Artful Living Magazine | Spring 2021 by Artful Living Magazine

SPRING 2021

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In an effort to lift spirits, spread positive energy and support those around us, Artful Living has partnered with artist Heather Polk to bring you this exclusive art print, “Love is an Action Word.” A portion of proceeds will support the South Side Community Arts Center in Chicago. Visit ArtfulLiving.com/Giving to purchase. From the Artist “Love is an action word is the simplest description of this artwork. Love is an act of selfless giving, sharing and receiving — ideally a reciprocal loop. Even more simply, I love hearts! I collect them. I regularly pair hearts with hands in my work as a way of exploring a range of emotions associated with love. I felt this particular artwork was perfect for Artful Giving because there is a universal appeal: We all have a heart, and we all have hands to give, help or support.”

Homeownership is all of it.

Home is healing.

Home is a headquarters.

Home is love.

Unfortunately, homeownership is not attainable for everyone. But together we can begin to change this. The movement to grow homeownership opportunities. The benefits of homeownership reach every corner of the lives of Minnesotans. Most Minnesotans want to own homes, but there are barriers that unnecessarily limit homeownership opportunities for so many in our state. This problem is not new, but the housing market today presents unique and growing challenges for those left out of homeownership.

What our housing market needs—more affordably built homes. Minnesota’s housing market serves many of us well, and the homes we build in Minnesota are among the most energy efficient in the country. However, our housing market does not provide an adequate supply of affordably priced homes. We need to build more of them. Lots more of them. This lack of affordably priced options is not by design. The housing industry wants to meet the demand for these homes and to grow homeownership opportunities. Unfortunately, several barriers hold us back from serving the entirety of the housing market.

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HomeownershipMN.org

Lifting barriers to homeownership. One of the largest barriers to homeownership is a series of outdated rules and requirements that unnecessarily limit the construction of affordably priced homes. Many rules, like local government zoning, were created to protect resources and consumers. However, over the years these rules have grown to work against our shared value of homeownership opportunity for all. Modernizing these rules and protections to make them work in support of homeownership opportunities is a challenge, but it can be accomplished!

The opportunity of homeownership for everyone, everywhere. Through our premier home tour events and our advocacy work at the capitol, Housing First Minnesota has a proud history of promoting homeownership in Minnesota. We have welcomed Minnesotans to celebrate homeownership for decades and watched our region grow. Today we find ourselves in a moment of critical importance as we think about those left out of our housing market. This moment calls us to prioritize the cause of homeownership and to inspire Minnesotans to take action.

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THE

FOOD ISSUE

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CONTENTS FEATURE

ILLUSTRATION BY ITSME23/ISTOCK

112 WHY FOOD MATTERS 10 luminaries weigh in on the importance of food in their lives in 2021.

IN EVERY ISSUE 218 ADVERTISER INDEX

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CONTENTS

CULTURE 44 AT AUCTION Influential tastemakers bring Old World objects into the modern day.

50 ESSAY Former Star Tribune food editor Lee Svitak Dean reflects on a 40-year career.

55 NICE RIDE The Audi RS Q8 puts racecar performance in the everyday SUV.

STYLE 72 TREND What happens to a sober-curious movement in a global pandemic?

76 MEN’S STYLE David Coggins on the five shoes every man should own.

The season’s most covetable tableware.

COMPASS 91 WINERY Charles Stinson designs an inspired Sonoma County property.

96 DESTINATION The most extraordinary bars across the world.

103 TOUR Desirable destinations the Artful Living way.

Artful Living

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CONTENTS

191 ICON Ina Garten on the virtues of comfort food.

198 HISTORY How a soy sauce plant transformed one Wisconsin town.

204 MUSIC Five years after Prince’s death, his legacy remains shrouded in mystery.

214 NORTH NOTABLES The region’s best and brightest.

HOME 128 PROPERTY GALLERY Coldwell Banker Realty presents the finest homes for sale.

152 RESTORATION A historic St. Paul home gets a thoughtful renovation.

159 GARDENING Chris Plantan on the splendor of a cutting garden.

164 ARCHITECTURE Aulik Design Build creates a contemporary Colorado retreat.

ADVENTURE 176 ESSAY Steve Hoffman gets a lesson in adventurous eating.

179 EXCURSION Arizona’s storied Enchantment Resort debuts Trail House.

184 FARE Why you should embrace a field-to-fork lifestyle.

Artful Living

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INTEL

Every home has a story.

FROM THE EDITORS Kate Nelson: It’s hard to remember a time when we were fixated on culinary trends like molecular gastronomy, edible activated charcoal and unicorn food — the colorful, sparkly cuisine that reached its peak with Starbucks’ Unicorn Frappuccino. And yet, that was just a few years ago. These days, I think we’re all eager to have more authentic, honest conversations about what really matters. For our feature, we tapped renowned writer Julia Heffelfinger to cover exactly that: why food matters (page 112). She asked 10 food world luminaries — from chefs and farmers to authors and activists — to discuss this complex, complicated topic. Hayley Saunders: There’s no shortage of interesting food and wine content in these pages. Barefoot Contessa fans will love Ina Garten’s take on the importance of comfort food in today’s world (page 191). Brittany Chaffee explores how a Kikkoman soy sauce plant transformed a small Wisconsin town (page 198), while Laura Schara explains why you should embrace a field-to-fork lifestyle (page 184). And Julia Bainbridge shows what happens to a sobercurious movement during a global pandemic (page 72). KN: For this issue, we asked some celebrated Minnesota writers to speak from the heart. Former Star Tribune food editor Lee Svitak Dean shares observations from her 40-year career (page 50). Steve Hoffman, who earned his James Beard Award with a story about Northern food that appeared in this very magazine, recalls an important lesson in adventurous eating (page 176). And of special note is the epic journey music reporter Andrea Swensson takes us on as she tries to uncover a mystery surrounding the late great Prince five years after his passing (page 204). HS: Spring is a time of rebirth and renewal — something we all have been looking particularly forward to this year. We hope this content helps you kick off the season by making you smile, making you think and making you remember what really matters.

Happy reading,

Kate Nelson Editor-in-Chief

Artful Living

Hayley Saunders

Managing Editor + Associate Publisher

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Lee Svitak Dean, Katie Dohman, Amber Gibson, Julia Heffelfinger, Steve Hoffman, Jennifer Blaise Kramer, Wendy Lubovich, Chris Plantan, Anne Roderique-Jones, Laura Schara, Andrea Swensson

Photographers: Victoria Campbell, Camille Lizama Illustrators: Hilbrand Bos, Eva Hoffman, Michael Iver Jacobsen, Klawe Rzeczy, Alexa Todd

Advertising Sales Contact Frank Roffers at 952-237-1100 or froffers@artfulliving.com.

Subscriber Services Contact us at 952-230-3133 or hello@artfulliving.com.

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Artful Living is published by North Co., all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reprinted without permission. North Co. cannot be held responsible for any errors or omissions. Artful Living is committed to preserving the environment and demonstrates this by printing efficiently and sustainably. In consideration of environmental impact, this magazine is 100% recyclable.

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THE MAGAZINE On the Cover Our spring food issue features a captivating image by renowned Danish photographer Ditte Isager that beckons us back to nature. It was captured for Copenhagen’s Noma, widely considered the world’s best restaurant. Isager has worked with the eatery on several photography collections, which have earned her multiple James Beard Awards and helped make her one of the most sought-after lifestyle photographers across the globe. She credits Noma cofounders Claus Meyer and René Redzepi for teaching her to appreciate the beauty of food. As for her inspirations? “My biggest inspirations are light and colors: I love watching the daylight, how it travels throughout the day, how it changes with the weather, and how different types of windows and glass create different types of light,” she explains.

About Artful Living is one of the top independent boutique lifestyle magazines across the United States with international reach. Founded in 2008, this award-winning quarterly magazine features engaging original content and beautiful design, bringing the best of the North and beyond to an affluent audience with impeccable taste. This elegant, intelligent publication aims to inspire and entertain, highlighting culture, home, style, travel, food, profiles and more. The Artful Living lifestyle brand is headquartered in Minneapolis.

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Artful Living Delivered Right To Your Doorstep To subscribe to Artful Living or order back issues, visit ArtfulLiving.com. For bulk copies, contact us at 952-230-3133 or hello@artfulliving.com.

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Dry Party Julia Bainbridge on the sober-curious lifestyle.

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Taste Maker Inside Gianluca Longo’s inspired Syon House vignettes.

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CULTURE

AT AUCTION ESSAY NICE RIDE

44 50 5 5

Spring 2021

CULTURE

AT AU C T I O N

MASTER

Artful Living

CLASS THE AUCTION WORLD TAPS INFLUENTIAL TASTEMAKERS TO BRING OLD WORLD OBJECTS INTO THE MODERN DAY.

PHOTOGRAPHY PROVIDED BY CHRISTIE’S

BY W E N DY L U B OV I C H

Spring 2021

CULTURE

AT AU C T I O N

IT’S THE KIND OF LUSH, CINEMATIC VIGNETTE THAT

conjures up elegant dinner parties in aristocratic estates, complete with silver candelabras, antique porcelain and rich Murano glass. But this ravishing scene isn’t from a movie set or an editorial photo shoot; it’s part of an online marketing strategy to help bring Old World objects into the modern day. More and more, esteemed auction houses like Christie’s and Sotheby’s are partnering with influential tastemakers to bring a bit of pizzazz to high-profile sales. For a duo of recent sales, Christie’s tapped British Vogue Style Editor Gianluca Longo to style spaces using objects and artwork that would soon be hitting the auction block. The editor has always dreamed of living in a conservatory, so he created a series of vignettes inside London’s iconic Syon House. Videos of those dreamy settings were then splashed across the auction house’s website and social media channels. “The tastemakers are all experts in their fields, chosen for their ability to harmoniously bring a sale to life with great style,” explains Christie’s Head of Sale and Specialist Isabelle Cartier-Stone. “We approached Gianluca specifically due to his love of art, travel, fashion and interiors. He has an innate international approach and understanding of how to meld 17th through 19th century objects within a home today.” And that partnership certainly paid off. Featuring English and European furniture, art, silver, ceramics and the like, the dual auctions brought in more than £4.5 million between an online sale and a live auction beamed around the world. As anticipated, pieces showcased in Longo’s vignettes attracted strong bidding. A French ormolu and cloisonné enamel étagère cabinet sold for £43,750, twice the estimate. And a set of six grained Montgomerie pattern armchairs sold for £11,875, again double the estimate. Tastemakers and auction houses seem to be a match made in marketing heaven. To wit: Last fall, Christie’s asked American heiress and businesswoman Aerin Lauder to create a table setting in her East Hampton home, mixing family objects with pieces from the sale of the Jayne Wrightsman collection. For a 2019 auction, Sotheby’s partnered with Victoria Beckham, who exhibited soon-to-be-sold Old Master paintings in her London boutique. And back in 2018, even Martha Stewart got in on the action, selecting her favorite porcelain from the Christie’s sale of the collection of Peggy and David Rockefeller; the domestic doyenne was smitten with an 1815 Derby service featuring bold fruit and flowers. Beyond just style, these tastemakers are also promoting sustainability. Younger clients and collectors are encouraged to invest in quality pieces — timeless antiques with generations of skill and craftsmanship behind them. Curated vignettes show them how to mix these treasures with modern-day pieces, creating a home that is lovingly layered over time. “I love seeing that there is a generation of late 30-somethings whose interiors are an extension of their own personal style — ultimately an expression of themselves as they embrace ‘special’ for everyday living,” Cartier-Stone concludes.

For a behind-the-scenes look at Gianluca Longo’s Syon House vignettes, head to ArtfulLiving.com.

Artful Living

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CULTURE

Artful Living

E S S AY

Taste

OF THE

Past

FORMER STAR TRIBUNE FOOD EDITOR LEE SVITAK DEAN REFLECTS ON 40 YEARS REPORTING FROM KITCHENS, RESTAURANTS AND FARM FIELDS. I L L U S T R AT I O N B Y M I C H A E L I V E R J A C O B S E N

Spring 2021

CULTURE

E S S AY

THE NEWSPAPER STACKS CROWD

me at the dining room table, more than 2,000 sections in all, many stuffed in boxes, others in bound volumes, vying for space and attention. The disarray is temporary; I’m only weeks into the close of a 40-year role at the Star Tribune, first as a food writer then as the Taste section editor for 26 years. For now, I’m flipping through newsprint, looking for memories hidden among the pages. My first byline in the Minneapolis Star took me to a pick-your-own produce farm near Osseo, where I gathered strawberries along with a story about two youthful farmers that I later typed out on an IBM Selectric. Four decades later as I worked from home, my final story as a Star Tribune staffer involved a Zoom interview with Swedish chef Magnus Nilsson. Between those two bookends, a crazy quilt of interviews, experiences and developments tells not only my history, but that of Minnesota food culture. Week after week, year after year, I talked with chefs, home cooks, farmers and artisan producers, all in an effort to answer the age-old question: What’s for dinner? Along the way, I made some observations.

Artful Living

FOOD WRITING WASN’T A THING. Taste debuted in October 1969, as food sections began popping up in newspapers across the country. From the beginning, food writers were journalists who happened to write about food and certainly not “foodies,” a term most of my colleagues from that era disdain. No one landed in these positions because of career planning. We fell into our roles because we were in the right place at the right time, and usually because an editor needed to fill a job fast. It wasn’t until the mid- to late nineties that college students and young professionals began inquiring about food writing as a career. My advice to them? Keep your day job.

HOME COOKS NEED SHORTCUTS. I was a new mother in 1980 when I joined the staff at the Star, one in the early wave of back-to-work women in search of mealtime strategies. In those years, cookbooks with fast recipes were few and far between, and those that dribbled into the newsroom ended up on my desk, ostensibly to reference for a new column on quick cooking but, in reality, to serve as my backup plan for dinner. In 1990, I interviewed an unlikely author of such a book: French chef Jacques Pépin, who was visiting Minneapolis to talk about his most recent tome, The Short-Cut Cook. I was still making my own spaghetti sauce when he gave permission to use the jarred variety. “Much is made of the notion that homemade quality is superior,” he told me. “But under the name of homemade, I have had some horrendous meals.”

JOURNALISTS DO THEIR HOMEWORK. By the 1990s, as the food world expanded, so too did mine as a journalist. In those pre-Internet and pre-smartphone days, when I sought background information, it often involved a trip to the Central Library or a dig through the newspaper’s files. When I needed to talk with California chef Alice Waters about her children’s book, I simply called her Chez Panisse and she answered, with only a hint of surprise. That would eventually change as restaurants developed their own websites and chefs enlisted publicists. But to this day, local food journalism is still personal,

with Minnesota chefs answering a call or text from a reporter on deadline. (Thank you, chefs!)

AMERICAN CUISINE GOT ITS DUE. Alice Waters offered a challenge — and made national headlines — with a letter she wrote to president-elect Bill Clinton in December 1992 encouraging him to appoint a new White House chef who would prepare healthful foods and focus on American fare. “We chefs from across the country believe that good food, pure and wholesome, should be not just a privilege for the few, but a right for everyone,” she said. “Good food nourishes not just the body, but the entire community.” Local chefs weighed in with their thoughts on American fare. “I believe that meaningful cuisines are regional in nature, just like with Chinese cuisine, where Cantonese and Szechuan cooking are not alike,” said Ken Goff, then executive chef of the Dakota Jazz Club & Restaurant and an early proponent of Midwestern cooking. Minnesota food, meanwhile, earned a significant shout-out a few years later from Julia Child, as she sampled her first taste of walleye at Goodfellow’s in Minneapolis per my recommendation.

TWIN CITIES DINING WAS TRANSFORMED. Some will debate who gets credit for sparking the early transformation of the Twin Cities dining scene. In my unofficial timeline, it’s Marcus Samuelsson, the Swedish-Ethiopian chef who brought the dazzle of New York City’s Aquavit to Minneapolis in 1998 at a time when fancy restaurants still meant special occasion. We weren’t quite ready for what turned out to be a less than five-year stint. (During our first interview, I suggested to Samuelsson that his plans to serve sea urchin to Minnesotans might be optimistic.) But he raised the bar locally for both chefs and patrons. The sheer number of articles about him in the Star Tribune — more than 145 over the course of two decades — reflects both his popularity and his influence.

MINNESOTANS CARE WHERE THEIR FOOD COMES FROM. Much like that scene in The Wizard of Oz that dramatically changes from black and white to

technicolor, the 2000s rocked the food industry. Concepts once relegated to the sidelines were embraced by the mainstream: Local! Sustainable! Organic! Seasonal! We would never eat the same again after the sizzle of grass-fed meats, the taste of local produce and the delight of craft-made treats. With an explosion of restaurants highlighting where their ingredients came from, farmers like Greg Reynolds of Riverbend Farm responded in kind. Among those pioneering chefs were Lucia Watson (Lucia’s Restaurant and Wine Bar), Brenda Langton (Cafe Brenda and Spoonriver), Lenny Russo (Cue and Heartland), and Alex Roberts (Restaurant Alma). Meat from Thousand Hills, cheese from LoveTree Farmstead, and breads from Steve Horton and Michelle Gayer were some of the many prized staples that found their way onto plates across Minnesota and beyond. And the establishment took notice, with local restaurants getting nods from national magazines as well as the James Beard Foundation, which awarded Tim McKee, then of La Belle Vie, with Minnesota’s first Best Chef Midwest title in 2009 (five others would follow in the next decade).

A WAVE OF NEW VOICES JOINED THE CONVERSATION. In the blink of a camera shutter (often on an iPhone), the food world shifted with the advent of Instagram in 2010 — and so did we in the newsroom, though a bit reluctantly at first. No longer were food journalists and cookbook authors the only voices in the discussion, which made the tapestry of food ever richer.

SOME THINGS NEVER CHANGE. Sitting down for dinner with family and friends may never have been as important as during this past year, when the pandemic made those moments fleeting or elusive. To all those who have persevered to supply food for our tables, we owe virtual hugs and words of gratitude. To the home cooks, reluctant or otherwise, who have provided three squares and snacks (with or without fresh sourdough bread) to their perpetually hungry brood, we say thanks — because the kids probably won’t. And to the storytellers, more of them than ever before, we urge you to keep writing. There are many tales left to be told.

Spring 2021

MAKE THE MOST OF HOME

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Shop online or schedule a personalized appointment from the comfort of your home today at fergusonshowrooms.com.

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PHOTOGRAPHY PROVIDED BY AUDI

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WITH THE 2021 RS Q8, AUDI PUTS RACECAR PERFORMANCE IN THE EVERYDAY SUV. BY M I TC H E L L L A M B E R T

Spring 2021

CULTURE

NICE RIDE

WITH ITS LEADING INNOVATION AND PREMIUM STYLING, AUDI functionality, a black Alcantara headliner and rear powered side sunshades. has produced some of the finest vehicles on the road today. And given Large infotainment touchscreens control all climate and audio functionality, resulting in a clean, modern-looking dash. The instrument the automaker’s wide range of offerings — from sedans and SUVs to twodoor convertibles and high-performance sports cars — there’s a specific cluster is also fully digital, letting you customize the display for the current driving situation. A configurable upgrade adds night vision technology model to fit every driver’s needs. The Q8, a newer addition to the lineup, boasts classic Audi styling coupled with modern utilizing thermal imagery cameras, which can technology. It is undoubtedly an impressive assist in nighttime driving with visual and audio alerts about animals, pedestrians or obstacles in machine, but for those looking for a little more power, Audi has the answer with the 2021 RS Q8. the roadway. The 2021 Audi RS Q8 The RS Q8 is an ideal auto marrying everyday Although it may resemble the standard model in appearance, the RS Q8 is a completely different practicality with racecar performance available • Starting at $114,500 at the slightest push of a pedal. And while most animal under the hood. With 591 horsepower, it • 0 to 60 mph in 3.7 seconds can go from zero to 60 mph in a mere 3.7 seconds high-performance SUVs usually come with a • 4.0-liter 8-cylinder engine tradeoff in comfort, that’s not the case here — thanks to its 4.0-liter eight-cylinder turbocharged • 8-speed Tiptronic automatic transmission engine. Carbon fiber bits, a lower, sportier stance, in fact, Audi actually enhanced it. Whether it’s a • 591 horsepower with 590 pound-feet bigger wheels and an upgraded ceramic braking weekend family excursion, a date night for two • Top speed of 190 mph or a fast-paced drive in the canyons for one, the system also set the RS Q8 apart. • 7,700-pound towing capacity Inside, RS sport heated and ventilated seats with RS Q8 adapts for all. • All-wheel drive 14-way power adjustment make for a comfortable • 23-inch Audi Sport 5-Y-spoke wheels driving experience. You can also upgrade to the For more information, visit Audi Minneapolis or luxury package, which adds front seat massage log onto audiminneapolis.com.

Artful Living

A R T I S A N

H O M E

T O U R

BUILDER PREVIEW Ever wonder what's behind the doors of the most exquisite homes in the Twin Cities? The eighth annual Artisan Home Tour is your chance to step inside more than 30 homes designed and constructed by the region's most exceptional homebuilders and remodelers. These artisans create incredible residences that blend artistic vision with unmatched craftsmanship.

D O O R S

O P E N

T H I S

J U N E

ARTISANHOMETOUR.ORG | JUNE 11-13, 18-20, 25-27 · 12-6PM

Builder A R T&I SRemodeler A N H O M Ephotography T O U R . O R G by| Meghan J U N E 1 1Doll - 1 3 ,Photography 18-20, 25-27

· 12-6PM

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STONEWOOD, LLC Sven Gustafson

Since 1920, Stonewood has been a custom-home innovator that combines honest craftsmanship, time-tested processes, and innovative technologies. We built our processes around simplicity, transparency, and common sense. We strive to make each stage of the building experience rewarding and enjoyable.

ALIGN BUILDING AND REMODELING, LLC Tim O'Connor

At Align Building & Remodeling, we are focused on quality and customer experience. As a boutique builder, our goal has always been to focus on a small group of discerning clients who expect the top-notch quality and expertise of large building firms, but who also desire ongoing personal attention and a one-on-one relationship with their builder.

LECY BROS. HOMES & REMODELING Kevin Johnson, Mark Lecy, Andy Johnsrud, & Roy Lecy

For over 35 years, Lecy Bros. Homes & Remodeling has exceeded the expectations of our customers. Our reputation is built on constructing exquisite homes and our steadfast ethics. A family-owned business and a solid pillar in our local community, we deliver elegance and integrity in every custom home.

LANDMARK PHOTOGRAPHY

ARTISANHOMETOUR.ORG | JUNE 11-13, 18-20, 25-27 · 12-6PM

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PA R E N T C U S T O M HOMES, LLC Brook Parent & Brent Parent

Brent and Brook Parent are passionate about building highquality custom homes. From the moment the land is identified, Brent or Brook will personally work with you through every step in the process and make it exciting and fun.

LANDMARK PHOTOGRAPHY

LANDMARK PHOTOGRAPHY LANDMARK PHOTOGRAPHY

GORDON JAMES CONSTRUCTION, INC. John Quinlivan & Joe McPherson

Gordon James is as much about building relationships as it is about designing, building, and remodeling homes. Their team practices three main tenets of a homebuilding business: organization, detail, and structure.

GONYEA CUSTOM HOMES

Jon Connolly, Tony Sonnen, Mike Gleason, & Julie Treanor (not pictured) Custom luxury homes on exquisite homesites. We take a blank canvas, add your vision, and create a masterpiece you can call home. Dedicated to beautiful architectural design, quality, craftsmanship, and customer service, we've never believed in the ordinary. We invite you to experience extraordinary.

ARTISANHOMETOUR.ORG | JUNE 11-13, 18-20, 25-27 · 12-6PM

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B U I L D E R S

S U S TA I N A B L E 9 DESIGN + BUILD

Chad Hanson, Ryan Hanson, & Vince Birdsley It's not just a vision for tomorrow: Sustainable 9 Design + Build creates homes for tomorrow, today. This is reflected in the company's enduring commitment to sustainably built, high-performance, energy-efficient homes that are stunningly designed and custom built.

