Wag Magazine July 2017

Sit down to dinner with…

Melissa Clark WAVE HILL BREADS Where quality rises

NOVELTEAS Clever sips

SWEET SCOOPS

Nick Di Bona’s ice cream

SHOP AND ‘SAVOR’ New dining at The Westchester

CONNOR MCGINN

exploring hospitality

Creativity on a plate JUDGED A

TOP

MAGAZINE WESTCHESTER & FAIRFIELD LIFE JULY 2017 | WAGMAG.COM

IN NEW YORK STATE 2014, 2015, 2016

E VERY OB J ECT HAS A STORY

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CONTENTS J U LY 2017

68

COVER STORY

WHAT’S FOR DINNER?

12

Pressure cook

16

A novel pour

Baking a sensory experience in Norwalk

NovelTeas combines tea tins with "a novel twist."

Photograph courtesy NovelTeas.

28 32

44

Pink Olive whimsy

46

A place to ‘Savor’

50

20

Katharine the great

Sweet sounds

36

52

24

An old Saybrook welcome

Rising from dark shadows

This page

26

The ripeness of the older woman

Hot and spicy

40

Extending hospitality through Connecticut

Where great dining meets great viewing

56

Decadent delights

60

Plating a bridge between food and table

66

Selling homes to the rich and famous

94

Confessions of the far-grazing foodie

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FEATURES H I G H LI G HTS

64

WARES Dramatically casual dining

72

WAY A place for splendid country entertaining

76

WEAR Rockin’ new looks

78

WEAR Flirty fashions

80

WHERE’S EUROPE Carbonara wars – France versus Italy

84

WANDERS The big four – Tokyo’s finest

88

WANDERS The fix is in

90

WANDERS Hangin’ in Penang

92

WONDERFUL DINING Double feature

96

WINE & DINE Rothschild vintages that are truly ‘Légende’-ary

98

WHETTING THE APPETITE Jackie Ruby’s Fresh Asparagus Soup

100

WHERE ARE THEY NOW? Flat-out flair from Ethan Abramson

102

WHERE ARE THEY NOW? Ousia brings Greek essence to the West Side

104

WHERE ARE THEY NOW? New travels, new flavors

106

WEAR Adding dimension to your haircut

108

WELL Reaching new yogic heights

110

WELL ‘French-fries’ without the guilt

112

PET OF THE MONTH Johnny Be Good

114

WHEN & WHERE Upcoming events

118

WATCH We’re out and about

136

Melissa Clark knows 'What's for dinner.'

See story on page 68.

Photograph by John Rizzo.

Sit down to dinner with…

Melissa Clark WAVE HILL BREADS Where quality rises

NOVELTEAS SWEET SCOOPS

Nick Di Bona’s ice cream

SHOP AND ‘SAVOR’ New dining at The Westchester

CONNOR MCGINN

exploring hospitality

Creativity on a plate JUDGED A

TOP

MAGAZINE WESTCHESTER & FAIRFIELD LIFE JULY 2017 | WAGMAG.COM

84 108

WIT How do you show hospitality to others?

COVER:

Clever sips

90

IN NEW YORK STATE 2014, 2015, 2016

COVER STORY

106

112

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WHAT IS WAG?

Some readers think WAG stands for “Westchester and Greenwich.”

We certainly cover both. But mostly, a WAG is a wit and that’s how we think of ourselves, serving up piquant stories and photos to set your own tongues wagging.

HEADQUARTERS A division of Westfair Communications Inc., 3 Westchester Park Drive, White Plains, NY 10604 Telephone: 914-694-3600 | Facsimile: 914-694-3699 Website: wagmag.com | Email: ggouveia@westfairinc.com All news, comments, opinions, findings, conclusions or recommendations in WAG are those of the authors and do not constitute opinions, findings, conclusions or recommendations of the publication, its publisher and its editorial staff. No portion of WAG may be reproduced without permission.WAG is distributed at select locations, mailed directly and is available at $24 a year for home or office delivery. To subscribe, call 914-694-3600, ext. 3020. All advertising inquiries should be directed to Anne Jordan at 914694-3600, ext. 3032 or email anne@westfairinc.com. Advertisements are subject to review by the publisher and acceptance for WAG does not constitute an endorsement of the product or service. WAG (Issn: 1931-6364) is published monthly and is owned and published by Westfair Communications Inc. Dee DelBello, CEO, dee@westfairinc.com

