Style + Beauty

THIS IS WHERE I TAKE HER

Ellie's standing list, for the friend who comes once a year. Article and Photography by I have friends from all over the world who come to visit me in Palo Alto. This is mostly because I’m such an advocate for the Bay! Over the years, I’ve built a perfect little running itinerary for when someone's in town. It’s less a list than a route. Where we start. Blue Bottle on University on a Saturday morning. I grab a matcha and we sit outside on the patio to catch up. A walk worth taking. ...

Home + Design

FROM NEW DELHI TO PALO ALTO

Twenty years of Indian textiles. Three years of Marigold Row. Photography by Karina Pemberton At Marigold Row, a shop on the Town & Country side of El Camino, Anita Mehta is unfolding a piece of cloth that someone in a village outside Kolkata stitched together by hand. She runs a finger along a seam where two older fabrics have been joined. The technique is called Kantha, the Indian habit of refusing to throw a good cloth away. A grandmother's sari starts to wear through. Two layers are laid...

Home + Design

THE HOUSE AROUND THE OAK

A Saratoga rebuild that left the tree standing. Photography by Drew Kelly A couple in Saratoga had a half-acre lot with a protected oak tree on it, and four grown daughters. They were ready to rebuild the house. Every architect they consulted drew a two-story plan, the standard answer when a heritage tree on the lot forces a builder vertical. Cynthia Spence Design looked at the same lot and proposed something different: a one-story modern farmhouse that wraps around the tree instead of...

Home Services

Close to Home

Close to HomePalo Alto takes the spotlight in the latest episode of ADU Adventures, and what the show finds here says something quietly flattering about the town, and about the way its families build.Ask around Palo Alto and you'll hear a familiar set of questions, usually raised quietly, often at the kitchen table. Where will Mom and Dad live as they get older, close enough to help but still independent? Where does a grown child land while saving for a place of their own in one of the most...

Home Services

Putting a Face to the Build

For a lot of families around Palo Alto, the backyard has quietly become the answer to a question they've been carrying for years. Where will Mom and Dad live as they get older, close enough to help but still independent? Where does a grown kid land while saving for a place of their own? How does a family stay close, actually close, same-property close, without anyone giving up the life they've built?More and more, the answer is an accessory dwelling unit: a second, fully independent home in the...

Life + Culture

A Global Perspective on Local Living

Connecting our community through curated art, flavor, and purposeful service. Article and Photography by The European Muse From the halls of the Louvre in Paris to the castles of Ireland and Norway's fjords, my travels shape my eye for beauty. I bring that global inspiration home to you. The Baker's Art Baking is my first language and greatest skill. Whether crafting custom cakes or practicing watercolor at Gamble Garden, I believe in the power of creating something beautiful and tactile...

Food + Beverage

Under the Olive Trees

A quiet afternoon at the Rooftop at RH Palo Alto. Photography by Courtesy of RH The easiest way to explain the building at 180 El Camino Real is to say what it is not. It is not a store in any of the familiar senses of the word. It does not look like one from the sidewalk, and it does not behave like one once you go in. It is four stories tall, built from stone and glass, with twelve-foot olive trees in iron planters at the entrance and a cascading fountain carved from Biancone limestone at...

Life + Culture

Ninety Years on Emerson

Bell's Books at ninety, and the stubborn case for staying. Article and Photography by In the spring of 1935, a twenty-four-year-old named Herbert Bell drove up from Los Angeles in a station wagon full of books. He had come to Palo Alto with his employer, a book dealer named David Lawyer, for the students at Stanford. A year later, Lawyer decided there was no money in selling books to students and sold his share to Bell for twenty-three hundred dollars. Bell, who was fond of understatement...