COREY GAFFER

HENDEL HOMES Rick Hendel & Amy Hendel

Hendel Homes is a residential builder of high-end construction and renovations. By fostering meaningful partnerships between clients, architects, designers, and tradespeople, Hendel creates homes with uncompromising excellence, always.

S WA N S O N H O M E S

Blake Swanson & Lindsey Swanson Swanson Homes has been Minnesota's luxury homebuilding expert for over 50 years. Our ambitious and talented small team provides our clients with a unique and personal hands-on experience that creates relationships to last a lifetime.

ARTISANHOMETOUR.ORG | JUNE 11-13, 18-20, 25-27 · 12-6PM

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CUSTOM ONE HOMES Todd Polifka

At Custom One Homes, we aren't afraid to take on a challenge. With over 35 years in business, we're proud of the reputation we've built. Our staff is passionate about what they do, and every decision we make is grounded in our commitment to deliver our clients their homes without making compromises.

DAVID CHARLEZ DESIGNS BRICK + LINEN SKY DEFINITION

WOODDALE BUI LDERS, I N C. Steve Schwieters

Wooddale Builders has been in business since 1975. We continually strive to meet our clients' needs from concept, throughout the building process, and up to completion. Our team works hand in hand with our clients to give them a home with superior craftsmanship and design.

LANDMARK PHOTOGRAPHY

HIGHMARK BUILDERS, INC.

Nathan Carlson, Matt Eastman, Terry Gaulrapp, Kristen Schammel, & Jim Moras Building trust is more than our tagline, it's our code of ethics. Our mission is to elevate your vision—from the ground up. Our years of experience and artisan craftsmanship will bring all the pieces of your project together into a breathtaking whole. ART BY DOUGLAS FLANDERS & ASSOCIATES LANDMARK PHOTOGRAPHY

ARTISANHOMETOUR.ORG | JUNE 11-13, 18-20, 25-27 · 12-6PM

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MIKAN CUSTOM HOMES, LLC Ryan Jones & Mike Youngs

Our mission is to deliver quality custom craftsmanship with an emphasis on details. We strive to build personal relationships with our clients while creating spaces that are intimate, functional, and timeless.

ZEHNDER HOMES, INC. Eric Zehnder

Zehnder Homes takes pride in delivering homes that their clients envisioned when they started dreaming of building a new home. Our team is dedicated to ensuring that vision becomes reality. Functional floor plans, along with designs that provide the perfect balance between quality and value, are what set Zehnder Homes apart.

LANDMARK PHOTOGRAPHY

DENALI CUSTOM HOMES, INC. David Bieker

Denali Custom Homes is a guided building experience led by a knowledgeable team who strive to produce some of the most unique homes in the Twin Cities. At Denali, personal service is at the forefront of our approach, through site selection, design, and build.

ARTISANHOMETOUR.ORG | JUNE 11-13, 18-20, 25-27 · 12-6PM

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TROY THIES PHOTOGRAPHY

MARK D. WILLIAMS CUSTOM HOMES, INC.

Keith Schaehrer, Anne Jansson, Mike Lauwagie, & Mark Williams We are a small design-build firm made up of experienced, hard-working people, each devoted to their craft and to each other. We believe the quality of our homes is rooted in our relationships with homeowners and trade partners. Simply put, we love what we do, and we care about who we create with. Come join our family.

HARTMAN HOMES, INC. Mike Hartman

JOHN KRAEMER & SONS, INC. Gary Kraemer, Jeff Kraemer, & John Kraemer

Our 43 continuous years in business, impeccable reputation, and financial stability give our clients peace of mind. As Minnesota's only four-time Builder of the Year, we strive to go above and beyond to ensure we exceed the expectations of all our clients.

After being in the business for 35+ years, Hartman Homes has refined the art of building homes. We have assembled an award-winning team of employees and craftsmen that are at your service. We pride ourselves on giving customers the highest quality product, design, and process for a great value.

ARTISANHOMETOUR.ORG | JUNE 11-13, 18-20, 25-27 · 12-6PM

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NIH HOMES, LLC

Colt Skogquist, Jeremy Skogquist, & Chad Skogquist Often imitated, but never duplicated. At NIH Homes, our clients are at the heart of the process, while we provide the framework. We are driven to craft you a custom home that feels welcoming, looks beautiful, reflects your individuality, and enhances your life on the lake.

CITY HOMES, LLC Rebecca Remick

City Homes is a passionate, imaginative, women-led team building dream homes around the Twin Cities. Every home we build is masterfully planned out and executed with the highest level of craftsmanship. We only work with artisans who share our same level of dedication to building your dream home.

TJB HOMES, INC. Tom Budzynski

TJB Homes is committed to energy-efficient design which lessens the impact of housing on our environment and your wallet. Our combination of innovative building techniques creates comfort in the home while reducing energy consumption and cost. In every case, we work closely with our clients to make sure the home we build is exactly the home they want.

ARTISANHOMETOUR.ORG | JUNE 11-13, 18-20, 25-27 · 12-6PM

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ISPIRI, LLC Jason Fabio

ISPiRI has executed diverse designbuild projects for over 13 years—from kitchens and owners' suites to wholehome renovations and additions throughout the Minneapolis metro. Our fully integrated design-build approach to each project allows our team to provide clients with thorough, thoughtful, and creative solutions to every challenge.

SPACECRAFTING

REVISION, LLC

John Daly & Sven Gustafson Revision is the premier boutique remodeler in the Twin Cities area specializing in design and renovation. Our team's unmatched vision and experience reawaken existing spaces to complement your home. At Revision, our craftsmen bring your dreams to reality.

LANDMARK PHOTOGRAPHY

LECY BROS. HOMES & REMODELING Andy Johnsrud & Kevin Johnson

More than 35 years of experience has made us experts. By doing our due diligence upfront we eliminate the remodeling horror stories you may have heard. Your project will be in budget, on time, and with the highest quality workmanship. We pride ourselves on employing the best craftsmen—a team of 30 skilled professionals who are experienced, knowledgeable, and detailed. We do our own demo, framing, trimming, and finish work. This is the groundwork for a successful project and rewarding client experience. © SPACECRAFTING

ARTISANHOMETOUR.ORG | JUNE 11-13, 18-20, 25-27 · 12-6PM

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Q U A R T E R S AW N Jeff Nicholson

Celebrating its 15th anniversary in 2020, Quartersawn Design Build is a premier luxury bespoke firm in the Twin Cities that takes a holistic approach to remodeling homes. As a team of architects, designers, and builders, our focus is on great design, beautiful craftsmanship, and a joyful experience.

LANDMARK PHOTOGRAPHY

ANDREA RUGG PHOTOGRAPHY

P I L L A R H O M E S PA R T N E R , I N C . K.C. Chermak

Celebrating over 25 years of bringing dreams to life! Our most recent 2020 Whole House ROMA-winning home is an example of how we aim to embrace the best of the past and blend it with today's inspirations. This balanced design process allows homeowners to discover their passion to create a new home while honoring its history.

FRONTIER CUSTOM BUILDERS Nate Jurmu and sons, Tanner and Ryan

2020 ROMA WINNER REMODELER OF MERIT AWARD © SPACECRAFTING

Settle your home with the space, features, and style that will truly elevate your quality of life. Frontier builds on family with thoughtful design, efficient scheduling, fine craftsmanship, and personal service. We offer both remodeling services and new home construction to the most particular clients. We're as selective as you.

ARTISANHOMETOUR.ORG | JUNE 11-13, 18-20, 25-27 · 12-6PM

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R E M O D E L E R S

NOR-SON CUSTOM BUILDERS Matt Holmstrom, Andy Anderson, & Eddie Near Founded in 1978, Nor-Son is an award-winning custom builder that specializes in creating homes that afford you the space, comfort, and quality in which you can create lifelong memories. Our superior craftsmen combine building science with skilled artistry to transform every design detail into a stunning, one-of-a-kind home.

EMILY JOHN PHOTOGRAPHY

HIGHMARK BUILDERS, INC. Jim Moras, Kristen Schammel, Matt Eastman, Terry Gaulrapp, & Nathan Carlson

Make the home of your dreams a reality. Breathe new life into outdated spaces with Highmark's exceptional design solutions. Our proven process and integrated design/build team will ensure a masterful result that adds to your home's value. LANDMARK PHOTOGRAPHY

G R A ND

M A S T E R

S P ONS OR

Shaw/Stewart Lumber Company has been providing quality products and creative custom solutions to customers since 1886. They serve luxury homebuilders and remodelers as well as commercial contractors in the Twin Cities area. As a homebuyer or remodeling customer, you can depend on Shaw/Stewart to be the trusted source to provide your builder or remodeler with quality products, responsive service, and creative solutions for your project. When you're ready to select windows and doors, you are invited to join your contractor to visit the Marvin Design Gallery and confer with the professional design staff. You'll see the latest offerings from Marvin and feel the difference in quality, design, and craftsmanship. All of the window and door displays are set in realistic vignettes, designed to help you imagine the possibilities for your own home. SHAWSTEWARTLUMBERCO.COM

SPACECRAFTING VINTAGE ELEMENTS

ARTISANHOMETOUR.ORG | JUNE 11-13, 18-20, 25-27 · 12-6PM

J O U R NE YM A N

With over 20 years in the business, industry-leading warranties, and unparalleled building materials technology, AZEK Exteriors has emerged as a marketplace leader in premium products that endure beautifully. We manufacture distinctly unique siding, trim, and moulding products with a dedicated focus on converting the building products industry from its uninspiring past to a dynamic and sustainable future. Across our expanding exteriors building product portfolio, the AZEK Exteriors brand presents homeowners, builders, architects, dealers, and contractors with a comprehensive suite of first-rate products that are long-lasting, sustainable alternatives to wood. AZEKEXTERIORS.COM

S P ONS OR S

Whether you're starting a renovation or building your dream home, Ferguson Bath, Kitchen, & Lighting Gallery is here to help every step of the way. From traditional to contemporary and every style in between, Ferguson offers a vast selection of plumbing, lighting, and appliances from today's top manufacturers, beautifully showcased in state-of-the-art showrooms. In addition to unmatched product selection, Ferguson's product experts have years of industry experience and are knowledgeable about the latest product trends and the building and remodeling process. Ferguson works with both trade professionals and homeowners to ensure product selections are perfect for every project. Our passion for customer service is easy to see after just one visit to your local showroom. FERGUSONSHOWROOMS.COM

At Fireside, we understand that some of life's best moments happen around the fire, and your local fireplace experts are here to help no matter your project. Since 1951, we've been making the selection and installation process easy with the best sales and service experience. Let's create your perfect fireplace together.

A beautiful fireplace is the focal point of the home where memories are made. Heat & Glo® offers innovative designs that bring warmth and comfort to your lifestyle. For warmth, comfort, and ambiance, no one builds a better fire. HEATNGLO.COM

FIRESIDE.COM

Granite-Tops is the Midwest's leading fabricator and installer of custom stone, quartz, and solid surface countertops. With thousands of slabs and hundreds of colors to choose from, Granite-Tops' Stone Countertop Outlet is by far the easiest, most convenient way to select and purchase your countertops. We have enjoyed more than 25 years of continued growth and success, expanding to seven locations across Minnesota, Wisconsin, and North Dakota. We are a full-service company providing field measurements, complete fabrication, and installation—all in one location. No other fabricator offers so much in just one stop. STONECOUNTERTOPOUTLET.COM

S A V E At Marvin, we are driven to imagine and create better ways of living. With every window and door we make, we strive to bring more natural light and more fresh air into homes, and to create deeper connections to the natural world. Crafted with exceptional skill, our products deliver quality you can see, touch, and feel, beauty that brings joy, and performance that stands the test of time. We put people at the center of everything we do by designing for how people live and work and imagining new ways our products can contribute to happier and healthier homes. MARVIN.COM

T H E

D A T E

JUNE 11-13, 18-20, 25-27 · 12-6PM

ARTISANHOMETOUR.ORG

Let’s connect—and plan for your financial future Talk to the Pink Wealth Management Group about creating a customized investment strategy for you. Visit us today at www.pinkwmg.com.

Investment and insurance products offered through RBC Wealth Management are not insured by the FDIC or any other federal government agency, are not deposits or other obligations of, or guaranteed by, a bank or any bank affiliate, and are subject to investment risks, including possible loss of the principal amount invested. © 2021 RBC Wealth Management, a division of RBC Capital Markets, LLC, Member NYSE/FINRA/SIPC. All rights reserved.

20-WQ-03850 (01/21)

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PHOTOGRAPHY BY ALEX LAU

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Spring 2021

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BUZZ W ORT HY

WHAT HAPPENS TO A SOBER-CURIOUS MOVEMENT IN A GLOBAL PANDEMIC? BY ANNE RODERIQUE-JONES

ACCORDING TO JULIA BAINBRIDGE, THERE’S NEVER BEEN

Artful Living

champion — there was simply no need to justify this among her peers. Bainbridge predicts that in a decade, no one will be asking why you’re not drinking and notes that “alcohol is the only drug you have to justify not taking.” With the rise of sober bars and craft nonalcoholic cocktails, a sober-curious lifestyle can easily be mapped onto our favorite rituals and routines. After all, we’re social creatures and clinking glasses is a fine way to hobnob. Bainbridge, too, enjoys drinking as a social activity but points out that it’s really about the pleasure of gathering and that sipping something slowly encourages conversation without distractions — even on a Zoom call. This means that Dry January and Sober October are as likely to make headlines as stories about quarantiners slugging back bottles of pinot. As Bainbridge explains, “It’s not about segregating drinkers and nondrinkers.” Indeed, for some, it’s perfectly acceptable to have a fluid relationship with alcohol. So where does this lifestyle land on the spectrum between Shirley Temples and Rosé All Day? For Bainbridge and her fellow sober-curious followers, winding down with a consumption ritual might mean sipping an elegant Verjus Spritz or punchy Pea Flower Lemonade, taken from the pages of her book. And although cocktails are meant to be fun, she’s excited to see that “nonalcoholic drinks are finally being taken seriously and that this conversation is getting louder.” A rousing cheers to that — with or without the booze.

For more from Julia Bainbridge on the sober-curious lifestyle plus her Verjus Spritz recipe, visit our website.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY ALEX LAU

a better time to be a nondrinker. And she would know. She was ahead of the sober-curious curve, prompted to pen her recent recipe book, Good Drinks, by her 2014 decision to remove alcohol from her life and a subsequent longing for well-made booze-free cocktails. The movement — in which followers abstain from alcohol for wellness or other reasons — started a few years ago and was picking up some serious steam in early 2020. But what happens to a sober-curious movement during a global pandemic? We know this much: We’ve been drinking more while in quarantine. Online alcohol sales, for example, saw a whopping 339% boost when the coronavirus outbreak first hit, according to market intelligence firm Winsight. This shouldn’t come as a surprise given the state of the world and our current lifestyles, where work is done on the sofa and loungewear is the look du jour. For many, an enticing way to delineate the end of the workday is savoring a glass of wine — the at-home equivalent of socializing with friends over happy hour. “There are people who want to engage in this ritual and have that transition, but who don’t want alcohol involved,” Bainbridge explains. Pre-COVID, the sober-curious movement was gaining traction. It’s part of a booming interest in wellness, which has ballooned into a $4.5-trillion industry with a focus on mindfulness and moderation. And studies show that younger people — millennials and Gen Zers — are imbibing less than previous generations. In fact, Bainbridge says the most memorable conversation she’s had about her book was with a millennial who didn’t understand why she was a non-drinking

Spring 2021

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STYLE

MEN’S STYLE

BEST FOOT FORWARD THE FIVE SHOES EVERY MAN SHOULD OWN. B Y D AV I D C O G G I N S I L L U S T R AT I O N B Y H I L B R A N D B O S

Artful Living

HOW YOU DRESS YOUR FEET IS IMPORTANT. STRANGERS ASSESS US FROM

head to toe, not head to ankle. That means you’ll be judged by your shoes, and, if we’re being honest, you deserve to be. A well-dressed man is always well-shod. There’s no way around that. Men notice; women notice; the sartorial gods most certainly notice. Why? Because shoes express intention. They declare a worldview, a plan of attack, a sense of who you are. A man who wants to be taken seriously wears serious shoes. Proper shoes are mostly made in England. Sometimes in America, Italy or, in rare cases, Belgium. They’re crafted with fine leather, often by hand. Some are Goodyear-welted, a century-old technique indicating they’re durable and easily resoled. With attention — regular shining, shoe trees, a wary eye toward heavily salted winter sidewalks — your beloved brogues will last. Shoes should also be well-proportioned. Please no square toes, one of the few unbreakable rules. Storied companies like Crockett & Jones have used the same molds, or “lasts,” for decades. These are numbered and have their own devotees; I personally enjoy the narrow 314 for tasteful suede oxfords. Alden, America’s great shoemaker, is known for its elegantly rounded toe. You can find them at Leffot, perhaps the best shoe store in the country, which happens to be down the street from my apartment in New York City. It’s worth making the pilgrimage to witness how intense obsession can be; men come here to get custom polish, to put matters in perspective. Here are five footwear options that will instantly establish your credentials on the ground in every room you enter.

Oxfords

It’s good to have a pair of shoes that means business. If they’re lovely lace-ups, then business can also mean pleasure. When it comes to color, I prefer brown. The English have their own theory about the acceptability of blue suits with black shoes, but I believe black shoes are for funerals. Suede oxfords are the ticket with a flannel suit (though by all means wear suede year-round). If you want something more substantial, then a pair of brogues will do — perhaps a burgundy cordovan. Keep a stable of them and take them out for a spin, like your favorite sports car peeling out of your garage. Edward Green and John Lobb are classics for a reason and good places to start.

Loafers

Loafers are such universally appealing and flattering shoes that I’m surprised more men don’t embrace them. There are as many loafers as there are personalities. Find a style to suit your taste, like a favorite cocktail. There’s something raffish about beaten-up Gucci loafers. There’s something reassuring about Sid Mashburn penny loafers, which look good with everything from cords in winter to shorts come summer. If you’re feeling ornamental, then by all means add tassels, the garnish of the loafer world.

Boat Shoes

You love to spend time sailing at your house on Nantucket. What’s that? You don’t have a sailboat? You don’t have a house on Nantucket? That’s alright — neither do I. But we can look as comfortable as if we did. Sperry boat shoes in blue or brown are very seaworthy, and their white soles won’t mark the deck of your friend’s boat. In a similar vein are camp mocs, the classic brown leather shoes with leather laces, three or four eyelets, and a thin red or brown rubber sole. Rancourt has made them in Maine for ages.

Chelsea Boots

A good pair of boots is practical and stylish. Chelsea boots can be very natty in the English sense. The Beatles wore them with peg-legged suits that were as concise as their shoes. You can still sport them that way if you’re feeling mod. More likely, you’ll don them with jeans or cords, which pair nicely with the versatile R.M. Williams Gardener boot that easily dresses up or down. One thing to keep in mind with Chelsea boots — indeed any shoe — is that their proportion should mirror that of your pants: Narrow boots go well with narrow trousers.

Belgians

Beloved in certain quarters and misunderstood in others, Belgians are streamlined, lightweight, almost slipper-like, with a tiny bow on top. At first sight, they might seem dainty or dandyish; at second glance, too. But ultimately, they veer to a position of strength. Of those who’ve embraced the Belgian, few go back. The originals come from a small shop on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, but these days you can find variations worldwide. Baudoin & Lange, a wonderful English company, makes a cleaner version sans bow. This is not neutral, which is part of its power. It’s a reminder that the right shoe makes a statement with every step you take. A Minnesotan turned New Yorker, David Coggins is the author of the New York Times bestseller Men and Style and writes a style column for Artful Living.

Spring 2021

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PREVIOUS Nude Hepburn Lowball Glass, Design Within Reach, $45 for four • Skultuna Extra Large Karui Tray in White, Design Within Reach, $550 • Arhaus Eva Small Round Vase in White, $49 • Regalis Black Truffle Olive Oil, Williams Sonoma, $40 • Fritz Hansen Tea Light Candleholder in Brass, Design Within Reach, $170 • Flowers, Apricot Floral • LEFT Pottery Barn Quinn Stoneware Planter, $30 • Casafina Sardegna Salad and Dinner Plates, Ampersand Shops, $22–$24 • Costa Nova Nau 5-Piece Flatware Set in Gold, Ampersand Shops, $75 • Bodrum Brushstroke Napkin in Gold, Ampersand Shops, $24 • Costa Nova Lisa Glass Tumbler in Amber, Ampersand Shops, $24 • Simon Pearce Pillar Candles in Ivory, Ampersand Shops, $16–$22 • RIGHT Pottery Barn Schott Zwiesel Classico Wine Glass, $12 • Crate and Barrel Small Lemont Vase in Blush, $169 • Pottery Barn Eclectic Candlesticks in Marble, $8 • Hay Candles, Design Within Reach, $35 • Pottery Barn Dakota Flatware Set, $50 • Pottery Barn Finn Stoneware 12-Piece Dinnerware Set, $79 • Pottery Barn Cotton Casual Napkin in Flax, $5 • Pottery Barn Napkin Ring in White Marble, $7

Artful Living

Spring 2021

STYLE

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Pottery Barn Quin Ceramic Vase, $40 • Crate and Barrel Vino White Wine Glass, $10 • Crate and Barrel Crescent Highball Glass, $8 • Pottery Barn Eclectic Candlesticks in Marble, $8 • Twist Taper Candle Set in Dijon, Ampersand Shops, $21 • Crate and Barrel Couture Satin 5-Piece Flatware Place Setting, $37 • Crate and Barrel Wren Bowl and Salad and Dinner Plates in Gray, $6–$7 Shop Galleria Home Stores: Ampersand • Arhaus • Crate and Barrel • Design Within Reach • PBteen • Pottery Barn • Pottery Barn Kids • Williams Sonoma

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A PLACE IN THE

SUN

ARCHITECT CHARLES STINSON BALANCES SUNLIGHT AND STRUCTURE TO CELEBRATE THE QUIETER SIDE OF CALIFORNIA WINE COUNTRY. BY MERRITT BAMBRICK

Spring 2021

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Artful Living

W I N E RY

TUCKED ALONG THE WESTERN EDGE OF

Sonoma County is one of wine country’s best-kept secrets. Coursey Graves Winery sits high atop the Bennett Valley, where cool temperatures and rocky soil are reminiscent of France’s Bordeaux region. When it came time for the owners to manifest their vineyard home, the Minnesota natives asked architect Charles Stinson to create a fluent exchange between the complex geography and the architecture sitting upon it. Stinson first visited the site in 2015, marveling at the geometry of the vineyard, a nearby pond, and the bluffs and hills surrounding it all. He sketched a floor plan using his preferred medium of colored pencil to provide initial concepts. “A vineyard is soft but bold, so the structures needed to be that way, too,” he explains. He drew forms flying out over the property that ultimately became soaring decks off the house overlooking the very heart of the vineyard — extending from a home existing in pure harmony with nature. Stinson has had a hand in everything from the architecture to the landscaping to even the winery branding. Inspired by his initial sketch, the owners asked him to transform it into a wine label that elevates the Coursey Graves story. “It’s the soaring architecture and the sun working together in a simplified language,” he shares of the label design. Co-owner and winemaker Cabell Coursey echoes that the Coursey Graves story starts with sun: “Sunlight isn’t talked about as much as soil,” he says, “but I believe it’s what makes wine unique. Making wine is essentially translating sunlight.” He’s an expert at cultivating the best fruit from the climate, where within a three-minute drive through the vineyard the elevation changes by 1,000 feet and the temperature can swing 30 degrees. “The combination of our cooler temperatures makes our wine elegant and

pure,” he adds. “It tastes like fresh fruit, which you don’t get in hotter regions.” Cabernet, merlot and syrah climb three hills, mirroring Stinson’s vision of a village-like trifecta of structures: the barn down below, the winery at the center and the house above with a commanding view of it all. He tapped prominent Marin County builder Jeff Jungsten to ensure all three read as one language. “Charles’s and the owners’ collaborative spirits inspired such a value-oriented project,” notes Jungsten. Collaboration was key, as what started as a singular floor plan evolved into an endeavor to make every building on the property feel cohesive. The team used naturally occurring stone and oak as primary materials in addition to the winery’s principal element: sunlight. “Charles thinks of light as a building material,” Jungsten explains. “When you pay attention to that type of detail, the finished result is magic.” Each level of the home — which is scheduled for completion next spring — cascades to the next with strong lines that mimic the surrounding geography. The carport was specifically designed so as not to interrupt any sightlines. Inside the residence, large expanses of glass frame the panoramic valley vistas and let natural light pour in. Even in hallways, panes of glass nearly reach the ceilings, allowing for natural light in places most people wouldn’t think to optimize. Cool, light-colored plaster, meanwhile, offsets the warmth radiating from the sun-soaked interiors. “There’s a very earthy feel,” Jungsten shares. The family’s private spaces sit on the west side of the abode, with entertaining amenities on the other. Sliding glass doors lead to the soaring decks where an exterior kitchen, barbecue area, infinity pool and fire pit boast eastward-facing views of Bennett Valley. “The sky, the hills, the architecture — it’s all a sculpture,” says Stinson of this unique property.

