Protein by DunneFrankowski

We’re Milanese. And that means it’s not easy to impress us with coffee. When even our Chinese restaurants serve excellent espresso and any old shabby corner bar serves its caffeine perfectly oily, just-right . But lately London has really decided to get into the good-food game, and coffee is no exception. Like weeds in a freshly watered garden, fantastic little cafés – many of them dredging up long forgotten techniques – have been springing up all over the city.

Last week we queued (and that’s a lot to ask of us cynics when it comes to coffee) to get into the opening of Protein’s brand new, tiny little café in its 18 Hewett Street headquarters in Shoreditch. The duo DunneFrankowski is using the space as a sort of beta testbed for its modular coffee bar design that is pretty novel in a couple ways: it can easily be reconfigured (and replicated almost anywhere), and it’s designed to be staffed by a maximum of two people. It also has a Chromo-enabled feed so you can see in real-time what’s going on at the coffee counter: check it out.

But more importantly, the coffee itself is really, really damn good. (And it was free with a Foursquare check-in – follow us!) Simple, strong, well-prepared coffee that is absolutely lightyears ahead of the chains. With a fantastic environment, to boot – and making a special guest appearance were high-class versions of the quintessential lowbrow, feel-good food: hot dogs from Big Apple Hot Dogs.

Later in the evening, DunneFrankowski also released The Independent Coffee Book, which besides being a really lovely little volume, is an up-to-date guidebook for the best local cafés around London – and there are many. So, hats off to you Protein and DF, you’ve impressed some tough critics. And now that we’ve got the ammo to hunt for other nice cafés, bring on the good coffee!

Protein by DunneFrankowski Timelapse from Protein® on Vimeo.

Yvette van Boven / Winter

2DM’s Yvette van Boven has really been taking the food world by storm as of late. The restauranteur/chef/artist/author (yes, there is truly nothing she can’t do) has been a busy busy bee: over the past year, she’s done Martha Stewart and Edible Radio and been featured an impressive number of publications, most recently in Dutch foodie digest, Delicious. And speaking of delicious, her Amsterdam restaurant Aan de Amstel is among the highlights of Amsterdam’s food scene. And if all that weren’t entirely enough (this is Yvette we’re talking about!), we’re thrilled to announce the release of her latest book, Winter, a delightful winter comfort food followup to her critically acclaimed Home Made.

We gave you a sneak peek of Winter this past July, but the book has at last hit bookshelves in Holland. Her trademark hand-drawn recipes here illustrate “comforting winter food, with inspiration from Ireland, France and Holland,” all places Yvette calls home. The unconventional mix of Yvette’s native and adopted food cultures lends her recipes all the balance of warmth and cozy unpretentiousness good winter food needs. It works exceptionally well as a compliment to the eclectic Home Made.

Photos throughout the volume come courtesy of her equally talented partner in crime, Oof Verschuren, and it’s published by Dutch house Fontaine. It goes without saying that the book is absolutely stunning. So bundle up – it’s cold out! Sturdy winter coats and a copy of Winter!

Karin Kellner / Cucina Italiana

Practically since its founding in 1929, La Cucina Italiana has been a symbol of fantastic Italian cuisine the world over. And its black and white headliner and positively mouth watering photos have come to mean every bit as much on a Milan newsstand as in its international version in a California gourmand’s kitchen. It has meant slow food and quality before the former was a movement or the latter was much of a concern, and has long been a solid reference for excellent recipes. And for the past two jam-packed issues, the illustrations of 2DM’s Karin Kellner been adding a touch of her cozy flair to the venerable icon.

For this issue, Karin made portraits of distinguished chef Walter Pedrazzi, “pop cuisine” inventor and Michelin Star restaurant D’O Davide Oldani, renowned sommelier Giuseppe Vaccarini and Giorgio Donegani, president of Food Education Italy, along with other fun scenes.

