Laura Jackson on the launch of her new brand Hoste

With Hoste, Laura Jackson merges her design nous with a love of good, local food
Clara Strunck29 August 2019

Laura Jackson is excited. Next weekend, she will launch Hoste: a lifestyle brand encompassing supper clubs, travel, interiors and a monthly newsletter. The term ‘lifestyle brand’ may be overused in 2019, but for Hoste, the description seems apt. ‘I don’t know what it’s going to be yet,’ says Jackson, thoughtfully. ‘I know that I want to build a community of like-minded people. When we started Jackson and Levine we never thought that everything that happened to us would be possible, so I want to go into this open-minded.’

Jackson has form: in 2012, she launched a supper-club series with radio DJ Alice Levine, which enjoyed enormous success. Since then, the pair have collaborated on a cookbook and homeware ranges for Habitat. Jackson may not have a firm plan for Hoste, but she knows what she’s doing — next weekend’s inaugural supper club sold out in just 25 minutes. ‘It’s about meeting around a table and enjoying conversation with people you wouldn’t normally chat to,’ she smiles. ‘I’m glad people still want to do that.’

Picking a location for the first dinner was easier than expected. A friend put Jackson on to Forty Hall farm and vineyard, an Enfield-based business and social enterprise that supplies local ingredients and makes its own award-winning wines, while helping its volunteers through ecotherapy (treatments centred on outdoor activity). ‘Because community is at the core of Hoste, I wanted to do the launch somewhere that had the same ethics,’ says Jackson. She and Simon Stallard, Cornish restaurateur and author of The Hidden Hut, will cook on wood-fired grills in the vineyard and nearly everything will be sourced from the neighbourhood. ‘There’s Enfield honey, a beer company and a local gin distillery. We’re trying to work on a goat’s cheese but the nearest I’ve found so far is Essex!’

For Jackson, the look is as important as the food: she has collaborated on clothing collections for Rixo and Warehouse and her personal style naturally translates into her tablescapes. ‘I always want to create things that aren’t ridiculously expensive,’ she says. ‘I buy linen from the fabric shop and make my own tablecloths and napkins. High street homeware collections like Zara and Next are amazing and eBay is brilliant for glassware.’ (hostelondon.co.uk; fortyhallvineyard.com)

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