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KITTY TRAVERS • La Grotta Ices
WORK • Wednesday Routine
KITTY TRAVERS • confectioner • La Grotta Ices
Neighbourhood you work and live in: Elephant & Castle
It’s Wednesday morning. What’s the scene at your workplace?
Wednesday morning sees me fleeing as an act of radical self-care (flinging myself on my bike, feet skidding off the pedals) at 8a. This might not seem particularly early, but it crucially means that I miss the usual daily routine for my kids (teeth-brushing, packed lunch-making, school run, etc). This is incredibly freeing! I stop by work to put away my dairy order, plus a box of tiny Corsican clementines that’s been delivered, but I’m just in and out, on my way to my weekly class at Alan Herdman Pilates.
Wait, come back! Exercise is the most boring thing you can talk about, and I’m sorry to do it, but my 20+ years of cooking professionally have been ruinous, and it’s important I try to repair the damage. My class is right across London, just off Edgware Road. It suits me just right because it’s quite serious and proper, but not competitive at all. Most of the other devotees are of advanced years and are very genteel, remarkably lithe, and flexible. We puff away gently like a room full of slow electric kettles for an hour, and then it’s time for breakfast. I go to the café at La Fromagerie. It’s cramped and a bit dark, but (similarly to my pal Leila’s Shop), they cook with lovely ingredients from the grocery shop next door. I have scrambled eggs on toast, Tabasco sauce, and very hot coffee.
What’s on the agenda for today?
I persevere with an article I’ve been trying to finish for ages about the director Mati Diop. I look up her documentary Dahomey, and it’s screening in half an hour's time at the amazing Garden Cinema just off Kingsway. Tickets are a fiver and it’s only an hour long, so I throw ice cream-making to the wind for the morning and cycle towards Aldwych.
At this point, just in case you think I’m a spoiled little pig living the high life… you’re right, I am. But also, my husband has been working on a film for the past eight years and has been away a lot, so I’ve been taking care of kids/house/ice creams and trying to keep life functioning which sometimes feels completely overwhelming. He finished the grade this week and his work is done, and that’s my excuse for taking time off for a little treat today.
Cycling is the best way to get around London, and it’s one of the only times I’m able to think thoughts. At home, my naughty but nice little children take up all my mental energy. In my euphoria, I start imagining a tropical fruit cassata. Back at work, I juice the tiny clementines and save the cut halves for stuffing. Then, I finish batches of key lime, zabaglione, and Sicilian feijoa ice creams so they’re ready for a taste test tomorrow.
Any restaurant plans today, tonight, this weekend?
Eating out alone once a week with an old copy of a New Yorker (from Shreeji Newsagents) is a pleasure I look forward to almost too much. Sometimes I go to Toklas Bakery because they also have the best coffee cups in town: olive green ones just the right size for my long black, and delicious crispy pizza topped with potatoes or Jerusalem artichoke and sour Italian soft cheese.
How about a little leisure or culture?
I’m looking forward to dinner some night soon at Lao Dao. It’s a Chinese XinJiang restaurant in a beautifully restored 1920s Kennedy’s Sausage Shop on Walworth Road. It has a cool, festive atmosphere, and I just love it there. We’ll order dark, tender chicken stewed with Szechuan pepper, star anise, and potatoes, crowned with a single, wide, neverending noodle. Also: huge pots of steaming tea and nice wines from Ancestral.
Any weekend getaways?
I love a weekend getaway to Paris, where I get an ice cream (wild strawberry Melba cup) at the historic Berthillon tea room on the Île Saint-Louis. It has to be in the seated section, because then you get to eat out of beautiful scalloped metal coupes from Madame Berthillon’s private collection.
What was your last great vacation?
The aforementioned key limes were bought from the Hamlin Stevenson farmers market in George Town, Grand Cayman, after a recent residency at the dreamy Palm Heights hotel. I initially didn’t want to go because I’m afraid of flying, and also because I’m a horrible snob — a Google search of the local supermarket revealed it was full of Waitrose produce and shortbread, so I assumed it was a place of homesick expats living in a tax haven and that everything was imported. That may be true, but it’s also true that there are incredible farms on the island growing crazily fragrant guava, june plum, genip, naseberry, papaya, soursop, green coconut, and starfruit.
And though this won’t be a newsflash to anyone who has come from or been to the Caribbean before… the water is warm, clear, and full of red snapper and leaping swordfish. The sand is like icing sugar, and Palm Heights just seems to draw the best, sweetest, most gorgeous staff (who are also great cooks) from all over. I had a lot of fun working alongside them. I miss it and can’t wait to go back.