Spring 2021

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THE WORLD’S MOST EXTRAORDINARY WATERING HOLES. BY FRANK ROFFERS

BARS ARE DRINKING DESTINATIONS IMPORTANT TO HUMAN SOCIETIES AND OFTEN

considered places to escape reality. We can trace their origins back to ancient Greek and Roman times. How many bars are there around the world? No one knows for sure, but it’s estimated there are more than a million across the globe. They typically fall into one of several categories, from hotel bars and cocktail lounges to taverns and beer halls. Many are ordinary, but some push the boundaries of creativity. Here, we present five of the most extraordinary watering holes in the world.

Artful Living

PHOTOGRAPHY PROVIDED BY THE RITZ CARLTON, HONG KONG AND JUAN SERRANO CORBELLA/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

RAISING THE BAR

COOL IN THE CARIBBEAN Floyd’s Pelican Bar St. Elizabeth, Jamaica

Located a mile offshore in the Caribbean Sea, Floyd’s Pelican Bar is accessible only by boat and was initially created to serve local fishermen. Owner Floyd Forbes built his establishment on a sandbar entirely out of driftwood, coconut tree trunks and palm branches. Jamaican captains ferry guests out to sea in colorful water taxi boats; the trip and entry will set you back $10. The bar interior boasts an array of memorabilia from around the world, and the floor looks like a guest book as patrons are encouraged to carve their names into the dock boards. Most bar goers wade into the turquoise waters with a drink in hand, socializing with strangers and making new friends. Floyd’s operates a tiny kitchen serving lunch and dinner, including a daily seafood catch, jerk chicken and coconut garlic lobster. In case you’re wondering, there’s no bathroom. Cash only.

THE AIR UP THERE Ozone Hong Kong

Ozone sits half a kilometer above sea level on the 118th floor of the Ritz-Carlton, Hong Kong. Claiming the title of highest bar in the world, it is quite literally over the top. Guests enjoy jaw-dropping panoramic views of Victoria Harbour, Hong Kong Island and beyond. The interior design is out of this world in every sense, with an explosive and extravagant futuristic vibe. Mixology is in full force here, and the extensive food menu includes a range of sushi, Japanese cuisine and Asian tapas served to the soundtrack of a live DJ. Patrons include hipsters, expats, hotel guests and people celebrating special occasions. Bring your Gold Card as the drink prices are almost as high as the bar’s setting. A strict dress code is enforced, and reservations are required.

Spring 2021

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D E S T I N AT I O N

A BIZARRE SLICE OF AMERICANA Sip ’n Dip Lounge Great Falls, Montana

Start with an old-school motor lodge, combine it with a tiki bar, add in a swimming pool and some mermaids, and you get one of the most unusual bars in the world. This crazy combination is best described as Polynesia on the Great Plains. The Sip ’n Dip draws a local crowd ranging from college kids to ranchers to airmen from the nearby military base. The entertainment consists of a “tank” of mermaids (and occasionally mermen) who perform behind two large glass windows six nights a week to the delight of visitors from near and far. Another draw? The kitschy vocals of Piano Pat Spoonheim, a local icon who’s been headlining here for more than 50 years. Guests tackle drinks like the 52-ounce rum fishbowl and dine on the signature meatloaf.

A SHOT OF ADRENALINE Cresta Run St. Moritz, Switzerland

Back in 1885, British military officers created the Cresta Run as a tourist draw. This natural ice racing track starts in St. Moritz, winds its way down a narrow valley for nearly a mile and ends at a clubhouse in the village of Cresta. Racers fly down the mountain on a ribbon of ice headfirst at speeds of up to 80 mph in pursuit of the fastest daily time. Spectators, meanwhile, cheer them on and witness spectacular crashes that often require an ambulance to collect wounded riders. Spandex-clad participants mingle with women draped in fur and gentlemen dressed in tweed as they sip on Champagne and snack on light bites in a clubhouse steeped in tradition. It’s eccentric, charming and somehow unpretentious. The signature drink for riders is the Bullshot: a vodka concoction containing four beef bouillon shots, Worcestershire sauce and hot peppers. Guest passes can be arranged in advance.

THIS PLACE IS ON FIRE Tom’s Burned Down Cafe La Pointe, Wisconsin

Tom’s Burned Down Cafe is a hastily cobbled-together bar draped with tents and tarps that could easily be mistaken for a junkyard. Presiding over Lake Superior, it is located on Madeline Island and only accessible by ferry boat from the mainland port of Bayfield. This cannabis-scented open-air ramshackle wonderland of bars, decks and stages is adorned with eclectic art and twinkling lights. Hundreds of signs share sayings like, “You have to be tough if you are going to be stupid.” How did this place come to be? Nearly 30 years ago, a fire broke out at an existing bar called Leona’s and the structure mostly burned to the ground. The name was changed to Tom’s Burned Down Cafe (“Tommy’s” for those in the know). By day, it’s a funky beach break. By night, locals and tourists come together to enjoy live music and celebrate another day in paradise. Cash only.

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TOUR EXPERIENCE AMERICA’S MOST DESIRABLE DESTINATIONS THE ARTFUL LIVING WAY.

ASHEVILLE • INDIANAPOLIS • PARK CITY

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ASHEVILLE ART IS THE LIFEBLOOD OF ASHEVILLE, NORTH

Carolina, connecting visitors and locals through music, culinary and visual arts. Take an artist-led tour of the thriving River Arts District then visit the newly remodeled Asheville Art Museum for a deeper understanding of the city’s creative roots. Admire the historic Biltmore Estate, built by George Vanderbilt, and discover the natural environment that inspires many creators with a hike in the majestic Blue Ridge Mountains. –A M B E R G I B S O N

Stay

THE FOUNDRY

Adapted from a 20th century steel foundry, this 87-room boutique hotel is the newest luxury property in town, part of Hilton’s Curio Collection and a celebration of both Appalachian culture and the block’s historically Black community. A manicured bocce lawn, fire pits and rocking chairs welcome guests to gather in the outdoor courtyard each evening before retreating to spacious guest rooms for a restful sleep. In-room amenities highlight local partners like Asheville Tea Company and French Broad Chocolate. Signature restaurant Benne on Eagle serves Southern cuisine with a light, modern touch, reimagining collard purloo with black rice and lemony yogurt and accenting North Carolina red shrimp with smoked ham heart and fresh persimmons. Beyond the Foundry’s sturdy brick walls, you’re just a few blocks from many of the city’s most celebrated restaurants and breweries. Plus the chauffeured Tesla Model X house car can whisk you anywhere else you wish to go.

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Dine

CÚRATE

PHOTOGRAPHY PROVIDED BY THE FOUNDRY HOTEL, CÚRATE AND RYAN THEEDE PHOTOGRAPHY

Restaurateur Katie Button is Asheville’s most renowned chef, and Cúrate is her flagship eatery. This modern Spanish tapas bar is inspired by her time working with Ferran Adrià at his esteemed elBulli. The design and service evoke the relaxed conviviality of pintxos bars in San Sebastián, with a menu driven by simple preparations of seasonal ingredients. From charred radicchio with garlicky romesco sauce to wild mushrooms sautéed with sherry to head-on Mediterranean prawns served with large flakes of sea salt, all the meant-for-sharing fare pairs beautifully with the Spanish wine, cider and local beer on offer here. Last year, Button also launched Cúrate at Home, a nationwide delivery service for Spanish specialty foods and ingredients like gazpacho, albondigas (meatballs) and housemade Spanish-style sausages crafted with North Carolina pork that lets diners recreate their favorite dishes.

SAUNA HOUSE

Asheville’s cool mountain air and lush forests have made it a wellness haven dating back to the late 19th century, when doctors would prescribe some time here as the cure for fatigue, respiratory illnesses and other Gilded Age maladies. Sauna House is the latest in the city’s global palette of wellness experiences, specializing in Nordic hydrotherapy in a social atmosphere. This unassuming bathhouse offers three saunas, a cold plunge pool, heated furniture and cold showers for a contrasting hot and cold circuit. You can book out the infrared sauna, plus the massage therapists do excellent deep tissue work. Bring your bathing suit for a couple rounds of the Sauna House cycle: 15 minutes in the sauna, a few minutes in the cold plunge, then 15 minutes lounging and rehydrating. This Scandinavian tradition is thought to boost circulation and immunity while relieving stress, pain and inflammation.

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INDIANAPOLIS HOOSIER HOSPITALITY, AFFORDABLE ATTRACTIONS

and a strong sports culture are just a few reasons to love Indiana’s capital city. Bike or walk the eight-mile Cultural Trail to take in the public art, craft breweries and local boutiques before zipping around the Motor Speedway with a professional racecar driver at 180 mph. And check out the Garage, a new marketplace and food hall in the vibrant Bottleworks District, for all of Indy’s coolest independent dining and shopping under one roof. –A . G .

Dine

GALLERY PASTRY BAR

After beginning as a wholesale bakeshop in Broad Ripple, Gallery Pastry opened an all-day cafe and dessert lounge downtown across from Bankers Life Fieldhouse last year. Brunch — complete with bottomless mimosas — is the name of the game here. Cinnamon crème brûlée French toast, silky omelets, and eggs Benedict with Smoking Goose jowl bacon and roasted red pepper pesto are all tempting choices whether you’re craving something sweet or savory. A colorful portrait of Anthony Bourdain gazes down approvingly as plate after plate of mouthwatering fare is delivered from the bustling open kitchen. Chef Ben Hardy’s croissants, breads and macarons are delectable, particularly the foie gras macarons adorned with caviar. The salads are a surprise hit and a light yet flavorful way to strategically save room for dessert. Glossy entremets and petite cakes, meanwhile, beckon from the pastry case.

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Stay

BOTTLEWORKS HOTEL

A terra-cotta art deco building that was once Coca-Cola’s largest bottling facility has been transformed into a chic 139-room hotel along trendy Massachusetts Avenue. Original terrazzo tile floors, doorways, millwork and brass railings have all been carefully restored to their 1930s splendor. The rotunda, with its spiral staircase and effervescent sodainspired ceiling detailing, is the best spot for Instagram snaps. Larger-than-life black-andwhite portraits line the property’s spacious hallways, and the rooms themselves are equally sumptuous, pairing neo-industrial design with luxe finishes. Snack on local sweets from the minibar like Newfangled Confections then saunter over in your plush robe to Woodhouse Day Spa next door (the only hotel spa in Indianapolis) for a high-tech HydraFacial and a relaxing snooze in a heated zero-gravity pink Himalayan salt chair. And be sure to catch an indie film at Living Room Theaters across the promenade after dinner at the Garage Food Hall.

PHOTOGRAPHY PROVIDED BY VISIT INDY

CIRCLE CITY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX

Home to more than 100 artists and makers, this sprawling complex is both a maze and a treasure trove of unique, beautiful and delicious finds. Some tenants, like 8th Day Distillery, Centerpoint Brewing and Fowling Warehouse (a bowling and football mash-up) are open daily, while others have limited hours or are available by appointment only. This is the best place in town to discover emerging artists creating works across all genres, from paint to metal to woodwork. Unleash your inner creative at Indy Fused Glass, where you can design abstract art or colorful mosaics on a variety of glass objects. First Friday is an especially good time to visit, when artists open their studios and galleries to the public in a festive atmosphere with live music and dance performances. Stop by SoChatti’s new single-origin chocolate tasting room to enjoy luscious liquid chocolate on tap.

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TOUR

PARK CITY PARK CITY, UTAH, HAS BECOME A YEAR-ROUND

destination for outdoor enthusiasts, with sunny spring skiing and 60 acres of action sports at Woodward Park City. Venture just outside city limits to soar through the sky on the world’s longest zipline course followed by an afternoon snack of award-winning cheese and freshly churned ice cream at Heber Valley Artisan Cheese. For the perfect locally made nightcap, pair bean-to-bar Ritual Chocolate with High West Distillery whiskey. –A . G .

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Stay

THE ST. REGIS DEER VALLEY

A funicular ride with panoramic slopeside views heightens anticipation before you check into Park City’s most luxurious resort. Facials at Remède Spa incorporate cult-favorite European skincare brands Biologique Recherche and Natura Bissé while soothing massages and lounging beside the heated, split-level outdoor pool are sure to lull you to peaceful sleep. Wake up just in time for celebratory nightly Champagne sabering on the mountain terrace followed by dinner at RIME. Beloved local chef Matthew Harris has crafted an exquisite ingredient-driven menu focused on simply prepared local meats and sustainably caught seafood. Guest quarters here are elegantly appointed, with marble bathrooms, deep soaking tubs and private balconies overlooking the surrounding sylvan paradise. The St. Regis also boasts 34 private residences, including nine new homes at Snow Park, situated at the base of the funicular. Priced from $2.7 million to $7.2 million, these exquisite homes feature professional kitchens, multiple fireplaces and other luxurious amenities.

Shop

CAKE

PHOTOGRAPHY PROVIDED BY ST. REGIS DEER VALLEY, CAKE AND RIVERHORSE ON MAIN

Since its 2008 debut, Cake has been Park City’s premier women’s clothing boutique. Owner Katie Hammond has the contemporary mountain chic look styled to perfection, including warm sweaters, heavenly soft tees and functional yet fashionable denim. She hand selects favorite pieces from coveted brands like Isabel Marant, IRO, Vince, and Rag & Bone for a wardrobe that embodies the effortless lived-in luxury this destination is known for. “Anything goes in Park City, but when in doubt, reach for denim and boots,” Hammond says, describing the local uniform. “And don’t forget a sweater or lightweight jacket, even in the summer — when the sun goes down, temps drop big time.” In recent years, Cake has expanded its selection of apothecary and skincare goods as well, with a focus on high-end natural beauty brands such as Goop, Joanna Vargas, Susanne Kaufmann, Vintner’s Daughter and the like.

Dine

RIVERHORSE ON MAIN

One of the oldest and most distinguished restaurants on historic Main Street, Riverhorse dishes up delectable cuisine and refined service in a rustic setting, including an artfully prepared amuse-bouche to begin your meal. Signature offerings such as buffalo short rib and macadamia-crusted Alaskan halibut are accompanied by seasonal produce. For a quintessential Utah experience, try the wild game trio, featuring elk, buffalo and venison with a port reduction, huckleberries and scalloped potatoes. Executive Chef Seth Adams shows off his global imagination with dishes like scallop and shrimp tom kha over saffron risotto with lemongrass coconut cream. Riverhorse also operates nearby Park City Provisions, a specialty grocery store and deli that’s ideal for a healthy breakfast or lunch to fuel outdoor adventures. Plus the kitchen team is available to create fully customized menus for catering and private events, from intimate family dinners to micro weddings.

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FEATURE

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WHY FOOD

MAT

10 LUMINARIES — FROM CHEFS AND FARMERS TO AUTHORS AND ACTIVISTS — WEIGH IN ON THE IMPORTANCE OF FOOD IN THEIR LIVES IN 2021. BY JULIA HEFFELFINGER PORTRAITURE BY ALEXA TODD

ILLUSTRATION BY ITSME23/ISTOCK

“WHY DOES FOOD MATTER?” IS A DAUNTING QUESTION. AS A WRITER WHO’S DEVOTED HER

entire career to celebrating food and the people who’ve built their lives around it, I had never really stepped back to seriously consider it. At first, the answer seems obvious: We need food to live. But in today’s world, food is so much more than simply sustenance. It’s entertainment. It’s an outlet for creative expression. It’s a source of conflict and a solution. Food takes on a different meaning and importance to each of us. It’s both deeply personal yet one of life’s few universal truths. What I learned while working on this feature is just how complicated this subject really is. I spoke with chefs whose driving passion is to share it with others. With farmers whose livelihood revolves around growing it. With activists who see it as a medium for change. Each story took me on a new journey and encouraged me to rethink how I approach food in my own life. The conversations I had with these 10 individuals weren’t always easy. Yes, food can be celebratory and exciting, but it can also be complex and uncomfortable. As we all reflect on the challenges of the past year and ready ourselves for what’s ahead, it’s important to remember the power that food holds. It’s something we all need and something we all have in common. It has the ability to open our minds and bring us together. The stories that follow are a collection of experiences, lessons and musings about the ways — both big and small — food plays into our day-to-day lives. Taken altogether, they illustrate why food is so entangled in our culture and so synonymous with our identity. This is why food matters.

TERS

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FEATURE

MASHAMA BAILEY

Executive Chef and Partner at the Grey

As executive chef of the Grey in Savannah, Georgia, Mashama Bailey has earned a number of accolades, including the 2019 James Beard Award for Best Chef Southeast.

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Racism has been baked into the clay and cast-iron pots across this country. In almost any city around the world, you’ll find the people who have migrated there represented by local restaurants. But Black folks’ migration to this country was forced. Black peoples’ contributions helped build these cities and provide texture. In spite of all of this, because of slavery, Blacks have adopted American culture as their own. After I returned to the South to open the Grey, I stepped back and looked at how much Black people have influenced all things American, and food is no exception. For me, American cooking and African American cooking are not that different. Restaurants play a big part in changing people’s perspectives. They allow someone from outside a culture to learn or grow through exposure to different ingredients and preparations. With so many restaurants in America and all of us being exposed to one another’s cultures through food, why is our society so divided? When I decided to move back to Savannah and start a restaurant with my business partner, Johno Morisano, little did I know that our partnership would test this theory. It would test the basic differences in American culture and how we coexist. Before Johno and I considered whether we had potential as partners, we asked ourselves and each other, What could we add to the industry? How would our work be different? I also needed to prove to myself that Black American food is more than what people expect it to be. I wanted to show its value. At the Grey, we celebrate the good aspects of American culture while exposing the bad. We know that true understanding is going to take a lot of listening, sacrifice from those who hold power and a passing of the torches by those who have maintained control of the narratives. We discuss the influences of slavery and other migrations throughout the South. We celebrate the heritage of African American culture through the lens of the African Diaspora. We talk about all of our influences, from growing up in New York City and traveling around the country. We try to tell that story through our food, our design and our service. In many ways, we’re still figuring that out as we continue to learn from our mistakes and inspire our team. All we can hope is that through our work we can heal, gain perspective, and continue to grow from a place of trust and respect. In the time of a global pandemic and one of the largest uprisings in decades on behalf of Black Americans, we present an example of how uncomfortable these conversations are going to need to get.

BOBBY STUCKEY Master Sommelier

My wife, Danette, is the most patient woman. For the entire 20 years of our marriage, I’ve worked six days a week. Sunday is our day together, and I’m confident this day wouldn’t be as special to us if I had two days off. On Sundays, we typically head to Bart’s, our favorite vinyl shop in Boulder. We don’t need more records, but half the fun is picking out something new to listen to that evening. One weekend it might be Ethiopian funk, the next it’s experimental punk rock. We’re omnivores of music and wine, pairing each album with a fitting bottle. Music, like wine, is all about discovery; both have their own sense of terroir and can transport you to a different place. We might pair that Ethiopian funk record with a vivacious white from the Canary Islands or punk rock with a bold sangiovese. We’ve kept this tradition going for years, and it was the muse for my wine bar, Sunday Vinyl. Just like at home, we like to keep the music and the wine list varied and unexpected. Sure, sometimes you want the hits, like a rousing Queen ballad or an oaky chardonnay, but other times you thirst for something new.

BOBBY’S MUSIC AND WINE PAIRINGS BILLIE HOLIDAY’S LADY SINGS THE BLUES WITH A 2015 JEAN-LOUIS CHAVE HERMITAGE: The bluesy, smoky, soulful music beautifully complements this seductive, earthy expression of syrah. HERB ALPERT & THE TIJUANA BRASS’S SOUTH OF THE BORDER WITH A 2018 VEYDER-MALBERG GRÜNER VELTLINER: This crisp bottle works well with warm weather and spicy food. It will put a dance in your step, just like the upbeat sounds of the amazing horns. FLEETWOOD MAC’S RUMOURS WITH A FORADORI TEROLDEGO: Elisabetta Foradori is the high priestess of teroldego, a deeply colored red wine grape grown in Italy’s Trentino region. Her distinctive wine can keep up with this iconic record. THE CLASH’S LONDON CALLING WITH A 2018 RONCO DEL GNEMIZ SAUVIGNON SOL: I love to talk punk rock with Zeno Palazzolo, the son of the winemakers at Ronco del Gnemiz. This electric wine is a classic, just like this album. MARIA CALLAS’S PURE WITH KRUG CHAMPAGNE: The exemplary sounds of Maria Callas, with her powerful yet ethereal voice, pair wonderfully with a grand Krug. Bobby Stuckey lives in Boulder, Colorado, and is the cofounder of the James Beard Award–winning Frasca Hospitality Group and Scarpetta Wine. He is also the cofounder of the Independent Restaurant Coalition, formed to help save local restaurants.

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FEATURE

HETTY MCKINNON

Food Writer and Cookbook Author Breakfast was a grand affair in my childhood home. Each morning, I’d wander downstairs to find my mother hunched over her wok, diligently stir-frying soy sauce noodles or tossing fried rice. As a non-English-speaking Chinese immigrant living in Australia, she cooked to express herself and to connect with the home and culture she left behind. Growing up, I felt like I was trapped between two cultures. I didn’t feel comfortable with my Chinese heritage nor with my place as a second-generation Australian. The food we ate at home, especially my mother’s elaborate nightly banquets, served as a daily reminder that I was different. (As an angsty teen, I wanted steak with mashed potatoes and peas, a meal my mother made occasionally as her way of dabbling with Western cuisine.) After I had my own children, I fell into a career in food running my own salad delivery business. Soon, my mother started helping me in the kitchen. It was while we were cooking alongside each other that food began to take on a new meaning. Perhaps for the first time, I saw my mother as more than my parent, but as a woman who has lived many lives: as a dreamer, a creative, a survivor. I began to understand what food meant to her and the immense pride she felt in keeping her family food traditions alive for her own children. The more I cooked, whether that be Chinese dishes or the global flavors on display in my cookbooks, the closer I felt to my heritage. As a Chinese kid who grew up in the West with rudimentary Cantonese language skills, I finally began to lay claim to my Asian-ness through food. The ebullient, full-bodied flavors of my youth welcomed me back, helping me understand and feel proud of the person who stared back at me in the mirror. Today, the food I cook is not distinctly Chinese nor Australian, but rather a third interpretation of the two cultures. It’s my gateway to exploring my identity as a thirdculture person who has roots in the East but grew up in the West. Although I love Chinese dumplings, you’re more likely to find my family eating ones filled with spinach and feta than water chestnuts or napa cabbage. And come dinnertime, my mother’s signature curry vermicelli has a spot on the table alongside my Aussie-inspired Vegemite ramen noodles. The food we cook and share with others can so powerfully connect us to our past while creating pathways to the future. It allows the children of immigrants to write a new narrative about who we are and to show that our story is just as authentic as the generation before us. Hetty McKinnon is a best-selling cookbook author and New York Times recipe contributor living in Brooklyn. Her latest tome, To Asia, With Love, is out this April.

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“THE MORE I COOKED, THE CLOSER I FELT TO MY HERITAGE.”

