JUNE 11/12 2022

Who
wants
to own
a hotel
now?
 June 11/12 2022

FEATURES
18.
Checking in
A little-known, fast-growing
American hotel chain aims to
change the future of the industry.
Can it? By Brooke Masters

24.
American odyssey
What photographer Jim Dow’s road
epic captures about the US

36.
▶
Positively medieval
An ancient manuscript yields
delectable secrets. By Polly Russell
ALBA YRUELA

INTELLECT APPETITES WIT& WISDOM

9 Tim Harford 14 Simon Kuper 33 Tim Hayward 44 Robert Shrimsley

Learning to think Sport’s meritocracy vs Discoveries from a funky cellar The key to happiness: effective
requires the heart politics’ chumocracy 34 Recipe advance planning
10 Leo Lewis 16 Gillian Tett Spaghetti vongole 45 Games
Our household is The Tao of train travel 41 Jancis Robinson 46 The Questionnaire
hopelessly deadlocked Cinemas paradiso Edward Carey, author and artist
12 Gallery
Gareth McConnell’s flowers

Issue number 975 • Online ft.com/magazine • FT Weekend Magazine is printed by the Walstead Group in the UK and ON THE COVER
published by The Financial Times Ltd, Bracken House, 1 Friday Street, London EC4M 9BT © The Financial Times Ltd 2022
No part of this magazine may be reproduced in any form without the prior express permission of the publisher
Illustration by Lisa Sheehan
Publishing: Daphne Kovacs, head of advertising, FT Weekend Magazine – daphne.kovacs@ft.com
Marginalia by
Production: Danny Macklin, advertising production – daniel.macklin@ft.com or magscopy@ft.com Nadine Redlich @FTMag

FT.COM/MAGAZINE JUNE 11/12 2022 5

 Letters
Fine dining’s reckoning
by Imogen West-Knights
I had wanted to go to Noma for
years. During Covid times, they
pretty much fired their entire
“family” with little notice. A lot of
poorly paid young people with no
savings whose identity was built
around the prestige of Noma got
broken that day.
The email I got about it was
such a load of PR waffle that any
half-intelligent person could read
between the lines and see what
they really thought of their staff.
I’m not interested in going there
any more, especially after reading
this article.
AndyKaufmann via FT.com
My experiences as a kitchen
seasonal worker in Cornwall years
ago – long hours, poor or illegal
pay rates, abusive conditions –
are encapsulated by the memory
of the waiter who regularly, with
unanimous kitchen staff approval,
spat on the restaurant owner’s
evening meal before serving it.
I doubt much has changed.
RB, Cornwall
This is an important story
especially for all of us “foodie”
tourists and champions of work
of chefs.
@om via Twitter
The best chair for work might not
be the one you think
by Harriet Fitch-Little
Sitting in a chair is a learnt
behaviour and thus probably
unnatural for human beings.
This is why younger kids will do
anything but sit in them properly.
So all chairs challenge human
musculoskeletal behavioural
norms. Mind you, so does spending
40+ hours a week at a desk.
6 FT.COM/MAGAZINE JUNE 11/12 2022
We all need to move more and
somehow mimic what our ancestors
did to promote better health. The
chair was first recorded about
3,000BC when people were much
smaller and lighter, and had a life
expectancy of perhaps 35 years.
They sat in them not to work, more
likely to rest briefly. Yet somehow
this simple object has morphed
into the accepted default postural
solution for the human race.
StevieD123 via FT.com
Nitrous oxide, madness and
Roget’s Thesaurus
by Thomas W Hodgkinson
An excellent piece with a splendid
▶
cartoon to illustrate Humphry
Davy’s loss of “all connection with
external things” following his
experiments with nitrous oxide.
I recall a master at school telling
us about Davy and the clerihew:
Sir Humphrey Davy
Abominated gravy
He lived in the odium
Of having discovered sodium
Alastair Conan, Coulsdon
Even when you do succeed,
sometimes it pays to try again
by Tim Harford
Tim Harford’s piece brought to
mind music producer Jim Steinman
(of Bat Out of Hell fame), who after
a successful take would say, “That
was perfect. Let’s do it again.”
John Kelly, Little Raveley
The cheap, green, low-tech
solution for the world’s megacities
by Simon Kuper
I agree that cars pollute, generate
congestion and cause accidents but
they increase personal mobility
enormously, which leads to
increased prosperity. The solution
is not to abolish cars or lorries, but
to make them less contaminant
Did you know FT Weekend has a podcast? We explore today’s
culture, big ideas, nuanced questions and what it means to
live a good life. Join us for inspiring conversations, in-depth
storytelling, a bit of escapism and a lot of fun. Search
‘FT Weekend’ where you listen, or ft.com/ftweekendpodcast
JUNE 4/5
Copenhagen’s culinary demons
TO CONTRIBUTE
You can comment on our articles online
or email magazineletters@ft.com.
Please include a daytime telephone
number and full address (not for
publication). Letters may be edited.
by increasing their electrification
with safer design and managing
congestion through pricing. All
means of transport have a place
in providing mobility for certain
purposes at the right place and time.
Increase of personal and freight
mobility is a condition for increased
prosperity. Spatial monopolies
are only broken by improving
transport. If we reduce mobility,
we fall prey to monopolistic
employers, shopkeepers or
landlords. That was the condition
in the Middle Ages and it only
improved with industrialisation
and more effective transport.
Marcial Echenique,
University of Cambridge
Can augmented reality take off
where VR has failed?
by Tim Bradshaw
We live in a world of too many
people, too much carbon. Tech such
as virtual reality can help people
to experience things that would
otherwise not be affordable, either
for them or for the planet.
So bring it on, these snap glasses
sound cool!
Secret Lemonade Drinker
via FT.com
Salad cream days (May 28/29)
by Tim Hayward
I love you, Tim Hayward. Your
articles are informed, dogmatic,
full of peppy joie de vivre.
My prawn cocktail (cold water
prawns only) has been transformed
according to your strictures by the
use of home-made salad cream
made using a small springy whisk.
By the way, I was reliably told
by the local postman that Madame
Cradock could not make a decent
cup of tea. Tea gown? I’m sure you
wear it well.
Yvonne Bristow, Carnyorth
Enda Kenny + Ruth Rogers = Kenny Rogers
Picture quiz
10. Calamity Jane
8. Rub(-a-Dub-Dub) 9. Death Valley, California
4. John Fortune 5. Red Sea 6. The Troubles 7. Heartache
1. The Finkler Question 2. Mind 3. Red Arrows
The link was nouns in Hamlet’s “To be or not to be” soliloquy
Quiz answers
 Inside: What politics can learn from elite football p14

Intellect
Undercover Economist
TIM HARFORD
Intellectual virtues to help
sharpenyour thinking skills

What does it mean to “learn how to think”? Is it a matter of

learning some intellectual skills such as fluent reading, logic and
clear expression? Does it require familiarity with some canonical
texts or historical facts? Perhaps it’s all about correcting certain
biases that cloud our judgment?
I recently read a thought-provoking essay by the psychologist
Barry Schwartz, best known for his book The Paradox of Choice.
Writing a few years ago in The Chronicle of Higher Education,
Schwartz argued that one of the goals of a university education,
especially a liberal arts education, is to teach students how to
think. The trouble is, said Schwartz, “nobody really knows what
that means”.
Schwartz proposes his own ideas. He is less interested in cogni-
tive skills than in intellectual virtues. “All the traits I will discuss
have a fundamental moral dimension,” he says, before setting
out the case for nine virtues: love of truth; honesty about one’s
own failings; fair-mindedness; humility and a willingness to seek
help; perseverance; courage; good listening; perspective-taking
and empathy; and, finally, wisdom – the word Schwartz uses to
describe not taking any of these other virtues to excess.
One only has to flip the list to see Schwartz’s point. Imagine
a person who is hugely knowledgeable and brilliantly rational,
yet who falls short on these virtues, being indifferent to truth,
in denial about their own errors, prejudiced, arrogant, easily ▶

FT.COM/MAGAZINE JUNE 11/12 2022 ILLUSTRATION BY GUILLEM CASASÚS 9

 Intellect

◀ discouraged, cowardly, dismissive, narcissistic and prone to Notes from the Cutting Edge
every kind of excess. Could such a person really be described as
knowing how to think? They would certainly not be the kind of LEO LEWIS
person you’d want to put in charge of anything.
“My list was meant to start the conversation, not end it,” I regret toinform youthat
Schwartz told me. So I sent his list to some people I respect, both
in and adjacent to academia, to see what they made of it. The reac-
thefamilygames debate is
tion was much the same as mine: almost everyone liked the idea still a stalemate
of intellectual virtues, and almost everyone had their own ideas
about what was missing.
The Cambridge statistician Sir David Spiegelhalter raised the
idea of intellectual variety, since working on disparate projects
was often a source of insight. Hetan Shah, chief executive of the At the end of this month, house- Japan supplies have thus been
British Academy, suggested that this variety, and in particular the hold negotiations over buying a unusually thin and, since the start of
ability to see the connection between different parts of a system, PlayStation 5 will enter their 600th the year, there have only been three
was the most important intellectual virtue. He also argued for a day of deadlock. Arrival at this mile- weeks where Sony sold more than
senseofhumour:ifwecan’tplaywithideas,evendangerousideas, stone may well bring all parties back 30,000 units here. In one extraor-
we are missing something. to the table, but a breakthrough still dinary week in May, Sony sold only

