Caviar Gets Even More Refined

09.08.2023 - 09:49 / nytimes.com / Barbara Hepworth

These days, it seems that some restaurants will add a dollop of caviar to anything, from fried chicken to hamburgers, practically reducing the once-luxurious treat to a condiment. So it’s perhaps no surprise that chefs are turning their attention to something more rarefied than your everyday osetra: albino caviar, which ranges in color from alabaster to golden, and is the result of uncommon mutations. The most sought after is that of the beluga sturgeon but, says Hermes Gehnen, the founder of N25 Caviar, an international purveyor, “restaurants generally can’t afford it. It’s more for superyachts.” At Les Trois Chevaux in New York, the eggs of the Acipenser ruthenus, a small sturgeon known as the sterlet, are shaped into a quenelle tableside and plated with white asparagus, aerated béchamel and beurre de baratte-basted brioche. The monochromatic presentation allows diners to be “more cognizant of what [they’re] actually tasting,” says the restaurant’s owner, Angie Mar, 41, who describes albino caviar as “supple and velvety.” Rasmus Munk, 32, the chef and co-owner of Alchemist in Copenhagen, is drawn to albino caviar’s “beautiful aroma of butter and creamy texture.” He serves it atop a square of crisp, sourdough-flavored freeze-dried milk born of his collaboration with an M.I.T. researcher on food for space travel. And at the omakase restaurant the Araki in London, the chef Marty Lau slices white cuttlefish and squid into fine ribbons and tops them with a spoonful of golden roe. Although white caviar stock is limited, they aren’t the only pale orbs worth chasing. Snail eggs, which have a mushroomlike flavor, have the same visual appeal despite their earthy taste. Just don’t assume they’ll be a bargain. “Sometimes,” says Munk, “you’ll pay even more money for snail eggs than you do for caviar.” —

When Modernism arrived in Scandinavia in the 1930s, Finnish designers quickly became known for their handblown colored glass, which was more substantial and elemental than that of their Italian counterparts in Murano. Alvar Aalto, Kaj Franck and Tapio Wirkkala were unconcerned with delicacy, employing richly hued cased glass in geometric dimensions shorn of ornament and taking inspiration from abstract stone sculptors such as Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth. Today, one of their spiritual heirs, the 53-year-old Helsinki-based Harri Koskinen, has electrified that uniquely moody Finnish aesthetic in a series of glass table lamps for Hermès. These 10-inch-high domed fixtures, in smoky tones of cassis, fern and amber, don’t merely illuminate but smolder with a volcanic light. . —

Opening next month, the Fifth Avenue Hotel occupies a 1907 McKim, Mead & White-designed building on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 28th