homage sweet

Eye-popping pastries from Merlyn’s Pâtisserie elicit reviews like magical and intergalactic. But the passion and intention siblings Jun and Anna bring to their craft are fully grounded in a mother’s love.

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by Allison Jarrell photos by Courtney Kent

was a risk.

Thoughts of excitement, peppered with doubt, swirled through Anna Mae Kucharski’s mind as she and her brother Jun Dupra prepared hundreds of baked goods for their first Sara Hardy Farmers Market of the season. Jun was confident that their AsianFrench fusion pastries would be a hit. Anna wasn’t as sure.

“Oh my gosh, I was so nervous,” Anna says, recalling their market debut with a smile. “I didn’t know if people would want to even try some of this stuff. I was just hoping that Traverse City was ready to embrace something different.”

The goods in question? An array of more than 460 meticulously crafted technicolored pastries glistening in the late May sun. Some recognizable, some not so much.

Walking up to their stand felt like a moment inside Willy Wonka’s factory. There were purple-striped croissants filled with bright violet pastry cream made with ube—a purple yam with a nutty vanilla flavor, very popular in the Philippines, Anna and Jun’s home country. Savory swirled croissants rolled up with sundried tomatoes, basil and goat cheese. Korean streusel bread. Croissants shaped like muffins and filled with mango pastry cream. A brioche dressed as a Ferrero Rocher chocolate.

It was the reveal of Merlyn’s Pâtisserie, the siblings’ bakery business they’d dreamed up seven years prior. And despite spending more than a decade working in the local and national culinary scene, they were largely unknown, starting their brand from scratch. But Anna and Jun, both accomplished chefs and bakers, knew they had something special to share: their favorite Filipino and Asian flavors incorporated into the traditional French pastries they learned to make here in Traverse City.

That first market was a whirlwind— they nearly sold out. And while Jun expected success that first day, even he couldn’t have anticipated what came next: a lengthy line of adoring customers that grew week after week. For their fourth market, they decided to double their production to more than 800 pastries (no small task in the midsummer heat). And for the first time, they sold out, only crumbs left in their Plexiglass display cases.

Nearly a year later, Merlyn’s has grown beyond a beloved farmers market booth. They offer online orders for pickup at their new commercial kitchen. They celebrate holidays with seasonal offerings. And the siblings have their sights set on one day owning their own bakeshop, where the community can gather, sit and enjoy a yuzu éclair or a matcha macaron.

What Anna and Jun want most of all, though, is to make their biggest fan proud. Their mother, the eponymous Merlyn. She is, after all, the person who taught them the importance of taking risks and following their hearts, and instilled in them a love of all things food and family.

Anna, jun and their brother Andrei, grew up in a small province just outside Manila, the bayside capital of the Philippines. Their father had abandoned their family early on, leaving Merlyn to make a heartbreaking decision: find a job abroad that would pay enough to care for her three children. Anna was 9, Jun was 6.

“The Philippines is a third-world country; their number one export is not products, it’s the people,” Anna explains. “A lot of people work abroad to find a better job to support their family.”

And so, Merlyn left her home, working first in Saudi Arabia as a cook, then in Hong Kong and Canada as a nanny. She was gone for nine years. Nine years that Anna and Jun spent living with different family members—grandparents, cousins, aunts. They wouldn’t see her for years at a time. And when she did come home, it might only be for a couple months, or a couple of weeks.

The irony isn’t lost on Anna. Merlyn was caring for someone else’s kids while someone else took care of hers. Her mother’s sacrifice still brings Anna to tears and is something she shares with her own children— the strength and fortitude of their grandmother’s love.

It’s why, when she and Jun were thinking of business names, Merlyn’s Pâtisserie was the obvious choice.

“We named it for our mom because it’s an extension of her,” Anna says. “It’s the hard work, it’s all the sacrifices she’s made so she can raise three kids and have a better life for them. That’s what we’re trying to do as well, to have something better. Merlyn’s is the story of us, and of our mom as well.”

Merlyn fell in love with a man from Michigan while working in Canada, and eventually the two married and moved to the U.S. To Mancelona, specifically. Naturally, it wasn’t long before Anna, Jun and Andrei joined them. That was 20 years ago—April 3, 2003. It was Jun’s 16th birthday. It also happened to be a massive blizzard.

“We were scared for our lives because it never snowed in the Philippines, so when we got here we were like, ‘Oh my gosh, this is going to be the end of us!’ It was literally a whiteout. But we’re here twenty years after. We’re still alive!” Anna laughs.