D
feels a long way off.
ame Frances Cairncross has chaired several nota- Part of the delay is that global
ble academic institutions. She suggested that if economic forces are playing havoc
one accepted the premise that intellectual vir- with stock, of course. But this is by
tues were also moral virtues, a greater one was no means our first version of the
“humanity…asympathyforthehumancondition argument. As each enchanting gen-
and a recognition of human weakness”. eration of console (particularly
She also suggested the virtue of “getting stuff done”, noting the those of Sony and Nintendo) has
line from the Book of Common Prayer, “we have left undone those come along, the question of the new
things which we ought to have done.” True enough. What would machine’s cost-to-justifiability ratio
be the value of having all these intellectual virtues if we did not blazes around several talking points.
exercisethem,andinsteadspentourdaysmunchingpopcornand Is it really that much better than
watching TV? the one you’ve already got? (Abso-
Tom Chatfield, author of How To Think, mentioned persua- lutely, yes, the existing model is
siveness. What is the point of thinking clearly if you cannot help now decade-old tech and just look
anyone else to do likewise? This is fair, although persuasiveness at game X.) OK, but is it worth $500
is perhaps the intellectual virtue that most tempts us into the when the games also cost $60? (Well,
vices of arrogance, partisanship and an unbalanced treatment yes. See previous answer.) Really?
of the facts. And yet you whinge
Almost everyone raised the omission that was much on my about the cost of the
mind: curiosity. Curiosity was not on Schwartz’s list, except per- kids’ trainers. (Yes, InoneweekinMay,
haps by implication. But curiosity is one of the central intellectual but that’s totally Sonysoldonly2,693
virtues. Curiosity implies some humility, since it is an acknowl- different.) And so unitsinJapan–asign
edgment that there is something one doesn’t yet understand. on. The support, thatthesupplycrisis
Curiosityimpliesopen-mindednessandaquesttoenlargeoneself. this time, of a naggy couldbegettingworse
It is protective against partisanship. If we are curious, many other 12-year-old in my
intellectualproblemstakecareofthemselves.AsOrsonWellesput lobbying effort has
it about the film-going audience: “Once they are interested, they been useful, though not decisive.
understand anything in the world.” But the core difference between
Very good. Range, systemic thinking, humanity, humour, this and previous iterations of the
getting things done, persuasiveness, curiosity. Other plausible argument has been the PS5 itself. In
virtues were suggested, too; alas, this columnist must also display Japan, Sony’s home turf, its games
the virtue of brevity. But one of my correspondents had a sharply machine has been very difficult to
different response to Schwartz’s emphasis on explicitly moral buyfromamainstreamretailer.Nor-
intellectual virtues – tellingly, the one most actively involved in mally, there is an initial post-launch
teaching.MarionTurner,professorofEnglishliteratureatOxford stampede and ensuing shortages
university,putitfrankly:“I’mnottrainedtoteachstudentshowto that all form part of the hype (and
be good people, and that’s not my job.” fun). Within a year, though, the
It’s a fair point. It is very pleasant to make a list of intellectual casual buyer can generally find one
virtues, but why should we believe that academics can teach stu- without too bruising a quest.
dents courage, humility or any other virtue? Yet if not academics, Not so with the latest PlaySta-
thenwho?Parents?Primaryschoolteachers?Newspapercolumn- tion. Launched in November 2020,
ists?Perhapsweshouldjusthopethatpeopleacquirethesevirtues despite the well-known headwinds
for themselves? I am really not sure. of a global semiconductor shortage,
Barry Schwartz is on to something, that is clear. Facts, logic, it has been buffeted by supply chain
quantitative tools and analytical clarity are all very well, but the difficulties. Sony, which has a real
art of thinking well requires virtues as well as skills. And if we battle on its hands against Micro-
don’t know who will teach those virtues, or how to teach them, soft’s Xbox, has been funnelling its
that explains a lot about the world in which we now live. machines to particular markets,
principally the US, where it believes
Tim Harford’s latest book is “How to Make the World Add Up” victory will be decided.
2,693 PS5s in Japan – an indication,
say analysts, that the supply crisis
could actually be getting worse.
Those Japanese gamers determined
to secure a machine are left relying
on store lotteries, luck or a second-
ary market where “as new” used
PS5s trade at 70 per cent above the
official retail price.
This absurdity has killed the
debateinourhouse.Sinceitslaunch,
the PS5 has sailed through two
Christmases and multiple Lewis
family birthdays both hotly desired
and defiantly unpurchased.
ItmaybethatSonyhasaninterest
in keeping its Japan sales low. Calcu-
lated globally, it makes little money
on the hardware
sales of PS5 units –
no problem, given
that the real money
is made on the soft-
ware. In Japan, says
one analyst who has
covered the com-
pany for decades, it
is probably making a loss of about
¥2,000 on every machine sold.
Pelham Smithers, another vet-
eran Sony-watcher, suspects the
spew of red ink could be even more
severe, with material costs rising sig-
nificantly amid global inflation and
high energy prices, and with the yen
plunged to a 20-year low. That com-
bination, says Smithers, could mean
that Sony is losing about ¥15,000
on every PS5 it sells in Japan. That
could be an incentive for it to ensure
that stores and online retailers are
not flooded with machines. Sony’s
gaming chief did recently announce
“a significant ramp-up” in PS5 pro-
duction this year, but for now, I’ll
have to make do with our PS4 – itself
the result of a successful round of
household negotiation.
Leo Lewis is the FT’s Asia
business editor

10 FT.COM/MAGAZINE JUNE 11/12 2022

 Intellect

GALLERY
Photograph by
GARETH McCONNELL

Flowers have been a subject

in Gareth McConnell’s work for
more than 20 years. The first
such photograph by the London-
based artist, from 1998, was of a
plastic funeral wreath in a disused
undertaker’s parlour. It was taken
in McConnell’s hometown of
Carrickfergus, Northern Ireland,
in the aftermath of the Good
Friday Agreement. Flowers have
since recurred abundantly in his
ongoing series Night Flowers and
The Dream Meadow. He has honed
a signature style that plunges us
into a dreamlike universe where
colour is saturated and intensified.
“To take something like flowers
and really try and make the subject
matter your own is difficult,”
he says.
A solo show of McConnell’s
recent flower works is on display in
London. It is the second in a series
of exhibitions called The Troubles
Generation, which invites artists
who grew up in Northern Ireland
to present work that sheds light
on life in the shadows of sectarian
conflict. McConnell speaks of
formative coming-of-age moments
through the language of flowers,
unravelling personal memories of
a time where widespread violence
was the backdrop, but when
rave culture was simultaneously
bringing divided communities
together on the dance floor. His
flowers are symbolically layered
with meaning, emotion, joy
and sorrow.

By Vivienne Gamble. Gamble is the

director of Seen Fifteen, London,
where McConnell’s “The Brighter
The Flowers, The Fiercer The Town”
is on until June 19

‘Dream Meadow XXI’, 2021

12 FT.COM/MAGAZINE JUNE 11/12 2022

 Intellect
World View
SIMON
KUPER
Elite football is a meritocracy.
Why can’t politics be?
I
know many readers are sick of me bang-
ing on about Oxford, but I promise this
column is about a bigger question: are
political and educational elites in coun-
tries such as the UK, the US and France
genuinely elite achievers?
In the past year, I’ve published two books
about elites. The first, Barça, is an inside look at
FC Barcelona, the football club, and the second,
Chums, a dyspeptic account of the mostly male
Oxford-educated Conservatives who rule Britain.
A response I often get is, “Surely the best-educated
people should be running the country?” But
whereas the sporting elite is a high-performance
meritocracy, the political elite isn’t.
To play for a top-class football team, such as
Barcelona until about 2019, you had to be one of
the 200 or so best footballers on earth. All players
have trained for the job since childhood, amid con-
tinuous selection. After each season, eight to 10
boys in every team at Barça’s youth academy, the
Masia, are replaced by newcomers selected from
among the millions who want to be professional
footballers. The average kid lasts only three years
in the Masia.
In football, quality trumps CV, looks or skin
colour. The day a tiny 16-year-old Argentine with
a flowerpot haircut trained with Barcelona’s first
team, Ronaldinho, then the world’s best foot-
baller, remarked that the kid, Leo Messi, should be
playing for the firsts already.
But players must keep performing. Once Ron-
aldinho declined, he was kicked out, his brilliant
CV an irrelevance. Failure in sport is clear-cut
and gets punished. Even retaining your level isn’t
enough, because football improves tactically and
14
physically almost by the month. Coaching staff many levers to steer several hundred thousand
have to keep innovating. When Barça stopped civil servants, whereas a football coach manages
doing that, they collapsed, culminating in the 8-2 20 or so people whom he sees daily.
thumping by Bayern Munich in 2020. Every political leader will confront an array
Contrast this with the highly educated political of problems about which they know little – for
elite. If you’re born into the right caste, selection instance, Ukraine, climate change and Covid-19.
isn’t very rigorous: elite US universities in 2017 They therefore need the humility and listening
admitted more students from the top 1 per cent of skills to act as conveners, hearing out experts.
the income distribution than from the bottom half. The worst possible leader is an egomaniac who –
And elite universities rarely kick out underper- perhaps encouraged by his CV, caste and gender
formers. Boris Johnson’s classics tutor at Oxford – imagines he knows best.
recalled that “Boris rubbed along Infact,littlebrillianceisrequired
on no hour’s [work].” At Har- anywhere in the governing process.
vard, a study in 2019 found that Elitenetworksleadto Ideally, government specialists are
43 per cent of white students thebestjobs,including themselves reliable conveners who
admitted were either recruited ingovernment,where distil the latest consensus of their
athletes or children or other rela- leadersliketorecruit fields, because that is more likely to
tives of alumni, donors or faculty chumsandrelatives be right than the blue-sky thinking
and staff. Most of these students of some maverick who may or may
wouldn’t have got in otherwise. not be the next Einstein.
Yet they almost all manage to sail through college. A football team has to win matches, but a gov-
In short, Harvard is not the Masia. Elite universi- ernment has to please voters. That has little to do
ties have other priorities besides excellence. They with good policymaking. An energy transition or
often retain elements of their past as gentlemen’s educational reform can take decades to judge and
finishing schools, teaching upper-caste presenta- sometimes longer. The core job of government is
tional skills. to avert catastrophes, but voters rarely reward
Graduating from one of these places gives you politicians for things that don’t happen. Instead,
a life-long entrance ticket to the top, which is why governments generally get voted out because of
someFrenchelitemembershavetheiralmamaters poor presentational skills, trumped-up culture
inscribed on their tombstones. Networks lead wars or global recessions.
to the best jobs, including in government, where I’ve spent my journalistic career toggling
leaders like to recruit chums, caste-mates and rela- between sport and bigger things. I used to worry
tives. Selection in politics is chiefly for clubbability that football was a lower subject than politics.
and electability, not governing skills. Many politi- I don’t any more.
cal leaders have zero prior experience of running
even a government department. Nor do they have simon.kuper@ft.com @KuperSimon
ILLUSTRATION BY HARRY HAYSOM FT.COM/MAGAZINE JUNE 11/12 2022
 Intellect
American Experiment
GILLIAN
TETT
The banker who fell to Earth
and boarded a train
A
couple of weeks ago, I had
breakfast in New York with a
Malaysian accountant-turned-
banker named Azman Mokhtar,
who I first met years ago when
he ran the Khazanah sovereign
wealth fund. He arrived carrying a fat photo book
entitled KembaraKretapi:AroundtheWorldinTrains
of Thoughts. It was the memento of an epic journey
he took in 2019, boarding exactly 77 trains over 77
consecutive days as he circumnavigated the globe.
The idea, he explained, was to celebrate some-
thing known as kembara in Malay (probably best
translated as “wanderlust”). Planes are not well
suited for kembara, since being 30,000 feet above
the ground detaches you from, well, the Earth.
Train travel, by contrast, enables you to better
experience the places you’re travelling through.
Mokhtar had dreamt of this pilgrimage for
40 years while working in finance, so when he
finally retired in 2019, he took off. “The world
is both small and large, and life is both long and
short,” he writes in the book. “Live it.”
It is a sentiment that most of us might usefully
ponderrightnow.Foronething,itshowsthe power
of escape fantasies as a way to sustain our imagi-
nations during long careers. For another, kembara
seems like a doubly precious commodity today.
Backin2019,whenMokhtarboardedhisfirsttrain,
he assumed that the world would always be open
for anyone who wanted to explore it.
So did most people whose careers had been built
on the back of globalisation. If you had a travel
dream, there seemed no reason to rush.
But soon after Mokhtar finished his 77th train
ride, Covid-19 erupted. And while the pandemic
16
has now ebbed, it would be hard to replicate his him concluding that “tutorial cultures in tahfiz
tripatpresentgivenChina’squarantineregimeand madrasas, Oxbridge colleges and ancient Tibetan
rising tensions between Russia and the west. temples perhaps have more in common than
Indeed, in a world of growing geopolitical strife commonly thought”. In Russia he stumbled on
and uncertainty, it seems increasingly naive to unexpected beauty in the Moscow metro system
assume that borders will remain open, even when and, as a devout Muslim, was thrilled to discover
the pandemic is over. In a deglobalising, uncertain that the Saint Petersburg Mosque “was the largest
age, travel opportunities need to be grabbed. in Europe” when it opened in 1913.
Mokhtar’s journey demonstrated something In Sweden he had a less pleasant surprise:
else, too: the power of putting your feet on the the trains were badly delayed, and another pas-
ground. During much of his later career, he worked senger swore at him. He viewed this as a sign of
in the Petronas Towers in Malaysia, “a turbulent upside down world”,
thetallestoftheirkindintheworld. where “developed” countries no
This was an elevated perch, both Financiersoftenwork longer seemed quite so advanced.
physically and metaphorically. But intowersthatleave InAmericahefacedmoredelays,
italsosymbolisedaproblem:finan- themfeeling asifthey and despaired that “the nation that
ciers and executives often work in havearighttofloat gave us the great transcontinen-
places and ways that leave them aboveeveryoneelse tal railroad… just won’t upgrade its
feeling as if they have a right to float infrastructure”. But after he got the
above everyone else. To counter last seat on the 2,500km journey
that, Mokhtar says that he often urged his staff to from Perth to Adelaide in Australia, he marvelled
engage in kembara in their jobs, by walking incog- at the beauty of the Nullarbor Plain and the “pretty
nito around the companies and places that the garden city” he found in Adelaide (Day 73).
fund invested in. His long-planned trip was a way Tohardenedexplorers,suchobservationsmight
to counter the detachment he felt after years spent seem mundane. But after looking at Mokhtar’s
in an office tower. book, I felt not just inspired but also embar-
What he encountered along the way was not rassed about how we used to take globetrotting for
necessarily shocking; the value came from numer- granted in our pre-pandemic age, when nobody
ous tiny surprises. In the rail carriages of Vietnam worried about the type of labour shortages and
he was stunned by the entrepreneurial spirit of flight cancellations that we are currently seeing in
the other passengers and the fact that so many Europe. Today, uncertainty is the new certainty.
people smoked “peace pipes” on board (“Things So, if you, like Mokhtar, have secret travel dreams,
they don’t teach you at Harvard Business School!” the message is simple: act on them now or soon.
he joked in his Instagram posts). With or without trains.
On a stop in Lhasa he saw Tibetan monks
teaching their students in a manner that left gillian.tett@ft.com @gilliantett
ILLUSTRATION BY CRISTIANA COUCEIRO FT.COM/MAGAZINE JUNE 11/12 2022
 Suite dreams
An upstart hotel chain thinks it’s cracked the code to post-
pandemic travel, from room designs that soothe germaphobes to
the melding of work and leisure time. If it’s right, the future of the
hotel business may look very different. By Brooke Masters