SEAN SHERMAN Founder of The Sioux Chef

Have you ever wondered why there aren’t Native American restaurants? When most people think of Indigenous foods, an Indian taco probably comes to mind: a piece of fry bread mounded with spiced ground beef, shredded cheese and iceberg lettuce. In actuality, this is a poor representation of the amazingly diverse legacy of our Native ancestors. To begin to understand Indigenous food systems, first you have to understand how destructive colonialism was — and continues to be — for Native people. The Indigenous perspective of our histories is largely removed from our curriculums, so few people understand the plight of our many communities and the atrocities we faced. In the 1800s, genocidal destruction completely decimated entire crops, seed banks and communities. The 1900s saw the removal of our generational Indigenous educations, which were replaced with Westernized teachings. When I was growing up on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota in the seventies and eighties, many families including my own had very little access to healthy, culturally appropriate foods. The government commodity food that filled our cupboards is still a major source of food for tribal communities today. Now as a professional chef, I’ve made it my mission to understand and promote Indigenous food systems and practices. Last year, our nonprofit, NATIFS, opened the Indigenous Food Lab, where we’re working to relearn the practices of our ancestors and share that knowledge with tribes across Minnesota and, eventually, across the country. During the pandemic, we’ve been delivering nutritious meals made with regional and Indigenous ingredients and without colonial ones — meaning no wheat flour, dairy, cane sugar, or even beef, pork or chicken — to area tribal communities. We want to make this healthy food as accessible as possible and create opportunities for more people to learn about Native cuisine and develop food enterprises in their own communities. Later this year, we’re opening our first Indigenous-focused restaurant, Owamni, on the banks of the Mississippi River in Minneapolis. These falls were sacred to the Indigenous people of Minnesota, and we’re fortunate to be able to carry this story forward. We’ll be giving guests a taste of true Minnesota flavors while showing how Indigenous history can be weaved into the fabric of a city itself. I believe that one restaurant can change an entire community. Food is a common language and a great way to begin to understand your culture. Through our efforts to bring Native American cooking into the modern day, we’re creating something new for future generations. We want them to grow up with access to these foods and a true understanding and appreciation for them. We’re honored to be working toward an era of reclamation for our Indigenous communities. Sean Sherman is an Oglala Lakota chef, activist and cookbook author based in Minneapolis. He’s the co-owner of The Sioux Chef and cofounder of the nonprofit North American Traditional Indigenous Food Systems (NATIFS).

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FEATURE

Founder of Rodney Scott’s Whole Hog BBQ What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you think of an epic feast? I bet it’s a roasted pig with an apple in its mouth. That screams “feast” in ways that a Thanksgiving turkey or a standing rib roast doesn’t quite say. Maybe it’s because the word “hog” symbolizes gluttony and greed, so to feast on a hog is the height of feasting. Whole hog is king of the barbecue world. Barbecuing briskets and pork shoulders well is an art form that takes time, skill and dedication, but it doesn’t take the 12 hours of concentration that a whole hog requires. When I barbecue a pig, the coals are placed directly under the meat. The fat from the pork drips down, and the smell of the smoke immediately changes. The combination of aromas from the smoke off those wood coals and the smoke off that simmering fat creates a magical flavor. I think that’s the secret to the taste of my barbecue. In my experience, you need all five of your senses to cook the perfect pig:

TOUCH

Check your thermometer consistently to see if your temperature is getting too hot. Place your hand on the wood or sheet metal you have covering the pit. Get used to how it feels when it is burning hot or when the temperature has dropped.

SIGHT

Look at the color and volume of smoke coming out of the pit. When the meat is smoking, the smoke is a white-gray color and floats out of the pit. When you have a flare-up in the pit, you’ll start to see the smoke darken and increase in volume.

SOUND

Listen for the rhythm of the fat dripping from the hog. When it’s cooking properly, you should hear the sizzle of fat dripping every four to six seconds. If it’s coming down faster than that, it’s cooking too quickly and has probably flared up.

TASTE

Let smoke be your primary seasoning. I add a dry spice blend as well as our vinegar-based sauce during the last few minutes of cooking so the sauce cooks into the meat. You get more flavor this way than if you just add the sauce at the table.

SMELL

Finally, trust your nose; it will develop over time. Rodney Scott is the 2018 winner of the James Beard Award for Best Chef Southeast and has been cooking whole-hog barbecue in South Carolina for more than 25 years.

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REPRINTED WITH PERMISSION FROM RODNEY SCOTT’S WORLD OF BBQ: EVERY DAY IS A GOOD DAY BY RODNEY SCOTT AND LOLIS ERIC ELIE. COPYRIGHT © 2021 BY RODNEY SCOTT’S BBQ, LLC, A SOUTH CAROLINA LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY. PUBLISHED BY CLARKSON POTTER, AN IMPRINT OF PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE.

RODNEY SCOTT

JESSICA BATTILANA

Food Writer and Recipe Developer For three years, I had the best job in the world: elementary school lunch lady. After more than a decade in food media — authoring cookbooks, writing for magazines and developing recipes for my San Francisco Chronicle column — I wanted to try something new. So when the job as cook at my sons’ school opened up, I decided to go for it. The lunches I cooked for those 175 kids were love letters I wrote every day. They took the form of crispy, salty croutons piled on Caesar salad, of scratchmade sloppy joes on plush buns, of canned tomatoes transformed into silky soup. Instead of dumbing down recipes to make them less flavorful, less scary, less challenging, I made good food with great ingredients and trusted that the kids would be tempted into trying it. Some days, I failed spectacularly (kids really don’t like quinoa), and other times, I succeeded unexpectedly (they’re into spice-roasted cauliflower). I cooked the familiar (macaroni and cheese) and the less familiar (jambalaya). I balanced the tried and true (bananas) with the new (persimmons). I could’ve made it easier on myself by serving only the most beloved school lunches — pizza and burritos — again and again. Instead, I experimented with new recipes and flavors, remaining hopeful that by cooking up, rather than down, to the kids they’d eventually catch on. They’d read the love letters and know they were meant for them. When we show kids that we care about the food they eat — from its selection to its preparation to its presentation — we’re showing them we also care about them, deeply. And in my anecdotal experience, it works: One day after lunch, I was summoned to the first grade classroom, where a group of 6-year-olds cheered for a coconut curry loaded with tofu and vegetables, proclaiming it their favorite lunch ever. Jessica Battilana has authored numerous cookbooks with chefs and food personalities as well as her own Repertoire: All the Recipes You Need. She lives in Maine with her family.

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FEATURE

SARA KATE GILLINGHAM

Cookbook Author and Cofounder of The Dynamite Shop I didn’t start baking sourdough bread as therapy, or to add to the growing list of Instagrammable homesteading habits, or even as a pandemic pastime. It was a long slow walk to get here, with plenty of unrelated therapy along the way. The notion that making sourdough is a form of therapy cracks me up because it can be so frustrating that you may need some therapy after attempting it. I always say start with the easy stuff; until you understand how flour behaves on its own, you can’t understand why lactobacilli in the air helps bread rise. If you attempt the Bien Cuit 60-Hour Sourdough or the 13-step Tartine Country Bread recipe, I promise you’ll end up crying. So instead, make quick breads. During my childhood, quick breads were the extent of the bread baking in my family: beer bread mixed up right in the loaf pan or skillet-baked drop biscuits. It was California in the eighties, so I was aware of people cultivating sourdough starters at home — these were the folks with kombucha mothers and sauerkraut setups — but our weekly bag of San Francisco sourdough from Ralphs did my PB&Js just fine. By the time Jim Lahey’s No-Knead Bread popped up in The New York Times in 2006, I had a newborn and the thought of making a little warm loaf of bread fit into the hibernation of early motherhood. I, along with millions of other eager home bakers, finally understood that baking artisan-style bread at home wasn’t all that hard. It wasn’t sourdough, but it looked and tasted legit. Finally, I was ready. Lahey’s method followed by a close study of Ken Forkish’s Flour Water Salt Yeast led me to my now weekly sourdough rhythm that includes several starters, a barter arrangement with a friend who grinds his own flour, and a habit of always making two loaves so I can give one away. This past year when, like many folks, I had some extra time, I fed my neighbors with a constant stream of bread. I traded it for homemade kimchi. I left loaves hanging on doorknobs. I even had a few awkward exchanges with surprise gluten-free neighbors. The caretaking of the starter and the rhythmic mixing, folding and shaping of the bread — even the act of packing it up into paper bags and delivering it around town — has finally become therapy in the sense that it soothes me, but only because I can almost do it with my eyes closed. With that newborn now off to high school, tending to my breads gives my maternal instincts an outlet. Like mothering, it’s now ingrained.

“THIS PAST YEAR, I FED MY NEIGHBORS WITH A CONSTANT STREAM OF BREAD.”

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Sara Kate Gillingham is a James Beard Award– winning cookbook author and cofounder of The Dynamite Shop, an online culinary school based in Brooklyn.

SOPHIA ROE

Chef, Welfare Advocate and Food Access Activist There’s a community refrigerator and pantry a few blocks from my house in Brooklyn. Not the Brooklyn that sells $15 avocado toast or $9 oat milk lattes. I live in a Brooklyn that has block parties in the dead of winter, treats a simple game of pickup basketball like it’s the playoffs and needs no reason at all to get the grill going. I live in a community. I met Ms. Harris at the community refrigerator last year. She’s a stunning woman, even at 78 years young. I had just dropped off a few boxes of garbanzo bean pasta, a bottle of nice olive oil, some premium tea and a jar of manuka honey. Listen, I hear you. I know it seems pretentious to gift specialty or expensive pantry items, but let’s be honest: If you wouldn’t eat that expired cream of chicken soup, chances are no one else will either. My rule? If I wouldn’t eat it, it doesn’t belong in the community fridge. After dropping off my donations, I watched Ms. Harris get up from a nearby bench and go straight for the garbanzo bean pasta. She picked up a box, studied it carefully, then asked, “How does this taste?” I told her, “It doesn’t taste like typical pasta, but it’s good and has lots of protein.” She smiled and said, “My grandson always talks about protein for his muscles.” She made me laugh and even forget I was running late. I wanted to see her again. She told me she visited the community refrigerator every Tuesday and Thursday; she had lost her job during the pandemic and needed to reserve all her money for rent and medication. Now, I see Ms. Harris twice a week. I get so excited to share an interesting ingredient or recipe with her or tell her about something crazy that happened. We listen to each other. All the pricey products and treatments that experts tout for your wellness don’t make me feel half as good as Ms. Harris does. Food is far more than what we put in our mouths. It’s universal. It fuels, animates and motivates us. The friendship Ms. Harris and I have keeps me full for days. We met because of food (or the lack of it), but now we exist in stories, in walks around the block, in finding her the perfect shade of lipstick at the corner drugstore. What’s most exciting about what food has done for Ms. Harris and me is that you can have it, too. Sophia Roe is a chef, writer and advocate living in Brooklyn. She is also the host of the new show Counter Space on VICE TV.

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FEATURE

LEE WOLEN

Executive Chef and Partner at Boka Restaurant Group I’m a homebody. I don’t drink; I don’t go to bars. Despite my long career as a chef at establishments like Eleven Madison Park in New York City and now Boka in Chicago, I’ve never been into the late-night scene that comes with this industry. Before I got married in 2015, I knew my bachelor party wasn’t going to involve a rowdy trip to Vegas. Instead, I wanted a meal to remember. So my cousin and I hopped a plane to San Francisco to take in an 18-course dinner at the storied Restaurant at Meadowood in the heart of Napa Valley. Christopher Kostow’s Michelin-starred institution was a mecca for incredible California cooking. What makes a place like this special is that you can’t recreate it anywhere else in the world. It’s a luxury as a chef to have an experience like that — to be taken care of, to celebrate the important moments in life. Last fall, the Glass Fire ravaged Northern California and reduced the Restaurant at Meadowood and many homes and businesses to rubble. All that was left standing were the smoldering brick fireplaces. Luckily, this American institution will be rebuilt, and I look forward to walking through those doors again one day. Until then, here are the courses that remain emblazoned in my mind from that unforgettable meal back in 2015. EEL SMOKED OVER CABERNET STAVES BEEF TONGUE SABA: What a perfectly balanced bite. The small piece of eel was smoked over wine barrel staves (wooden slats) infused with California cabernet. The beef cheek was sliced paper thin and wrapped around the eel like a package. It was finished with a touch of saba, a syrup-like vinegar made from grape must. DAYLILY SPOT PRAWN CAVIAR: In this dish, the sweet prawns were chopped like a tartare and stuffed into yellow daylilies just as you would with a squash blossom. The steamed blossoms were served with an unctuous caviar butter. GRILLED DUCK FUDGE YAM: This duck was served with a yam purée and a “fudge” that I still can’t decipher to this day. The sauce was slightly sweet and had a rich umami quality. OLIVE OIL BLUEBERRY MILLET: A silky, chilled panna cotta was infused with grassy olive oil and topped with gooey early season blueberries and crunchy puffed millet. Simple and elegant. THE GARDEN, CANDIED: I had heard about this dish: an assortment of produce — beet, kabocha squash, citrus rind — preserved in syrup and candied. When you have amazing ingredients, you don’t need to do much. Lee Wolen is a James Beard Award–nominated chef living in Chicago. He has held a Michelin star at his restaurant, Boka, since 2011.

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KRISTIN KIMBALL

Author and Cofounder of Essex Farm We’re in the midst of one of our family’s annual rituals: flipping through seed catalogs to decide what to grow. Our farm in northeastern New York produces a full year-round diet for roughly 300 members who take home a share of what we harvest every week. Choosing seeds is a fairly serious job; my husband, Mark, and I have been at it long enough to know what works well. Our kids, however, have ideas of their own. Rather than focus on the practical, they’ve dog-eared the pages with all the weird things they could plant, with no regard for if the seed will produce something popular or even, for that matter, edible. Mouse melons, for example. I’d never heard of these pinkie-sized cucumbers that look like itsy bitsy watermelons — probably because serious farmers would never consider growing them. (The catalog notes, with some sarcasm I think, that they’re “not particularly high-yielding.”) Jane, who is 13 and loves miniature things, would like to grow an acre of them. Meanwhile 10-year-old Miranda wants catnip — and lots of it. (I assume because she thinks it would be hilarious to see what a 900-foot row of feline hallucinogen would do to the barn cats.) Whatever we decide, we need to do it soon. It looks like seeds might become the new toilet paper of end-stage pandemic shopping. Seed houses have been reporting record-breaking sales since last spring, and some of our usual varieties are already sold out. It seems people got spooked by empty grocery store shelves or bored from so much time at home, and many of them started planting. I have conflicting feelings about this. On one hand, I don’t want to plant less reliable varieties of staple crops — or convince our members to eat mouse melons. On the other hand, a nationwide run on seeds makes me optimistic about our collective future. Anything that gets hands in soil and produces food is a step in the right direction. A new connection with the earth is a very healthy thing in the wake of so much upheaval. Our world is increasingly split between what’s real and what’s fake, and a garden is definitely, demonstrably real. People with different backgrounds and different beliefs can talk reasonably about their tomatoes. Growing food restores my faith in the basic goodness of the world, because the act of putting a seed in soil is an act of hope. Most of the time, given sun, water and a little luck, your work will light the fuse of life. I’ve been at this for 17 years now, and the magic of it all still amazes me. Maybe this magic of growth is what we all need after coming through this long season of darkness. I’m all for it — even if we have to eat mouse melons.

“GROWING FOOD RESTORES MY FAITH IN THE BASIC GOODNESS OF THE WORLD.”

Kristin Kimball is a travel writer turned farmer and the bestselling author of two memoirs. She lives with her family in Upstate New York.

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Baldamar marks the turning point where we usher in the new standard for style, service and steak. It means the menu’s made with old-world craft at its core and modern day meat eaters in mind — with flavors forged in fire and folded into pure primal perfection. It’s where every steak is aged 40 days and 40 nights for a taste of biblical proportion, and where crazy-fresh seafood means it was caught during your morning commute. At the bar sits every spirit imaginable, and someone who isn’t afraid to use them. This is more than a new steakhouse. It’s a line in the sand. It’s not just where you celebrate special occasions. It’s where you create them.

B A L DA M A R .C OM

1642 County Road B2 West • Roseville, MN 55113 • Reservations: 6 5 1 . 7 9 6 . o o 4 0

Private & Group Dining • Happy Hour • Sunday Buffet Brunch • Gift Cards • New Year’s Eve • New Year’s Day Hangover Buffet

Photo courtesy of Gladson New York Photos courtesy of Gladson New York c. 2020

Custom Wedding Suits,

Inspiring Hope for Better Times

TopShelfInc.com 612.824.2800 Minneapolis Since 1976 Call for appointment E

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VIE W The Spring PROPERTY GALLERY IN THIS ISSUE:

HEART & SOUL FEATURED ON PAGE 142

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PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE List Your Home With the Luxury Home Sales Leader* Year in and year out, Coldwell Banker Realty dominates the luxury real estate market in Minnesota. And 2020 was no different, as we again ranked No. 1 in luxury home sales in the Twin Cities area.*

60%

Coldwell Banker Realty Edina Realty Lakes Sotheby's International

50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% $750K+

$1M+

Sales price

$2M+

$3M+

We also have some exciting news about a change to our prestigious Coldwell Banker Global Luxury® branding. The Coldwell Banker® brand recently unveiled a sleek new logo and imagery for the Global Luxury program that is in line with the company’s rebrand. The sophisticated new branding establishes a modern look for mobile, social and digital marketing and matches the upscale properties we sell, enabling us to showcase the Global Luxury program as a leader in delivering excellence, performance and refinement. We're excited to offer a vast selection of luxurious homes for sale in our Spring Property Gallery. Thank you to all of our sellers whose properties are showcased in this issue. And if you’re considering selling your home this spring, contact an agent affiliated with the Twin Cities’ luxury real estate leader.

Matt Baker President Minnesota and Western Wisconsin Coldwell Banker Realty *Based on closed sales volume information from NorthstarMLS for the counties of Anoka, Carver, Dakota, Hennepin, Ramsey, Scott, Washington and Wright, $750,000 and higher, as reported on Feb. 8, 2021 for the period of Jan. 1-Dec. 31, 2020, calculated by multiplying the number of buyer and/or seller sides by sales price. Source data is deemed reliable but not guaranteed. The property information herein is derived from various sources that may include, but not be limited to county records and the Multiple Listing Service, and it may include approximations. Although the information is believed to be accurate, it is not warranted and you should not rely upon it without personal verification. Affiliated real estate agents are independent contractor sales associates, not employees. ©2021 Coldwell Banker. All Rights Reserved. Coldwell Banker and the Coldwell Banker logos are trademarks of Coldwell Banker Real Estate LLC. The Coldwell Banker® System is comprised of company owned offices which are owned by a subsidiary of Realogy Brokerage Group LLC and franchised offices which are independently owned and operated. The Coldwell Banker System fully supports the principles of the Fair Housing Act and the Equal Opportunity Act.

MICHAEL STEADMAN

612.296.0900 mbsteadman@cbburnet.com mikesteadman.com

WILLOW BAY SANCTUARY 1875 LAKESIDE TRAIL | ORONO | $1,299,000 Don't miss your opportunity to build in the new premiere subdivision on Long Lake. Only 3 homesites remain in Willow Bay Sanctuary. There are 2 off lake lots ranging in price from $599,000 $675,000. The final lake lot features 200 ft of prime lakeshore. Amenities include, connections to City Water and City Sewer, located in the Orono School District and open to all builders with architectural review. For more information or to walk the available lots, please contact Mike Steadman.

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ZINN FAMILY REALTORS 952.474.4444 czinn@cbburnet.com zinnrealtors.com

3665 NORTHOME ROAD | DEEPHAVEN 5 BR 6 BA | $3,495,000 A rare opportunity in the historic Northome neighborhood on Lake Minnetonka’s St Louis Bay. The heavily wooded 1 ½ acre site has 60 feet of south facing lakeshore with a rare permanent dock only a two-minute cruise from the main lower lake. The 2019 major remodel by Boyer Construction was extensive. The stone & brick house is a perfect blend of timeless grandeur with today’s open floor plan with all new surfaces. National Award-winning Minnetonka Schools with Deephaven Elementary. Just 20 minutes from the MSP airport and downtown Minneapolis.

19300 CEDARHURST STREET | DEEPHAVEN 4 BR 5 BA | $1,850,000 Stunning estate on a heavily wooded 1.5-acre site in historic Cedarhurst neighborhood of Deephaven. Lake Minnetonka deeded dock, swimming beach and covered boat slip. The home is richly appointed and has been meticulously maintained and updated to include all the features the 2021 buyer expects. The landscaping is breathtaking with professionally designed and maintained exquisite gardens, stone patios and grass yard areas with room for a pool. The home is in the award-winning Minnetonka School District. 20 minutes from MSP and downtown.

11477 FETTERLY ROAD W | MINNETONKA 6 BR 5 BA | $1,350,000 Minnetonka is Minneapolis’s closest suburban executive neighborhood. Sited on 1.6 acres on a bluff overlooking acres of ponds and wetlands. The home is architecturally designed with old world charm and exquisitely crafted materials. The open floor plan has multiple comfortable spaces throughout including a main level master suite. The lower level has a large family room with billiards, wet bar, wine cellar and guest bedrooms. Wildlife filled views from the home and the outdoor living areas. 10 minutes from downtown and 20 minutes to airport.

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JEFFREY DEWING

612.597.0424 JDewing@CBRealty.com JeffreyDewing.com

2303 HUNTINGTON POINT ROAD E | MINNETONKA BEACH 4 BR 5 BA | $7,999,000 Beautifully designed Minnetonka Beach residence offering breathtaking water views overlooking 205’ of level lakeshore. Enjoy world-class architectural details at every turn, main-level Owner’s suite with walls of windows looking out to the tranquil backyard, endless indoor & outdoor entertaining spaces all tucked away on .92 private acres.

726 WIDSTEN CIRCLE | WAYZATA 4 BR 5 BA | $2,699,000 Gorgeous sought-after Widsten townhome on a quiet non-through street. Enjoy breathtaking sunset views overlooking Wayzata Bay, main-level Owner's suite, sitting room with stunning water views, large office with built-ins and three outdoor spaces. Heated three-car garage. Walk to the beach, shops, restaurants and all the amenities downtown Wayzata has to offer!

3923 TRAMORE LANE | DEEPHAVEN 4 BR 5 BA | $2,575,000 Stunning custom-built masterpiece tucked away in a tranquil setting just minutes to Wayzata & Excelsior! This beautiful home was designed for entertaining with an open flowing floorplan, walls of windows offering natural light-filled spaces, and high-end details & finishes at every turn! Enjoy the private backyard with pool.

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PAT MCGRATH

651.485.4850 pmcgrath@cbburnet.com patmcgrathhomes.com

1330 GOOSE LAKE RD | SAINT PAUL | $1,890,000

7 S LONG LAKE TRAIL | NORTH OAKS | $1,450,000

Estate style 18+ acres with 500+ feet of pristine south facing shoreline on Gem Lake. This former hunting lodge is fabled to have hosted the St Paul elite and former president George HW Bush. The perfectly preserved historic lodge room boasts beautiful elevated views across the entire lake. Truly a rare find this close to the Twin Cities.

Architecturally designed to take advantage of long natural views. Open floor plan with spectacular windows and lighting. Tranquil acreage setting less than 30 minutes to either Minneapolis or St. Paul. Additional 3 acre lot available.

590 WOODLAND DRIVE | MAHTOMEDI | $1,375,000

CEDARLEAF POINT | MAHTOMEDI | PRICE UPON REQUEST

No detail missed. Masterfully designed throughout featuring Wolf, Miele, and Sub-Zero in the chef’s kitchen. Luxurious vaulted master suite with spa inspired bath. Wine cellar, theater, exercise room, and fabulous entertaining spaces in the walkout level. All bedrooms have private baths.

Impossible to find new construction in Mahtomedi. Small enclave of only 14 beautiful lots. Some with frontage on scenic Echo Lake. Super convenient location only 1 mile to shopping and 2 miles to freeway entrance. Home/land packages from $1,200,000.

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DREW HUELER

612.701.3124 drew.hueler@cbrealty.com www.drewhueler.com

2845 LILLIAN LANE | ORONO 5 BR 5 BA | $1,495,000

128 BROADWAY AVENUE N | WAYZATA 4 BR 4 BA | $1,295,000

The ultimate modern farmhouse designed and built by Chamberlain Fine Custom Homes. Idyllic setting on over 2.7 acres. Open concept main level, gourmet kitchen, private office and luxurious master suite. Located in Orono schools. Additional lots and build packages available.