Anna and jun thrived in Northern Michigan. After spending a year in Mancelona, they moved to Traverse City and attended Northwestern Michigan College, Anna studying personal accounting, Jun studying fine arts.

But it wasn’t long before Anna found herself drawn to the culinary arts, which she attributes to her love of cooking as a child. Sharing meals is an integral part of family life in the Philippines, and she took on a lot of that responsibility in her mother’s absence. “She had to step up, because we lived with so many relatives,” Jun says. “She was like my second mom. And she’s a really good cook.”

Inspired by Anna’s path, Jun followed suit, and the two attended NMC ’s Great Lakes Culinary Institute (and Jun will be the first to tell you that Anna was top of the class, Dean’s List). But it wasn’t until Anna took an intro to baking course that her life launched into a new orbit. Before she knew it, Anna was taking a job at Trattoria Stella as their pastry chef and lunchtime line cook. After a couple years, she moved on to the role of pastry supervisor at a local resort, and two years later became the pastry chef at Red Ginger. Next, she joined Jen Welty’s team at 9 Bean Rows,

Leelanau County’s bakery and café revered for its European pastries.

Meanwhile, Jun also found himself at Red Ginger, as a sushi cook first and taking over as pastry chef when Anna left. But then he began to travel—first to East Lansing, where he worked at a Korean bakeshop, and then a bit farther, to Los Angeles, where he landed a dream job at Wolfgang Puck’s flagship restaurant, Spago Beverly Hills. With a plethora of new chef skills under his belt, he eventually returned to Traverse City.

As their journeys veered in different directions, they both found themselves coming back to a seed planted by Red Ginger’s owner Dan Marsh.

“He saw something special in us,” Jun says, “and he suggested that in the future, maybe we open a highend bakery.”

Anna and jun began adding more and more of themselves to their market menus: Japanese sausage bread, ube mochi donuts, taro almond buns and an array of croissants—from blueberry yuzu and Thai tea to matcha and red bean. They topped pastries with local fruit throughout the summer and even jumped on the pumpkin spice train in the fall.

The only rule for adding to their menu: make things they want to eat themselves. One week, that could be a cheesy Korean garlic bread. The next? A savory bacon, sausage and asiago muffin baked with an entire soft-boiled egg inside (known lovingly as the BA*ES muffin). That one required skills Jun learned in LA and honed off the clock.

“It took two months to learn the egg science for that muffin. Lots of peeling and boiling. I learned so much about eggs … more than I wanted to,” he laughs.

And if it seemed like the line got exponentially longer at Merlyn’s farmers market tent, that’s because it did. But not a single person complained, because they were busy either asking others for their personal recommendation, or passionately advocating for their favorite pastry. And once you make it to the tent, you’re immediately greeted by Anna and Jun, and maybe another family member or two (with luck, on a day Merlyn makes a cameo). They’ll ask how you’ve been since the previous market and tell you what’s new with them. And they’ll explain what everything is in detail—no question is too small.

“To see that line makes us feel really proud of what we’re doing. I’m not going to stay in line if something’s not good,” Anna says. “We never really expected people to welcome us with open arms like that.”

Jun adds, “It’s great, being able to see and talk to the people that we serve. You don’t really get to do that in the restaurant business. The relationships you create are so rewarding and important.”

Last winter, the duo moved into a new commercial kitchen space in kids’ success is her true “trophy.”

Traverse City, one with 24/7 access, an improvement from the three days a week model they had at their previous kitchen. They’re excited about the change, and of course, they’re constantly brainstorming new additions to their menu—from a variety of Asian breads, to airbrushed pieces of chocolate art. Eventually, they hope to open their own brick-and-mortar shop, allowing them to showcase even more Asian foods and flavors. A place for community.

“I’m very proud of them,” she says, tears of joy welling. “After all of the hardship we had … I can’t believe they’re doing it.

“They told me, ‘We’re going to name [the business] Merlyn’s.’ I was shocked,” she says, smiling. “And they said it’s to honor me. I’m so happy. And I made a joke, ‘My goodness, nobody knew my name, and now I’m famous in Traverse City!’”

“I learned this from Anthony Bourdain: You can really learn someone’s culture or just their personality by eating with them. That’s why food is such a big part of our life, because it’s how we can relate to people,” Jun says.

Meanwhile, Merlyn has every newspaper clipping about Jun and Anna laminated, hanging on her bedroom walls. She’ll happily tell you her

by elizabeth edwards