Illustration by Lisa Sheehan

Portraits by Timothy O’Connell
 O
ne September afternoon in 2020,
Vera Manoukian received a call from
a recruiter on behalf of a hotel chain
making ambitious expansion plans.
Would she, the caller inquired, want
to be chief operating officer of Sonesta
International as it ramped up from just
58 properties to more than 1,100, with
upwards of 100,000 rooms?
Manoukian, a 30-year veteran of
the hotel business who was then head
of the Hilton brand, was intrigued.
It was a grim time to be in hospitality: stringent
lockdowns and international travel bans had dec-
imated demand, and a vaccine still seemed far off.
At Hilton, echoing lobbies and empty rooms tes-
tified to a 90 per cent drop in revenue, suspended
dividends and mass furloughs.
Manoukian, 58, is a fast walker and a faster
talker. Leaving Lebanon for the US as a teenager,
she studied chemistry in college and stumbled into
hospitality after seeing a “help wanted” sign. She
rose rapidly, becoming Sheraton’s youngest hotel
general manager at the age of 29. By 2020, she had
worked for huge players, including Starwood and
Hilton, and watched as the industry bounced back
from 9/11, the financial crisis, recession and more.
But to be planning a post-pandemic expansion in
the depths of the pandemic was something else.
There was only one problem: “What is a Son-
esta?” she asked.
Founded in 1937, Massachusetts-based Sonesta
once owned luxury hotels such as New York’s Plaza
andWashington’sMayflower.WhenIwasincollege
in the 1980s, the group’s pyramid-shaped Cam-
bridge hotel was a hot place to take visiting parents
(and their credit cards) for brunch. But as large
hotel chains transformed into managers and mar-
keters of stables of carefully delineated brands
rangingfromposhtobarebones,Sonestawithered.
In 2011, it was acquired by a little-known real
estate investor and had, since then, flown so far
under the radar that it was practically invisible.
Sonesta, Manoukian realised, was a unique
chance to redefine post-pandemic travel on behalf
of a very different kind of hotel company. At a
time when industry profits were down more than
95 per cent and the biggest US hoteliers were on
the defensive, the real estate moguls who owned
Sonesta planned to steal a march. It was already
becoming clear that domestic travel would recover
much faster than far-flung trips, and the spread
of remote working had the potential to funda-
mentally reshape business travel. Here also was a
chance to rethink both the business model and the
principles of hotel design in ways that would help
coax germaphobes back out on the road. Shocking
someofherformercolleagues,Manoukianbecame
Sonesta’s COO in November 2020. The chance to
start from scratch was too unusual to pass up.
World-shaking events aside, the hotel business
isn’t what it used to be. Over the past couple of dec-
ades, the biggest chains have steadily gobbled up
smaller ones, while simultaneously selling off their
actual hotel buildings to concentrate almost exclu-
sively on marketing and operations. The biggest,
Marriott, has 30 different brands encompassing
more than 8,000 hotels. But you can count the
number of properties this nearly $60bn company
owns on your fingers and toes – most were spun out
into another company in 1993, and the rest were
20
sold off. Same story at Hilton and InterContinen-
tal Hotels Group; each owns or directly leases less RMR exhibits little
than 1 per cent of its properties. The rest are mostly
split between high-profile locations the companies
to no glitz, no
manageforoutsideinvestorsandamuchlargerand wacky branding
growing group of hotels that is owned and operated
byfranchisees,whomustcomplywithbrandstand- gurus, not even one
ards on decor, service and staffing.
That means when you walk into a brand-name celebrity heiress
hotel today, no matter whether your room costs
$50 or $500, chances are it is the hospitality equiv-
alent of a McDonald’s. In the US, just 5 per cent of
hotels are owned or directly managed by chains,
while 53 per cent are franchises, up from 47 per
cent a decade ago, according to hospitality data
provider STR. As it did for so many industries, the
pandemiclaidbaredivergingagendas.Whilethebig
hotelbrandsdrewpublicattentionandsympathyto
the hospitality industry’s struggles, they sloughed
offmuchofthefinancialpainontoowner-operators
who still had to maintain buildings and pay staff.
Sonesta’s expansion has its genesis in an earlier
crisis where these power dynamics played out sim-
ilarly. The company is owned by The RMR Group,
a Boston-based real estate investor with $37bn in
assets under management. RMR exhibits little to
no glitz, no wacky branding gurus, not even one
celebrity heiress. Its bread and butter has been
property management. In fact, it only got into
the hotel business when one of its trusts bought a
batch of senior-living properties from Marriott in
the early 1990s. When RMR sought to buy more,
the hotel chain instead offered some Courtyard
by Marriott and Residence Inn buildings instead.
RMR’s portfolio gradually expanded from there, as
it struck management deals with other big chains.
RMR’smoveintohotelswasspearheadedbyJohn
Murray, a 61-year-old Long Island native with an OPPOSITE: SONESTA INTERNATIONAL CHIEF
accountingdegreeandearlierstintsatEYandFidel- OPERATING OFFICER VERA MANOUKIAN AT THE
COMPANY’S WHITE PLAINS HOTEL
ity.AsIwasreportingthisstory,hewaspromotedto BELOW: RENDERINGS OF A ROOM AND OUTDOOR
becomeSonesta’sCEO.Murrayisaffableandmatter AND INDOOR GUEST SPACES PLANNED FOR
of fact when we speak. He tells me it all started with REFURBISHED SONESTA PROPERTIES
a slap in the face. After the 2008-09 recession, Mar-
riott and IHG dealt with their cash flow problems
by refusing to pay RMR more than $100mn of what
they owed for use of its buildings until the economy
improved. As its experience in the hotel business
waslimitedtorealestate,RMRseizedtheirsecurity
depositsbutthenhadnootheroptionbuttorenego-
tiate the contracts and wait.
When a local hotel brand that had seen better
days came up for sale two years later, Murray
pounced. “We said, we’re going to buy Sonesta so
thatifweareeverinthatpredicamentagain,thebig
brandscan’tsay,‘Wewilljuststoppayingthem,’”he
says. By the time Covid-19 hit, Sonesta was operat-
ingnearly60hotelsandhadsuccessfullylauncheda
newsub-brand,SonestaESSuites.In2020,Marriott
andIHGagainstoppedmakingsomepromisedpay-
ments and said the money might not start flowing
until 2025. This time RMR was ready. It cancelled
theirmanagementcontractsandhandedovermore
than 200 hotels to Sonesta. The plan, Murray says,
was simple: “We’re going to make Sonesta into a
major hotel company.”
Overnight, signs that read Courtyard, Candle-
wood Suites and Holiday Inn Crowne Plaza came
down, replaced by newly invented brand names
and signage. The hotel buildings themselves and
on-the-ground staff remained the same. At a
former Kimpton in Washington DC, the removal
of that brand’s colourful prints left guestrooms
FT.COM/MAGAZINE JUNE 11/12 2022
 feeling generic and half-empty. Some 250 miles
north at a former Crowne Plaza in the New York
suburbs, the general manager Monika Henry and
about 100 workers were grateful they still had jobs.
But “we sort of wondered what a Sonesta was”, she
says. “We didn’t know who we were.”
Customers were equally confused. Gil Marsden,
adocumentary-filmdirector,foundhimselfandhis
crewbookedintothreeSonestasoverashortperiod
of time. One was a bare-bones, extended-stay
hotel, while the other two were full-service proper-
ties with snazzy ballrooms and room service. The
only thing they seemed to have in common was
a name he hadn’t heard of. “They don’t feel like
they are big enough to have different brands,” says
Marsden. “It’s a crapshoot.”
Murray and RMR agreed. So they shelled
out $90mn for the parent company of Red Lion
Hotels in March 2021. That not only added more
than 900 franchised hotels, mostly midscale and
economy properties in the west and midwest,
but also gave Sonesta the expertise to sign other
hotel owners to its chain. “They’ve become a real
player in the market,” says Alam Pirani, execu-
tive managing director of Colliers Hotels, which
advises hospitality investors. “I think they are
going to be aggressive.”
Manoukian, Sonesta’s new COO, charged in,
hiring a former colleague from Starwood as mar-
keting director and someone below her to focus
onbranding.Theybroughtinconsultantstodevelop
slogans and standards and to sketch out new room
and lobby designs. Her goal, she says, was: “I want

I
togofrom‘WhatisaSonesta?’to‘IwantaSonesta.’”

n large markets like the US, a hotel’s brand is cru-

cial because travellers have many options and
relatively few sources of reliable advice beyond
online booking sites. Guidebooks and listicles
about Paris are a dime a dozen; the same is less
true for Cincinnati, Ohio or Richmond, Vir-
ginia. A branded hotel may be sterile, but it’s a
safe bet. “For most people, this is the pinnacle
of discretionary spend. They want to lessen the
chances of disappointment,” says Robin Hutson,
co-founder of the UK’s Hotel du Vin and The Pig,
both of which managed to combine the recognisa-
bility of a chain with boutique sensibility.
In theory it shouldn’t be that hard to get hotel
branding right, Hutson says. “Basics will go a long
way. The minimum you want from a hotel is a
really great mattress, enough water pressure in the
shower, and you want it to be dark and quiet and
the pillow to be soft. It is not rocket science.”
Yet when Sonesta executives started running
focus groups with guests and potential guests, they

