“If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches; for to the creator there is no poverty and no poor indifferent place.”
—Rainer Maria Rilke
I love flowers, I'd love to have the whole place swimming in native flowers …
Lilliput was a small-format British monthly magazine of humour, short stories, photographs and the arts, founded in 1937 by the photojournalist Stefan Lorant. It had a reputation for publishing what were, for the time, fairly daring photographs of female nudes. In August 1960 it was absorbed into “Men Only” (which only later became pornographic).
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How to host a summer picnic
Rose Chalalai Singh and Samyukta Nair, Fiona Golfar and Skye Gyngell, Missy Malik-Flynn and Gabriel Pryce, Amber Guinness, and Aditi Dugar share their tips for an alfresco feast – whatever the weather
Fiona Golfar and Skye Gyngell cook up a lazy afternoon lunch in London Cathy St Germans, Tom Konig-Oppenheimer and Solange Azagury-Partridge are among the stars in Shepherd’s Bush
I’ve been friends with the chef Skye Gyngellsince I met her in Sydney when I was 19. She was working in a deli where they made a memorable chicken and celery salad with a great mayo dressing, excellent in a baguette.
Our lives have been conjoined ever since, and now our children are best friends. Often, we congregate at my house in west London for big Sunday lunches. In summer, they mostly happen on my garden terrace, under the wisteria. We cook together – although we are like the odd couple, with polar personalities: she is calm and order and I am drama and chaos. She makes lists, I hurl things together.
For this picnic we have invited an easy group of friends, the kind who don’t mind helping: jeweller Solange Azagury-Partridge, stylist Bay Garnett, Orlebar Brown founder Adam Brown and his husband, the PR Tom Konig-Oppenheimer, Port Eliot Festival co-founder and writer Cathy St Germans and Will Rowley, our wonderful doctor friend.
Skye and I share a belief that entertaining is theatre. The look of the table sets the scene for the food and allows people to relax and enjoy themselves. It’s nice to think about the mood for the day, and to make a space where things happen slowly – somewhere people can settle into, read a book, take a nap, play cards and, in Cathy’s case, make a Hawaiian lei from the flowers in the garden.
On the lawn we pitched a rustic woodsman’s tent from the Canvas Awning Company; we hauled a piece of plywood out of my garden shed and placed it low on top of some old apple crates. We covered it with a tablecloth from Summerill & Bishop and scattered a selection of rugs and cushions made from recycled plastic bottles from The Unnatural Flooring Company and Weaver Green – totally waterproof. These were mixed with some long, padded sofa cushions from Caravane in Marylebone.
While we cooked, we kept everyone happy, drinking rhubarb and sweet cicely cordial and grazing on biodynamic radishes, hunks of homemade porridge sourdough bread and creamy butter sprinkled with sea salt, and heirloom tomatoes slipped from their skins and doused in extra virgin olive oil. We took the most beautiful pale-green cabbage leaves and filled them with freekeh and sour cherries, sitting them on a bed of ewe’s curd with a tomato vinaigrette.
In my Gozney wood-fired oven we made focaccia di recco, a type of flatbread topped with stracchino cheese, and added courgettes with their flowers. Then we moved on to langoustines, over which we spooned a shellfish butter. I had to battle with Skye’s perfectionism to let me slide the flatbread around so it could cook evenly near the flames. After a mid-afternoon snooze, we woke up to a rhubarb and strawberry pie and lemon shortbread biscuits filled with lemon cream and mascarpone. The whole thing was utterly relaxed. And the best bit? Everyone helped to clear up!
The Rita’s duo stage a southern-style cook out in Soho Missy Malik-Flynn and Gabriel Pryce turn a rainy day into a spontaneous celebration
For any British picnic there is a chance of a thunderstorm. And so it is that on the day of Missy Malik-Flynn and Gabriel Pryce’s lunch, London welcomes a record-breaking week of non-stop rain. The founders of Soho restaurant Rita’s remain unflummoxed. Malik-Flynn is just arranging wine bottles full of flowers around her restaurant’s high-walled garden when the rain begins. As her plan B, she quickly pivots to a picnic table under a rickety awning. Thankfully, the couple have a loose definition of a picnic, rejecting the “Emily Brontë ideal” of “eating under a tree with a gentleman from a neighbouring town”. Says Pryce: “Any kind of snack and drink with more than one person – whether you’re sitting on a coat or a blanket – has the enjoyment of a picnic.”
