnipiac University showed Trump had a 43% approval rating on immigration and a 54% disapproval rating. That poll was conducted between 5 and 9 June – after several days of protests.Meantime, back in Santa Ana, a city of about 316,000 in southern California, shop owner Alexa Vargas said foot traffic had slowed around her store, Vibes Boutique, with sales plummeting about 30% in recent days.On a recent day, the shop’s jeans and glitzy T-shirts remained un-browsed. Metered parking spots on the usually busy street sat empty. A fruit and snow cone vendor whom Vargas usually frequents had been missing for days.“It shouldn’t be this dead right now,” Vargas, 26, said on a Tuesday afternoon. “People are too scared to go out. Even if you’re a citizen but you look a certain way. Some people don’t want to risk it.”Reyna, a restaurant cook, told her boss she didn’t feel safe going to work after she heard about the immigration detentions at Home Depot stores in the city.The 40-year-old, who is in the US without legal status, said she fears becoming an Ice target. Current immigration laws and policies don’t provide a way to obtain legal status even though she’s been living in the US for more than 20 years.“I need to work but, honestly, I’m scared to death to leave my house,” she said.For now her life is on hold, Reyna said.She canceled a party for her son’s high school graduation. She no longer drives her younger children to summer school. She even stopped attending behavioral therapy sessions for her seven-year-old autistic son.Reyna said she can’t sleep. She suffers headaches every day.Early on Tuesday, she said, immigration agents in an unmarked vehicle swept up her husband’s 20-year-old nephew, who is a Mexican national without legal status. The scene unreeled across from her home.Her autistic son, a US-born citizen, has begged her to allow him to play on the front yard swing set.“No, honey. We can’t go outside,” Reyna told him.“Why?” he asked.“The police are taking people away,” she explained. “They are taking away people who were not born here.”This story was co-published with Puente News Collaborative, a bilingual non-profit newsroom, convener and funder dedicated to high-quality, fact-based news and information from the US-Mexico border. More

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      The Independent Hospitality Coalition Gives L.A. Restaurants Hope

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      Last Tuesday, Valerie Gordon made an Instagram video about new signs she had posted around her small Los Angeles restaurant reading “Private: Employees Only.” She explained that they marked all nonpublic areas of the restaurant that would be off limits to Immigration and Customs Enforcement in a raid.The scale of the response to the post shocked her. Ms. Gordon estimated that it had already been viewed more than 500,000 times and shared widely across the Los Angeles restaurant industry.“What that showed to me is there is a need for this information, there is a deep need, and people don’t really know what to do,” Ms. Gordon said.But she had some help with the post. The guidance Ms. Gordon described came from the Independent Hospitality Coalition, a small, scrappy advocacy group which has emerged as an organizing hub for the Los Angeles restaurant industry.Founded during the pandemic, the I.H.C. is one of a number organizations, local and national, which are trying to bring together isolated, competing restaurant businesses. The coalition’s main mission is to help business cut through red tape like liquor permitting processes and promote more restaurant-friendly legislation at the state level. But in Los Angeles in the last five years, a rolling series of major disruptions — from the pandemic itself, to the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020 to the 2023 Hollywood strikes to the wildfires in January — has made operating a restaurant an uncertain proposition.And then came the ICE raids and the deployment of the National Guard.Eddie Navarrette, the executive director of the Independent Hospitality Coalition, said the years since Covid have brought successive upheavals to Los Angeles that have negatively affected restaurant business.Sinna Nasseri for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Here Are the 2025 James Beard Restaurant Award Winners

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      Toni Tipton-Martin, Jungsik Yim and the restaurateurs behind Le Veau d’Or were among the top honorees.The James Beard Foundation gave out its annual culinary awards Monday night in Chicago, with the chefs and co-hosts Andrew Zimmern and Nyesha Arrington handing out gold medals to chefs, restaurateurs, bakers and bartenders from across the United States.To reflect the growing influence of cocktail and bar culture, three new awards were given out this year: best new bar, outstanding professional in beverage service and outstanding professional in cocktail service.New York City restaurants won three of the six major national awards: outstanding chef (Jungsik Yim of Jungsik), outstanding hospitality (Atomix) and outstanding restaurateur (Lee Hanson and Riad Nasr of Frenchette, Le Rock and Le Veau d’Or).It was the 35th edition of the black-tie gala, which has been transformed from a Monday-night-only event (to allow chefs to squeeze in a trip when restaurants are traditionally closed) to a full weekend of panels and pop-ups. (Food media professionals like writers, directors, podcasters and influencers received their awards at a ceremony on Saturday.)The awards program was suspended in 2020 and 2021 as the industry responded to the pandemic, and as the foundation tried to incorporate rapidly evolving ideas about race, gender, privilege and workers’ rights. Since then, priorities have shifted away from the traditional guest experience — food, service and décor — and toward evaluating chefs and restaurants as employers, community members and professional leaders.Toni Tipton-Martin was presented with the lifetime achievement award.Jeff Schear/Getty Images For James Beard FouWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Shifts Deportation Focus, Pausing Raids on Farms, Hotels and Eateries