$37bn
discovered that many of them found travel inher-
ently stressful, a feeling only exacerbated by the
pandemic. Booking a hotel was particularly nerve-
racking because so many places failed to live up to
photos posted online. To the new chief marketing
and brand officer Elizabeth Harlow, who started in
hospitality as a front-desk clerk in The Mayflower,
that unease seemed like an opportunity. “Guests
were hungry for a sense of calm and things to help
them offset anxiety. So how do we create spaces or
experiences that fulfil those needs?”
At Sonesta’s budget, extended-stay properties,
Assets managed by the the answer was pretty straightforward. Guests
Boston-based RMR there are often workers – in construction, say, or
nursing – on extended assignments that might last
Group, Sonesta’s owner for months at a time. These conditions mean ▶

FT.COM/MAGAZINE JUNE 11/12 2022 21

 ◀ small irritations can eventually loom large. The
hotels offer few amenities to boast about, but the
staff quickly become familiar faces. So the brand-
ing team boiled down the proposition for the range
of properties, called Simply Suites, to offering
rooms that have “everything you need and noth-
ing you don’t”. That means free laundry facilities,
kitchens, WiFi and a fitness centre as standard,
though no spas or restaurants. “Everyone relies
on our guests, so they can rely on us,” Harlow says.
“We are not going to tell you it’s one thing, and
when you get there it is something else.”
Finding an identity for the group’s full-service
Sonesta Hotels and Resorts was a lot harder. The
properties are a motley collection of urban bou-
tiques, standard business hotels and beach resorts.
Sonesta turned to Catch, a New York-based brand-
ing agency, to come up with ideas. Digging through
the focus groups, they found that almost everyone,
even business travellers, was seeking a way to
take the edge off. “We heard the word ‘relax’
across all of the traveller categories a shocking
amount of time,” says Douglas Spitzer, Catch’s co-
founder. “We never really heard that outside of a
vacation in the past.”
Asaresult,Sonesta’sfull-servicehotelsadopteda
slogan –“Checkoutthemomentyoucheckin”–and
are gearing their services around “discovery”. How
well this works is arguably the biggest test of Sones-
ta’s marketing plans. While domestic leisure travel
hasrebounded,businesstravelremainsprofoundly
depressed. The Global Business Travel Association
predictsthattotalcorporatetravelspending,which
plunged53percentinthefirstyearofthepandemic,
will climb back to $1tn in 2022 but won’t recover to
2019 levels until at least 2024. And room usage has
shifted. While business hotels used to be full from
Monday to Thursday, travellers are now focused on
what the industry calls “bleisure”, a combination of
business travel or remote work around a personal
weekend. So Thursday to Monday are now busy
days, and travellers want a lot more information
about the hotel’s surroundings.
The same trends are also prompting larger
hoteliers to rethink their offerings. Accor, which
has 5,300 hotels and 40 brands, has long been
strongeramongbusinesscustomers.Butitrecently
launched a string of all-inclusive resorts in Turkey
and Egypt because “people want to have meeting
spaces,entertainmentandwatersportsinthesame
venue”, says Patrick Mendes, Accor’s chief com-
mercial officer. “They want to be able to work and
O
go with their family at the same time.”
n a snowy February day, Manoukian
strides to the front of a big ballroom in
White Plains, New York to the sound of
INXS. “Need You Tonight” is blaring, and
the assembled hotel staff are cheering
loudly. “Let’s bring down the house, guys,”
she says, grabbing a Sonesta-branded
clapper and shaking it. “I love your energy
and passion. I’m going to bottle it.”
Her visit is the culmination of a week-long train-
ing session meant to get Sonesta employees around
the country enthused about their new brand and
about growing the company. Reception agents,
housekeepersandmaintenanceworkersalikehave
been deluged with Sonesta swag, offered meals
usually reserved for guests and invited to discuss
how the company’s various slogans would apply to
their jobs and their hotel’s target guests.
22
The designs
incorporated the
latest research on
germaphobic
travellers, such as
keeping corners
visible and using
light-coloured
bathroom surfaces
Anyone who has sat in on a similar session
knows marketing speak can quickly get abstruse.
But when talk of a “powerhouse” customer-type –
a demanding business traveller who might tack on
some leisure time – comes up, some of the White
Plains staff immediately perk up. They have a spe-
cific customer who always wants Room 1202 and
makesherdispleasureclearifitisnotavailable.“So
now it’s in her profile. For the powerhouse, we pro-
vide solutions, not excuses,” says Tonya Inman, the
local sales director. “Now that Sonesta has outlined
what each brand represents, it makes it a lot easier
how we sell to each target customer.”
As the staff raise plastic flutes of sparkling cider
to toast the changes, Manoukian sums up the task
at hand: “You are the ones who are going to bring
the brand to life.”
But rallying the troops will not be enough.
“Hotels should offer a bit of fantasy that you don’t
get when you walk through the front door of your
own house. There is something exciting about that
little thing that is ‘free’ that you aren’t expecting,”
Hutson says. Perhaps the most famous effort along
these lines started in the 1980s at DoubleTree, now
owned by Hilton. The chain first put freshly baked
chocolate-chip cookies in VIP rooms as part of
nightlyturndownservices,butiteventuallyshifted
to handing them out to everyone at the check-in
desk. The chain’s 600-odd hotels now give out
65,000 every day, or more than 25mn a year. “In
ourfocusgroups,youwouldnotimaginehowmany
people referred to that cookie,” Harlow says. “It’s
such a simple gesture, but people remember it.”
Sonesta’s search for similar gestures is being
shaped by the pandemic. For the full-service
Sonesta hotels, management aimed squarely at
post-Covid travellers. Surveys show that 60 per
centofcustomersarelookingtomeetnewpeopleon
vacation and 79 per cent see travel as part of “self-
care”. So those hotels will roll out bar carts stocked
with ready-to-drink cocktails in their lobbies. The
chain also plans to offer organised group hikes,
walks and runs in areas where appropriate, and is
negotiating a partnership that will allow guests to
download the mindfulness and sleep app Aura for
free. “There’s a fundamental rethinking of travel
and how important it is to our sense of wellbeing,”
says Max Buccini, Sonesta’s new brand leader.
The more budget Simply Suites is focusing on
helping to counteract the loneliness that long-term
guests may experience. This includes offering free,
freshly popped popcorn in the lobby at 6pm daily,
twice-monthly visits from local food trucks and
a grill on the patio to encourage guests to congre-
gate. “The hotels are simple but not basic,” Harlow
says. “There’s no pool, no spa. [But] every prop-
erty will have a grill. It’s like coming home from
work every day. You can gather around the barbe-
cue and have a beer.”
What is certain to matter day to day are the hun-
dreds, even thousands of standards that will come
to define Sonesta’s brands. These range from the
operational (the size of pillows and how long they
can be used before being discarded) and the expe-
riential(thegenreofmusicplayinginthelobbyand
its volume) to design (the colour of the carpets in
the corridors). As “asset light” hoteliers, Hilton,
IHG and the other big chains use such standards
to ensure guests receive a uniform experience. But
expansive requirements – particularly for physi-
cal standards, known as ADC (architecture, design
and construction) – can and do lead to resentment
among building owners and franchisees who have
to foot the bills.
Murray and his colleagues think they can turn
their real estate pedigree to their advantage as
Sonesta grows. They aim to woo other owners to
convert their existing hotels to Sonestas through
a new franchising arm, unveiled last September.
“The large brands have no skin in the game. They
don’t own hotels. When they say, ‘You have to rip
out your tubs and put in showers, or you have to
have 24-hour room service, even if you have an
empty hotel’, franchisees don’t like rules that don’t
makesense,”Murraysays.“Whenwecomeupwith
brand standards… we have to live with them. We’re
putting our money where our mouth is.”
Staci Patton, a Chicago-based interior designer
who specialises in hotels, can certify that is true.
Hired last autumn to reimagine the Sonesta Select
brand as a mid-price boutique, she was handed
pages and pages of specifications about the 60-odd
existing hotels, along with warnings about what
could and could not be changed, from the fin-
ishes in the bathrooms to the location of the hotel’s
restaurant. Her original idea of putting local ele-
ments in each hotel was scrapped in favour of a
more generic, and less expensive, theme: “Neigh-
bourhood hotels made personal.” Lighting aimed
at making the hotels’ outdoor space more welcom-
ing was toned down from fancy lanterns to string
lights. The designs also incorporated the latest
research on germaphobic travellers: wood floors
FT.COM/MAGAZINE JUNE 11/12 2022
 ABOVE AND ABOVE RIGHT: CHIEF MARKETING AND BRAND
OFFICER ELIZABETH HARLOW AND GLOBAL BRAND LEADER
MAX BUCCINI AT SONESTA WHITE PLAINS
25mn
The number of chocolate-chip
cookies the Hilton-owned
DoubleTree hotel chain gives
guests every year
FT.COM/MAGAZINE JUNE 11/12 2022
and lacquered furniture rather than fluffy carpets
andsoftsurfaces.Keepingcornersvisibleandusing
light-coloured bathroom surfaces help reassure
guests that rooms really are clean.
In the lobby, the hotels will use colour and fix-
tures to create visibly different areas for dining,
working and sitting, so they feel less cavernous
when only partly full – a familiar problem during
the pandemic. That means a blue stained-wood
area between reception and the restaurant, and a
bright yellow booth for making private phone calls.
“Guests really want to come into a space where
they can be in the open but also in their own nook,”
Patton explains. “Together, but alone-together.”
Sonesta’s rethink of post-pandemic travel looks
a lot more like a series of tweaks than a wholesale
shake-up. And compared to some of the edgier
offerings at the bigger chains, the branding is rela-
tively vanilla. That’s on purpose. Harlow, Sonesta’s
marketing chief, argues the chain is putting owners
and guests first. “This is what they’re looking for in
their physical spaces. This is what they need,” she
says. “Rather than having things that might be per-
ceived as radically different, we wanted to develop
things that our guests were asking for. Crazy stand-
ards are one thing, but unless we deliver the best
guest experience we can, based on what our guests
aretellingus,theydon’tmeanawholeheckofalot.”
To that end, Sonesta recently revamped its web-
site and launched its first smartphone app, making
it easier to book. A relaunched loyalty programme
isdueintheautumn.Inthemeantime,ithassigned
up 20 franchise hotels and expects to hit 50 by
June, crucial to getting its name in front of more
people. It re-entered the New York City market in
April by purchasing a majority stake in four Man-
hattan boutique hotels. “If you don’t have a hotel
in New York, you don’t really have a brand,”
says Murray. This isn’t hubris: meeting planners
and big corporate travel departments won’t do
business with a chain that doesn’t have several
New York options. He is looking for deals in Miami
and Los Angeles, two huge markets where Sonesta
lacks a presence.
Sonesta remains 50 years and many billions
behindthebignamesincorporatehospitality.Mar-
riott, Hilton and IHG each have more than 5,000
hotels and dozens of brands among them. Not that
itseemslikemuchofadeterrenttoMurray.Inearly
April, the company convened its new customer
advisory board, composed of guests and business
partners, in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Murray showed
up to make a personal pitch on the chain’s behalf.
“Our goal is that when somebody says, ‘Where
are you going to stay?’, they’ll answer, ‘I’m debat-
ing’, [and] we want to be in that conversation.” He
was delivering his speech to a meeting room in a
recently refurbished, luxury Sonesta.
Brooke Masters is the FT’s US investment and
industries editor, and an associate editor
23
24 FT.COM/MAGAZINE JUNE 11/12 2022
 I’VE GONE
TO LOOK FOR
AMERICA
Photographer Jim Dow spent the
1970s criss-crossing the country in a
bid to capture the unfamiliar

