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Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
As anyone who has watched The Bear will understand, working in a kitchen is one of the most stressful environments: soaring temperatures, micro-deadlines, insane attention to detail, plus the ancillary frustrations of patrons who have, like, opinions and food allergies, etc. It can make any service unbearably tense.
These tensions must compound when you are partners both in life and in the kitchen – I speak as someone who can’t even watch my husband chop a carrot without trying to stage some kind of intervention. But in this week’s issue we meet five couples who live and work together, running successful restaurants while trying to balance this with family life. I’m astonished that any pair can withstand such an intense schedule but, as our lovebirds attest, things work smoother when the business is a true partnership.
How do you feel about Anthony Scaramucci? I’ve been fascinated by the Republican financier since his ill-fated 10-day tenure as White House director of communications to President Donald Trump. In recent years his reputation has largely been rehabilitated, not least thanks to his role as a co-anchor of the podcast The Rest is Politics US. That “The Mooch” is a tremendous blowhard is undeniable, but through the course of the episodes I’ve grown quite fond of him and his outrageous taste. Naturally, then, we asked him to be our Aesthete, and he delivers with a brilliantly candid account of his obsessions with Lamborghinis, Billy Joel and superhero figurines.
Superheroes of another nature feature in Fiona Golfar’s story about Maggie’s, the cancer support centre that first opened in 1996 and now helps more than 300,000 people every year. Fiona originally visited earlier this year intending to write a more detached feature, but she soon found its services invaluable for coping with her husband’s cancer diagnosis, which they have lived with for the past 10 years. Admitting you need help as the partner of someone who is going through chemo or cancer treatment is still something of a stigma. We are supposed to care for those who are having treatment, not require the care ourselves.
Maggie’s has helped to overcome this assumption, offering its services without judgement to whoever requires them. There are now 24 Maggie’s centres in the UK, with a further four affiliated ones around the world. Fiona’s story is a moving account of how it has been a saviour.
Lastly, we head to Miami for a 22-page property special, focusing on the south Florida city emerging as one of the most dynamic in the US today. My favourite story describes its evolution in the wake of Michael Mann’s hit series Miami Vice, and how his coke-filled neon crime fantasy still informs its mood. Detectives Tubbs and Crockett are now long into their retirement, the pastel suiting has been through many cycles, and the lawbreakers put away. The show’s pink palaces, however, remain shining beacons of the city, forever enshrined in that brilliant soundtrack by Jan Hammer, and still as fashionable.
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