Bridget Arsenault

British-born and New York-based, Margot Hauer-King is the middle child of American theater producer Debra Hauer and London’s best-dressed restaurateur, Jeremy King. Hauer-King was raised in restaurants – her father having shaped London’s dining scene with his business partner Chris Corbin, from The Wolseley to Le Caprice to J. Sheekey, still reframing with his solo openings, The Park and Simpson’s. And now, after a chance introduction to journalist and film producer Emmet McDermott – of the headline-making documentary White Hot: The Rise & Fall of Abercrombie & Fitch – Hauer-King and McDermott are reshaping Big City nightlife. Opened just over a year ago in Greenwich Village, People’s is best described by what it is not.

Washington, DC might not seem the obvious choice for Britain’s oldest wine and spirits merchant to establish its first US outpost, eschewing more likely suspects such as, say, Manhattan. But that’s exactly what Berry Bros. & Rudd, founded in 1698 opposite St. James’s Palace in London, has done. “We’ve quickly earned recognition across all of DC, as well as Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, and more,” says Jamie Ritchie, the company’s longtime managing director. “The news that we’re here spread quickly because it’s a smaller population, a smaller competitive set. People are aware we’ve arrived.” ‘If you spend too much time looking backwards you tend to bump into the future.

Lila Raicek likes a big swing. Just last year the New York-based playwright and screenwriter debuted My Master Builder in London’s West End – only a matter of months after the first draft landed on director Michael Grandage’s desk. Most writers wait a lifetime to catch even a whiff of a Broadway or central London staging (especially one starring Ewan McGregor and Elizabeth Debicki). But for Raicek, this warp-speed ascension is something of a pattern. “I wrote a play at Columbia,” says Raicek of her college days. “It was my senior graduate school thesis. And that play was seen by a couple of people in Hollywood.” Bang, that script gets optioned for the screen and lands Raicek in a Los Angeles writers’ room.