Expect to see even more of Karin’s work in various cozy places in the coming months. (We’d like to spend our holidays wrapped up inside one her sketches, honestly.) And together with the recent publication of Yvette Van Boven’s new cookbook Winter (more on that soon), we’re over the culinary moon. And really, really hungry.

Rui Pereira / Lateira

Oh, canned food. That lowliest of fare, hermetically sealed for apocalyptic aftermath and just one half-step above dreaded instant noodle soup. But is it, really? In many countries–especially southern European ones–the connection to good food runs so deep that even the food permanently preserved in tins can be pretty fantastic: legumes, greens and especially fish. Good oil and prime catch are good oil and prime catch, even in a tin. It’s the mystery meat sausages and chemical concoctions like Spaghetti-O’s that are really causes for concern.

For his most recent project, Lateira, Portuguese designer Rui Pereira looked to the long history of fish canning in his country to build a new ritual around eating from the tin. And in his solid effort to de-stigmatize it, he simultaneously promotes tradition and ups the cachet of a wrongly disparaged mode of food preservation. Much like the Megaphone project we saw at this year’s Salone del Mobile, the concept mixes an old archetype and contemporary habits with handcraft to produce a beautiful, practical, culturally innovative object. Moreover, the red clay and hand drawn white motifs harken back to classic Portuguese handicraft.

The project has been shown at Show me Galleryin Lisbon during this year’s Experimenta Design. And suddenly, tuna for lunch sounds like a downright delicacy…

Yvette Van Boven x Verde

2DM’s maven of all things food Yvette Van Boven has shown off her fantastic paper cutouts in the most recent issue of Verde. The journal of organic food and sustainably is an offshoot of the lauded, forward-thinking Swiss grocer Coop. Always a positive voice for better food in all senses of the word, Yvette’s work here illustrates “Coffee and Solidarity,” which considers Starbucks’ paradigm-shifting move towards more ethical and sustainable coffee.

The world’s most ubiquitous coffee chain (yet conspicuously absent from Italy) has made major changes to its supply chain over the past few years, and is now a major driver of Fairtrade in the coffee industry. In the last year in Switzerland alone, the company’s initiative has helped 168 families in Central and South America on a path towards improved lives and is sure to have a heightened impact as it gains traction. Talk about compelling consumption.

Karin Kellner / Eating & Drinking

For her feature in our series on the summer adventures of 2DM‘s artists, illustrator Karin Kellner temporarily traded in her lush watercolours for a fork and some velvety colour film. The result is a hearty cheers to a holiday well-spent – it’s been a great summer!

Yvette van Boven / Barcelona Whirlwind

Yvette van Boven simply doesn’t stop. There was really no “holiday” to her summer, and while the rest of us have been busy scarfing down tasty delicacies, Yvette’s been dreaming up newer, tastier ones. And making them look really, really pretty. She was, however, kind enough to let us in on a recent whirlwind tour of Barcelona for our series on the summer adventures of 2DM‘s artists, where her ridiculously good new book Home Made Winter cookbook was just put into print. Also, over the course of our shamefully relaxing summers, she’s also made Dutch bitterballen for Designsponge. and is appearing Wednesday at the eminently cool Brooklyn Kitchen. This week you can also tune in to hear her on both Martha Stewart Radio (tomorrow) and the Slow-Food masters Edible Radio.

Meanwhile, enjoy an exclusive snapshot story glimpse into her wonderfully hectic trip to the Catalan capital accompanied by her husband, photographer Oof Verschuren.

We want whatever Yvette’s eating. Now, for the whirlwind:

Oof giving suggestions, my publisher Martin keeping an eye on things.

There’s the cover!

Me.

A quick lunch around the corner, then back to the printing house.

Beautiful misprints.

Drinks on the beach at the end of the day.

And dinner afterwards.

Walking back to the hotel.

And finishing the book early the next day.

So time for more lunch outside.

And a swim!

