A Hawaii Shop Turning Oahu’s Invasive Trees Into Surfboards

This spring, the chef Molly Levine began serving seasonal cuisine from a refurbished 1971 Airstream trailer parked on a former dairy farm in the Hudson Valley. Westerly Canteen’s trailer holds a compact kitchen with cream-painted walls and blond wood counters. “I had this wild idea, like, ‘What if we took the food truck concept and put it in a space that is still mobile but feels beautiful and welcoming?’” Levine said as she stirred a pot of golden-hued stock, fragrant with spring onion and green garlic. Levine, who previously worked at the Berkeley, Calif., restaurant Chez Panisse, founded Westerly with her partner, Alex Kaindl, a farmer who tends half an acre in Sharon, Conn. Nearly all of their ingredients are sourced from farms nearby. (Starting this month, Kaindl’s crops will also be incorporated.) Developing the weekly menu is a puzzle that requires maximizing limited space and resources. “A lot of our decisions are very creative and passion driven but also very practical,” Kaindl said as Levine ladled the stock over a plate of nettle-stuffed ravioli. “We slice up the spring onions that go into the dish, and the tops are made into the broth,” Levine said. “We’re using every piece of the onion.” The founders hope to engage the surrounding community while also drawing diners from afar. They’ve partnered with Tenmile Distillery, which offers cocktails made with local ingredients to go alongside Westerly’s menu (their take on a Negroni includes Faccia Brutto bitters from Buffalo, Method sweet vermouth from Romulus and gin made on-site at Tenmile). “We really want people to sit here and stay a while,” Levine said. westerlycanteen.com.

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A Quilter Reclaims His Image

Over seven years after his release from Angola State Prison in Louisiana, where he was wrongfully imprisoned for 41½ years, Gary Tyler will celebrate his first solo exhibition of quilts on July 8 at the Library Street Collective in Detroit, the same city where Rosa Parks and Tyler’s mother campaigned for his freedom in 1976. Tyler’s practice began after he started volunteering at Angola’s hospice program. In addition to gifting quilts to the families of late patients, volunteers would sell them at the prison’s rodeo for funding. When the group needed extra hands for an upcoming show, they recruited Tyler. “Doing my work made me realize that I have something to offer, that my greatest asset is myself,” Tyler says of revisiting quilting…