Just three blocks to downtown Wayzata, this new construction home combines quality and sophistication with an amazing location. Enjoy all that Lake Street has to offer with shopping, dining and Lake Minnetonka a short walk away. Open concept main level. Gorgeously appointed throughout. Wayzata schools.

151 BELL STREET | EXCELSIOR 3 BR 3 BA | $1,249,000

3360 EAGLE BLUFF ROAD | MINNETRISTA 4 BR 4 BA | $1,039,000

Build your dream home in charming Excelsior. Existing plan is able to be modified to suit your needs. Blocks away from Lake Minnetonka, downtown shopping and top-rated restaurants. Mark D Williams Custom Homes design and build.

This gorgeously refreshed home features stunning panoramic views of Lake Minnetonka in the coveted Eagle Bluff neighborhood. Open concept, main level living with large lakefacing windows. Main level master suite. Enjoy the Lake Minnetonka lifestyle with included boat slip on Priest Bay. Turn-key and ready for you to call home.

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George W. Stickney Kevin Stickney 952.476.3694 gstickney@cbburnet.com

952.250.2015 kwstickney@cbburnet.com

David Stickney

Jacob stickney

952.250.0122 djstickney@cbburnet.com

952.250.1267 jmstickney@cbburnet.com

2791 COPELAND ROAD | INDEPENDENCE 3 BR 3 BA | PRICE UPON REQUEST

7625 PIONEER CREEK ROAD | INDEPENDENCE 3 BR 3 BA | PRICE UPON REQUEST

Set upon a picturesque 52 acres this charming, remodeled farmhouse is the perfect equestrian or hobby farm retreat. The property offers: 100' x 52' indoor arena, 80' x 40' barn, 14 stalls, tack room and more. Potential for lot split.

Escape to your own private oasis on 10+ acres with a separate shop and pole barn. This sun-filled walkout rambler offers an abundance of entertaining and living spaces with an inviting layout. The home showcases a gourmet kitchen, vaulted ceilings, wonderful 4-season porch overlooking the pool and freshly painted throughout.

3515 MEADOW LANE | MINNETONKA 4 BR 4 BA | PRICE UPON REQUEST

4209 CHRISTY LANE | MINNETONKA 3 BR 3 BA | PRICE UPON REQUEST

Captivating Charles Cudd built two-story home is a testament to timeless architecture and flawless craftsmanship. This thoughtfully sized home is guaranteed to impress with its magnificently remodeled kitchen and exquisite attention to detail.

Upon entering this completely renovated Scandinavian modern farmhouse you are greeted with a crisp white interior and clean lines through its open floor plan. High-end finishes grace the interior and stunning sight lines capture private views.

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BERG LARSEN GROUP 612.925.8404 getinfo@BergLarsenGroup.com berglarsengroup.com

1300 MOUNT CURVE | MINNEAPOLIS 10 BR 11 BA | $5,995,000

2102 CEDAR LAKE PARKWAY | MINNEAPOLIS 4 BR 5 BA | $3,695,000

Crowning one of the highest points in the City, this grand mansion is offered for the first time in over 35 years. Approached by a circular drive, the home offers stunning public rooms, seven car garage, and amazing outdoor pool with cabana.

Stunning Stinson/Streeter contemporary superbly captures lake and skyline views. Walls of glass open from great room to expansive outdoor terrace with pool and fireplace. Each bedroom with private bath. Elevator, study, media room.

2305 PENN AVENUE S | MINNEAPOLIS 4 BR 5 BA | $2,750,000

5905 LEE VALLEY ROAD | EDINA 5 BR 6 BA | $2,395,000

Picturesque move-in-ready storybook classic! This Kenwood home updated to perfection has it all. Overlooking Lake of the Isles, interiors are open, light and bright. Multiple outdoor living spaces are equally impressive. A true City Lakes gem!

Set on a gorgeous, level 1.83 acre site in west Edina, this Denali-built home features high ceilinged spacious rooms, bonus room, state of the art media room, and heated driveway. Large rear yard could easily accommodate pool or tennis court.

8983 AVILA COVE | EDEN PRAIRIE 5 BR 4 BA | $2,195,000

2727 DEAN PARKWAY | MINNEAPOLIS 4 BR 5 BA | $1,895,000

Accented by stone, walls of glass and high ceilings, this architect designed contemporary takes advantage of its picturesque Bearpath site. Kitchen/family room opens to a cantilevered porch and deck. Walkout level sport court and 4-car garage.

With views of Kenilworth Channel and easy lake access, fully renovated Mediterranean with 1st floor family room and bar, center island kitchen, 1st floor office and sunroom, master bedroom with fireplace and dual baths. Lower level family room and wine cellar. Attached 3-car garage.

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BERG LARSEN GROUP 612.925.8404 getinfo@BergLarsenGroup.com berglarsengroup.com

1930 KNOX AVENUE S | MINNEAPOLIS 4 BR 6 BA | $1,895,000

6616 DOVRE DRIVE | EDINA 5 BR 6 BA | $1,825,000

Prime location on one of Kenwood’s favorite blocks features family room open to kitchen, master suite with study, generous room sizes, finished lower level, attached garage, steps to Lake of the Isles.

Captivating whole house renovation. Entertain in high style in phenomenal dual island kitchen open to family room. Master suite with ultra luxe private bath. Walkout family room complex plus fitness room. Pool, outdoor fireplace.

301 KENWOOD PARKWAY #302 | MINNEAPOLIS 2 BR 2 BA | $2,495,000

2833 OVERLOOK CIRCLE | BLOOMINGTON 4 BR 5 BA | $1,475,000

Stunning two bedroom + den with outstanding Sculpture Garden and skyline views and expansive terrace. Fully renovated with center island kitchen open to great room, walls of glass, private elevator entry to unit. Much coveted building and location.

Hidden from view, this bluff side architect designed home is spectacularly private. Bird’s eye perspective is enjoyed throughout, including the vaulted gazebo and second level balcony. Sub-garage bonus space, new windows, decking, mechanicals.

11636 RASPBERRY HILL ROAD | EDEN PRAIRIE 5 BR 6 BA | $1,295,000

4627 BRUCE AVENUE | EDINA 5 BR 5 BA | $1,195,000

High ceilinged, light and airy walkout. Master suite includes generous sitting room/study. Kitchen and family room open to extensive tree top deck. Plus three additional bedrooms, exercise, second family room with media on the lower level.

Well maintained updated Country Club home has terrific open kitchen/family room, four bedrooms and three baths on second. Third floor getaway, plus finished lower level with 2nd family room, exercise, guest bedroom and bath. Charming rear yard with deck.

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BRUCE BIRKELAND

612.414.3957 BBirkeland@cbburnet.com BruceBirkelandGroup.com

4913 SUNNYSLOPE ROAD W | EDINA 6 BR 5 BA | $2,750,000

2212 W LAKE OF THE ISLES PARKWAY | MINNEAPOLIS 7 BR 9 BA | $2,350,000

Stunning Sunnyslope residence w/luxurious materials, exceptional use of light & sprawling park-like lot with tranquil privacy. Open design concept, lavish kitchen w/two-story volume, theater space, new pool and lush landscaping.

Remarkable Lake Of The Isles estate, rich in history with magnificent interior spaces, huge lakeside owner's suite with luxurious owner's spa, one-of-a-kind glass porte-cochere and expansive water views.

57 GROVELAND TERRACE | MINNEAPOLIS 4 BR 5 BA | $2,150,000

6016 LESLEE LANE | EDINA 4 BR 4 BA | $1,950,000

Refined Lowry Hill residence with jaw dropping Minneapolis skyline vistas and thoughtful renovation. Hand selected marbles and stones, custom crafted carpentry, and luxurious finishes throughout.

Classic Artisan architecture with stone wrapped exterior that perfectly blends into its picturesque surroundings. Extraordinary detail-centric interiors, luxurious finishes, open concept and fitness room.

1901 KNOX AVENUE S | MINNEAPOLIS 6 BR 5 BA | $1,850,000

1122 MOUNT CURVE AVENUE | MINNEAPOLIS 7 BR 7 BA | $1,795,000

Located on one of the most prized Minneapolis streets, this exemplary Prairie influenced brick-wrapped residence graciously sits on a picturesque corner lot and provides a timeless renovation and inground pool.

Exceptional Colonial Estate masterfully melds richly ornate architectural details, impressive scale, awe-inspiring spaces and luxurious finishes.

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BRUCE BIRKELAND

612.414.3957 BBirkeland@cbburnet.com BruceBirkelandGroup.com

66 GROVELAND TERRACE | MINNEAPOLIS 4 BR 6 BA | $1,795,000

2540 CEDAR SHORE DRIVE | MINNEAPOLIS 3 BR 5 BA | $1,595,000

A classic, brick-wrapped Georgian Colonial architecture with an all-encompassing remodel. This exemplary property blends finely restored and new architectural details, irreplaceable character and thoughtfully integrated modern-day luxuries.

Exceptional midcentury ranch on park-like lot with modernist elements and nature views. A unique circular foyer, grand window wrapped rooms for entertaining, Hollywood inspired built-in bar and expansive art walls.

2677 E LAKE OF THE ISLES PARKWAY | MINNEAPOLIS 4 BR 3 BA | $1,395,000

4400 THOMAS AVENUE S | MINNEAPOLIS 3 BR 4 BA | $1,350,000

Sweeping water vistas seamlessly tie the picturesque outdoors to the light-infused interior spaces, creating a tranquil backdrop for daily living. Artisan updates, timeless architectural accents and tree-top owner's suite.

Masterfully renovated Linden Hills cottage with unrivaled location - only steps to picturesque Lake Harriet, shopping, restaurants, parks and more. Offering hand selected marbles and stones, richly colored wood tones and stained glass accents.

2003 QUEEN AVENUE S | MINNEAPOLIS 4 BR 5 BA | $925,000

2100 HUMBOLDT AVENUE S | MINNEAPOLIS 5 BR 3 BA | $799,900

Charming cottage style home on beautiful tree-lined street, steps from scenic Lake of the Isles & Kenwood Park. This classically designed home masterfully balances thoughtful updates, irreplaceable historic character & architectural details.

Perfectly perched on a picturesque Lowry Hill lot, this exceptional brick wrapped residence blends modern-day updates, timeless finishes & exquisite historic character. Designer kitchen, two window wrapped sunrooms & a tree-top 3rd floor family room.

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KRISTA WOLTER

612.247.5106 Krista@KristaWolter.com KristaWolter.com

RED FOREST WAY | NORTH OAKS 5 BR 7 BA | $3,200,000

4619 MOORLAND AVENUE | EDINA 8 BR 7 BA | $3,895,000

Spectacular walkout rambler in North Oaks. This one owner home features main floor living like no other. Master wing includes a private office, a caretaker’s suite, and master bedroom with exceptional walk-in closet and private master bath.

Newer custom-built home with one of the largest lots in Country Club of Edina! The perfect blend of old-world craftsmanship with today’s modern amenities & design with generous spaces throughout all 3 floors. An entertainer’s dream.

54 MISSISSIPPI RIVER BOULEVARD N | SAINT PAUL 6 BR 4 BA | $895,000

13001 TWILIGHT ROAD | ONAMIA 4 BR 3 BA | $1,295,000

Exquisite French Tudor along the Mississippi River! Architectural details have been meticulously maintained for nearly a century. Home features a gourmet kitchen, wood beams, wood burning fireplace, herringbone brickwork and paver driveway.

Historic Perfection on Lake Mille Lacs. Just an hour and a half from the Twin Cities. This historic home sits on 1.76 acres on Twilight Road. Original stone exterior, fireplaces, flooring and beams. Enjoy 400’ of landscaped lakeshore frontage.

HILL FARM CONDOMINIUMS | NORTH OAKS 3 BR 2 BA | PRICE UPON REQUEST

225 QUAIL STREET | MAHTOMEDI 4 BR 3 BA | $825,000

North Oaks will soon welcome a three story condo building surrounded with privacy and conservancy land. This unique setting within the area provides exceptional maintenance free living in a convenient location. Taking Reservations Now!

A unique opportunity in the heart of Mahtomedi. The award-winning Hagstrom Builder is offering custom built villas, each secluded on nearly half an acre with private views and architectural details throughout. Taking lot reservations now!

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JOHN F ADAMS

612.720.4827 JAdams@CBBurnet.com JohnAdamsRealtor.com

28120 BOULDER BRIDGE DRIVE | SHOREWOOD 6 BR 8 BA | $3,495,000 Among the most private estate locations on Lake Minnetonka in this price range that exhibit the privacy and charm that are overwhelmingly apparent here. Enjoy westerly views of Smithtown Bay, incredible indoor-outdoor entertaining spaces and a private nanny/in-law suite. Association trails, tennis courts and deeded boat slip.

625 LOCUST HILLS DRIVE | WAYZATA 3 BR 4 BA | $2,999,000 Enjoy peaceful views of nature throughout this home offering southern exposure of Lake Minnetonka. Featuring a floorplan that is open yet cozy, detailed craftsmanship, luxurious owner’s suite with lakeside balcony, main level terrace and Locust Hills Association 2 miles of walking trails, clubhouse with pool and deeded boat slip.

16110 CROSBY COVE | WAYZATA 4 BR 6 BA | $2,475,000 Beautiful L. Cramer built home in desirable Crosby Cove. Highlights include a resort-like backyard with concrete pool with seamless benches, shallow lounging area, waterfall accents and a level fenced lawn. Enjoy a gourmet kitchen, main level owner’s suite, elevator, 3-season porch with tree-top views and deeded boat slip.

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Barbara Sallick of Waterworks appreciates beautiful materials in a table’s design, especially when it aligns with the style of the kitchen.

HEART & SOUL BY KRISTEN ORDONEZ

ARTICLE COURTESY OF HOMES & ESTATES WORLDWIDE

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PHOTO BY DURSTON SAYLOR

NO MATTER ITS MATERIAL OR DESIGN, THE KITCHEN TABLE HAS BEEN REDISCOVERED AS THE CENTER OF BOTH ROOM AND HOME.

hen you hear the word “kitchen,” it is easy to imagine the basic essentials that make up a kitchen — the gentle creak of the cabinet doors, the precisely timed clicks of a stove igniting gas to fire, the cool touch of stainless steel appliances. But what about the iconic kitchen table? Today’s trendsetters may still say that kitchen islands are “in” and the standard wooden kitchen table is “out.” But as top craftsmen and professionals in the interior design industry will discuss, the concept of a kitchen table has changed and its legacy reflects more than just a place to eat one’s meals. The kitchen itself is fondly referred to as the “heart of the home.” Designers like Heather Hungeling of Heather Hungeling Design note that nearly all projects start with the kitchen, “whether someone is building a new 10,000-square-foot house or completing a smaller remodel.” Having worked primarily on kitchen and bath projects, Hungeling says that prioritizing a kitchen’s design is key, as finding the perfect balance of style, appliances and space can sometimes make this room a pain point on a project. Barbara Sallick, co-founder and senior vice president of design for Waterworks, agrees, noting that its level of importance has become increasingly clear to clients. “[They are] becoming more informed about the importance of planning for a perfectly functioning kitchen, one that marries their lifestyle and design aesthetics,” says Sallick,

as her experiences working on her newly published book The Perfect Kitchen have led her to a new perspective on the process of kitchen design. Both Hungeling and Sallick confirm that designing the layout of a kitchen is akin to mapping traf fic patterns. These patterns form around what vital pieces are taking up space and where, from the distance between the refrigerator to the pantry, the appliances, and more. A kitchen table, synonymous with gathering and family meals, should naturally have a set place within the room, raising a multitude of decisions to consider: What size would work best for the needs of this home? Will this piece be multifunctional in terms of storage or a workstation? Does it fit the space well enough, or would an island work better? And ultimately, how does the placement of a table affect the flow of traffic in a kitchen?

When considering recent trends in kitchen design, Sallick notes that we are currently living in the “era of the island.”

PHOTO BY ERICA GEORGE DINES

PHOTO COURTESY HEATHER HUNGELING DESIGN

The style of a home, both internally and externally, can be a great catalyst for a kitchen and table’s design, according to Hungeling. For example, this natural oak wood worktop complements the finish of the cabinetry.

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These dynamics have become more abundantly clear since the beginning of the pandemic, as more people are taking a closer look inside their homes and the rooms they frequently use. “The kitchen has emerged as the community center of many household activities and celebrations,” Sallick states. “We spend much more time talking about food and preparing meals, especially during our COVID-19 quarantine.” For many, the kitchen table, no matter its appearance, has been the most important part of the kitchen — the soul within the heart of a home. Hungeling notes the benefits of a kitchen table are because of the focus on family, as it emotes a more soulful experience when everyone gets to sit down together. “We’ve been able to make these nice dinners to nurture ourselves and to make us feel better, it’s comforting,” Having crafted a variety of furniture pieces, Hays says a good table should be sturdy with a soul or history. “It should be able to take abuse and still look good, either durable enough to not show use or if it does, it takes on a patina with age.” A true

Questions like these are crucial to ask on behalf of a kitchen’s design, which is personal to every client, according to Tyler Hays, founder of BDDW, a luxury boutique brand known for heirloom-quality furniture. “Some are more concerned with the fewest steps between things like the sink, refrigerator and stove. The needs and use of [kitchens] vary widely,” he says, from professional chefs to those who just like to entertain. No matter the exact specifications of where appliances or cabinets were placed, there is always a centralized hub where families and guests gather, for meals or otherwise. The physical kitchen table, therefore, has since transformed into a concept, materializing in different ways and styles. For some, a table is a marble-topped center island with a butcher’s block, and bar stools along its edge. For others, it might be lengthy and handcrafted, with enough chairs and room to act as a dining room and office. It is the dynamics of the kitchen that help to develop its character, and further what its “table” looks like.

PHOTO COURTESY BDDW

Dark wood wishbone table from BDDW

craftsman, Hays prefers a classic wooden table without resin or lacquers, affirming that “wood looks good and wears well on its own.” Hungeling concurs with having a table with character, as it speaks to a more authentic feel, but also to finding ways that fit the needs of a client. For example, she suggests for someone looking to get more use out of a traditional farmhouse table with beautiful patina to add a marble top, adding both beauty and a functional workspace. Though the recent global situation has affected our lives at home, Sallick says there truly aren’t any trends, current or future, that will dictate what the perfect kitchen table looks like, or the right choice between choosing a table or an island. “In my grandmother’s kitchen, which I remember fondly, the table sat squarely in the middle of the room; it was the prep space, the community center, the dining place. No matter how many people we were, we always gathered around the table, had great conversations and created great memories. Table or island, many cabinets or few, the kitchen is the place that brings people together.”

A true craftsman, Hays prefers a classic wooden table without resin or lacquers, affirming that “wood looks good and wears well on its own.”

PHOTO BY EMILY FOLLOWILL

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An island divided into different work zones, seen here, opens the kitchen up in terms of functionality.

PHOTO BY JOHN UMBERGER, COURTESY HEATHER HUNGELING DESIGN

Space and placement will ultimately dictate the size of your table, says Sallick. “The longer, wider and bigger [the table is], the better.”

19500 CEDARHURST STREET | DEEPHAVEN 4 BR 4 BA | $3,175,000 Lakeshore Jewel on Robinson's Bay! This walkout rambler with main floor master, can be remodeled or a new home can be built on this spectacular site. As part of the estate area Association of historic Cedarhurst, this property enjoys protected docking. Never before offered, this is a one of a kind rare opportunity! Ellen DeHaven 612.817.5555 edehaven@cbburnet.com

20735 LINWOOD ROAD | DEEPHAVEN 6 BR 6 BA | $2,350,000 Rare Cottage-style 6-bedroom home in Cottagewood area. Beautifully detailed, renovated spaces, in move in condition. Sport court, main floor master, multiple study and work areas, association beach and tennis court. High demand Minnetonka schools. Hurry! Ellen DeHaven 612.817.5555 edehaven@cbburnet.com

1805 W LAKE STREET UNIT 403 | MINNEAPOLIS 3 BR 3 BA | $2,750,000 Stunning Streeter & Associates masterpiece located in the iconic Edgewater complex has the timeless feel of an elegant New York apartment with spectacular views of Lake Bde Maka Ska. Featuring floor to ceiling window walls, chef's kitchen, butler's pantry with back entrance, soundproof music room and luxurious owner's suite. Ruth Whitney Bowe 612.805.7412 RWBowe@cbburnet.com

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12TH AVENUE NORTH | PLYMOUTH 3 BR 5 BA | $2,395,000 An inspired re-invention of a floating roof, mid-century modern. Featuring a one of a kind concert space built for epic entertainment, yet intimate enough for casual life. Pro-level audio, an incredible bar, lighting and more. Walls of windows highlight the tranquil landscapes and acreage on Hadley Lake, just north of Wayzata. Gary Petersen 952.451.0284 Ian Petersen 612.910.6005

2530 FOX ST | ORONO 4 BR 5 BA | $1,750,000 A Must See Experience. The striking culmination of architect, builder and designer masterfully blurring the lines between classic and current architecture. Refined and detailed yet, bright and spacious - hand made mosaics, columns and millwork. Picturesque 4 acre setting, perfect for pool. Close-in Orono. 5 minutes to Wayzata. Gary Petersen 952.451.0284 Ian Petersen 612.910.6005

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19699 623RD AVENUE | LITCHFIELD 7 BR 8 BA | $1,850,000

3132 NORTHVIEW RD | MINNETONKA BEACH 4 BR 4 BA | $1,795,000

Enjoy this 7800+ FSF Lake Minne-Belle home. Three separate living quarters for year-round extended family enjoyment.

Classic lake home or prime building site in Minnetonka Beach. Perfect elevation, 118 ft of Crystal Bay lakeshore.

Greg Hahn 612.280.2311 Gary Petersen 952.451.0284

Gary Petersen 952.451.0284 Ian Petersen 612.910.6005

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17900 SHAVERS LANE | WOODLAND 6 BR 8 BA | $2,449,000 Vacation at home in the extraordinary estate situated on nearly 4 very private acres in sought after Woodland. This gorgeous setting includes a sprawling flat lawn, swimming pool, tennis court & interior lap pool. Interior is full of light, flow allows for entertaining but also has many intimate spaces to escape. Melissa Johnson 612.670.3456 Melissa.Johnson@cbburnet.com

5641 BARTLETT BLVD | MOUND PRICE UPON REQUEST NIH Homes presents this stunning Lake Minnetonka modern Dutch Colonial situated on a picture perfect lakeshore site with panoramic southern vistas and sandy bottom. This quintessential lakeshore home features hand crafted custom design elements, a gracious floor plan and a 6 car garage. Other lakeshore sites available. Brian Benson 612.227.8629 bkbenson@cbburnet.com

4810 SHERIDAN AVENUE S | MINNEAPOLIS 6 BR 4 BA | $1,795,000 Welcome to this stately center hall brick colonial on the southern shores of Lake Harriet. This magical home is filled with warmth and emotion. Its gracious living spaces and architectural details are breathtaking. Just steps from the lake, the location offers all the best of neighborhood life and Lakes area living. Rod Helm 612.720.9792 rhelm@cbburnet.com

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4804 WOODHILL WAY | EDINA $1,699,000

6350 RANIER LANE N | MAPLE GROVE 4 BR 4 BA | $1,100,000

Classic East Edina colonial on beautiful .6 acre lot. Gorgeous new kitchen. Large dining room great for entertaining.

Gorgeous new walk-out rambler / lovely site. 4,000 feet, casual elegance, light/bright spaces with main-level living!

Steve Schmitz 952.484.6045 SMSchmitz@cbburnet.com

Erik Myhran 612.810.3745 Lisa Piazza 612.751.0976

7005 OAK RIDGE RD | CORCORAN 6 BR 7 BA | $1,649,000

4965 TIMBER TRAIL | MINNETRISTA 5 BR 5 BA | $850,000

Nestled on 2 Acres abutting a 5 Acre wetland with pond. Three main level bedroom suites and an amazing indoor pool!

Nestled in trees on 4.7 Acres of majestic woods and wetlands. Spacious four season porch frames beautiful nature views.

