“I had no clue what I was doing at the time,” she admits, “but I learned a lot in the process.” Born in Los Angeles and raised in Austin, Texas, Lewin previously worked as editorial director of the restaurant recommendation site The Infatuation, eating her way around all of New York City’s boroughs most nights of the week. “Not every night is a dinner party, but any night can be a Big Night,” is the mantra behind the colorful concept store, explains Katherine Lewin, who took a risk when she founded it nearly two years ago. What might sound like a motley first course at New York’s next latest eatery is just one-quarter of a tightly-curated shelf at Big Night, which opens the double doors of its second location this week.

But some said it was because he had forsaken his spear.Precious morsels of caviar brined to perfection, creamy hand-molded Beurre de Baratte butter from Normandy, and piquant mussels marinated Spanish-style with the unlikely companion of sweet kombu seaweed. Arab Maina died on the field of action in the service of the King. It was so simple and so unimportant.īut of course it meant something to Kibii and me, because the tall young man was Kibii's father and my most special friend. He was shot and killed by the other man, who also believed in duty, and he was buried where he fell. He took the gun and held it the way they had told him to hold it, and walked where they told him to walk, smiling a little and looking for another man to fight.

He thought war was made of spears and shields and courage, and he brought them all.īut they gave him a gun, so he left the spear and the shield behind him and took the courage, and went where they sent him because they said this was his duty and he believed in duty. The young man tied his shuka on his shoulder one day and took his shield and his spear and went to war. It was an ordinary story, but Kibii and I, who knew him well, thought there was no story like it, or one as sad, and we think so now. It was about how the war progressed in German East Africa and about a tall young man who was killed in it. It was not a story that meant much as stories went in those days. It seemed a laborious method of retribution, but that was the way it was being done.Ī messenger came to the farm with a story to tell. A man of importance had been shot at a place I could not pronounce in Swahili or in English, and, because of this shooting, whole countries were at war.

West with the night