Apartment Look

When our children were 11 and 9, young enough to still be entirely inside the family circle but old enough to remember, we splurged on a “once in a lifetime vacation ” and rented a small farmhouse in Southwestern France outside the village of Saint-Cyprien. Each day, our son and daughter would say goodbye to the donkey that hung around our patio and we’d climb in the tiny rented Renault and drive somewhere in the fairy- tale beautiful Dordogne River region . On one of these excursions, we stumbled on the provincial city of Sarlat. An accident of history and several centuries of stagnant economy had left Sarlat’s center virtually unchanged architecturally since the days of siege engines and knights galloping over drawbridges. City fathers had wakened one morning in the late 1950s to realize that, leaning above narrow and winding cobblestone streets and alleys, they had one of the largest collections of intact medieval architecture in Europe. The French government subsidized restor...

fullscreen The first impression of Highland Park's RBTA, the neighborhood's new izakaya, is that it's a tad narrow. The space is akin to a railroad apartment, in which you have to pass through the separate compartments to get to where you need to be. "Cozy" isn't quite the right word for it, however, what with the industrial bulbs hanging over head, and the file of passersby at the front window, some of whom will glance at you expectantly as if hoping for some sign of your opinion on the place (FYI, we're having a perfectly good time ). The prevailing atmosphere here is one of a tucked-away stand in Tokyo’s famed Shoube Yokochou Alley , also affectionately known as "piss alley" (we doubt the tourism board was responsible for this one). The vibe at RBTA is a little frenetic, a little boozy, and the mindset is one of instant gratification. RBTA, named for the robata grill that exists in the heart of the kitchen, is the brainchild of chef Justin Ba...