Kathy Sawicki 612.270.1001 ksawicki@cbrealty.com

1120 S 2ND STREET UNIT 1204 | MINNEAPOLIS 2 BR 2 BA | $850,000

435 WILLOUGHBY WAY E | MINNETONKA 3 BR 4 BA | $849,000

Top floor unit with expansive views at Stonebridge. 2+ bedroom floorplan, ideal for home office, media or guest room.

Terrific executive townhome offers the ease of main floor living & spectacular views. 9 min to DT Mpls, 5 to Wayzata!

Fran & Barb Davis 612.554.0994 fdavis@cbburnet.com | bjdavis@cbburnet.com

Carolyn Olson 952.270.5784 cholson@cbburnet.com

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LUXURY IS UNIVERSAL When your home is marketed through international luxury websites and a global office network in 43 countries and territories, it attracts affluent buyers everywhere.

COLDWELLBANKERLUXURY.COM The property information herein is derived from various sources that may include, but not be limited to, county records and the Multiple Listing Service, and it may include approximations. Although the information is believed to be accurate, it is not warranted and you should not rely upon it without personal verification. Affiliated real estate agents are independent contractor sales associates, not employees. ©2021 Coldwell Banker. All Rights Reserved. Coldwell Banker and the Coldwell Banker logos are trademarks of Coldwell Banker Real Estate LLC. The Coldwell Banker® System is comprised of company owned offices which are owned by a subsidiary of Realogy Brokerage Group LLC and franchised offices which are independently owned and operated. The Coldwell Banker System fully supports the principles of the Fair Housing Act and the Equal Opportunity Act. 202ULG_8/20 CalRe #12345678

Bath furniture by Lacava and fittings by Waterworks.

fittings | fixtures | surfaces | lighting for beautiful kitchens and baths Designing and selecting the perfect fixtures for your home should be a creative, enjoyable process and the Montaggio team does just that. Our carefully selected product lines represent a range of price points and personal taste. Since 2003, we have maintained a unique showroom to serve you. Appointments are not necessary - parking available.

612-333-6264 | www.montaggio.net | 150 N. 2nd Avenue, Minneapolis, MN 55401

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CROWN JEWEL A STATELY SUMMIT AVENUE QUEEN ANNE GETS A THOUGHTFUL RENOVATION BY PURCELL QUALITY.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY SPACECRAFTING

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R E S T O R AT I O N SHE IS AN 1894 MASONRY-STYLE QUEEN ANNE VICTORIAN, DESIGNED BY RENOWNED

architect Clarence Johnston and situated on St. Paul’s stately Summit Avenue. An empty nester couple looking to make a switch from their suburban home had initially thought perhaps they’d build new, but once they laid eyes on this Queen Anne, they were smitten. It had good bones. A kitchen and bath remodel and some floor refinishing, and they’d be all set. But of course, the walls of historic houses usually hold secrets. These walls hid a variety of code violations, some asbestos and a number of other kinks to straighten out in order to bring the abode up to code and to the level of detail the owners wanted. For instance, one of two woodburning fireplaces in the parlor needed chimney reconfiguration and a new liner to bring it back to a functional state. To take the helm for the kitchen and bath design, the owners tapped Lisa Loushin Kroskin of Haute Kitchens and Interiors. “They loved the home’s architecture and historic elements, but it was not their personal taste,” she says. “It was heavy; she wanted more elegant and welcoming. It could have easily felt unwelcoming if not redone properly.” And as much as the owners loved the historic aspects of the house, they weren’t interested in turning it into a museum. “People should walk into this home and feel like they can actually sit in the chairs

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and get comfortable,” notes Loushin Kroskin. In other words, living in history rather than living history. Loushin Kroskin knew it would take a certain kind of builder to forge a natural marriage between the historic elements of the house and the modern, livable sophistication the clients were after. There was never any question — she called Tim Purcell, owner and president of Purcell Quality, to help. A self-described history buff, Purcell was a natural fit for the project as the layers peeled back to reveal a lot of heavy lifting on the code front. He viewed his role as both preserving the original beauty and finding creative solutions to problems, such as matching millwork and duplicating missing corbels. And it was no small task; he estimates there were some 38 different millwork profiles alone. “I love working on a home that hosts so many stories,” Purcell explains. “It’s one thing to work on an old home and quite another to work on an old home with historic significance. In protecting the integrity of that original home, you have to be really careful — you can’t just start gutting finishes. Part of our job is to be conscientious about original details and moldings. Anyone can gut a space and start over, but it takes a special kind of contractor with a passion for old homes to be able to work in the space, maintaining the original integrity yet giving the client modern conveniences.”

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This also meant balancing the owners’ preference for simplicity with the ornate tendency of Victorian design. Much of the abode got an overhaul, such as the reconfigured owner’s suite, which now boasts a beautiful freestanding tub as the crown jewel to the curved walls and windows. But other elements were preserved; the kitchen, for example, retained its original Victorian-sized footprint, complete with butler’s pantry and an added pantry. When it came to furnishings, the homeowner turned to a Twin Cities favorite: Traditions. “She made our job easy,” notes Vice President Mary McElroy and her team. “She is so detail-oriented and was very thoughtful in everything she selected for the house. Every piece had a lot of thought put into it.” Classic American-made pieces that are also livable — some clad in easy-cleaning Crypton performance fabric — flow from room to room. The Traditions team loves the dining room in particular. “It’s just stunning,” McElroy explains. “The owners left a lot of the original and simply updated it. From the rug to the chandelier, the dining room is a total showstopper from the very moment you walk into the house.” Purcell agrees that the project turned out pitch-perfect. “We found the original blueprints to the house, and it was really cool to go back and see that it is so close to what was actually built,” he says. “I’m proud of our team and the persistence for perfection and getting all the details right.”

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THANK YOU TWIN CITIES FOR MAKING US

MINNESOTA’S

HOME SELLING TEAM

FOR COLDWELL BANKER REALTY SINCE 2015!

BRACE HELGESON

RYAN PLATZKE

Look no further...the Helgeson Platzke Team is THE premier team for luxury home sales.

952-942-7777

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Affiliated real estate agents are independent contractor sales associates, not employees. ©2021 Coldwell Banker. All Rights Reserved. Coldwell Banker and the Coldwell Banker logos are trademarks of Coldwell Banker Real Estate LLC. The Coldwell Banker® System is comprised of company owned offices which are owned by a subsidiary of Realogy Brokerage Group LLC and franchised offices which are independently owned and operated. The Coldwell Banker System fully supports the principles of the Fair Housing Act and the Equal Opportunity Act.

Creatively reimagining the way you experience your home.

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F lower POWER THE SPLENDOR OF A CUTTING GARDEN. B Y C H R I S P L A N TA N

P H OTO G R A P H Y BY V I C TO R I A C A M P B E L L

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Artful Living

THERE IS INHERENT DISCORD AMONG GARDENERS:

to cultivate and lovingly raise flowers or to cut and share them with others. I believe there’s a bit of both in every gardener, especially when spring comes around. The cutting garden was imagined to skirt this issue. Setting aside an area to grow blooms for cutting — essentially a vegetable garden for flowers — lets you snip stems in their prime without any angst. I used to think cutting gardens were only for vast estates with a full groundskeeping staff, but I’ve come to realize you can be a casual cut flower gardener, tucking blooms amongst your perennials and shrubs or even in pots or planters. One of the charms of such a garden is its dynamic change throughout the growing season. Keep in mind that most plants have a specific bloom time, meaning they will not flower continuously. Consider keeping a bloom time chart through the years that can help you choreograph an ongoing supply of flowers. You can even go as far as curating a specific color palette or selecting certain bloom forms, such as complementary or contrasting sizes and shapes. And if you like arranging, be sure to include varieties that make good fill, like foliage plants. First-timers may want to stick with a few easy-to-grow flowers. Read plant tags and seed packets carefully, taking note of the hardiness zone and bloom times. You’ll want to organize your garden with the tallest plants in the back and those with the shortest stature in the front. One of my favorites, sweet pea, is a vining plant that needs netting or a trellis to climb. Tall annuals may require stakes or other supports as they grow. This is fortuitous if you like architectural garden structures like the three-dimensional tuteur. Place it in the middle of the garden for a focal point or even in pots. Having the right tools for the right job makes cutting and arranging easy and pleasurable. Every cutting garden should be equipped with the tools of the trade: pruners, wire cutters, floral snips, chicken wire, vases and flower frogs. A large worktable with ample space for multiple vases and discarded foliage is a plus. If you have the room, keep all your vases in one area so you can easily assess the size, shape and fit for your flowers. There are no hard and fast rules when it comes to arrangements. I like to think about the color, texture, scent and scale, while keeping in mind the intended setting or recipient. Some of the most beautiful bouquets are just handfuls of what is in season, quickly gathered and put in water. For other ideas, look to Mother Nature and how things grow together in the countryside. Fill a vase with clean, cold water and use floral snips to cut a half inch off each stem at a right angle. This allows for proper and effective hydration. For added panache, crisscross, alternate or twist together stems. Then decide whether to add more or leave as a simple statement. You don’t need a sprawling estate or a seasoned green thumb to have a designated cutting garden and your vases filled all season long — just a desire and willingness to nurture. Right here in the North, we have some of the best garden centers, nurseries and experienced experts in the country. The neat thing about gardens and those who tend them is the shared passion and knowledge. It reminds me of a proverb: “He who plants a garden plants happiness.”

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PHOTOGRAPHY BY AUBREE DALLAS/DALLAS & HARRIS PHOTOGRAPHY

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ARCHITECTURE

HOME

MOVING

MOUNTAINS

AULIK DESIGN BUILD CREATES A CONTEMPORARY COLORADO GETAWAY FOR A CHICAGO FAMILY. BY MERRITT BAMRICK

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IT’S A QUIET, SNOWY NIGHT IN CHICAGO. A

couple out walking their dog is stopped in their tracks by the beauty of an Aulik-designed home. It’s under construction, but the sleek, contemporary details spark an idea for another wintery destination — the family mountain retreat they’ve been dreaming of — and they know their search for an architectural design firm is officially over. “The next thing I know, Gary Aulik is walking me through this house he’d just built,” the client explains. “His energy and ability to talk through every little detail were incredible; I knew we had to work with him.” The clients had three sets of architectural plans for their six-acre lot in Snowmass, Colorado, but nothing felt exactly right. “We knew we had to get our arms around the site right away,” shares Aulik Design Build President Gary Aulik. But that didn’t mean rushing into plans. Instead, it meant camping out in a trailer. He and Senior Project Architect Charles Peterson flew to Denver and drove their rented trailer up, up, up — nearly 8,000 feet above sea level to the clients’ parcel of land — and camped out for three days. They were able to take in the rising and setting sun, and observe how the sunlight interacted with the surrounding geography: 10 mountain peaks that extend 11,000 feet above. They got a feel for the terrain and the wildlife, and even went so far as to monitor headlights from the road. “Staying directly on the site helped us realize that the orientation of the home could be improved,” Peterson notes. And so they repositioned the residence from previous plans to significantly reduce harsh lighting. Aulik’s team spent a lot of time in Snowmass, a ski resort town that sits some 10 miles northwest of Aspen. In addition to architectural services, they represented their clients every step along the way, from vetting and hiring a homebuilder to working with state and county officials to meet the area’s unique building ordinances and land covenants. Protecting the environment and preserving the landscape were of utmost importance. Case in point: The lot sits in the range of an elk migration path, so the team needed to carefully position the abode. “Any time we had to make adjustments ‘mid-flight’ on the site, Gary would take out his marker, grab a two-by-four and draw the new plan right there,” the client shares of Aulik’s inspiring energy and drive. Materials and finishes required county approval as well, so Aulik ventured out into the lot’s fields and brought back timber, rock and sagebrush to lay alongside the final selections. “We effectively camouflaged the home,” he says. The intentionally limited palette is sophisticated and complex. Even the steel rooflines mimic the mountain range with strong, angular gables. The composition is calming, both inside and out. Inside, a charcoal motif is carried throughout the brick, ash flooring and laminate Arclinea kitchen for a layered effect. “We stayed within an organic feel,” notes Kathy Deveny, founder and president of KMD Interior Design, who applied indigenous materials whenever possible when it came to furnishings and case goods. “Everything feels like it could live outside.”

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Large expanses of timber and rock are common in the lodge-like abodes of Aspen, but these clients craved something different: the warm invitation of a chalet but with contemporary architecture that suits their Chicago style. The result is clean, sharp lines and expansive walls of glass that bring in natural light and frame the panoramic vistas of the Rocky Mountains. “Whenever we arrive and take in the view, we take a deep breath and think, ‘This is why we’re here,’” gush the homeowners. Every part of the 5,000-square-foot residence provides flexible, functional space. A multipurpose area, for example, is as much a home office as a library as a cocktail party room. Also apparent are nods to Aspen’s leisurely lifestyle, with a spa terrace, an exercise room and one of the four bedrooms boasting four full-size bunk beds. Guests can grab a seat at the banquette-style booth in the dining nook or cozy up near the double-sided fireplace in the great room to take in the scenic views. Efficiency is as important as comfort in a vacation home, notes Aulik, who’s passionate about creating as green a footprint as possible. To that end, recycled content makes up a good portion of the exterior, which stands up to the Colorado climate and protects the efficient inner shell. “We design legacy homes that we know will last for generations,” he adds. As the homeowners bring this first generation into their mountain getaway, it’s framed in the humanity that comes with partnering with a small shop like Aulik’s. “Gary always went the extra mile,” the clients share. Indeed — quite literally for this unique project.

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ADVENTURE

ESSAY

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N O S

IN OF FLESH AND BONES AND FISH ON FRIDAYS. BY STEVE HOFFMAN I L L U S T R A T I O N B Y E VA H O F F M A N

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IT WAS GENERALLY UNDERSTOOD,

growing up Catholic in St. Paul, that you ate fish on Fridays as a form of sacrifice. For one day, you were to set aside the self-indulgence and the faintly sinsullied physical satisfactions of dripping hamburgers and bleeding steaks for the prim virtues of a fillet of fish. There were still dangers, even then. There was a smell we called “fishiness,” with distantly poisonous associations. And there was, of course, the widely acknowledged scourge of asphyxiation by tiny translucent bones. Fortunately, schools of walleye hovered deep below the slate gray waves of Minnesota’s frigid and beautiful lakes. And a walleye fillet was scentless, boneless and as mild as a communion host. It was barely even flesh — more a sort of edible alabaster. A perfect Virgin Mary of a fish. So we ate walleye most Friday nights, quickly and with determination. Like shaking hands after a first date. Or sex for procreation. It wasn’t until I was 21 that I first ate a trout, in Paris, on a luncheon field trip with a group of old people. I was in the middle of an internship with the Little Brothers of the Poor. Our mission was to comfort elderly Parisians whose physical needs were mostly addressed by the French Republic, but whose loneliness and isolation were not. I remember a lawn, a very hot sun, and improvised banquet tables and folding chairs. One of those dispiriting, arranged entertainments that are like trying to create actual fun by saying “This is fun” over and over for an hour or two. I sat next to Albert (“ahl-BEAR”), although he was better known by his diminutive, Bébert (“bay-BEAR”). Bébert spoke a fast slurred French through his dentures. He always wore a white shirt, more or less clean (often less), a dark wool sports coat, and a derby cap on his liver-spotted head. A slight hunch and a thin blade of a nose made him look like a bird of prey staring out from a cloak of wings. He stood about five foot nothing, and I loomed over him in a way that made me feel even more American than I no doubt already looked, in boot-cut Levi’s, a flannel shirt and 1980s feathered, center-parted hair. Every time I walked into a room, he announced that le Ricain was present — short for Américain, meaning “Yank,”

with associations (almost none of them complimentary) dating back to postwar American muscle flexing and a contemporaneous nod to the perceived chauvinism of Reagan’s America. I don’t remember what I ordered, but Bébert ordered a trout. As a reflection of the culinary shelteredness of my early life, it was not just the first trout I, on sabbatical from my junior year of college, had ever seen in person, but the first fish of any kind I had ever seen served whole. I had been led to think of Bébert as a charge, someone I needed to take care of — an enfeebled and lonely old man with a child’s name, an angry streak and a comically venomous tongue. I may have even thought of my young man’s physical strength as something that, having placed me in the position of caretaker, also conferred upon me some sort of superiority. But now he took a knife that oscillated like an idling motor and aimed it at the base of the fish’s head. He pierced the skin of the shoulder, and with the leverage this now gave him, his hand suddenly stopped quaking. He slit down through the crackling skin along the trout’s back with a patient sort of aplomb, then slipped the tip of the knife between the flesh and the bone at the base of the fish’s tail, and with a sure but careful series of prods and lifts with knife and spoon, removed the entire top fillet from the skeleton, skin still attached, and set it aside. He carefully scraped away the spiny dorsal fin from the now exposed ossature and — in a moment of pure magic that I have since worked to master but that has never had the same effect as this first time — he took hold of the fish’s tail with his left hand, worked his knife underneath the base of the tail where the flesh met the fin, pried free a small tab of meat and pinned it there with his knife. Then, in a single, slow, theatrical gesture, he lifted the spine, the ribs and all of the hairlike pin bones, along with the head, free from the peach-colored bottom fillet, which remained whole, moist and lightly steaming. With a small rivulet of sweat creeping down his temple from under the band of his wool cap, he transferred one of his fillets to my plate, flavored by the crisped skin and the browned butter from the pan — and also, no doubt, by

its wondrous presentation. An entire cultural education seemed to me to be present in this simple, elegant and useful act, performed as second nature, as if this were one of adulthood’s inevitable and natural acquisitions. Trout, for me, had always been tied to mysterious and sophisticated realms: to fly-fishing, to knowledge of moving water and the outdoors generally, to elevated eating, to a certain kind of manhood — self-assured and gentlehearted — to which I aspired. Albert’s agile dismantling of this trout scrambled whatever hierarchy had established itself between us. It showed him to be in touch, in a way I was not, with both the elemental and the artful — two poles between which skinless walleye fillets existed in a sort of bloodless no man’s land. Albert, I thought to myself, would have known how to dance. He would have known how to kiss and where, while kissing, to place his hands. He would have known what to uncork with lamb. I felt large and powerful and a bit oafish beside him. He showed me how to gracefully slip spoonfuls of pink muscle from silvery skin and encouraged me to let the trout linger a moment in my mouth, so that its yielding firmness, its fatty luxuriance and its elusively vegetative freshwater aromatics might be properly appreciated. He took a sip of lunchtime wine then returned to his trout. It was a first tipping of the scale. An invitation to understand eating as both an aesthetic event and a way of engaging with the bones and entrails of the world. From that trout descended all of the tongues, the tripe, the roe, the sweetbreads, the joints, the gizzards, the kidneys, the hearts and the livers that have taken a life of eating from a squeamish examination of flakes of white fish meat into a way of loving the world completely while reveling in the terms of life and death. I was more grateful to Bébert than our relationship, and to some extent my French, would allow me to express. But I was happy that day to be his student and his companion, a fellow eater of trout for the space of a meal that reduced age and nationality to small-minded trifles. I could not tell him that then. And it is time to rectify that lapse. Thank you, Bébert. Affectionately, Le Ricain.

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IMPROVING LIFE OUTDOORS

AWA R D - W I N N I N G L A N D S C A P E A R C H I T E C T S , D E S I G N E R S , A N D B U I L D E R S

PHOTOGRAPHY PROVIDED BY TRAIL HOUSE AT ENCHANTMENT

ADVENTURE

EXCURSION

ROCK SOLID ENCHANTMENT RESORT’S NEW TRAIL HOUSE BECKONS ADVENTURERS TO SEDONA. BY JENNIFER BLAISE KRAMER

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EXCURSION

SEDONA, ARIZONA, HAS LONG ATTRACTED TRAVELERS HOPING

to soak up the area’s natural beauty and feel the mystical pull of its vortexes, where energy is said to radiate more intensely. Now, at a time when we’re more desperate than ever to be immersed in nature, renowned luxury destination Enchantment Resort has unveiled Trail House, a unique adventure hub ideal for exploring the famous red rock wonderland. It’s an understatement to call Enchantment, tucked into the rustcolored cliffs of Boynton Canyon, stunning. It’s that natural setting and the surrounding 300+ miles of easily accessed trails primed for walking, running, hiking and mountain biking that inspired resort owners and sisters Dana Tang and Tracy Tang Limpe’s vision for Trail House: a launchpad to get guests out deeper into the real magic of the box canyons they know and love. “Dana and I both fancy ourselves to be outdoor adventure enthusiasts; she’s an avid mountain biker and I love to hike and road bike,” Tracy explains. “We believe strongly that the best way to experience Boynton Canyon is on foot or on the seat of a bike.” And the adventure epicenter they’ve created is a destination in itself. Designed by New York City–based firm and Architectural Digest AD100 honoree Gluckman Tang Architects, the 4,100-square-foot glass, steel and stone building was inspired by the natural environs. Adobe brick reflects the red rocks, oxidized steel symbolizes the desert varnish dripping down those rocks and earthen concrete floors ground the interiors. A trellised roof of latillas (peeled pine logs commonly seen in the Southwest) weaves together the interior and exterior. Shade trees and a fire pit provide outdoor gathering spaces for swapping stories. Inside, the retail shop offers highend apparel and top-of-the-line mountain bikes and electric bikes for day rides, while the map room sports a 12-foot video wall, a 3D topographic map table and a photo gallery serving up plenty of adventure inspiration. Leading the way on tailored excursions are Trail House’s 28 expert guides. “Our guides are patient, reassuring teachers who are highly experienced,” notes Tracy. “Many of them helped build the 300-plus-mile trail system that surrounds Enchantment and have come to guiding from other careers and backgrounds.” Geologists, journalists and photographers are just a few of the types of pros leading unique experiences like sunset rides, full moon hikes and birdwatching treks. And thanks to their years working with the U.S. Forest Service to chart, preserve and build the trails, many have in-depth knowledge of the terrain as well as insider insights about the geology, wildlife and heritage of this land that’s held so sacred. To further care for the canyon’s trails and ecosystems, a portion of proceeds from each guided adventure supports long-term preservation. Every excursion delivers unreal panoramic views and beckons the spirit of adventure, even self-discovery. Tailored, themed hikes span from meditative morning trail yoga to the rugged Hangover Experience (named for the strenuous climb and cliffs, not too many margaritas) to an artistic night sky photo walk, where Instagram-worthy moments can be snapped under the stars. For mountain bikers, experts offer lessons and signature rides, including the Native American Teachings Excursion that showcases traditions and practices of the Apache. “Mountain biking is a sport where people push themselves out of their comfort zones — and with the support of our Trail House guides, guests come away feeling a great sense of accomplishment,” says Tracy, who dubs herself a nervous mountain biker. New to the sport, she’s pushed herself with the help of those trained experts to conquer the physical challenge while enjoying the sensory experience on the trails. For Dana and Tracy, Trail House is a vision realized. It gives Enchantment guests the opportunity to get out of their comfort zone before returning to relax in their casita, sip a prickly pear margarita by the pool, or visit storied Mii Amo spa (which will reopen in 2022 after a refresh). It adds to not just the resort’s offerings but to “the soulful experience” of Sedona altogether, as Tracy puts it. “You have to ride in Sedona to understand how meaningful and enriching the experience can be,” she concludes.