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      The abrupt pivot on an issue at the heart of Mr. Trump’s presidency suggested his broad immigration crackdown was hurting industries and constituencies he does not want to lose.The Trump administration has abruptly shifted the focus of its mass deportation campaign, telling Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials to largely pause raids and arrests in the agricultural industry, hotels and restaurants, according to an internal email and three U.S. officials with knowledge of the guidance.The decision suggested that the scale of President Trump’s mass deportation campaign — an issue that is at the heart of his presidency — is hurting industries and constituencies that he does not want to lose.The new guidance comes after protests in Los Angeles against the Trump administration’s immigration raids, including at farms and businesses. It also came as Mr. Trump made a rare concession this week that his crackdown was hurting American farmers and hospitality businesses.The guidance was sent on Thursday in an email by a senior ICE official, Tatum King, to regional leaders of the ICE department that generally carries out criminal investigations, including work site operations, known as Homeland Security Investigations.“Effective today, please hold on all work site enforcement investigations/operations on agriculture (including aquaculture and meat packing plants), restaurants and operating hotels,” he wrote in the message.The email explained that investigations involving “human trafficking, money laundering, drug smuggling into these industries are OK.” But it said — crucially — that agents were not to make arrests of “non criminal collaterals,” a reference to people who are undocumented but who are not known to have committed any other crime.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      A Paris Restaurant With Live Jazz and Soaring Ceilings

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      Plus: a new oceanside hotel in Mexico, murta berries and more recommendations from T Magazine.Welcome to the T List, a newsletter from the editors of T Magazine. Each week, we share things we’re eating, wearing, listening to or coveting now. Sign up here to find us in your inbox every Wednesday, along with monthly travel and beauty guides, and the latest stories from our print issues. And you can always reach us at tmagazine@nytimes.com.Stay HereA New Rosewood Hotel on Mexico’s Pacific CoastThe Premiere Beachfront Studio Suite, which overlooks the Pacific Ocean, at Rosewood Mandarina on Mexico’s Riviera Nayarit. Courtesy of Rosewood MandarinaThe expansion of Riviera Nayarit — a roughly 200-mile stretch along Mexico’s Pacific coast, about an hour drive north of Puerto Vallarta — continues this week with the opening of Rosewood Mandarina. The 134-room hotel occupies a verdant, densely forested 53 acres interspersed with farmland, and has views of both the Sierra Madre Occidental Mountain Range and the ocean. The environment was central to the interior design, says Caroline Meersseman, a principal at the New York-based studio Bando x Seidel Meersseman. “Ninety-five percent of the rooms face the ocean,” she says. “We used as many windows and mirrors as possible to bring the exterior inside.” Aside from the natural beauty, Meersseman and her team found inspiration in the region’s Indigenous Huichol and Cora cultures. Mexican contemporary artists were commissioned to create the decorative pieces and furniture found in every guest room, such as the sculptural ceramic lights by Salvador Nuñez that resembles the native peyote cactus, each one painted to reference Huichol art and craft; and a series of abstract murals based on traditional Huichol fairy tales by the Guadalajara painter Maryan Vare. The hotel’s primary restaurant, La Cocina, will be another nod to the region, with seafood (ceviche with jackfruit, lobster tacos, spiced prawns) caught from the Pacific, a few steps away. Rosewood Mandarina opens May 8; from $1,000 a night; rosewood.com.In SeasonThe Crunchy Red Berry That’s a Celebration of Autumn in ChileLeft: at Boragó, a restaurant in Santiago, Chile, the chef Rodolfo Guzmán serves an autumnal dessert of fresh murta berries, Patagonian rhubarb and sheep’s milk ice cream. Right: at Crocadon, an organic farm and restaurant in Cornwall, England, rows of 12-year-old murta bushes thrive.Left: courtesy of Boragó. Right: courtesy of Crocadon Autumn in Chile signals the arrival of murta season, when ancient wild berries — known variously as murtilla, Chilean guava or strawberry myrtle — flood the country’s southern landscapes. Fragrant and floral, with a texture somewhere between a crisp blueberry and firm apple, murta has long been treasured across Chile for both its distinct flavor and nutritional value. At Amaia in Maipú, a suburb of Santiago, the chef Iván Zambra, a champion of Indigenous Chilean foodways, favors murta berries for their crunchy texture and natural acidity. From March through May, Zambra showcases fresh red murta in vibrant herb salads and a tartare. To preserve the season’s bounty, he steeps the berries to make syrups and jams, capturing their essence for year-round dishes like murta panna cotta with yogurt semifreddo and lawen, a traditional herbal infusion intended to soothe colds and ease stress. At Boragó in Santiago’s Vitacura neighborhood, the chef Rodolfo Guzmán sources murta — including a rare white variety he serves fresh as a condiment or predessert — through an expansive network of southern foragers. He resists preserving the berries whenever possible. “When you preserve them, you lose the soul,” he says. Though his team occasionally ferment or dehydrate murta to layer flavor into broths, they most often present the fruit at its aromatic peak. This season, Guzmán is debuting a dessert that pairs murta with tangy Patagonian rhubarb and rich sheep’s milk ice cream. “It’s about honoring the momentum of the land,” he says. Murta has found its way into gardens and farms in Italy, New Zealand and parts of Britain (at Crocadon, an organic farm and restaurant in Cornwall, the chef Dan Cox serves strawberry myrtle with sorrel sorbet, anise hyssop oil and fresh sorrel leaves), but Guzmán notes that the Chilean variety retains a unique flavor. “You want to grab that personality and allow it to accent all the other ingredients,” he says. “When it’s fresh, it’s just pure magic.”Gift ThisEmbroidered Bed and Table Linens Created in Collaboration With Laila GoharLeft: a Laila Gohar x Vis-a-Vis place mat and napkin, photographed at Philip Johnson’s Glass House in New Canaan, Conn. Right: a top sheet made using the point de noeud embroidery technique.Pia RiverolaThe New York-based artist Laila Gohar and Véronique Taittinger, the owner and artistic director of the bespoke linen company Vis-a-Vis Paris, are launching their first collaboration, a 13-piece collection of hand-embroidered bed and table linens that draw on traditional techniques. A pleated duvet cover took nearly 500 hours to complete, while the intricate point de noeud style of embroidery on the collection’s top sheet was once used by 15th-century French nuns. Gohar’s penchant for whimsy emerges in the form of a scalloped tablecloth embroidered to look as if a handful of multicolored beans had been scattered onto its Belgian linen surface. For those worried about the practicality of using such delicate pieces on a regular basis, Taittinger says that upkeep is surprisingly simple: “Avoid the dryer, but they can be machine washed. The more you use them, the better they get.” From $55, modaoperandi.com.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      A Guide to New, and Creatively Designed, Restaurants in New York City

