In Good Taste: Kate Snyder

10 things the writer and Brand Manager at Loeffler Randall can't live without

Kate Snyder is a writer and creator based in Brooklyn–she also happens to be one of my best friends. The mind behind

Pony Express

on Substack, she is also the Brand Marketing Manager at Loeffler Randall, a wonderful cook, and the host of a great dinner party. Quick witted and sharp, Kate’s sensibility is fun, feminine, and truly her own. Below are the curated picks that will instantly draw you into her world. Hope you enjoy <3

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1. Lisa Corti Tablecloth — Two years ago I went with this guy I was dating to his brother’s wedding. I bought this for the couple as a gift but then that guy broke up with me two weeks later and I had this $250 tablecloth sitting at the foot of my bed for twice that long. I kept it there, wrapped with a devastatingly earnest bow, thinking maybe I could find a way to give it to the bride as a gesture of my unfailing class and goodwill and then maybe that would make the man who broke my heart see what a huge mistake he’d made. But I decided the better, more beautiful thing would be to take it for myself — a consolation prize of a pretty devastating heartbreak (he said it really sucked he wasn’t feeling it because I was so funny). Now I use it for every single dinner party and by now it’s covered in my turmeric stains and candle wax and he is way slower than I am (we still follow each other on Strava).

2. Gigantic Enamelware Bowl — I mean gigantic. Like big enough for a home birth or even a modest indoor Koi pond. I thought it would be too big to ever use again when I bought it for its first intended use (a 40-person housewarming/birthday party punch in February when people are drinking house party punch like water), but I’ve used it 100 times since. For punch again, for setting wine and beers on ice, and for my famous (shhh) farro salad over and over again. Bonus points for how cute and elven it makes me feel when I hold it <3.

   

3. Deruta Of Italy Dinnerware — I go to Chelsea Flea probably once a season, and 75% of the time it’s full of (frankly) smelly garbage and I get all but spat on by the guy selling antique French nightgowns (they’re hanging in the middle of a parking lot but no God FORBID I touch a sleeve). Every fourth visit, though, I strike absolute gold, and it is that Russian roulette that keeps me coming back for more. On one such visit I found a full set of Deruta dinner plates — 10 total, selling for $8 a plate. This is the exact motif on the ones I brought home, and I love these and these so much too omg you should get them!!

4. Antique Room Screen —Harling Ross changed my life when she did this years and years ago and I couldn’t wait for my very own perfect screen to find me. It did, months later at a secondhand furniture store in my hometown. This screen had just arrived two days before I did, delivered by the grandchildren of a renowned northern Virginia haberdasher (!!). I bought it for $750, at that point the most I’d spent on anything but rent, and for the first time I felt like something close to a grown woman. And now I feel like an investment genius because it’s selling on Charish for $3,715. You could get this one or this one or this one or this one that I found for you.

   

5. Staffordshire Terrier Salt & Pepper Shakers — Everyone literally won’t stop telling me about how amazing it is to go out for dinner solo and how they love it so much but I will never want to do that no matter how many times you have a single glass of wine with your journal at the bar, Sara Keene. I found these perfect vintage salt and pepper shakers that sit on my dinner table in perpetuity and now I never have to have a meal by myself because they’re always with me. They make me so happy to look at them…

6. Ottolenghi Simple — It is very well documented (by me) that if I ever cook you Ottolenghi’s Chicken Marbella it means I love you. I have made it for a lot of people and I have loved them all. It’s from Simple, which is the cookbook that wholly informed the kind of cook I am — the flavor profiles that I like and the balance that I hope to strike when it comes to warmth, texture, and how I want you to feel when I leave my dinner table. Full and cared for.

7. Fury Bros Supra 56 Hand Soap — This soap smells like my middle school crush’s deodorant which is one of my top five favorite smells in the world, naturally. I found it at Fine & Dandy, a seriously amazing vintage menswear shop in Hell’s Kitchen. It is also the only soap that can get the reek of an old sponge off my hands. :).

8. Charlie Brown Welch's Jars — Much more than the Zodiac, my sun, moon and rising signs are aligned with Sally, Lucy, and Snoopy, respectively. I found four of these sweet as shit Peanuts jam jars at Yesterday’s News in Cobble Hill (which is in my experience the only New York vintage store with prices that aren’t insulting please and do correct me if I’m wrong) and I love them so much. They are equally as perfect for a little glass of wine at dinner as they are for my OCCASIONAL glass of skim milk before bed (GROW UP ABOUT IT.)

   

9. Art by Sophie Treppendahl — The process of aging means realizing with increasing frequency that it’s better to just buy the actually good thing. Like for the love of god, Kate, do not get another $3 ring from the jar on the checkout counter that leaves your finger green and itchy. Put down the movie posters and save up to purchase one painting by a real artist you really love. And so the plastic-framed Time cover goes on Facebook marketplace and I spring for work by Sophie Treppendahl. I saw a show of hers at the Quirk Gallery in Charlottesville and her colors and brushstroke is what I hope my heart and soul would look like if it sat for a portrait. When she moved from Richmond to New Orleans, she posted a big studio clean out sale of her studies and drafts to her site and I got two of them — rough sketches with acrylic on paper. I’ll have them for the rest of my life! Another very favorite artist of mine Scott Csoke posts little studio sales to their stories semi-regularly, too. Follow them!!'

   

10. Bois De Balincourt Perfume — I worked at a fancy boutique called Scarpa all throughout college and most summers in between. I was the only employee under 40 and the women that took me under their collective wing there taught me a lot about taste, especially for the finer things. We had a wall full of very expensive cosmetics in the back, things like Vintner’s Daughter and Kjaer Weis foundation, and when it was slow and I’d already Swiffered underneath all the racks I’d spend half an hour just re-smelling every single eau de parfum. Bois De Balincourt was always my favorite but I’d never let myself buy it because it was $100 and even with my generous employee discount it didn’t feel cosmically right for me to have such a luxe signature scent at 19. You should smell exclusively like Dove deodorant and Glossier You at 19. But the women of Scarpa gave me a bottle when I graduated and now I buy two every year during the Sephora sale so I’ll never run out and I’ll always smell like “a dominant Cedarwood and Sandalwood accord that's supplemented by a spicy Cinnamon Nutmeg complex with an earthy Vetiver note.”