FT.COM/MAGAZINE JUNE 11/12 2022 25

 I
used to think of photography
in illustrative terms, and my
time as a design student solid-
ified that notion. Images were
secondary to text, which was
intended to sway a person to
favour a product, idea or story.
ButwhenIenrolledinthegrad-
uate programme at the Rhode
Island School of Design in 1965, under the
photographer Harry Callahan, I was sur-
rounded by people who saw photographs as
extensions of their internal, thinking selves.
Trying to catch up, I employed different
approaches and explored a variety of sub-
jects:streets,buildings, some portraits. I even
took pictures for the yearbook.
Late in the fall of 1965, I met Walker Evans.
I had no idea who he was or anything about
his work. But his book American Photographs
completely changed the way I thought about
photography. The pictures were descrip-
tive, literate and distinct. They could be
read slowly; information was packed into
every square inch. They were intense but
not dramatic. Rigorous in their making, they
demandedattentivescrutiny.Itwasclearthat
I had a template for my education through a
classicmethod:atfirstemulate,thenleasethe
space and ultimately own the process, until
takingpictureswasnolongerare-enactment.
I began to travel when I could. I went to
new, unfamiliar places, looking for subjects
that struck a chord of familiarity. I was learn-
ing, figuring out what was me and what was
someone else.
After graduating I bought a larger view
camera, which allowed me more freedom to
use the full range of the mechanisms to adjust
perspective and focus. I began to accumulate
different lenses, coming to understand that I
could achieve a kind of respectful middle dis-
tance, neither so close as to eliminate context
nor so far away as to complicate with excess
information. Done carefully, the framing of
the picture gave fresh life to what was in front
of the camera and, as time went on, I was no
longer replicating anyone.
Myinterestinphotographyhasneverbeen
driven by an assumption that the present is
somehow damaged goods and the past a more
honest ideal. Nor is it to assume my superior-
ity to the subject by employing any form of
“nudge-nudge, wink-wink” irony. I’ve always
I WENT TO NEW, done straightforward, sharp-focus, very slow
photography. Although I don’t take pictures
UNFAMILIAR of people, I constantly interact with people.
Conversations can be long, exposures often
PLACES, LOOKING take minutes, and getting permission and
FOR SUBJECTS setting up also require time. One’s think-
ing about the image itself frequently evolves
THAT STRUCK A during the process, even while the shutter is
open. A car might pull up and park, a person
CHORD OF walk through and sit down, the light can
change, all potentially adding to or detract-
FAMILIARITY, ing from the final picture.

FIGURING OUT These pictures were made on numerous

trips around the US between 1967 and 1977,
WHAT WAS ME a 10-year span not quite in alignment ▶

26 FT.COM/MAGAZINE JUNE 11/12 2022

 ABANDONED TRUCK STOP, US 61/AR 150, NEAR NUMBER NINE, ARKANSAS, 1970
PREVIOUS SPREAD: ‘HEATED POOL’ SIGN AT MOTEL, US 99, BAKERSFIELD, CALIFORNIA, 1975; DIVING LADY SIGN, NEAR US 19, BLAIRSVILLE, GEORGIA, 1973

FT.COM/MAGAZINE JUNE 11/12 2022 27

 CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: BOWLING PIN WITH ARROW, US 1, BRANFORD, 0, 1971;
‘FORTUNE TELLER’ SIGN, US 79 AND 80, GREENWOOD, LOUISIANA, 1975; PAPIER-
MÂCHÉ ELEPHANT, US 202, GWYNEDD, PENNSYLVANIA, 1977; HARDWARE STORE
PAINTING ON WALL, NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE, 1977; HORSE PAINTING ON SIGN,
RANCH ENTRANCE, US 87, BILLINGS, MONTANA, 1972; REAR OF SCREEN, VAN NUYS
DRIVE-IN THEATRE, OLD US 101, VAN NUYS, CALIFORNIA, 1973

28 FT.COM/MAGAZINE JUNE 11/12 2022

FT.COM/MAGAZINE JUNE 11/12 2022 29
 MY INTEREST IN ◀ with the oft-disparaged 1970s but close
enough. Commencing with the later unful-
PHOTOGRAPHY filled hopefulness engendered by the civil
rights movement and the Great Society leg-
HAS NEVER BEEN islation, the period came to be characterised
by stagflation and gas lines. Jimmy Carter’s
TO ASSUME MY presidency was a run-up to the Awful ’80s
of Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, “Just
SUPERIORITY TO Say No”, the beginning of the end for Pax
Americana and, in due course, burgeoning
THE SUBJECT BY Boomer self-involvement.
During that decade, I got a grant from
EMPLOYING ANY the National Endowment for the Arts and a
Guggenheim Fellowship and worked for the
FORM OF ‘NUDGE- Seagram Corporation’s bicentennial project
NUDGE, WINK- photographing courthouses. I criss-crossed
the country in two different cars and a van
WINK’ IRONY six times and made countless smaller east-
west and north-south journeys.
From the first, my plan was to travel by
US- and state-numbered highways, getting
on interstates only when unavoidable. The
result has been an encyclopedic roll call of a
number of routes: US 2, 6, 11, 20, 41, 51, 61,
62, 80, 90, 99 (old), 119 and 301 are favour-
ites. Some go north to south, others east
to west, and a few run diagonally. Many of
them follow old Native American trails or
19th-century rail lines, often twisting and
rambling, dictated by river bends, mountain
ranges, politics, even serendipity.
At last count I’ve driven up and down US
11, in full or in part, more than 10 times over
half a century. The old two-lane, three-lane,
sometimes four-lane highway has proven a
bonanza. In the medium-sized and smaller
cities and towns, the road itself is a Main
Street with no bypass or alternative. It is a
horizontal, visual strip mine sometimes
running for a mile or two. I’ve taken more
than 60 different pictures along or hard by
COPYRIGHT JIM DOW; GIFT OF THE HALL FAMILY FOUNDATION, 2018.51.5; GIFT OF JIM AND JACQUIE DOW, 2018.55.2

the right-of-way. Among the subjects are six

minor-league baseball parks and five drive-
in movie theatres. There are restaurants
that serve breakfast, BBQ, pizza and hot
dogs. There are signs for coffee, Dr Pepper,
parking, motels, hamburgers and political
candidates. There is the Big Pencil, an arrow
into the front of a stationery store. There
are grocery stores, beer and juke joints, a
defunct guitar shop and abandoned gas sta-
tions. There are windows for a beauty salon,
shoe repair, dance studio and lunch. And
there is a pawnshop, a “sno-ball” stand and
a taco truck. Roads like these have been a
rich and continual source for pictures, but
the most fruitful has been US 11.
I never travelled around the US to find
myself. I went to find people, places and
things I didn’t know about. Leaving famil-
iar confines is an outward-facing process
best done by car on older two- or three-lane
roads, stopping, looking and listening every
step of the way.

Thisisaneditedextract from “Signs: Photographs

by Jim Dow” published by the Nelson-Atkins
Museum of Art, Kansas City. An exhibition of the
same name runs at the museum until October 9

30 FT.COM/MAGAZINE JUNE 11/12 2022

 LOTT’S GROCERY STORE, US 11, BESSEMER, ALABAMA, 1968

FT.COM/MAGAZINE JUNE 11/12 2022 31

 Inside: An ancient manuscript’s tasty recipes p36
Appetites
I
The Gastronome sometimes think you people don’t get how
Tim
tough this job is. You think it’s all fawning
maîtres d’s and complimentary champagne.
Let me disabuse you. A few weeks ago, I found
Hayward myself in London’s Spitalfields. What estate agents
undoubtedly refer to as a “vibrant quarter” was
truly hopping on a post-lockdown Thursday, which
From hell to heaven is the new Friday, apparently. I was to attend an
awards ceremony and thought I might slip in a swift
in Spitalfields meal beforehand. Something to line the stomach
for the inevitable gallons of Krug. I used an app to
book a table for one at a quite famous restaurant at
the unfashionable hour of 5.30pm.
I arrived to find the door locked and a note on
the window. A Christmas party, no less. Obviously
postponedfromlockdownandfullofcheerypeople
having a well-deserved good time, so it was hard to
FT.COM/MAGAZINE JUNE
MARCH11/12
19/20
2022
2022 ILLUSTRATION BY R. FRESSON
whinge. As John Gregory Dunne memorably put
it: “A writer is an eternal outsider, his nose pressed
againstwhateverwindowontheothersideofwhich
he sees his material.” So I did. My face was a mask of
passive aggression against the glass as I pondered
the unlikelihood of something like this happening
to someone more famous. I sought consolation in a
nearby shopfront marked Wine Bar.
The place was empty apart from the queue,
several small groups which, one after the other,
pitifully entered their urgent petition with the only
staff member on the empty floor. “Is it OK if we just
have a couple of drinks?”
They say it is impossible to translate duende, but
I think the waitress’s combined look of hauteur,
sadness and pitiless scorn as she contemptuously
dismissedeachgrouptoatablewasafineexample. ▶
33
 Appetites

◀ “The wines are all low intervention,” she spat as she cast the
wine list on the table like a challenge. Since I’d already waited
20 minutes for her attention, I felt it was too late to act on the
new information and wearily ordered a large glass of something
I thought I recognised. I was mistaken, though I had another
20 minutes to think about it until the staggering bill arrived.
I was the first to leave, the other groups watching enviously, as if I
was crossing the exercise yard to early release.
As I limped, cursing, around the perimeter of the once-great
market, I passed what appeared to be one of those supremely
arch hipster London junkshops attempting to create interest in
1970s electrical goods as objets de vertu. It had dodgy French
movie posters, lights spun from flame orange fibreglass, a near
mint 1972 Binatone Worldstar radio and – oh happy day! – a fully
stocked cheese cabinet. The place was called, and you’ll have to
bear with me here, Funky Cellar.
I ducked inside to be met by a bloke who looked like the result
if you’d image-searched “classic gorgeous French boy”.
“You have food?” I blurted.
“Of course.”
“Wine?” It was almost too much to hope.
Within seconds, I was whisked to one of several unmatched
tables in unfortunate Formicas. You know, the kind that
became extinct when stripped pine was discovered. The menu
was a bigger collection of comfortable clichés than The Archers
omnibus. But it was perfect. You know how you need a rhino-
slayer of a hangover to really appreciate a fry-up? I reckon you
might need to be dumped by an important restaurant and
duped by a natural wine bar to appreciate a French brocante/
fromagerie/bistro.