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      Visitors should at least peek into some of these spots, including a sushi restaurant with a 2D interior and a Baz Luhrmann-owned joint with major medieval vibes.May brings thousands of visitors to New York City for art and design fairs and related events. The largest and most established include two major art fairs, Frieze New York (Thursday through Sunday), and TEFAF New York (Friday through Tuesday), the NYCxDesign Festival (May 15-21), the International Contemporary Furniture Fair (May 18-20) and a new design fair, Shelter by Afternoon Light (May 17-19).But fairs and galleries aren’t the only places to see remarkable design in the city. Restaurants, for example, have become as serious about design as they are about the food (and sometimes even more so). Hundreds of dining establishments opened last year in New York City, many of them featuring impressive art, flattering lighting, high-end finishes and furnishings and, of course, at least a few Instagram-worthy backdrops.The ones highlighted below have opened in the past year. They were not chosen for their culinary or cocktail offerings but for their standout design, with interiors that are intriguing and engaging. Some were designed by professionals, others by industry veterans taking matters into their own hands, and one by a film industry power couple. Scoring a coveted reservation during a time when leagues of art and design types flood the city will probably not be easy, but a curious visitor might be allowed to pop in for a peek.Clemente BarThe interior of Clemente Bar, a new bar above Eleven Madison Park, was inspired by Kronenhalle, a wood-paneled restaurant in Zurich.Jason VarneyThis intimate bar above Daniel Humm’s Eleven Madison Park has garnered buzz for its original art, created by the man for whom it was named, Francesco Clemente. But it was Brad Cloepfil of Allied Works, the architect responsible for the 2017 redesign of the three-Michelin-starred restaurant, and Rachel Massey, his associate principal, director of interior design, who created the interiors.When Humm approached Cloepfil about designing a bar for Clemente’s works, he cited Kronenhalle, an elegant, old soul of an establishment in Zurich, as potential inspiration. Kronenhalle’s restaurant has wood-paneled walls clad with pieces by the likes of Marc Chagall and Joan Miró.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More