My friend Skye McAlpine has a PhD in classics from Oxford, which might seem like a bit of a paradox considering that she’s best known as a cookbook author and hostess (par excellence). Not that the latter requires any less intelligence or seriousness, just that the former has, let’s say, dry and stuffy associations. But once you know that her specialization is Latin love poetry, you begin to understand Skye beyond her (admittedly exquisitely curated) Instagram feed.
As her posts from her homes in London and Venice convey, Skye’s is a romantic view of the world, but it’s tempered with intellectual rigor. She strives for beauty in the everyday, and to create an atmosphere of love for both her friends and her considerable following. This is someone with an acute and innate understanding of cultures, an extraordinary transportive eye and a mind like a steel trap. I often say at PRIOR that it is our job to not only show the reality of a place, but the fantasy of it, too — a balance of romance and rigor. It is this lesser-known aspect of Skye that I love. Her recipes are not only plainly delicious and full of generosity, but have integrity and a sly sense of history and research.
For complex reasons of history, Skye and her family decamped to Venice when she was just six and, until very recently, she was known as this kind of Merchant Ivory throwback wandering through the magical city, visiting the Rialto market and then creating dishes, first with dishes of pure Venetian origin and then, slowly, more English and contemporary cooking. Now living predominantly in London with her husband and two boys, she has become a true bridge of cultures with two tables, one “in Venice” and another”for friends” at home.
David Prior: We've known each other for quite some time now. Even though you're associated with home and being home — either in London or your amazing palazzo in Venice — I think that people probably don't realize quite how worldly and well-traveled you are beyond those places. You grew up traveling. Where are some places that had a big impact on you?
Skye McAlpine: My parents always traveled, and when I was very little, we spent a lot of time in Australia as well. I think my mother says that this is very much to her credit, that when she went to change my first passport, when I was three, we'd been to Australia and back 18 times, which is a tribute to her.
It’s where you got your good sense of humor, I think. No?
Yeah, exactly. Australia, in a way, feels like home to me. I have so many happy memories. We dodged around up in Western Australia in Broome — all over, but there and Sydney predominantly. I think because I was an only child and my parents traveled lots, their general parenting attitude was that I would just basically fit in with them. Before we moved to Venice when I was six, we used to come to Venice a lot on holiday and then travel around in Europe. If they went to Paris, I went to Paris.
Then from the ages of 9 to 12, my parents were really into doing road trips across the States, because at the time my father loved Western movies and he was also collecting a lot of Navajo jewelry and random bits and bobs. So we spent quite a lot of time in Santa Fe, and he was really into vintage clothes or vintage Mickey Mouses. So we'd drive across the States to various dealers or whatever to buy vintage whatever it was, whether it was Hawaiian prints, guns, or cowboy hats.