W
FUNKY CELLAR
orking quickly, I slipped in an order for pork
10a Lamb Street
rillette and a non-binary croque. My strat-
London E1 6EA
egy here was that my modest order would 020 7247 7437
leave some budget for a glass, or possibly two, funkycellar.co.uk
of a good looking premier cru Chablis. Of course, no strategy
survives contact with the menu, and I was tempted by an addi-
tional “Funky Board” of mixed cheeses and charcuterie. Then
I remembered the wine bar and, as my lips puckered, ordered
the Chablis anyway.
In case you’ve never done it, let me tell you there is something
religiously calming about the moment you simultaneously
contemplate the smooth curves of an early ’80s Vega 642 black-
and-white portable TV, take your first sip of cold white as Stevie
Wonder’s Innervisions drops on to the turntable and a waitress
presents pork paste with a welcoming smile. Symbiosis of
serendipity and glorious, comforting recognition.
Back in the ’70s, when most of the Funky Cellar’s knick-
knacks were au courant, my nan had a kind of fat, overstuffed
legless footstool she referred to as the pouffée. It was, to be kind,
revolting. It was also smaller than the croque – properly rubbish
white sliced bread so rammed with gruyère and béchamel as to
be near spherical, slouched on the plate, oozing joy and a kind
of infinitely lewd challenge. I swear it winked at me: “C’mon
handsome. Climb aboard.” If the waitress found my behaviour
over the following five minutes in any way repugnant, she had
the exceptional grace not to show it as she wheeled in more wine
and the platter.
More sober research has revealed that Funky Cellar is
independent and run by a bunch of young French people who
don’tseemtohavemuchtruckwithPR.Andwhileitisn’tactually
a cellar, it turns out to be quite funky.
You see, I know my weaknesses. I am seduced by simple
hospitality, a sense of humour and, let’s face it, cheese. But
honestly, you don’t even need a cocked up booking and some
rotten wine to make the Funky Cellar a significant find. Go.
You’ll love it.

@timhayward; timhayward

34 FT.COM/MAGAZINE JUNE 11/12 2022


FT.COM/MAGAZINE JUNE 11/12 2022
Recipe
Rowley
Leigh
Spaghetti alle vongole
“Vongole” is enough. Walk into
any restaurant on or near the Italian
coast and the staff will know what
you want. You will be craving that
most elemental of constructions,
spaghetti alle vongole. Although
we like to remind ourselves that
Italian food is intensely regional,
spaghetti with clams is to be found
everywhere from Venice all the
way down the Adriatic coast, round
the heel and back up to Rome and
beyond, with little variation.
Back in Puglia a couple of weeks
ago, it took me two days before
I got my vongole, at Rosa’s. The
eponymous owner is no mug.
She is there, welcoming returning
customers, weaving around the
tables in her designer chef’s jacket
and gold-buckled Dolce & Gabbana
shoes. But the haute couture stops
there. There is nothing artful about
the food from a menu set in stone.
You start with antipasti: stuffed
mussels, the tiella of mussels, rice
and potatoes cooked in little clay
pots, octopus in various forms,
little pickled anchovies and bits
of swordfish carpaccio. Then the
crudo arrives: everything raw,
including the red prawns from Sicily
or Sardinia, langoustines, mussels,
clams and, a little incongruously,
oysters. Now the pasta, which
is usually the vongole. (Those
hankering towards the lobster are
discouraged on economic grounds.)
And then, if you’ve got space, there
is an impeccable fritto misto or
a grilled fish, usually bass, bream
or red mullet. Everything is as it
should be, correct and restrained.
Unfortunately, there is a little
bit too much restraint. It takes
us about a minute to suck up the
small amount on our plates. Even
in Italy, they are feeling the pinch.
The plague has pushed prices up
and portions down. With portion
sizes in restaurants everywhere
seemingly getting smaller, I am
glad that I am not quite as greedy
as I used to be. Still, another good
reason for home cooking.
More columns at ft.com/leigh
PHOTOGRAPH BY ANDY SEWELL
SERVES SIX
The safe mode of cooking
this dish would be to cook
the clams in advance,
take them from their shells
and reunite them with the
spaghetti and the juice
(strained if desired);
however, cooking them
as below, in real time, is
quicker and more fun.
• 1kg fresh clams, the
smaller the better
• 500g spaghetti
• 50ml olive oil
• 2 cloves garlic, finely
chopped
• 100ml white wine
• 1 or 2 pinches of
chilli flakes
• 2 tbs freshly chopped
parsley
1. Dissolve 100g of salt in
200ml of boiling water.
Add 800ml of cold water
and soak the clams in
this brine for a couple of
hours. This will purge
them of grit if they have
any. Rinse the clams in
plenty of cold, running
water, discarding any that
will not close after a tap.
2. Bring a large pan of
well-salted water to the
boil and add the spaghetti.
It will need two minutes
less than the time
recommended on the
packet. Heat a large, wide
pan with half the olive
oil and add the garlic.
After 30 seconds, add the
drained clams and the
white wine and cover.
The clams will open after
a couple of minutes.
Add the chilli and parsley
and remove from the heat.
3. As soon as the
spaghetti is ready but still
very al dente, return the
clams to the heat and lift
the spaghetti out with
tongs straight into the
clams. Stir everything
together and let the
spaghetti continue to
cook for a couple of
minutes, soaking up the
clam juices as it does so.
3. As soon as the
spaghetti is ready, stir in
the rest of the olive oil
and serve immediately.
The clams should be
salty enough so no
further seasoning
should be necessary.
Wine Down in Puglia the
battle to find enjoyable,
fresh and temperate wines
continues. Native grapes
such as Falanghina can
be interesting and there
are endless blends of
the more ubiquitous
grapes – chardonnay
and sauvignon blanc –
but they rarely inspire
enthusiasm. A Verdicchio
from further up the coast
in Le Marche is more
likely to have the requisite
zing and freshness that
seafood pasta demands.
35
 Appetites

History cook

‘Eat the dish

salubriously’
A newlydiscovered 13th-century manuscript
revealsalostworld ofdelectable recipes
By Polly Russell

In the middle of a busy restaurant kitchen in
London, Sam and Samantha Clark stand contem-
plating a saucepan filled with cooked, sprouting
broad beans. The Clarks, owner-chefs of Moro,
have been cooking with dried beans for dec-
ades, but it took reading an ancient recipe before
they thought to try sprouting them first. “What’s
insane,” says Sam, pausing to taste a bean he has
marinated in olive oil, cumin and coriander, “is
how much we recognise, how much we don’t and
how sophisticated the recipes are.”
He is talking about a newly discovered copy of a
13th-century manuscript titled Faḍālat al-khiwān
fī ṭayyibāt al-ṭaʿām wa-al-alwān (Best of Delectable
Foods and Dishes from al-Andalus and al-Maghrib)
and written by Ibn Razīn al-Tujībī. Since they
opened Moro in 1997, the Clarks have championed
thefoodoftheArabic-Iberian world, butal-Tujībī’s
tome is a revelation. “It will affect the way we cook
from now on for sure,” says Sam.
Arabic scholars have long known of al-Tujībī’s
culinary masterpiece, but it was a chance discov-
ery in 2018 at the British Library, where I work,
that allowed all the manuscript’s 475 recipes to be
collatedandtranslated.“IthoughtIwascataloguing
three medical texts,” says Bink Hallum, Arabic sci-
entific manuscripts curator. “Then I noticed that
the writing in the middle of this folio didn’t sound
medicinal. It was for food that was… tasty.”
A week before testing al-Tujībī’s recipes, the
Clarks meet Hallum and me in a nondescript meet-
ing room in the library’s back offices, looking at the
oldest known copy of the original 13th-century
manuscript. This one was written in the 1500s,
Hallum tells us. Another version, held at the
University of Tübingen in Berlin, was created ▶

36 PHOTOGRAPHY BY ALBA YRUELA FT.COM/MAGAZINE JUNE 11/12 2022

 ◀ in the 17th century and one kept at the Royal
Academy of History in Madrid was probably
created in the 18th century. Hallum has placed
the red, leather-bound volume on two black
foam rests.
With the help of a couple of “snakes” – strings
of weights – Hallum opens the binding in the
middle. The Clarks, careful not to touch, lean in
while Hallum attempts to decipher the recipe
in front of him. One word in particular eludes
him. “Turns out spending life reading scien-
tific manuscripts means I don’t have a great food
vocabulary,” he laughs. The flowing, elegant
writing on yellowing parchment remains clear,
despite being 500 years old. “It’s just so beauti-
ful to look at,” says Sam. “It’s more than a recipe
book. It’s a work of art.”
Hallum unexpectedly uncovered the manu-
script while cataloguing the library’s Arabic
scientific holdings. When he realised what he
was looking at, he emailed Nawal Nasrallah,
an authority on Arabic medieval cookbooks,
based in the US. Nasrallah happened to be in
the middle of translating versions of al-Tujībī’s
manuscript from the copies located in Berlin.
“With a heavy heart, I was resigned to the
idea that these incomplete copies were all that
was available, and I had to make the best of it,”
Nasrallah recalls via video call from her book-lined
office in Salem, Massachusetts. Hallum’s message
confirming the third and more complete copy was
“like a gift from heaven”.
One of only two cookbooks to survive from
the 13th-century Muslim-Andalucían world,
al-Tujībī’s manuscript details a sophisticated
38
culture. “It is extremely significant,” says Nas- brought settlers from Syria, Yemen and north
rallah. “Compared with other cookery books Africa, along with their customs, culture and
from this time, it is the most thorough and inclu- agricultural practices. They cultivated rice, saf-
sive of food categories and ingredients, and very fron, sugarcane, aubergines, sour oranges and
well written and organised.” Nasrallah’s transla- grains, in addition to importing ingredients from
tion, recently published as a 900-page hardback, the Arabic-speaking world.
contains footnotes, contextual chapters and a The 475 recipes in al-Tujībī’s manuscript pay
detailed glossary. It took “many, many years” to testament to this culinary and cultural diversity.
complete, she says. The book is organised into 12 parts, each with
According to Nasrallah, Delectable Foods was multiple chapters. The first focuses on “Bread,
“obviously written by a person who Tharayid [bread sopped in rich
has actually cooked” and enjoyed broth], Soups, Pastries, and the
food. Almost every recipe ends with Thelentilsarea Like” and, among its 16 recipes,
the invocation, “Eat the dish salu- deepglossybrown is one which “Invigorates coitus”.
briously”. “I can almost hear his andtasteearthyand (The dish consists of a broth
excitement,” says Sam Clark, leaf- rich.‘Theseshowup made with chicken or starling,
ing through Nasrallah’s translation. ourrecipeabittobe flavoured with Ceylon cinna-
“It’s like he’s tripping over himself mon, coriander seed, onion juice
to share different versions of recipes
honest,’saysSam with breadcrumbs, ginger, black
because they are so good.” pepper and cloves.) A later sec-
Born into a prominent Andalucían family in tion tackles the “meat of quadrupeds” with recipes
the prosperous city of Murcia in 1227, al-Tujībī for beef, mutton and lamb, as well as wild animals
was described by his contemporaries as a “learned like oryx, gazelle and rabbit.
scholar and eloquent scribe”. At about the age of There are 51 recipes dedicated to food preser-
20,alongwithmanyothers,hewasforcedintoexile vation such as curing fish, preserving olives and
when Murcia surrendered to King Fernando III of pickling turnips. “There are so many things to dis-
Castile. When he was 32, al-Tujībī settled in Tunis cover here,” says Samantha, marvelling at recipes
and wrote the cookery book commemorating the calling for ingredients like dessert truffles, yarrow,
culture and cuisine of his youth. “He wrote his borage, sparrows, purslane and asparagus. Dishes
cookbook motivated by a desire to preserve a won- like “Fried Aubergine Slices Simmered in Sauce
derful cuisine he grew up on,” says Nasrallah, “and and Topped with Eggs” or “Fried [Cheese-Filled]
which was in danger of being forgotten or lost.” mujabbana” (semolina dough) or “Zalãbiya” (lat-
According to al-Tujībī’s introduction, Andalu- tice fritters dipped in honey) would not be out of
cíans are “advanced in creating the most delectable place on Moro’s menu.
dishes”. Arabic influence in Andalucía was greatest The Clarks agreed to reproduce four of the
between 711 and 1492, as waves of Arab conquest manuscript’s recipes for a public event at the
FT.COM/MAGAZINE JUNE 11/12 2022

