Luxury is a million different things done just right. This week in MC Recommends: An album that evokes smoky jazz bars; a restaurant residency that will bring a new master chef to Pune every six months; a VFM timepiece with a 40-hour power reserve; a 52-year-old whisky in an arc-shaped bottle designed by Aston Martin; and Booker shortlisted author Shehan Karunatilaka's latest book.
Samara Joy’s voice evokes dusty vinyl records and smoky jazz bars. Is she really 22, or is she having you on? The American jazz vocalist, who was born in the Bronx, puts her own spin on Sarah Vaughan and brings Thelonious Monk alive with her vocalese. Her eponymous debut, and recently released follow up album, Linger Awhile, leave no room for doubt that she is one of the finest young vocalists of our time.
Restaurants at five-star properties mostly underwhelm, but the Alta Vida, at the Ritz Carlton, Pune, promises to be different. The poolside cocktail bar and grill will play host to a rotating line-up of chefs from across the world as part of the country’s first ever restaurant residency.
The inaugural residence, which started in the third week of September and will run for six months, features Chef Ray Adriansyah and his team from the Bali-based Nusantara by Locavore, which serves traditional dishes from around the Indonesian archipelago.
Expect less known dishes such as Juhu, which uses a traditional grilling technique and features young papaya, papaya leaves, cassava leaves, banana blossom, sweet corn, shallots, garlic, and chilies, and is wrapped and grilled in banana leaves; kepiting asap, crab marinated with ginger grass and sweet soy sauce, among others, and wrapped and cooked in banana leaves over a wood fire; and jukut kellogg mesanten, moringa leaves, and base genep (an aromatic seasoning paste integral to Balinese cuisine).
The Marlin, a 2017 reissue of a '60s classic, has been a blockbuster hit for Timex, and it’s getting increasingly tough to lay your hands on one. So, it makes eminent sense to grab the latest Marlin, which is every bit as affordable, stylish, and VFM as the 2017 Marlin.
Based on the 1969 Viscount collection, which featured a boxed 3, 6,9, 12 as well as a sunray dial and raised indices, the new 40mm Marlin comes with an on-trend green dial, as well as a blue one. The watch is powered by a Japanese automatic winding movement with a 40-hour power reserve.
Arc-52, the latest in the ongoing collaboration between the Islay single malt brand Bowmore and British sportscar maker Aston Martin, is an exceptional 52-year-old whisky that comes in a befitting decanter that wouldn’t look out of place at a bar on the very edge of space. The arc-shaped bottle, designed by Aston Martin, has a locking mechanism within the metal lid and the liquid it contains is the “marriage of single malt matured in a sherry butt and an American oak ex-Bourbon hogshead”.
Shehan Karunatilaka’s first book Chinaman: The Legend of Pradeep Mathew (2010), was widely read and much admired. It was also the winner of the Commonwealth Book Prize. His second novel, The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida, has been shortlisted for the Booker this year. We’ve read both, and are now about to dip into Karunatilaka’s latest, his first collection of short stories.
The Birth Lottery and Other Surprises took nearly two decades to finish, said Karunatilaka. “The oldest story was written during the millennium bug and the newest during a global pandemic,” he told PTI recently. The final result is a mix of genres, and the Sri Lankan author writes in the book that it contains stories with twists, tales where things happen, and stories that hope there’s a god, and ones that allow you to accept godlessness.
