The light
Wax candles on every table, wall lamps dimmed by hand, and not one spotlight on a plate. By midnight the patio is lit almost entirely by flame.
Home / The House
The house, room by room
Five years of rebuilding, Sevillian craftsmen, and a capacity kept deliberately small. This page is about the building, and about the way an evening moves through it.
The house
I
The house
A patio, two floors and a great deal of patience
The house was raised around 1780 and was, for almost two centuries, home to a family of olive-oil merchants. When we found it, the patio had been roofed over in sheet metal and the marble columns had disappeared under layers of paint.
The work took five years. We worked with Sevillian craftsmen who still fire azulejo by hand, and with a lime master who insisted on returning the walls to their original white. We added nothing the house did not already have.
- The central patio, with its recovered columns and floor of fired clay.
- The main salon, with a coffered ceiling and a fireplace in Estremoz marble.
- The library, eight covers, kept for the quietest dinners of the week.
- The roof terrace, open May to October, with the tower in view.
- Capacity held on purpose at forty-two covers per service.
The atmosphere of the night
The light drops, and the tempo changes
An evening here is composed like a piece: the light falls half a tone every hour, service slows after the second course, and the guitar replaces the silence once eleven has gone. Nobody will tell you when to get up.
The table
Hand-washed linen, white earthenware without decoration, blown glass. A table is dressed in front of the guest, not before they arrive.
The quiet
No background music before ten. The walls were treated acoustically so the table beside you cannot follow your conversation.
The salon
Evenings with a theme
A different appointment every week
Some nights are simply dinner. Others have a reason, and the reason is usually someone who grew, raised or wrote something worth an hour of the evening.
- Growers' Wednesday — whoever farms or raises it sits at the table and talks.
- Vertical sherry tastings — five draws from the same butt, once a month.
- Reading dinners — an Andalusian author reads between the main course and dessert.
- Guitar nights — live repertoire on the last Friday of the month.
- Summer on the roof — service in the open from May to October.