Lemaire Tomato Water is delicious: The Recipe
A Spyplane Exclusive, summertime in a glass. Plus small-batch clothes from an inspired independent L.A. maker, and life inside a postapocalyptic bunker
Mach 3+ city intel for traveling the entire planet is here. The threads for Tuscany and Berlin are particularly bubbling at the moment.
Check our new Ultimate Spyplane Guides to Tokyo, Kyoto, and Osaka, Naoshima, Teshima & more.
We just saluted the vibiest house we’ve ever been to, a short train ride from London, here.
Our new guide to How To Pack for a Trip Swaggily is here.
In today’s Plane we’ve got:
🪡 Small-batch shirts, shorts & more from a one-woman L.A. clothing line, dropping soon and priced much lower than they could be.
☢️ A movie from a brilliant director about life inside a postapocalyptic bunker.
🍅 Summertime in a glass.
Let’s get to it —
People often ask us, “Jonah and Erin, what does it mean as a matter of lived experience to be the No. 1 source across all media for ‘Unbeatable Recon?’”
The answer can take all kinds of forms. Here’s one: When you find yourself in attendance at the Lemaire SS26 show, as we recently did, you do not leave immediately when it’s over, the way some people hastily do. You linger. Not only to chop it up with friends, dap up Christophe Lemaire himself and learn that he f--ks with Blackbird Spyplane, but also to see if waiters come around with trays of delicious-looking beverages you have never seen before. And if they ask you if you’d like one, you tell them, J’en aimerais bien — merci.
That’s how Erin and I found ourselves drinking glasses of Lemaire Tomato Water. It was delicious — a touch salty, a touch citrusy, just the right hint of viscosity, almost clear, but with a luminous blush. Truly the taste of summertime in a tumbler.
We knew then and there that we had to track down the recipe, both for ourselves and for you, the gourmands of Spy Nation.
And that is exactly what we have done. The drink was crafted for Lemaire by Manger Manger, and today we are sharing the recipe in a World Exclusive Spyplane News Event:
For a glass of approx. 200ml, you’ll need:
- ripe organic tomatoes (approx. 500g or 1 lb.)
- a tiny pinch of salt
- verbena leaves, timut pepper (not required, but present at the show)
Blend quickly (no need for a fine purée), add a pinch of salt, the verbena leaves and the coarsely cracked pepper, mix. Leave to stand for 15-20 min to allow the salt to release the juices.
Line a fine strainer with cheesecloth (or a coffee filter or a clean tea towel), pour the purée into the strainer and place over a bowl. Leave to drain gently in the fridge, without pressing (to make the liquid very transparent).
Erin and I are away from HQ as I write this, but on Tuesday morning we popped into a supermarket to buy a pound of regs on-the-vine tomatoes and, sans blender, Erin improvised, using a citrus press to mash them up. (Use a blender.) We did find some fine cheesecloth, but had to sub in tarragon for the verbena leaves, and subbed in nothing for the timut pepper — some people suggest sichuan peppercorns as a rough alternative, but even though those might have added an enjoyable numbing note, we didn’t want that kind of curveball in our first batch.
Even under these sub-optimal circumstances, our tomato water turned out delicious. We will do it by the book ASAP. (FYI we turned the leftover salted & tarragoned tomato matter into a phenomenal pasta sauce.)
As it happens, there’s a little Melissa Clark NYT ode to tomato water from 2011, which notes its moment as a faddish fine-dining phenomenon back in the ‘90s. Clark’s various delicious-sounding preparations are all about working the tomato water into other dishes, though.
None are about taking the tomate straight to the mf tête, Lemaire-style.
Meanwhile —
For a year or so we’ve been keeping tabs on the work of a gifted L.A. clothesmaker who designs a small range of very cool-looking button-ups, pants, jackets and shorts — among other things — often with hand-sewn finishing.
She cuts her own patterns, and contracts with local sewers to produce the clothes in those cases where she doesn’t make the pieces start-to-finish herself. Despite all that, her clothes do not cost an arm & a leg.
This weekend she’s got a new drop coming, with another drop due in a couple weeks: