Dispatches from the house.
A short notebook from above the Atlantic — long reads on dining, on the city's best hours, on where to marry, where to swim, and where to drive when the city sends you out for the weekend. Written for the guests who take their time.
No. 01
Six Michelin-Caliber Tables of Rio de Janeiro
The MICHELIN Guide stopped reviewing Brazil in 2019. These are the six Rio tables that still cook at its standard.
The Guide MICHELIN doesn't publish Rio. The city's chefs carry on anyway — Felipe Bronze, Claude Troisgros, Rafa Costa e Silva, Alberto Landgraf, the line-by-line perfectionists at the Copacabana Palace and at Fasano. Six tables, in the order I'd take you.
No. 02
A Guide to Rio de Janeiro
Rio is a city you enter through the window. Here is how to read it — by mountain, by beach, by hour.
The city of stone mountains and long beaches, read slowly. Corcovado at dawn. Sugarloaf at dusk. Santa Teresa at lunch. Ipanema at the applause. A field guide for a first week in Rio — and for a second.
No. 03
Marry in Rio
A city that knows how to keep a secret, a city that knows how to throw a party. Everything a wedding needs, in one skyline.
Parque Lage for the ceremony. The Copacabana Palace for the reception. The Jardim Botânico for the portraits. A guide to marrying in the city that invented the long goodbye — venues, seasons, paperwork, pace.
No. 04
The Best Beaches of Rio
A hundred kilometres of sand, in order of when to go and why. A field guide to the city's seventy-two moods.
From Copacabana's curve to Grumari's wildness, the city's coast mapped by hour, crowd and light. The famous four, the hidden four, and the one you reach only on foot.
No. 05
Things to Do in Rio
Fifteen ways to spend a day in the city — mountain, beach, stadium, stage, the bondinho to Santa Teresa, the walk through Lapa at midnight.
From sunrise on Pão de Açúcar to a game at the Maracanã, the samba at Rio Scenarium, the tram up to Santa Teresa, the hang-glide off Pedra Bonita. A working list — by half-day, by time of year, by mood.
No. 06
Beyond Rio
Five places within a tank of petrol from Rio — the colonial town, the beach-hopper's playground, the island bay, the emperor's summer, the mountain pines.
Paraty, Búzios, Angra, Petrópolis, Campos do Jordão. Five weekend-shaped journeys out of the city — the colonial town preserved in amber, the fishing village the French imported, the emperor's mountain, the Brazilian Alps.
No. 07
How an Infinity Pool Actually Works
The edge that looks like nothing is holding the water back is the most engineered part of the house.
A vanishing edge is a weir, a catch basin and a second pump doing continuous work. What the detail costs to build, what it costs to run, and the three things that go wrong with one on a cliff.
No. 08
The Private Elevator, and Why Hillside Houses Need One
On a slope you do not build up, you build down. That decision is what puts a lift in a private house.
Hydraulic against traction, the shaft you cannot add later, what a service contract runs in Rio, and why the lift is the single feature that decides whether the lowest floor of a cliff house gets used.
No. 09
Living in a Glass House on the Ocean
Salt air is patient. Everything that lasts on an ocean cliff was chosen for one reason.
Why oceanfront houses use marine-grade stainless, laminated glass and anodised aluminium, what the salt does to the things that aren't, and the maintenance rhythm a glass house on the Atlantic actually runs on.
No. 10
Vertical Gardens, and What They Ask For
A living wall is a garden turned sideways. The plants are the easy part.
Irrigation, drainage, substrate and light — the four things that decide whether a living wall is a feature in five years or a stain. Written from a wall that threads three floors of a house in Joá.
No. 11
“Marble-Lined”: What the Word Is Doing in a Listing
Marble, granite, quartzite and porcelain all photograph the same. They do not behave the same.
Book-matched slabs, honed against polished, why Brazilian quartzite ended up in half the world's trophy houses, and the questions to ask when a listing says marble and means something else.
No. 12
How to Read a Luxury Listing
Built area, land area, suites, ocean view. Four phrases that mean four different things depending on who wrote them.
Área construída against área útil against área total, what counts as a suíte in Brazil, how ocean view gets stretched, and the five questions that turn a listing into a fact sheet.
No. 13
Buying Property in Brazil as a Foreigner
A foreign buyer can hold Brazilian urban property outright. The paperwork is where the time goes.
CPF, the escritura pública, the cartório de registro de imóveis, ITBI, and moving the money in on the record so it can leave again. The sequence, in order, with the parts that catch people out.
No. 14
Staffing a Large Private House in Rio
Eight hundred square metres does not clean itself, and the people who keep it are on the books.
Who a house this size actually needs, what registered domestic employment involves in Brazil since the 2015 law, and the difference between running a house yourself and handing it to a management company.
No. 15
Which Way the House Faces
In the southern hemisphere the good light comes from the north. Almost nobody checks.
North light, southern exposure, and why a Rio house that faces the wrong way is hot at the wrong hour. How to test orientation on a viewing, in about ninety seconds, without an instrument.
No. 16
Building on a Cliff
The view is the reason. The rock is the problem, the foundation and, in the end, the house.
Anchoring into gneiss, stepping a house down a slope instead of across it, drainage as the thing that actually fails, and why cliffside plots trade at a premium and build at one too.