British Library Food Season this spring. Sprout-
ing broad beans were on the menu, along with a
wafer-thin herb omelette, lentils and “soft, white
halwã” (nougat).
“We’ve been making what we call Syrian lentils
for 25 years,” says Sam, back in Moro’s kitchen.
“But al-Tujībī’s has browned garlic, saffron and
vinegar, so it’s going to be different.” To tackle
the halwã, Sam looks up a modern nougat recipe.
“It requires such precision,” he says, with a look
of disbelief. “How they managed by eye without
thermometers is incredible.”
Meanwhile, Samantha takes four large bunches
of coriander, pulverises them in a blender and
squeezes a couple of tablespoons of vibrant green
juice from the resulting mush. She tips this into a
bowl of beaten eggs and then adds coriander and
cumin powder before transforming the mixture
into a wafer-thin omelette.
The Clarks assemble their finished interpreta-
tions together on a table. The lentils are a deep,
glossy brown and taste earthy and rich. “These
show up our recipe a bit to be honest,” says Sam
a little sheepishly. Samantha samples the ome-
lette. “It is subtle,” she declares, “but really nice.”
The halwã, sweetened with honey and fla-
voured with walnuts and pistachios, has a
texture like a chewy cloud and is impossibly
moreish. “Any one of these could end up on our
menu,” says Sam excitedly. Stretching out across
the centuries, al-Tujībī’s 800-year-old recipes
are a reminder that the past is not always a for-
eign country.
Polly Russell is a curator at the British Library.
@PollyRussell1 the_history_cook
FT.COM/MAGAZINE JUNE 11/12 2022
Above from left: tasting Lentils from ‘Best of
dishes recreated by
Sam and Samantha Delectable Foods’
Clark for the British
Library Food Season in Take whatever kind of lentils are
May (clockwise from available to you, wash them, and put
top): herb omelette, them in a new pot with fresh water,
lentils, halwã and broad olive oil, black pepper, coriander seeds,
and chopped onion. Put the pot on
beans; pages from the
manuscript; the Clarks a fire to cook.
in the Moro kitchen
As soon as the lentils are done, add
Previous page: a salt – but not too much – a bit of
close-up of the halwã, pounded saffron, and as much as you
sweetened with honey like of fine-tasting vinegar. Break three
eggs into the pot, and as soon as they
and flavoured with
walnuts and pistachios set and the vinegar boils, remove
the pot from fire, empty it into a glazed
bowls and eat the dish salubriously,
God Almighty willing.
The British Library Food Season
takes place during April and May
live and online.“Best of Delectable
Foods and Dishes from al-Andalus
and al-Maghrib: A Cookbook by
Thirteenth-Century Andalusi Scholar
Ibn Razīn al-Tujībī (1227-1293)”,
translated by Nawal Nasrallah,
published by Brill, 2021
Appetites
Moro’s Lentil recipe by
Sam & Samantha Clark
• 6 tbs olive oil
• 4 cloves of garlic, chopped
• 3 tsp ground cumin
• 4 tsp ground coriander seeds
• Small bunch of coriander,
chopped and stalks set aside
• 2 red onions, chopped
• 250g small brown or Puy lentils
• Small pinch of saffron
• 1.75l water
• Salt and black pepper
• Splash of vinegar
1. In a largish saucepan, heat four
tablespoons of olive oil over a medium
heat. When hot but not smoking add
the garlic, cumin and coriander seeds
and fry for a minute until light brown.
Then add the coriander stalks and
three-quarters of the onions. Soften the
onions for 10 minutes, or until sweet.
2. Add the lentils, saffron and water to
the pot. Bring to the boil, and simmer
for 40-60 minutes or until the lentils are
soft and start to mush, becoming
sauce-like. Season well with salt and
pepper in the last stages of cooking.
3. Remove from the heat and stir in
the remaining chopped coriander and
the remaining olive oil.
4. Sprinkle a few teaspoons of your
favourite vinegar on to the remaining
raw onion. Fold half the onions into the
lentils and sprinkle the rest on top when
serving. Eat with a pitta or flatbread.
39
 Appetites

Wine

Jancis
Robinson
Blind Ambition’s journey
from dream to screen

E
rica Platter’s surname
will be familiar to anyone
who knows anything
about South African wine.
A journalist-turned-wine producer,
she and her journalist husband
John launched Platter’s South
African Wine Guide in 1978, a pocket
book unashamedly modelled on
Hugh Johnson’s annual.
The Platters’ guide was initially
dismissed by the South African
wine establishment, and the then-
dominant wine organisation, the
KWV, even refused to supply any
details for the book. But it has since
definitively established itself as the
bible of the blossoming Cape wine
scene. It is now run by a team of
tasters who aim to keep up with the
many new developments there.
A journalistic instinct never
subsides, and back in 2016, Erica
contacted me with an extraor-
dinary story. It was the tale of a
small group of economic refugees
from Zimbabwe whose upbring-
ing had been devoid of both wine
and fine dining, but who were all
now head sommeliers at top Cape
Town restaurants.
One of them, Joseph Dhafana,
arrived in Johannesburg in 2009
as a destitute 27-year-old, walk-
ing the streets looking for work
and sleeping rough. He was given
shelter in the city’s Central Meth-
odist Church, which had become
a refugee centre and was often
featured in TV news bulletins.
He was spotted on screen one night
by a cousin living in what was then
an up-and-coming Cape wine
region, Swartland, and she invited
him to visit.
His first job was as a gardener
workingeveryhourhecould,includ-
ing in the garden of a restaurant
called Bar Bar Black Sheep, whose
owner, Mynhardt Joubert, soon pro-
moted him to dishwasher.
He then became a waiter and,
as he later told Platter, “On March
7 2010, I had the very first glass of
bubbly in my life, from Mynhardt
[the restaurateur]. It was my birth-
day. I struggled a lot to finish it.
Looking in the glass, which was
fizzy, with my mind in the vine-
yards, trying to think how can
someone convert grapes to such a
wonderful liquid, I asked myself
dozens of questions with no one ▶

FT.COM/MAGAZINE JUNE 11/12 2022 ILLUSTRATION BY LEON EDLER 41

 Appetites
◀ to answer. The wine bug followed
me since that day.”
Dhafana moved to Cape Town
and up the ladder of restaurant ser-
vice, taking wine exams and ending
up in charge of the wine list at the
famous La Colombe restaurant.
He made contact with three other
young Zimbabwean men who had
come to South Africa in the 2000s
in search of a better life and whose
workethicandfascinationwithwine
mirrored his own. They all became
top somms: Tinashe Nyamudoka at
The Test Kitchen, Pardon Taguzu
at Aubergine and Marlvin Gwese at
Cape Grace Hotel.
In 2015, Dhafana entered South
Africa’s wine tasting competi-
tion and came third, so in 2015 he
was included in the South African
team in the World Wine Tasting
Championships, held every year
by the French wine magazine La
Revue du Vin de France. The South
Africans managed their best per-
formance ever and, inspired by
this, Dhafana set about assembling
a Zimbabwean team, to include his
‘The Zimbabwean team three friends, for the 2017 interna-
broke intoan impromptu tional competition.
The only problem was the
acappella songatdinner. cost. Some of their employers
This,and theirfervent helped out but the team needed
group prayerwere,of quite a lot more. We chipped in
course,cinematicgold’ with a crowdfunding drive on my
website. A total of £8,262 was
raised, more than they needed, so
by August 2017 they were set to
take on the world in Burgundy two
months later.
42
It seemed like such a great story
that I emailed everyone I could
think of who might be interested in
making a film about their attempt,
without success.
I
n June 2017, I attended a fine
wine conference at the Ventoux
estate of Xavier and Nicole
Sierra Rolet, producer of
Chêne Bleu wines. The Australian
Andrew Caillard, a fellow Master of
Wine, was also there. He had been
an adviser on a rather successful
2013 film called Red Obsession about
how the Chinese fell for wine,
so I tried to sell him the idea of a film
about the Zimbabwean wine tasters,
hoping he would communicate
it to the rest of the team back
in Australia.
As it happened, producer-
directors Warwick Ross and
Rob Coe had been looking for a
subject for a second wine-related
documentary and were consider-
ing making a film about the annual
Oxbridge wine-tasting competi-
tion in London. Caillard scribbled a
note about the Zim sommeliers
on a bit of paper at Chêne Bleu in
June and put it in the pocket of
a jacket he didn’t wear again
until August, when he found it
and mentioned the idea to Ross
and Coe. They were thrilled. By
September 8 they had the financ-
ing in place and had booked to fly to
Cape Town just 11 days later to film
the first footage, about the Zims’
preparations for the competition.
FT.COM/MAGAZINE JUNE 11/12 2022
 Jancis recommends...
ONES TO WATCH
A brief history of wine movies

• Blind Ambition (2021) wine counterfeiter on the 1976 Judgment

Documentary about Rudy Kurniawan of Paris California
four Zimbabwean vs France tasting
refugees-turned- • Red Obsession (2013)
wine tasters Documentary about • Sideways (2004)
China’s love of wine Drama based on
• Uncorked (2020) Rex Pickett’s book
Drama about a young • Somm (2012) about a California
man’s desire to become Documentary about wine-tasting trip.
a Master Sommelier four Americans’ It inspired widespread
rather than take over attempts to become planting of
his father’s Memphis Master Sommeliers. Pinot Noir vines
barbecue business There have been
two sequels so far • Mondovino (2004)
• Sour Grapes (2016) Documentary about
Documentary • Bottle Shock (2008) the increasing
about the prolific Drama based (loosely) globalisation of wine

All films have been reviewed on JancisRobinson.com;

Blind Ambition will be released in the UK by Curzon Films in July;
a scripted series based on the documentary is under way

In October, my Zimbabwean- which has helped so many refugees

born colleague Tamlyn Currin
and I went to Burgundy to wit-
ness the competition – and filming
– and were delighted to meet the
four members of the Zimbabwean
team. They were truly inspiring.
At dinner the night before, they
broke into an impromptu a cappella
song, prompting a rousing cheer
from their fellow competitors from
24 different countries. This, and
the team’s fervent group prayer just
before the wines were poured, were
of course cinematic gold.
Anyone with any knowledge
of film production will know how
time-consuming it is but this par-
ticular film, called Blind Ambition,
was hugely hampered by the pan-
demic. It was due to be launched in
Cape Town in late April 2020 but
has yet to be screened there. In the
end, its debut was at the Tribeca
Film Festival last June, where it won
the Audience Award for Best
Documentary Feature.
It pulled off similar feats at film
festivals in Sonoma and Sydney
and this Thursday will, at last, get
a London premiere, at the Curzon
Mayfair – at a screening in aid of the
International Rescue Committee,
everywhere get back on their feet.
It would be unsporting of me to
say any more about the somms’
performance in the 2017 and 2018
wine-tasting Olympics, both of them
filmedforthedocumentary,butIcan
report on what the team members
are doing now. As well as working as
a sommelier for Roar Africa, a travel
specialist, Dhafana has his own line
of wines and gin, Mosi and Tongai.
Nyamudoka has a range of South
African wines, Kumusha, which
are fairly well distributed in the US.
Taguzu has moved to the Nether-
lands, where he runs the only 100
per cent African-owned wine import
and export company in Europe.
He has also made an Austrian wine
called Dzimbahwe. Gwesen is now
group sommelier at the new five-star
hotel The Cellars-Hohenort in Cape
Town and has also begun to make his
own wine, Mukanya.
They are all still very much
in touch with the woman they call
“Gogo [granny] Ex”, after Platter’s
nickname Exie, and all four plan to
attend the London premiere.
More columns at
ft.com/jancis-robinson

