Good morning!

It’s been a minute (or actually, a couple of months) since our last newsletter. That’s because—staying on-brand, I suppose—I took a good, long summer pause from writing it. Now I’m pleased to say that we’re back, and for the remainder of this year you’ll receive this newsletter semi-regularly, on most Saturdays. Later this fall, we’ll be introducing a new format with “bonus” items—interviews, links, cultural recommendations, and more—below the fold.

We’re also now back with Time Sensitive, kicking off Season 10 with an episode featuring Rita Sodi, the Italian-born chef-owner of the Manhattan restaurant I Sodi, who, with her life and work partner, Jody Williams, also operates Via Carota, The Commerce Inn, and Bar Pisellino—all of them in the West Village. On the episode, we talk about food as a reflection of home, discuss her roots in the Tuscan village of Bagno a Ripoli, and, of course, get into Negronis (Sodi rightly considers herself “a Negroni-tasting guru, if that kind of thing existed”).

Back to my summer pause: I’m typing this note on a flight somewhere in the sky above Nova Scotia, on a return flight to New York following a 10-day vacation with my wife in Sweden and Denmark. In Stockholm, we stayed at Ett Hem—one of the more intimate and personal hotel experiences I’ve ever had (some of you likely know that it was designed by Ilse Crawford, whom I interviewed on Time Sensitive earlier this year)—and in Copenhagen, we stayed at the ethereal David Thulstrup–designed Vipp Loft. In addition to visiting the Louisiana Museum Museum of Modern Art in Humlebæk, Denmark, which is hands-down one of the most awe-inspiring art environments in the world and a must on any visit to Copenhagen, other highlights from our trip mostly had to do with food. For me, the restaurants Alouette (newly reopened and also designed by Thulstrup), Brutalisten, and Ekstedt were the standouts.

I then remained for a couple extra days in the Danish capital to participate in a “hotel event” called The Lobby (thank you, Dorte Bagge, for the invitation), where we recorded the second-ever live taping of Time Sensitive in front of an audience, with Nachson Mimran, co-founder of to.org and creative director and chairman of the Alpina Gstaad hotel, as the episode’s guest. When we release the conversation, later this fall, I’ll have more to share about our inspiring dialogue and Nachson’s vital, culture-shaping work in refugee settlements.

Now that I’m returning to New York, it feels appropriate to be starting our season with Rita Sodi. I’ve long admired her intimate, personal, and crafted approach to cooking and operating I Sodi—which, now that I think about it, isn’t that unlike the thoughtful hospitality at Ett Hem. In some sense, I aspire for The Slowdown to be to media what I Sodi is to the restaurant world and what Ett Hem is to hospitality: small-scale but impactful, unfussy but still elevated, and yes, intimate, personal, and crafted.

—Spencer