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ADVENTURE

FARE

GAME ON WHY YOU SHOULD EMBRACE A FIELD-TO-FORK LIFESTYLE. BY LAURA SCHARA P H OTO G R A P H Y BY C A M I L L E L I Z A M A

OVER THE PAST FEW YEARS, THE FIELD-TO-FORK MOVEMENT HAS GROWN

in popularity as many of us are wanting to get back in touch with where our food comes from. It comes on the heels of the farm-to-table boom, in which restaurant chefs share the local food producers they support on their menus. This has helped spur an increased interest in harvesting our own dinner locally through the ancient practices of hunting and gathering. When we harvest our own food, it allows us to appreciate the nourishment of wild fare as there is no guarantee one will be successful in the field. It also honors Mother Earth as wild game is organic, sustainable, free range and a very environmentally friendly way to feed our families. Hunting places us back into the natural circle of life ecosystem that has existed on this planet for thousands of years. Here in the North, deer hunting season is akin to a national holiday. According to Minnesota Department of Natural Resources data, more than half a million deer hunting licenses were sold in 2019. If you’re not a hunter, you may wonder what the appeal is all about. Hunting enthusiasts will share many reasons for their love of the sport, from creating memories with family and friends in the deer blind to playing an important role in wildlife conservation. In fact, hunters are some of our greatest wildlife conservationists as 100% of proceeds from licenses supports wildlife and habitat conservancy efforts managed by the DNR. One of the most popular reasons is plain and simple: Venison tastes good. Hunters set out each fall to get in touch with their ancestorial roots by stalking deer with the hopeful outcome of providing for their family with a freezer full of locally sourced meat to enjoy yearround. Venison is also a nutritional powerhouse. It’s richer in protein and lower in fat than other red meats, plus it’s high in iron, magnesium, selenium, and other important vitamins and minerals. If hunting skills haven’t been passed down generationally in your family, there are many resources available to help you get started. The DNR offers free webinars about hunter safety, gear, licensing and finding public land as well as access to experts, groups and communities available to mentor you along your hunting journey. I’m proud to partner with the DNR to encourage Minnesotans to get it local and get curious about harvesting their own dinner. Embrace the circle of life and connect with your nomadic roots and the natural world by sourcing your own food locally.

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FOOD STYLING BY JIM KYNDBERG | HAIR AND MAKEUP BY KRISTINE LOEHRER

ADVENTURE

FARE

Venison Burger with Morel Mushrooms and Brie and Cheddar Fondue Makes 4 servings

1 lb.

ground venison (if preferred, mix with beef or pork for higher fat content) smoked sea salt fresh or dried morel mushrooms ½ cup dry white wine 1 Tbsp. fresh lemon juice 4 oz. Brie, rind removed 2 tsp. cornstarch 4 oz. grated white Cheddar, or more to taste salt cayenne pepper (optional) hamburger buns 1. Form venison into 4 patties. Season with smoked sea salt 1 hour before grilling. 2. If using dried mushrooms, place in a glass bowl and pour over boiling water to cover. Let soak 30 minutes then dry on a dishtowel. 3. In a medium saucepan, combine wine and lemon juice over medium heat. Reduce by half. 4. While Brie is very cold (freeze lightly if necessary to remove rind), cut into small cubes and toss in cornstarch to coat. 5. Establish a gentle simmer on white wine reduction and slowly add Brie, stirring constantly. Fondue should be thin but creamy at this point. 6. Add Cheddar 1 Tbsp. at a time, stirring constantly. Continue to add until fondue is thick and creamy. Volume of cheese may vary due to variety used; adjust to your liking. Season with salt and cayenne pepper. Reduce heat to low and keep warm until serving. 7. Prepare a grill to medium heat. Cook burgers 3 to 5 minutes per side, turning once. Place on buns and top with mushrooms, fondue, and your favorite garnishes like bacon or scallions. Serve immediately with a side salad. Laura Schara is a lifelong outdoor enthusiast and cohost of the television series Minnesota Bound. Learn more at wildlyliving.com.

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Artful Living

I OFTEN SAY YOU CAN BE MISERABLE BEFORE EATING A COOKIE AND YOU CAN BE MISERABLE

after eating a cookie, but you can never be miserable while you’re eating a cookie. And while I say that halfjokingly, the sentiment is true. Food has an almost magical ability to comfort us, soothe us and bring us together in so many ways. We celebrate special occasions with food — a birthday cake or a big roast turkey — and we also turn to food for comfort on not-so-happy occasions: a delivery of baked goods to a family member who’s under the weather or a homemade dinner for a friend having a rough time. Food can be so much more than simple sustenance. So what exactly is comfort food? It’s food that’s not just nourishing but also emotionally satisfying. After September 11, 2001, I can’t tell you how many people told me they went out to get all the ingredients to make my Outrageous Brownies from The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook. After the financial crisis in 2008, restaurants everywhere suffered as customers cut back on their spending. But fast-food places prospered because they served inexpensive classics like hamburgers and French fries. As I write this, we’re in the middle of a global pandemic, and I have no idea when it will end or what devastation it will cause. People are isolated and stressed. Everyone I know has stocked up their fridges and pantries with ingredients they can cook for weeks or even months — chicken, vegetables, fruits, beans, rice and dried legumes. But my friend Deborah Davis commented that she opens her fridge and looks at all the healthy ingredients in there but all she wants is a grilled cheese sandwich. I can totally relate to that! During times of financial and political stress, there’s something about a hamburger and Coke or a big bowl of beef stew that just makes us feel better. They’re not fancy — in fact, quite the opposite. They’re familiar, delicious and soulsatisfying. In other words, they’re comfort food. There are many foods that are universally comforting. I think we can probably all agree that a mixed green salad isn’t anyone’s idea of comfort food. But chicken soup? Every international cuisine has its own version: Greek avgolemono, Vietnamese chicken pho, Belgian waterzooi and my personal favorite, chicken soup with matzo balls. For my newest cookbook, Modern Comfort Food, I developed Chicken Pot Pie Soup, a mash-up of classic chicken soup and chicken pot pie that hits all the right notes when you’re tired or cranky. Comfort foods are often the dishes that transcend cultures and borders. Many popular foods that have become ingrained in American culture — ramen, tacos, pizza — were originally brought to this country by immigrants who sought to recreate the comforting taste of home. And many of the recipes in my latest cookbook are inspired by comfort foods from around the world, from Emily’s English Roasted Potatoes to Shrimp & Linguine Fra Diavolo to Cheesy Chicken Enchiladas. Comfort food may be different for each person. An egg salad sandwich on toasted rye can cheer me up on a bad day, but it might not be what does it for you! Often the foods we turn to for comfort are rooted in what we ate as children. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are the classic American lunch for kids, but when I offered to make them for my British film crew, they recoiled in horror. Instead, they offered to make me their classic childhood lunch: white bread with cold baked beans from a can and Kraft singles on top. Yikes! (Please don’t tell them, but I’ll take a PB&J any day!) I don’t know about you, but I have to admit that these days, I’m a little grumpier than I used to be. I’ve always loved reading the newspaper in the morning, but now it feels as though it’s only bad news. Friends are angry with each other. People are venting on Twitter. It’s all just so stressful. So what do we do about it? We reach for a cold martini or a pint of rum raisin Häagen-Dazs ice cream to soothe our hurt feelings. Modern Comfort Food is devoted to helping you serve up seriously satisfying and delicious food that will feed not only your cravings, but also your soul. I hope it will help you take care of yourself and the people around you so everyone is happier and less stressed. In this crazy world, that’s an incredible gift you can give to yourself, your family and your friends. Cooking really delicious comfort food — particularly fresh, modern comfort food — ensures that everyone at your table will feel happy and satisfied, and isn’t that how we want the people we love to feel? I know I do!

Food has an almost magical ability to comfort us, soothe us and bring us together in so many ways.

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Skillet-Roasted Chicken & Potatoes Makes 4 servings Any roast chicken is comfort food to me, but roast it in a cast-iron skillet with garlic, potatoes, mustard and white wine, and I’m in! If you marinate the chicken in the morning, it takes no time to cook when you get home from work, and the skillet can go from the oven directly to the table. This is a great weeknight dinner.

4 large bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs (2½ to 3 pounds total) kosher salt freshly ground black pepper 2 ½ cups buttermilk, shaken good olive oil 2 tablespoons Dijon mustard 1 tablespoon dry white wine, such as Chablis 1 ½ teaspoons fresh thyme leaves ⅛ teaspoon sweet Hungarian paprika 1 pound medium Yukon gold potatoes, unpeeled and sliced ¼ inch thick 1 tablespoon minced garlic (about 3 cloves) 2 tablespoons fresh parsley, minced 1 tablespoon fresh chives, chopped 1. At least 4 hours (but not more than 12 hours) before you plan to serve, sprinkle chicken all over with 1 teaspoon salt and ½ teaspoon pepper. Place in a 1-gallon sealable plastic bag and pour in buttermilk. Seal bag and massage it lightly to be sure chicken is coated with buttermilk. Place in refrigerator to marinate. 2. Preheat oven to 350°F. Pour 2 tablespoons olive oil in an unheated 12-inch cast-iron skillet and tilt pan so oil covers bottom. Lift chicken thighs out of buttermilk, letting any excess buttermilk drip off, and place in skillet, skin side up, in 1 layer. Discard marinade. 3. In a small bowl, combine mustard and wine, and brush it on top of chicken. Sprinkle with thyme, paprika, 1 teaspoon salt and ½ teaspoon pepper. Place skillet in oven and roast chicken 30 minutes. 4. Using tongs, transfer chicken to a plate and put potatoes, garlic, 1 teaspoon salt and ½ teaspoon pepper into skillet. Toss to coat with pan juices then spread potatoes out. Return chicken to skillet, placing it on potatoes. Roast 30 minutes longer, until chicken registers 155°F on an instant-read thermometer. Transfer just chicken to a plate and cover loosely with aluminum foil to keep warm. 5. Return skillet to oven, raise temperature to 425°F, and roast potatoes 15 minutes, until they’re tender and starting to brown. Return chicken to pan and sprinkle with parsley, chives and extra salt. Serve hot from skillet. Recipe courtesy of Modern Comfort Food: A Barefoot Contessa Cookbook. Copyright © 2020 by Ina Garten. Photography by Quentin Bacon. Published by Clarkson Potter, an imprint of Penguin Random House.

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CAN SOY SAUCE CHANGE THE WAY WE SEE THE WORLD, LIKE IT DID FOR ONE WISCONSIN TOWN? B Y B R I T TA N Y C H A F F E E I L L U S T R AT I O N B Y K L AW E R Z E C Z Y

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THE YEAR IS 1959. NAVY PIER IS A GLOBAL BUSINESS

showcase, with the Chicago International Fair and Exposition attracting the likes of Queen Elizabeth herself. A young man weaves through the crowds handing out samples of Kikkoman soy sauce, a recipe sacred to his family for centuries. Most people try it for the very first time. “They liked it,” recalls Yuzaburo Mogi. “The experience made me think that one day, soy sauce could become the seasoning of the whole world.” He was onto something. Soon Kikkoman, a name now synonymous with soy sauce, saw a surge in popularity among U.S. consumers, with export volumes — and related costs — rising at an astronomical rate. And so under the guidance of then Managing Director Keizaburo Mogi (Yuzaburo’s father), Kikkoman set up a committee to explore production in the United States. Which brings us to a tiny town hall in Walworth, Wisconsin, where a spirited debate played out in the early seventies. After a handful of hearings, a meeting is called for the evening of November 7, 1971. The final tally? 54 for, 14 against. It’s settled: America’s first soy sauce plant will open in the heart of Big Foot Prairie. Over time, it will grow from churning out 2.4 million gallons of the condiment in its first year to an estimated 34 million, becoming the most productive plant for the world’s leading soy sauce brand. The pulling question here is this: Why did the Mogi family bring their centuries-old soy sauce to Wisconsin? For starters, they were drawn by the area’s plentiful agriculture, particularly its soybeans. Although Kikkoman’s aroma is complex — comprising 300+ components — it’s composed of just four simple ingredients: soybeans, wheat, water and salt. Second, Keizaburo was interested in the diligent Midwestern workforce. But that same workforce was worried about a foreign business setting up shop in its midst. “Some people worried it would be a 100% Japanese operation, with all Japanese workers and Japanese machinery,” Walworth resident Jerry Palzkill, who taught vocational agriculture at Big Foot High School, told the Chicago Tribune. “There were lots of rumors floating around, but Kikkoman did a great job of putting those fears to rest.” During the plant’s opening ceremony in 1973, attended by 10,000 people, Keizaburo eased the worries in Walworth. He assured locals that the facility was not a Kikkoman plant in the United States, but rather an American Kikkoman plant. And that’s what makes this story a beautiful one. Slowly, the subtleties of making a seemingly simple condiment changed the complexities of an entire town. Which begs the question: Can soy sauce change the way we see the world? You may be delightfully surprised. In early 1972, Bill Wenger was stationed in Hawaii as a U.S. Marine helicopter pilot. He received a letter from his mother, who lived near Walworth, with a newspaper clipping about the planned soy sauce plant. “I remember reading my mother’s letter then turning to my wife and asking, ‘What the hell is soy sauce?’” he recalled to the Chicago Tribune. “She went out to a local grocery store and bought a bottle of some horrible local brand. She brought it home and opened it. We looked at each other and said, ‘Good God, this stuff is terrible.’” But upon returning to Wisconsin, Wenger ended up spending more than 20 years as the plant’s manager, responsible for bottling, warehousing and the like. From the very beginning, the Kikkoman team was determined to localize management. In fact, amid apparent tension between the United States and Japan during the seventies, the company’s management practices were noted as “a rare

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example of overseas expansion without friction” in a 1974 Harvard Business School case study. So where did this managerial magic begin? Likely within the wise words of the Kikkoman Creed. For 19 generations, the Mogi family recipe has been handed down along with a set of 16 articles that has successfully guided the company for centuries. To name a few: Ensure progress and family prosperity. Preserve discipline and maintain tradition. Give to society as much as you can. Kikkoman, in both its heart and its product, is unique. Unlike many other commercial recipes, the brand’s soy sauce is made without chemicals, meticulously brewed with the help of a special fermenting agent called koji mold. Nurtured with love and patience, Kikkoman’s soy sauce is created by working microorganisms — actual living things. In fact, the sauce sings when it’s ready. The complex fermentation process takes anywhere from six to eight months, and the brew’s persistent bubbling and breathing indicates it’s healthy. “It’s like the health of children,” notes one brewer. “We watch their faces, check their temperatures and listen to their voices. If you don’t take care of them, they will grow up badly.” The Kikkoman Creed comes into play here, too: Approach all living beings with love. Over time, soy sauce became a Walworth kitchen staple. “The first year I worked at Kikkoman, we never had any soy sauce in our home,” Vince Miller, a one-time production manager who served with the 82nd Airborne during World War II, explained to the Chicago Tribune. “My wife wouldn’t buy it, wouldn’t even allow it in the house. I finally brought home a bottle and put it on some meatloaf. Now we use it on just about everything. I put it on peaches. We even have a local minister who puts it on his ice cream.” Beyond food, Kikkoman had a way of uniting this small Wisconsin community, stemming from a deep-seated belief that business depends on people (another article in the creed). From the get-go, the Mogi family didn’t want division between their American and Japanese employees, so they encouraged them to live amongst one another in Walworth and surrounding towns like Elkhorn, Lake Geneva and Williams Bay. “Our biggest goal in Walworth — in addition to producing good soy sauce — was to achieve coexistence and co-prosperity with the people of Wisconsin and the United States,” explains Yuzaburo, who today serves as Kikkoman’s honorary CEO and chairman of the board. “We’ve been doing business in Noda, Japan, for 360 years. We learned a long time ago that to survive, you need to coexist with the surrounding community.” And so, Walworth became a place for not only coexistence but co-prosperity. American and Japanese families came together for cookouts complete with burgers, bratwursts and, of course, sake. Wives played tennis with one another, and Japanese women gave tutorials on how to wear a kimono. “We learned a lot from the Japanese women,” one Walworth resident explains. “A lot about patience. A lot about diligence. A lot about bravery.” Making soy sauce is a beautiful, sacred process. And it goes far beyond the fermentation itself. Consider Walworth, Wisconsin. A family recipe brought together two cultures, making them realize we are indeed more alike than we are different. Perhaps, then, soy sauce is a lot like us: complex from afar, but simple at the root. So can soy sauce change the way we see the world? Why not? It reminds us that most good things in life require humility, grace and some bratwursts washed down with a little sake.

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O U R PA S S I O N I S B R I N G I N G YO U R V I S I O N TO L I F E 8 2 7 G L E N W O O D AV E , MINNEAPOLIS | 612-374-1090

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FIVE YEARS AFTER PRINCE’S DEATH, THE WORK OF DECODING HIS LEGACY HAS ONLY JUST BEGUN. BY ANDREA SWENSSON

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I DIDN’T WANT THIS STORY TO END.

For years now, I’ve been slowly unwinding a story about one of Prince’s most intriguing and iconic instruments, the white Cloud guitar prominently featured in his breakout film Purple Rain. At times, I’ve become obsessed with this story, reaching out to every Princerelated person I could think of and even derailing a perfectly nice vacation with my husband to scour every guitar shop in the Bay Area for clues. At other points, I’ve let it fade into the back of my mind like a movie soundtrack, content to leave it playing on a loop. It all started nine months after Prince passed away. That whole year of 2016 played out like a bleary, slow-moving car crash. Losing David Bowie was bad enough, but when news broke that Prince had been found dead at his recording complex and creative sanctuary, Paisley Park, the news went supersonic, rippling out from those white-tiled walls in Chanhassen to level fans around the world. I was standing outside his gates when I found out. Prior to Prince’s passing, you could say he’d been my beat. As a radio host and a music writer at the Current, for years I’d been driving out to that big white box to cover Prince’s Paisley Park After Dark parties and rehearsal jams, first of my own volition and eventually at his invitation. I’d also had the chance to meet with him, including one unforgettable latenight rendezvous that will forever be blazed into my hippocampus. Which meant that, after he died, journalists from around the purple aching globe wanted to ask me what he was doing, saying and creating in the final years of his cut-short life. I channeled my grief into work, interviewing dozens of Prince collaborators and friends for the Current, writing essays about the emotional fallout of his death, and putting the finishing touches on my book about the origins of the Minneapolis Sound he made famous. It was sometime in this winter haze of Prince fixation that I first came across a photograph of what has become known as the Cloud bass. I’d been hired to write a series of coffee-table books that would be sold in the gift shop at Paisley Park, which had reopened as a public museum. While researching, I became enamored with this mysterious instrument, which was the design inspiration for Prince’s Cloud guitar. It had the elegant curves and hand-carved details one might see on the head of a cello or violin, and its beauty was transfixing, even in a photo. What I didn’t realize at the time was just how storied and influential the bass had become in the canon of rock guitar history.

The world got its first glimpse of the Cloud guitar less than 20 minutes into Purple Rain, the 1984 film that made Prince an American superstar. In what might be the only romantic meet-cute set in a skyway mall, Prince pauses longingly in front of a store window to ogle a curvaceous, gleaming white guitar chained to a mannequin’s angular black body. “You see something you like?” asks his costar, Apollonia.

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And though he doesn’t respond, his eyes say it all. In the words of Mike Myers, who would later pay homage to that scene in Wayne’s World: “It will be mine. Oh yes. It will be mine.” In 2017, when I started researching the guitar, there was already plenty of local lore surrounding the one that appears in the movie, which was constructed for Prince by luthier Dave Rusan at the Uptown Minneapolis shop Knut Koupeé Music. But little was known about the bass that inspired it. I visited Dave Rusan at his Twin Cities home studio back in 2017, and he recalled his memories of building the original Cloud guitar for Purple Rain. As he remembered it, the assignment was handed to him on his first day back at Knut Koupeé after a six-month trip abroad: “After Prince left, the owner came down and said, ‘Prince is going to make a movie. He needs a guitar that’s going to be part of the plot, and you’re going to make it.’” Up until that point, Rusan had only done repairs, but as with so many artisans who entered Prince’s orbit, he quickly rose to the occasion. He worked off a sketch of a used bass guitar Prince had picked up early on in his career; as Rusan recalled, it might have been purchased in New York City. “New York City is the way I heard it,” he said, then stopped himself. “There’s different stories.” By the time I met Rusan, I’d already heard at least one of those other stories firsthand. And for reasons I still cannot explain, I had a sudden, all-consuming urge to figure out where that bass guitar came from and how it ended up in Prince’s hands.

There was one person who would know for sure: Prince’s first musical peer, longtime bass player and teenage best friend, André “Cymone” Anderson, who I’d already interviewed a handful of times by the time the Cloud bass mystery took hold. After speaking with so many people who knew Prince at different times and to varying degrees throughout his everfluctuating life, it had become clear to me that André held the key to the tender, pre-fame part of Prince’s life that remains under-appreciated and under-documented. Prince Rogers Nelson and André Anderson met as seventh graders at Lincoln Junior High in North Minneapolis, and within a day, they’d become fast friends and fledgling bandmates. Together they formed Grand Central, which by the mid-seventies had become one of the fiercest groups on the North Side and would compete against other young rivals in the neighborhood like Jimmy Jam Harris (who had his own group, Mind & Matter), Terry Lewis (who founded the band Flyte Tyme), and Sonny Thompson (The Family), who Prince would eventually recruit for the New Power Generation and rebrand as Sonny T. Prince and André were also roommates. After his parents separated, Prince bounced between his mother’s and father’s homes in North then spent a short stint living with an aunt in South Minneapolis before decamping

to the basement of 1244 Russell Avenue North to become the de facto seventh sibling in André’s sprawling family. The two besties spent hours woodshedding in that basement, listening to records, dreaming about making it in the music business and sketching out the blueprints for the Minneapolis Sound. I caught André in an especially nostalgic mood one afternoon in April 2017, just days after the first anniversary of Prince’s passing. Now a Los Angeleno, he was back in town for various tribute and memorial events, and at one, I pulled him aside and showed him the photo of the Cloud bass. He looked at the photo, then up at me, then back down at the photo. “That’s my bass,” he said, shaking his head. “I haven’t seen that in a long, long time.”

All these years later, André’s memory of finding the Cloud bass — his bass — is still crystalclear. It was the fall of 1977, and Prince had just signed to Warner Bros. Records and won his first of many power struggles with the label: He was going to record and produce his entire debut album himself. What is lesser known about this period of Prince’s life is that although he demanded to have complete creative control over the process, he didn’t travel to the Bay Area to record at the Record Plant alone. In addition to being accompanied by his then manager, Owen Husney, Owen’s wife, Britt, and the engineers/producers David “Z.” Rivkin and Tommy Vicari, Prince also requested that his best friend come along for the ride. André has a dreamy, impressionistic way of describing his early days with Prince, and the way he talks about his time in the Bay Area is especially evocative. After all, this was his first real journey outside of Minneapolis, and aside from brief forays to New York City and Los Angeles, it was Prince’s first longer visit to a new city as well. They had both just turned 19. One day between recording sessions, Prince and André “borrowed” Owen Husney’s rental car and took it for a joy ride. (I later asked Husney about this, and he confirmed it: “It was kind of like I was dad, and he’s just now admitting the kids were sneaking out and taking the car. I was ready to send him to his room!”) The entire crew was staying in a beautiful rental house overlooking the San Francisco Bay in Corte Madera, and Prince and André ended up winding down the hill and driving into nearby San Rafael, where they came across a funky guitar shop. André remembered being taken with the bass guitar immediately but didn’t know anything more about it other than that it was an unusual vintage instrument. He didn’t have the money to buy it, so he asked if Prince would buy it for him, and he did — which is why it remained in Prince’s possession when André left the band in 1981 to pursue a solo career. André’s San Rafael memory was so vivid. So why did everyone else seem to think the bass came from New York City?

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In August 2017, my husband and I took a vacation out to the California coast. We flew into San Francisco, rented a zippy car, and spent a week driving the twists and turns of the Pacific Coast Highway. On one of our last days there, we intended to drive up from San Francisco toward wine country, and it hit me: We would be passing right through the area where Prince and André found the Cloud bass. My husband is pretty used to my nerdy whims, so he humored me as we pulled off of the 101 so I could call André and gather as many details as possible about this long-lost guitar shop, which by then had become legendary in my mind. To my surprise, even though 40 years had passed, he still remembered all the twists and turns from the Corte Madera rental house to the San Rafael store. Before long, we were piloting our own rental car down those same streets. As it turns out, the shop wasn’t where André had remembered it, but a quick Google search pulled up several possibilities in town. Our first stop was a crowded little storefront called Players Guitars, which was overflowing with character but had only been in existence for two decades, not four. Next, we visited an acoustic guitar shop called Amazing Grace Music, where I met San Rafael’s longest running luthier, John Pedersen. He listened patiently as I regaled him with everything I was hoping to learn about the mysterious Cloud bass. It was about halfway through explaining the whole ordeal that I realized just how far down the Prince rabbit hole I was slipping, and Pedersen’s eyes grew wider as I spoke. He chuckled as he wrote down the

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names of a few other guitar pros in the area and was still laughing and shaking his head as I made my way out of the store. I followed up on all the leads Pedersen provided, emailing them photos of the Cloud bass and guitar, and laying out the whole saga. The most promising lead was with a shop called Bananas at Large, which had been in San Rafael since the mid-seventies. I sent a note to the man known as “Banana” himself, but no one responded. I’d hit a dead end. And, for a long time, I let the story go. Driving around San Rafael that day, I felt a connection to Prince — and subsequently, to André — that I treasured, regardless of whether I’d solved the Cloud mystery. It was romantic being there, in the place where Prince took his first big leaps outside Minneapolis and into his destiny. And as I looked out at the sun shimmering on the San Francisco Bay, I thought about how exciting it must have been to be there recording his debut album with his best friend at his side.