Malik-Flynn and Pryce established Rita’s in Hackney in 2012; the current restaurant, which opened three years ago, is their first permanent space. Gabe heads up the kitchen: Malik-Flynn handles drinks and front of house. Both have been inspired by their travels around the Americas. “At the core of what we do is conviviality and getting people together,” says Malik-Flynn, a fresh-faced and friendly host in a dress by New York designer Conner Ives.
For this meeting, Pryce is making a Southern-style cookout with grilled shrimp adobada and smoked chicken. Sides include jalapeño cornbread, “pool hall slaw” and Alabama white BBQ sauce (mayonnaise, apple cider vinegar, barbecue spices and horseradish). The chef explains that, in classic Southern barbecues, the sauces themselves aren’t actually smoky. “It looks a bit weird to people who think it should be a little pot of red smoky sauce,” he says of his condiment.
Lunch is scheduled for 1.30, but Malik-Flynn has told her guests to arrive at 1.15. “They’ll be late,” she says. The first person, brand consultant Ronojoy Dam, arrives 15 minutes early, closely followed by director Lucy Luscombe and Sadie, “the only dog allowed in the restaurant”. Everyone lingers by the bar as Malik-Flynn offers around jugs of sangria and fresh todoli citrus and oolong tea (served with or without Tito’s Handmade Vodka); music by alternative radio NTS plays in the background. “Anybody want to go and sit in the rain?” she asks. While Malik-Flynn gets everyone seated beneath the awning, Pryce brings out a steaming platter and slips out of his chef whites into a shirt by Aimé Leon Dore. “Chef Gabe! Chef Gabe!” chant the group. Soon there is a cacophony of clattering cutlery and affirmative grunts. “I would only eat this with good friends,” says Malik-Flynn. “You want to be able to react to your instinct – to reach out, touch it and eat it. You don’t want random strangers sticking their fingers in everything.”
For Pryce, the joy of a picnic is seeing guests return for second helpings. “I also like to watch how people build plates,” he says. “A couple of shrimps on the side will hold in a bit more salad – there’s an art to it.” The final course, two boxes of Ferrero Rocher – “oddly something our friends seem to love”, says Malik-Flynn. They require less skill to handle, but it’s still a pleasure to watch them disappear, one by one.
The Paris-based chef
Rose Chalalai Singh almost cancels lunch – she has been locked out of her private-dining atelier Rose Kitchen when we meet. A quick jimmy of a window allows her and her 14-year-old son Gabriel to get inside to start prepping the meal.
She’s planning a picnic-style spread to share with four Paris-based friends and her new business partner and fellow host, the London-based restaurateur Samyukta Nair, who arrives around mid-morning. “Whenever I visit, I want to move to Paris,” Nair says, walking into Singh’s lofty workspace in the 11th arrondissement.
It’s been a whirlwind friendship between Singh and Nair, who met only eight months ago but have spoken on the phone almost daily since. “Everything I do is personal, as you can see,” says Singh. “Sam understands that.”
In March, the duo took a research trip to Thailand, and last month they launched the restaurant
Koyn Thai in London’s Mayfair. The outpost is the fifth for Nair’s LSL Capital group and the first London venture for Singh, who closed her popular Paris restaurant in the Marché des Enfants Rouges in the Marais in 2022.
Today’s lunch menu combines some highlights from Koyn Thai, including homemade pork sausage and escargots in a green chilli and Thai basil curry sauce – whipped up by Rhys Cattermoul, the executive chef at Koyn, who joins Singh in her kitchen – alongside Singh’s simple market-style dishes. She bought the seabass from the fishmonger this morning, and steams and marinates it with seafood sauce and fresh coriander, and percebes sautéed with lemongrass, chilli, Thai basil and lime leaves. “This captures the relaxed vibe Rose is known for – it wouldn’t be the same in Mayfair,” says Nair.
Their guests start to arrive. First, the Italian fashion publicist Cristina Malgara, then Georgian designer Djaba Nikolaï Diassamidzé, and designer Giovanni Bassan, who comes armed with bottles of orange natural wine from Katkoot, the wine label he runs with his brother, Francesco. The rain falls. Typically. The outdoor plan is brought inside. The wine is poured, and the chat is easy, even though Malgara and Bassan have just met. “We didn’t know each other, but we already know each other,” Malgara jokes about their shared Italian heritage.