FT.COM/MAGAZINE JUNE 11/12 2022 43

 The Humourist
Robert
Shrimsley
The last Prius to freedom
Wit & Wisdom
My wife had suddenly announced
she did not want to take the Tube
home after the concert. She was
fine with it on the way there, but
the prospect of being compressed
with thousands of Killers fans for
20 minutes around the station
entrance so we could then snake
our way through another slow crush
to the platform, just so we could be
squashed like sardines for half the
journey home, was hardly enticing,
even in the days before Covid-19.
I understood her thinking, but
this was by far the best way home.
As a regular football spectator, I am
hardened to the crush, although one
always has the option of nipping
off a few minutes before the end.
With a rock concert, the best songs
are often saved until last. So this
was annoying. Clearly, my wife was
wrong, but the strange thing was,
she didn’t see it that way.
All manner of alternatives were
researched. Buses? Walking for half
44 ILLUSTRATION BY LUCAS VARELA
an hour to another Tube station on For too much of the
the wrong line so we could connect concert my mind
back on to the right and still packed
Tube? We thought of just hanging
was fixed not on the
around till the crowds departed. An show, which was
Uber was fine in principle, but I had terrific, but on the
a vision of Highbury Corner turned looming nuisance
into the roof of the Saigon embassy of our return
as hundreds waited for the last Prius
to freedom.
My wife was untroubled.
She was, to an irritating degree,
Mr. Brightside. “We’re in the middle
of London; we’ll find a way back.”
This was both true and also not in
the least bit reassuring. Yes, we’d
find a way back, but I was hoping
for something a bit more concrete
than the directional equivalent of
a Simon & Garfunkel song. What
if we found the wrong way and
discovered that instead of heading
to south-west London we had
walked off to look for America? It
was not that I doubted we would
get home, just that I did not see how
FT.COM/MAGAZINE JUNE 11/12 2022
 an unpredictable journey into the Games
night was a superior plan. A ROUND ON THE LINKS THE CROSSWORD
And so for too much of the by James Walton No 593. Set by Aldhelm
concert my mind was fixed not on
the show, which was terrific, but on All the answers here are linked 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
the looming nuisance of our return. in some way. Once you’ve
Even as the hits soared over the spotted the connection, any 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

stadium, Fergal Keane’s voice was you didn’t know the first time
9 10
playinginmyhead:“Theycamefora around should become easier.
rock concert but now tired, footsore 00 00 00
1. For which novel did
andhungry,theyarejusttryingtoget
Howard Jacobson win the
home. This man has been walking 11 12
2010 Man Booker Prize?
for 90 minutes and still can’t find
00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
the right night bus. There’s a dog at 2. Which British charity was
home, and its bladder cannot hold known until 1972 as the National
13 15
14
out indefinitely.” Association for Mental Health?
Surely, not since Scott headed off 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 16
3. Which regular performers at
to the Pole had man embarked on
British national events made their
such an ill-fated mission. I envisaged 17 18 19
debut in 1965 at Little Rissington
us bivouacked somewhere around
in Gloucestershire? 20 00 00 00 00 00 00 21 00 00
Islington, only 10 miles from base
camp. “I’m just going to McDonald’s. 4. Which of the “Two Johns” 22 23 24
I may be some time”. who worked with Rory Bremner

T
00 00 00 00 00 00 00
died in 2013?
his is why I’ve never made
5. What body of water separates 25 26
it to Glastonbury. The
Saudi Arabia from east Africa?
abilitytoliveentirelyinthe 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
moment is a skill I’ve never 6. What term, which originally
possessed. I will always be thinking applied to the Irish revolution 27 28
aboutthemud,thecrowds,howwe’ll of 1912-23, was used again five
findourwaybacktothetent.Waking decades later for another conflict? The Across clues are straightforward, while the Down clues are cryptic.
up in a sleeping bag two hours after
7. Which word is missing from
you finally managed to get to sleep,
all of these hit singles: “________
just so you can trudge 20 minutes ACROSS 27 Come together (8) say, when
Avenue” (The Maisonettes);
to the midden that passes for the 1 Swamp, bog (6) 28 Two-shilling climbing (6)
“________ Tonight” (The Eagles);
toilet is all part of the experience I’m 4 Hitting (a fly) (8) piece (6) 10 Rap about
“It’s a ________” (Bonnie Tyler)?
genetically coded to avoid. 9 Cowboy show (5) the old regiment
While friends dive into the 8. What’s the first syllable of 10 Fortune-telling DOWN being reorganised
mosh pits of life, I am drawn to the the nursery rhyme that refers using the hand (9) 1 Spoil one occasion for religious
sturdy chairs by the side. These to “the butcher, the baker, the 11 Virtuoso at sea (8) occasion (6, 7)
concerts are primarily about the candlestick-maker”? keyboard piece (7) 2 Fundamentally 15 Kent town upset
memories and the moment, and my 12 Acorn recover without the scorer (9)
9. Which valley is the hottest place
memories would be of the moments producer (3, 4) drug being put up (9) 16 Major disaster’s
in the world?
of inconvenience. I am not proud 13 Donkey-horse 3 Labour gets one cut without energy
of this but I also know it to be true. 10. What was the nickname of cross (4) catchphrase (6) that’s limited (8)
The key to my happiness is effective the wild west woman who’s been 14 Show up 5 Chinese design 18 Dull part of
advance planning. played on screen by Jane Russell, once more (8) plain trowel with Worcester I left (7)
The price of this is missing out Yvonne De Carlo and Doris Day? 17 North California odd bits only, 20 Still cast it out (6)
on the richest experiences, which National Park (8) perhaps (6, 7) 21 Top up faulty oil
mostly I’m OK with since there are 19 Dull pain (4) 6 Tiny drop to filters so it’s gone (6)
few riches I seek which don’t involve 22 Acrobat’s swing (7) deceive the 23 One to win over (5)
clean toilets, coffee machines and 24 Basic part (7) French (7)
a clear means of departure. In this 25 Custom, 7 Bury coffin terribly?
case, the price of my inadequacies convention (9) Not entirely (5)
was spending too much of the Solution to Crossword No 592 26 Opening piece, 8 Spout about
concert gaming through the T R I B A L A P A M P H L E T in short (5) Surrey’s borders,
alternative routes home. A E A Y A A A L A A L A E A A
Half an hour after leaving the A N A C O N D A A C A N V A S
stadium we were met by the cab A T A H A D A T A A C A E A T

that we did in fact manage to secure. M A C A R O N I A C A R R I E THE PICTURE ROUND

My wife was right. We had found a
A M A N A W A N A A R A A A F
by James Walton
A O A C O N F U S E D A G A U
simple way home, albeit a slow and A B L E A E A M A N A V E A L
expensive one. The cost of enjoying G A A A P R E J U D G E A R A Who or
these events is not merely eternal I A C A R A A U A E A R A G A what do
planning, it is also a surge-priced
Uber. It isn’t very rock’n’roll but, as
T
A
T
E
A
A
R
O
S
R
A
S
O
T
E
R
A
L
A
A
A
B
I
L
O
A
I
A
V
O
S
A
N
T
I
C
F
A
U
U
A
B
L
A
S
these
pictures + =
it turns out, neither am I. O A S A G A A E A U A A A L A
add up to?
GETTY IMAGES

R E E M E R G E A R E L I E F

robert.shrimsley@ft.com
@robertshrimsley ANSWERS ON PAGE 6

FT.COM/MAGAZINE JUNE
MARCH11/12
19/20
2022
2022 45
 Wit & Wisdom
The Questionnaire
Edward Carey
Author and artist
Interview by Hester Lacey
1. What is your earliest memory?
Picking daffodils in a Norfolk
garden. There was also being
forbidden to go on a bumper car in
Legoland in Denmark because I was
too small. That smarted.
2. Who was your mentor?
I had an amazing English teacher at
school called John Flint who
inspired me very much. He taught
us King Lear and I’m still in the
thrall of his classes many years on.
Later, I was lucky to have very
generous support from the
playwright Hugh Whitemore and
the novelist and short-story writer
Robert Coover. These two men gave
me confidence when I dearly
needed it. Things may have been
very different if it weren’t for them.
3. How fit are you?
I go running most mornings before
dawn, but remain perennially stout.
4. Tell me about an animal you
have loved.
There was a bulldog called Gerty in
46
the 1970s. More recently, at the
start of the pandemic, we took in
an abandoned black cat with a foul
temper – an appalling brimstone
beast that we love very much.
5. Risk or caution, which has
defined your life more?
Sometimes one, sometimes the
other. About a decade ago I came a
little off the rails – writing-wise
– and thought I’d never write again.
Returning to fairy tales and to
children’s literature taught me to
start all over again and to dare
myself in my thinking and writing.
6. What trait do you find most
irritating in others?
The enabling of morons
or monsters.
7. What quality do you find most
irritating in yourself?
Mind your own business.
8. What drives you on?
The next book or the next drawing.
There has to be something to work
towards, or it all feels a bit
ILLUSTRATION BY LAUREN CROW
desperate. In an unhappy moment,
stalled or worried, lost or aimless,
nothing works better for me than a
sharp pencil (Tombow B from
Japan) and a pad (Strathmore
Bristol Vellum), and then the pencil
might take you off somewhere,
anywhere. It seems very modest,
the pencil, but I don’t think it is.
I don’t think it can ever be fully
fathomed what the pencil can do.
9. Do you believe in an afterlife?
I’ll let you know.
10. Which is more puzzling, the
existence of suffering or its
frequent absence?
Both, everything.
11. Name your favourite river.
The Thames at low tide – I love
mudlarking. Finding old bits of
London in the mud each time I visit
the city has always been an
incredible delight. That you can
find history in the mud any day of
the week – Victorian, Georgian,
Tudor, Roman – feels like a miracle.
I love the Wensum too, as a Norfolk
boy. I remember one weekend on
the Wensum at dusk with a couple
of friends and seeing a strange mist
collect above the water. We were
convinced it was a ghost. It was an
experience to me as profound as the
books of Alan Garner, which I read
as a schoolboy and made me want
to become a writer.
12. What would you have
done differently?
I don’t really go in for regrets.
I once took 15 years to write a
novel, which was probably too long –
I should have told myself: “You
might think about hurrying up.”
My dear late father once said to me,
“You might try writing books that
people would want to read.” I’m still
working on that.
Edward will be at Essex Book Festival
on June 25 as part of the Midsummer
Madness day at Cressing Temple
Barns. essexbookfestival.org.uk
FT.COM/MAGAZINE MARCH
FT.COM/MAGAZINE JUNE19/20
11/12 2022