A lot happened between that Bay Area trip and the next time I thought about the Cloud bass. I released my first book, got pregnant, interviewed Prince collaborators on stage at Paisley Park’s Celebration with a big pregnant belly, kept busy with work at the radio station, and took a few months away from it all to adjust to becoming a mom. Sometimes, while reading Richard Scarry books to my daughter, I’d come across the character Bananas Gorilla and think about that day in San Rafael. But it wasn’t until the third anniversary of Prince’s passing that the flame was lit once again. It happened in April 2019 in the backroom of the downtown Minneapolis bar

Gluek’s, where I was taking part in a book signing with other Prince-related authors. A man walked up to me, glanced down at my name on my book and whispered: “I hear you have an interest in the Cloud bass.” It was the most exciting thing anyone has ever whispered to me at a bar. When I confirmed that yes, indeed I did, the man introduced himself: His name was Stuart Fleming, he was visiting from the United Kingdom, and he had an entire website dedicated to exploring the history of Prince’s most iconic guitars, from the Cloud to the Love Symbol to the Hohner Mad Cat. He told me that not only did he know where the Cloud bass came from, but he had spoken to the man who created it! I was floored. Fleming sent me all the intel he’d unearthed about the origins of the bass, including its original luthier — Jeff Levin, who built instruments under the name Sardonyx Guitars — and the East Village shop where he worked in the seventies, where Fleming believed Prince would have bought the guitar. Fleming had noticed that the Smithsonian, which has Prince’s original Cloud guitar in its collection, credited the design of the instrument to Dave Rusan and Knut Koupeé, and he wanted to see Levin get his due. I took all of this information, put it in a folder and did absolutely nothing with it for an entire year. At the time, I didn’t know why, other than that I was utterly perplexed as to how André’s vivid memory of finding the bass in San Rafael could possibly square with this revelation about its origins in New York City. As my work around Prince’s legacy continued to evolve — in the fall of 2019, I began hosting a podcast about Prince in partnership with the Current and the Prince Estate — I realized that I didn’t actually want to know the definitive

answer about the bass. As silly as it may sound, it felt like this obsession over a single detail about a niche moment in Prince’s history had become mine and mine alone, and the longer I took to solve it, the longer I could hold onto the personal connection I still felt to him and his music.

The fourth anniversary of Prince’s passing went by in a blur. To be honest, I don’t know that I could tell you what I did that day, other than that I was quarantined with a toddler and probably spent some of her naptime working on the liner notes for the reissue of Sign O’ The Times. So I didn’t realize right away that in the spring of 2020, one of Prince’s former guitar techs, John Woodland, had unveiled new information that was being referenced by everyone from the Smithsonian to Rolling Stone or that he was working on a book, Look Up in the Air: The Origin of Prince’s Cloud Guitar. Woodland’s research set off a chain reaction in the guitar community, which was further escalated when Prince’s long-lost second Cloud guitar, the Blue Angel, went up for auction and sold last June for $563,000. For a moment, I thought my work might finally be done. But when I read up on the latest findings, one fact in particular leapt out: According to Woodland, who cites another former Prince guitar tech, Joel Bernstein, Prince found the Cloud bass in New York City when he was there shopping his first demo tape to labels in 1976. It just didn’t sit right. For one, everything that’s been documented about that 1976 New York City trip indicates that Prince had little money to his name at that time. He’d flown out on a wing and a prayer to try to scrounge up interest in his work and stayed with his half sister, Sharon. The idea of him buying random bass guitars at that point in his career seemed off. And then there was André’s vivid memory of a different version of events. I couldn’t let it slide. I realized my soul would not rest until I figured out exactly how that bass ended up in Prince’s hands. I launched what I can only describe as a lightning round of interviews with everyone I could possibly think of who

might hold any clues. I started by replying to Fleming’s email about the instrument’s original builder — 15 months later, a totally normal and polite thing to do — and he graciously offered to pass along my contact information to Jeff Levin himself. He also put me in touch with a researcher at the Smithsonian, Theodore Gonzalves, who explained that the museum had recently gone so far as to perform a CT scan of the Cloud guitar in its collection to verify that it is indeed the original that Dave Rusan built for Prince in the fall of 1983. As to where Prince found the bass that inspired it? Nobody has any reason to question the New York City story, since that’s where Jeff Levin built the bass and where he put it up for sale. I called Prince’s former bandmates. I interviewed his guitar techs. I scoured every Prince book in my collection, which now numbers in the dozens, including a new memoir by early mentor Pepé Willie that mentions Prince visiting an East Village guitar store in 1977 — but also specifically notes that he did not buy anything, only briefly wailed on a guitar to everyone’s amazement then waltzed out the door. In the fall of 2020, I texted André and asked if he would chat with me about his Cloud bass. Again. Then in the hours leading up to our scheduled call, I heard from Jeff Levin, who’d agreed to talk to me. I called him right away, and when he answered the phone, I gasped. “I’m so excited to be talking to you,” I gushed. “I’m obsessed with your bass.” There was a long pause. “Did you read John Woodland’s article in Fretboard Journal?” he asked. “I’m not sure I can tell you more than what’s in there.” “I did read it,” I responded, “but I still have so many questions.” As Levin told it, the idea for the design of the bass had been percolating in the back of his mind for years as he worked at the East Village shop Matt Umanov Guitars doing repairs and rebuilds. He’d always been drawn to the design of the F-style mandolin, with its curved edges and swooping flourishes. In the early seventies, he and some friends started an informal rock-and-roll band and he needed a bass to play, so he extended the curved horn of the mandolin and stretched out the neck to

create a bass guitar in the same style, complete with beveled edges and hand-carved details. Looking back on it, Levin told me, “there’s nothing particularly interesting about it, really. I just needed something to play.” The band never moved past its occasional jam sessions, and before long Levin decided to put the bass up for consignment at Umanov Guitars. “I had a family to feed,” he said with a sigh. “You know, when you’re in business, that’s what you do. You sell them, right? And that’s what I did.” To Levin’s knowledge, the person who bought the bass was indeed Prince. He couldn’t recall the exact year it was sold, but it was sometime after he built it in 1972 and before the end of the decade, when he got out of the guitar business. Levin wasn’t in the store the day it sold and there are no records of the sale, but he had no reason to doubt his shopkeeper friend’s memory that it was purchased by Prince. I started explaining the whole saga to him: about André’s memory of finding the bass. About my time driving around to all those San Rafael guitar shops. And whether there would ever be a way to know once and for all what happened between the time the bass left Levin’s hands in the mid-seventies and when it was handed to Dave Rusan in 1983 to build the Cloud guitar. “I’m sorry, were you asking me a question?” “No — I don’t know,” I said. “I do have one more thing I wanted to ask you: What was it like for you to see your design turned into this famous guitar?” He sighed a heavy, existential sigh. “As far as I’m concerned, it’s just another instrument,” he told me. “I’m flattered that somebody bothered to copy it. What I didn’t like about it is that, you know, if you’re going to copy something, give credit where credit is due.” He was especially irked when he came across a placard at the Smithsonian that credited the design to Prince: “That was annoying, but not more than that.” “Well, in my opinion, there have been all of these Cloud guitar replicas made, but there’s still just the one bass,” I expounded. “And Prince held onto it all these years and still

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had it when he passed away. That has to mean something, right? I think that’s what drives me to figure this out. He bought this bass for André, his best friend, who was like his brother, basically as a gift for him so he could have something cool to play, and I think that says so much about their relationship, and about Prince’s beginnings.” “That’s a sweet story,” he humored me, shortly before we hung up. “That’s very nice to hear.” The Smithsonian has since updated its research to include Jeff Levin’s name in the creation of the Cloud. The only thing left, in my mind, was to talk to André.

As soon as André picked up the phone that afternoon, I dove right in. “I can’t let this go,” I told him. “Is there any way you could have bought the bass guitar in New York City?” André sighed. He was clearly frustrated by the new research that had emerged. “I mean, if people wanna find some new story, that’s fine,” he said. “But the reality is that I remember it, physically — there’s never been a question about it in my mind. I mean, I even remember why I got it. I bought it as a backup bass, because I knew we were going to do shows. I’m playing it in videos.” (André can be seen playing the Cloud bass in the 1980 video for “Why You Wanna Treat Me So Bad?”) “I played it. I remember it exactly. Prince and I were together all the time. And if he slipped away and somehow bought a bass I didn’t know about, that would be interesting, you know?” The more passionate André became about his memories, the clearer it became to me why this seemingly minor detail about a long-forgotten bass guitar had stayed with me so long. This wasn’t a story about a guitar at all. It was a story about who Prince was in that nascent period of his life, a story about his deep creative bond with his best friend, a story about who gets to tell the story about his life now that he’s gone. “I remember it like it was yesterday,” André said. “San Francisco was like a music hub in the seventies. I mean, everybody who was anybody was there: Tower of Power, Santana, Sly and the Family Stone. So many bands, a whole lot of traveling. Somebody could have bought it and brought it to San Francisco and traded it in — or who knows what. All I know is that’s where I saw it, you know?” I started telling André how much it meant to me that he was willing to share his memories of Prince with me, but as soon as I got into it, my voice caught in my throat. “There is something so beautiful about your friendship with Prince and your bond,” I told him. “I don’t really care about the guitar at all. Honestly, I start to zone out when people talk about how guitars are made and what pickups are used. But the part that is so beautiful to me is that this was such an important time in both your lives, as you were wondering what the future might hold. I’m just kind of taken with it.” “You’re so right,” he said. “That’s the honest, organic beauty of that time, because it really is the precursor of everything that came to follow.

I mean, think about two kids who came from where we came from, and literally months before that, we didn’t have no money. I mean broke. So that whole idea he was buying a guitar in 1976 — are you kidding me? But I do get that some people think that’s a better story; Jimi Hendrix used to walk around the Village and find these cool tapestry shops, blah blah blah. You know, with these stories, sometimes they try to make him into somebody else. But Prince’s story is a beautiful story. It’s a story of friendship, but it’s also a story of his own journey to figure out who he was.” That night, just before falling asleep, I noticed a new email alert on my phone. It was from the new owner of Bananas at Large in San Rafael, who I’d decided to ping one final time in hopes of one last clue. “Hi Andrea,” it read. “I believe this to be true. I’ve heard the story from multiple, credible people. The original founder, Fred Waxler, told me his version of the story. Prince was working at the Plant in late ’77 and would wander into the shop occasionally. I’m told he bought that bass, a keyboard, and a guitar plus accessories.” I texted André immediately. “That’s awesome. So I’m not crazy after all,” he responded, signing his text with a purple heart. I took a deep breath in and slowly let it out. My mind whirred at the idea of following this new lead even further — maybe tracking down a receipt or some other tangible piece of evidence to document this tiny piece of Prince’s massive life story once and for all. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that this story is just a microcosm of what makes Prince such a complicated, enigmatic, endlessly fascinating force in my life. In a way, the story of Prince’s Cloud guitar is just another example of the tension that was at the core of his entire career: It’s about ownership, credit and control. Who “made” the Cloud guitar, an instrument so influential that it will be forever memorialized at the Smithsonian? Was it Jeff Levin, who built the original bass? Was it André, who fell in love with the bass and brought it into Prince’s orbit? Was it Dave Rusan, who constructed the first Cloud guitar? Or was it Prince, who saw the potential to embrace a new shape — one with rounded edges, Machiavellian flair, a feminine tenderness, a winding complexity — to further differentiate his aesthetic presentation from the rock machismo of the 1980s? Who owns a person’s story? And who has the authority to tell it? These are the questions that keep me up at night as I puzzle out more of Prince’s past and, in turn, my relationship to it. And these are the questions that will keep me coming back to this work. Prince is gone, and for a long time, that was really hard to accept. But channeling my grief into these projects has only added more depth to my appreciation for what he accomplished in his short 57 years in this realm — and it has shown me that there will always be another thread to pull, another research hole to tumble down. So I’m letting this whole Cloud guitar thing go. For now.

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INTEL

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Artful Living

Notables THE REGION’S BEST AND BRIGHTEST. B Y K AT I E D O H M A N

Jina Penn-Tracy C e n t e re d We a l t h

PHOTOGRAPHY BY SPACECRAFTING

Jina Penn-Tracy, Financial Advisor and co-owner of Centered Wealth, has been investing in a better future her entire life, whether she realized it or not. She survived cancer in her late teens and, in response, became a consumer advocate for reducing cancer-causing toxins in our environment and food supply. She also survived childhood sexual abuse, in what became a high-profile case against the Children’s Theatre Company. To help create a better life for fellow survivors, she cofounded the nonprofit CTA Wellness, dedicated to providing resources to others impacted by the decades of abuse at CTC. And in 2003, she became the type of Financial Advisor she was looking for: one who didn’t think money was devoid of values or ethics. “My business is financial activism,” Penn-Tracy asserts. “You can use investments as a tool for making change happen inside companies. Shareholders have a bigger voice than any other entity.” One prominent example she points to is Nike being publicly ridiculed for using child labor in the nineties. Now, she says, the company has come so far as to embrace the activism of Colin Kaepernick as an aspect of its corporate social responsibility. The great news about ethical investing is that both businesses and investors end up coming out on top. “We’re seeing companies that are committed to doing the right thing environmentally and socially outperforming their peers,” Penn-Tracy notes. “And there’s research* that shows that people who invest according to their values are less likely to jump in and out of the market, so they do better over time, even just for that reason.” That’s where the name Centered Wealth comes from. It’s about knowing your reasons and sticking with them through the world’s ups and downs, netting a better future, and living your ethics. It’s also what propels Penn-Tracy to continue her advocacy, whether that’s pushing for protections for assault survivors or advocating with MN350 for Minnesota state pensions to divest from the top 200 carbon-holding companies. “I’ve come to realize that everybody is obligated to do what they can in the moment in whatever way they can,” she explains. “Going through life as a little kid and seeing people turn away — people who I know saw something and instead of turning into it turned away — made me realize that’s not the way to live life. I’m committed to staying actively engaged in making a difference every day.” Vanderbilt Financial Group is the marketing name for Vanderbilt Securities, LLC and its affiliates. Securities offered through Vanderbilt Securities, LLC. Member FINRA, SIPC. Registered with MSRB. Clearing agent: Fidelity Clearing & Custody Solutions. Advisory Services offered through Vanderbilt Advisory Services & Consolidated Portfolio Review. Clearing agents: Fidelity Clearing & Custody Solutions, Charles Schwab & TD Ameritrade. Insurance Services offered through Vanderbilt Insurance and other agencies. Supervising Office: 55 Main Street, Suite 415 Newmarket, NH 03857 603-659-7626. For additional information on services, disclosures, fees, and conflicts of interest, please visit https://www.vanderbiltfg.com/disclosures. *https://centered-wealth.com/resources/caring-about-the-world-makes-you-a-better-investor

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David Bieker and Jodie Unger Denali Custom Homes

Denali has planned and built a Designer Dream Home model — and it could be yours. The standout rustic modern retreat is situated near the Minnehaha Creek headwaters off Grays Bay on Lake Minnetonka with nary a neighbor in sight. It was created with a supercharged duo leading the way: Denali owner David Bieker and his longtime colleague Director of Sales and Marketing Jodie Unger. “We’re bringing both our sets of strengths together,” Bieker explains. “Jodie has strengths in multiple facets as an artist, interior designer and real-estate advisor, paired with my experience designing and building unique, architecturally significant homes for more than 20 years. This home showcases our wide range of talents in the luxury housing market.” Unger’s creative background and work as a realestate developer and even photographer help support Denali’s artistic vision found across its entire portfolio. Together, she and Bieker bridge the gap between architects, contractors and clients to create a one-of-a-kind abode unique to each homeowner. Above all, the team has a passion for advocating on behalf of their clients, from first touch to handing off the keys. This project lets their combined experience creating exclusive, custom-designed homes shine. “I was in awe of the privacy, nature views and towering white pines on each side of the site that would frame the view looking out over Minnehaha Creek,” Bieker says. “I immediately had this feeling that we were way up north somewhere instead of in Wayzata. This site is so spectacular it deserved a home that spoke to it. I used my 20 years of experience to inspire the design team from a builder’s perspective, like it was my own home.” That includes thoughtful details like a fourseason pool lounge with a fireplace, wet bar, and fabulous vistas of the headwaters of Minnehaha Creek and Grays Bay. “It’s a home especially designed for entertaining and indoor/outdoor living,” notes Unger. And come June, it will be available to tour during the Artisan Home Tour. A dream home, in a dream location — perhaps just waiting for you to move in.

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Ali Nanne

L ABB – Lash, Aesthetic + Brow Bar Ali Nanne has launched her latest experiment: LABB, which stands for Lash, Aesthetic and Brow Bar. The collective focuses on medical-grade skincare, including services like eyelash lifts and extensions, brow henna and lamination, waxing, microneedling, platelet-rich plasma, Aquagold, Botox, fillers, injectable vitamins and more. A spa, in this economy? Actually, yes. “Beauty is never going to go away,” she explains. “The economic magnitude of the pandemic on brands and retailers will be far greater than any recession, but there are definite signs that the beauty industry will once again prove its resiliency. Even in the midst of a pandemic, people have been craving their lash, skin and brow services. People care what they look like and want to feel good, even when they’re at home.” And on Zoom, of course, where everyone who’s transitioned to near-constant virtual meetings is treated to a rather unforgiving live feed of their own face. Nanne has sharply honed her sense for what customers want and need. Her career began in her apartment at the University of Minnesota, where she grew her clientele doing eyelash extensions while studying nutrition. Knowing she wanted to be an entrepreneur within the beauty industry, she went on to attend Aveda Institute. After graduating, she launched the Lash Refinery followed by her second company, Face Foundrié, two years later. But even after Nanne sold her share of Face Foundrié to make more time for family, an entrepreneurial idea simmered. Inspired by the so-called “skinamalist” look — focused on lashes, brows, and skincare over makeup — she decided to concentrate a few specialized services under one roof in Edina. These are all overseen by a physician and performed by nurse injectors and advanced-practice aestheticians in a space that feels decidedly unlike a doctor’s office. “This year especially, people are taking care of themselves — doing more meditation and taking action,” Nanne notes. “Our goal is to make an impact on the well-being of our clients by offering small, meaningful enhancements.” Devotees can buy into packages and monthly memberships and even bring home all-natural LABB products like brow soap, brow pomade, and brow and lash serum, with more branded wares on the way. “The purpose behind beauty services has shifted — what we do is based on how it makes us feel rather than how someone else thinks we look,” Nanne concludes. “The goal is to make people feel good in their own skin. Our purpose is to offer services that enhance their individual uniqueness and self-confidence.”

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ADVERTISER INDEX 6Smith, 99

Galleria Edina, 85

Nancy Norling, DDS, 94

Abitare Design Studio, 203

Gianni’s Steakhouse, 213

Nor-Son Custom Builders, 88

Ador, 183

Great River Shakespeare Festival, 175

Parasole Restaurant Holdings, 41

All Seasons Fireplace, 111

Helgeson Platzke Real Estate Group, 157

Phantom Screens, 90

ALL, Inc., 33

Hendel Homes, 18

Pink Wealth Management Group, 69

Anderson Windows & Doors, 20

Henri Interiors, 171

Plastic Surgery Consultants, 74

Art Resources Gallery, 162

Henry & Son, 187

Prestige Pools, 95

Artful Giving/Heather Polk, 10–11

Highland Bridge Custom Homes, 23

Purcell Quality, 197

Aulik Design Build, 219

Holly Hunt, 126

R.F. Moeller Jeweler, 29

Baldamar, 124

Housing First Minnesota/

Roth Living, 48

Bruce Kading Interior Design, 75

Sanctuary Salonspa, 125

Chankaska Creek Ranch & Winery, 174

Indulge & Bloom, 212

SKD Architects, 197

Charles Cudd Co., 8–9

International Market Square, 4–5

Skingevity Med Spa, 40

Charles R. Stinson Architecture & Design, 27

InVision Distinctive Eyewear, 158

Southview Design, 178

Charlie & Co. Design, 31

Ispiri, 42

Spacecrafting, 163

City Homes, 190

JB Hudson Jewelers, 2–3

Stonewood, 12–13

Clairmont Design Build, 87

John Kraemer & Sons, inside back cover

Streeter & Associates, 35

Coldwell Banker Realty

Johnjeanjuan, 182

Studio M Interiors, 70

Keenan & Sveiven, 87

Swan Architecture, 80

Crutchfield Dermatology, 25

Keylight, 101

Talla Skogmo Interior Design, 187

David Heide Design Studio, 49

Kowalski’s Markets, 86

Tangletown Gardens, 79

Daybreak Interiors, 79

Kurt Baum Architects, 203

Terry John Zila Catering, 182

Denali Custom Homes, 78

Land Rover Minneapolis, inside front cover, 1

The Sitting Room, 101

Eckerline Wealth Management, 49

Lucy Interior Design, 95

Top Shelf, 125

Edition Studios, 202

MA Peterson, 158

Traditions Classic Home Furnishings, 111

Elysian Construction, 102

Martha O’Hara Interiors, 22

Twin Cities Closet Company, 188

Eminent Interior Design, 213

Martin Patrick 3, 21

Union Place, 100

Eskuche Design, 162

Max’s, 171

Villa Korta Katarina & Winery, 39

Executive Health Care, 183

MH3 Landscaping, 170

Vujovich Design Build, 110

Explore Minnesota, 172

Minneapolis Institute of Art, 196

Warners’ Stellian, 19

Ferguson Bath, Kitchen & Lighting Gallery, 54

Minnesota Screens, 90

White Oaks Savanna, 6–7

Fiddlehead Design Group, 47

Montaggio, 150–151

Winnow MN, 175

Gabbert’s Design Studio & Fine Furniture, 37

Murphy & Co. Design, 75

Wixon Jewelers, back cover

Property Gallery, 128–149

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Artisan Home Tour, 14–17, 57–68

Artful Living

TO BE FRANK THE EXUBERANCE OF SURVIVAL FOR MY CONTACTS IN THE RESTAURANT AND

bar industry, this past year has been pure hell. It was like getting dealt the cruelest hand in a card game, a trifecta that started with an abrupt pandemic, soon followed by civil unrest that tore our community apart, then ended with shutdowns and enormous economic hardship. A friend who owns a steakhouse described the experience as a “punch in the gut and a new adventure in survival.” While Main Street businesses suffered, the stock market rebounded and residential real estate boomed. This illogical and counterintuitive twist magnified existing inequities depending on our respective occupations and socioeconomic positions. Go figure. On the other side of the bar, patrons missed the unique role taverns play in comfort and grieving. Before, when catastrophe struck, we could be together. During natural disasters, troubling events like 9/11, or private struggles such as the death of loved ones, eating and drinking establishments have served as meeting spaces where family, friends and like-minded strangers gathered for collective healing. Restaurants and bars do much more than simply feed and nourish us; they fulfill a human need for connection and shape our social relations. Congratulations to the restaurants that made it through and for their ability to adapt, recover and discover innovative ways to serve customers. May the rollout of vaccinations and a return to normalcy instill a catch-up mentality and inspire revenge spending by consumers emerging from isolation. Many of us are feeling resentment due to the monotony of eating our own cooking as well as empathy for others sadly drinking alone. Summer is around the corner. It will be safer to venture out, and outdoor dining will skyrocket. Surviving the past year’s nadir has earned our hospitality friends well-deserved feelings of joy, relief and exuberance.

Cheers,

Frank Roffers

Publisher + Editor-at-Large

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