Wheel Of Nutrition

We first came across Wheel of Nutrition at this year’s Fuorisalone as part of the excellent Superfarm project. A novel and deceptively simple idea, Wheel of Nutrition is a plate whose pie-chart decoration makes for a clever dietary guideline and game. While it might seem counterintuitive that a straightforward graphical solution can compel change, designers have recently found, for instance, a huge behaviour-bending potential with engaging graphical interfaces to encourage drivers to use their cars more economically (driving becomes a race to ‘green’). So, it stands to reason that when a meal feels like a game, there is increased incentive to eat according to the rules. And because the plate’s guidelines are more a playful suggestion than a forced imposition, the fun of eating remains fully intact.

As diabetes and obesity ravage both developing and rich nations, the imperative to create creative, engaging solutions for the world’s dismal eating habits is intensifying. Designers Rui Pereira and Hafsteinn Juliusson (whose intriguing growing jewellery we saw at Instant Design in February) in collaboration with Joana Pais, who are behind the plate (and Superfarm) are leading a charge for their generation. With Wheel of Nutrition, they’ve had very positive feedback from around the web, and the plate has even been given the thumbs-up by nutritionists and doctors. (Well done!)

And in a rare feat for a design introduced at Fuorisalone, Wheel of Nutrition is going into production in Diet, Extra-Ordinary and Supersize. The designers will get their hands on the first factory prototype by weeks’ end, and beginning in September it will be produced in Portugal and distributed by Iceland-based HAF.

From now on, it’s definitely okay to play with your food.

U Barba

Just past its first birthday, Osteria U Barba has become an unqualified smash hit in the Milanese food scene. Booked solidly every night since its inception, its influence has surely but steadily grown. It has even managed to wow a certain correspondent of a very influential, rather selective lifestyle and affairs publication with a glossy black cover (you all know the one), and landed itself a feature inside. The rest is history. And ever since, the restaurant tucked into an unassuming neighbourhood between Corso Lodi and Viale Liguria whose name means “uncle” in Ligure has quietly become a destination unto itself. The place is that good.

U Barba’s atmosphere is fantastic. It’s warm and unpretentious, yet young and unselfconsciously chic – it feels like a cross between a trendy Copenhagen café and one of LA’s many haute-natural hotspots. It’s spacious and airy, with a sprawling table flanked by lovely curvy chairs (whose designer we weren’t quite sure of) as its main room’s centrepiece. Lots of well-worn wood. Whitewashed brick. Thonet replica chairs painted battleship grey. And a cozy courtyard complete with a campo di bocce (pétanque court) that is, at least during the lunch hour, flooded with sunlight. This is exactly the kind of place Milan’s stuffy gastronoscene could use more of: social, fresh, inviting.

The fare is deceptively simple. Classic Ligurian dishes with high-quality ingredients and clean, straightforward presentation. The Blogazine lunched there yesterday (inside, to avoid the heat), where we enjoyed our lunch over a couple of nice imported beers, and finished off with gelato with neat garnish cups of nuts, pistachio and chocolate shavings. All come highly recommended. And dinner, apparently, is stratospheric – just make sure you make reservations in advance!

We had a lovely chat with one-half of the partnership behind the restaurant, where we talked food, architecture and Milan’s future. And we learned that there could just be a second (or third!) U Barba in the works for another lucky city around the world. London? Barcelona? Yes, please!

Radio / Street Food

Following their recent event for the The Milan Review of Ghosts, Marco Klefish‘s Radio is back with another, more delicious venture. This time they’re leaving the ghosts in the closet and taking to the streets for a glorious celebration of sometimes greasy, always delicious Street Food.

Tomorrow on Via Pestalozzi in collaboration with Tour de Fork they will be opening a public oven – yes! – reminiscent of ancient Mediterranean communal ovens, and will share their fare with guests. The celebration promises a mash up of chiefs, photographers, musicians, designers and editors all working together to reimagine culinary tradition and folklore. The result is sure to be an exceptional culinary feast, but thats not at all: If afro funk is your thing, Sila & The Afro Funk Experience will be playing a live show.

Opening tomorrow at Radio’s space at Via Pestalozzi 4, starting at 19:00. Bring a bib!