“I floated the idea of having lunch on picnic blankets and there was nearly an insurrection,” says cook and author Amber Guinness, who is based between London and Tuscany. “It’s nice to have a sitting-on-the-floor moment with an aperitivo, but with actual food most people want a ledge.”
Today’s lunch is laid out on trestle tables and benches in the sun-dappled olive groves of Arniano, the Guinness family home. The guest list, a mix of Tuscan natives and expats, includes painter and
Connolly fashion designer Gigi Ettedgui, journalist Matthew Bell (Guinness’s husband) and Roger Granville, co-founder of Florentine non-profit
Fondazione Mascarade Opera. Winemaker Giovanni Mazzei and Petersham Nurseries’ Lara Boglione are also here, armed with jeroboams of Castello di Fonterutoli and Ser Lapo made by Mazzei’s family. “The best parties have a mix of ages,” says Guinness. “And with picnics, their informality means everyone can join in and crack on.” This includes Guinness and Bell’s one-year-old son Milo, who toddles around happily throughout the afternoon.
Guinness kicks things off with prosecco limoncello spritzes, ricotta and nduja crostini with crispy sage, and a basket of fresh broad beans – she advises eating the latter straight from their pods with a generous hunk of pecorino.
A help-yourself-style banquet is laid out on Lisa Corti and Polkra tablecloths. The dishes include chickpea fritters, garlicky grilled tomatoes, beef carpaccio with raw courgettes, and pistachio pesto pasta. All work well cold or at room temperature, says Guinness. For dessert, there’s a gluten-free lemon caprese topped with chocolate ganache that calls for the zest of five lemons (recipes for all can be found in her latest cookbook,
Italian Coastal). She arranges slices onto a selection of floral-printed melamine plates
by John Derian, sourced from his store in New York.
The sun shines all afternoon. “We were lucky,” says Guinness, who takes delight in being able to flat-pack her tables. “We’ve had such bad weather in Tuscany over the past couple of months. Suddenly, summer sprang.”
“This is India – we can’t call people over and serve only cucumber sandwiches,” says award-winning restaurateur Aditi Dugar, of Masquein in Mumbai, who is adding the finishing touches to her sundowner picnic in her grandparents’ garden in a quiet corner of the city’s Pali Hill neighbourhood. “I spent so many memorable weekends here growing up,” she says. “It’s here that I also learnt the art of hosting from my nani [maternal grandmother] – no one does it like her.”
Dugar’s buffet table is laden with vases and planters filled with sunflowers, eustomas, agapanthus and daisies. Cane baskets and crates brimming with seasonal fruits tumble into the tablescape in one corner, while fresh pineapples double as vases elsewhere. “It’s a quintessential Indian summer vibe.
I wanted everything to be local,” she explains. Picnic tables are strewn around the garden, draped in block-printed fabrics.
Her guests are an eclectic mix of creatives and art patrons, including artist couple Jitish and Reena Saini Kallat, designer Nimish Shah, artist and photographer Dia Mehhta Bhupal and gallerist Shireen Gandhy – plus family: her uncle and aunt, Vijay and Sunita Choraria
The food is by Aditi’s catering company Sage & Saffron. Giant wooden platters hold a vegetarian spread that is the hostess’s take on traditional Indian snack-time favourites. Think vada pav swirls, jhal muri, dhokla doughnuts, avocado and yoghurt chaat, naan khatai and cream cones. “And mangoes! Freshly chopped mangoes, of course,” she laughs. “The menu has to be abundant. I always entertain wholeheartedly, no compromises.”
Dugar is constantly inspired by her travels, most recently her trips to Japan: “Yuzu has become my signature secret sauce.” When she’s hosting at home, Dugar lets her instincts guide her. “I love to open the fridge and figure it out. I never work with recipes. Probably because I’ve grown up seeing my grandmother and mom cook so intuitively.”
It’s the same with her tables at home. She’ll throw things together – mixing unexpected materials just as she does ingredients – so that nothing ever feels too curated or thematic. Bordallo Pinheiro mixed with Rosenthal, with blown-glass pieces, alongside handmade ceramics or a sustainable cardboard vase. “It’s all very home-style, never ever fussy. I don’t want my guests to feel intimidated or stressed. I’d much rather they feel comfortable enough to call me the next day and say, ‘Aditi, can you send over some of the leftover salad or noodles from last night? I can’t stop thinking about it.’”