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COVER STORY, PG.68 RYAN DEFFENBAUGH

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ROBIN COSTELLO

ALEESIA FORNI

PHIL HALL

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Cynthia Catterson is an award-winning writer based in Old Greenwich. When she is not traveling far and wide, Cynthia is the director of marketing and communications for Orthopaedic & Neurosurgery Specialists (ONS), a leader in the treatment of musculoskeletal conditions and sports injuries. ONS has offices in Greenwich and Stamford and will be opening a third location in Harrison in September.

Photograph by Bob Capazzo.

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JULY 2017

EDITOR'S LETTER GEORGETTE GOUVEIA

Welcome to our July issue.

And by welcome, we do mean “welcome” as we tweak our annual tribute to food with a special salute to hospitality.

Our state-of-the-art manufacturing facilities enable us to keep our quality high and our prices low.

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For many, good food and drink define hospitality, as you’ll see in the responses in our “Wit” section. I encourage you to visit those. They’re always a good read and this month we have a particularly lively group.

In other pages, you’ll discover food, glorious food, as we savor Savor Westchester, the reimagined food court at The Westchester mall in White Plains, then relish a Greek feast at Ousia, the latest offering from The Livanos Restaurant Group. Aleesia channels her inner Wonder Woman (and inner gourmet) at the new iPic Theater in Dobbs Ferry, while Jena ranges over Westchester and Fairfield to do her grocery shopping, then covers the waterfronts for some of the best eateries with marine or riparian views.

Our foodie subtheme has us revisiting a place that has always put out the welcome mat for WAG and its other patrons — The Inn at Pound Ridge by Jean-Georges. Jean-Georges’ right-hand man there is chef de cuisine Ron Gallo, a guy who can take the heat in the kitchen (and whip up one sinful black truffle pizza. Mmm.) Ryan profiles The New York Times food writer Melissa Clark, author of the new “Dinner: Changing the Game,” whom we encountered at one of the inn’s Literary Luncheons. A second Literary Luncheon gave us an opportunity to devour Chef Ron’s offerings once again as well as the no-holds-barred recollections of Boston restaurateur Barbara Lynch, author of the new memoir “Out of Line: A Life of Playing With Fire.” (You’ll want to read what she says about Julia Child and sex. It’s on Page 24.)

Strong-minded women like Lynch form another subtheme in this issue. We turned to Sheila Nevins, the outspoken author of “You Don’t Look Your Age…and Other Fairy Tales,” for some thoughts on the ripeness of the older woman — a demographic group whose allure and challenges have been thrust into the

spotlight by France’s chic first lady, Brigitte Macron, a good deal older than her hubby. We bet Mme. Macron knows a thing or two about hospitality. It is in essence grace and graciousness. Few people embody that more than senior writer Mary, who always has the perfect card and exquisitely bagged gift at the ready. Here she visits with Pink Olive, the elegant gift store, at its new Cold Spring location, and tells us about NovelTeas, whose tins combine tea and literature (as in “Don QuixoTea”). Brilliant.

Graciousness is, of course, the holy grail of hotels — and we have a spate of them as Jeremy visits the best in the world’s most populous — and perhaps most polite — city, Tokyo. Debbi checks in with fixer Anthony Melchiorri of the Travel Channel’s “Hotel Impossible.” And even I get into the act with a visit to the Saybrook Point Inn Marina & Spa in Old Saybrook and a side trip to The Kate, the arts center named for the town’s most famous daughter, Katharine Hepburn.

It was at Saybrook Point’s Three Stories guesthouse that I encountered concierge Anna Trenta Pratt, a twinkling, grandmotherly woman who embodies what hospitality is — a sense of home.

When I think of hospitality, I think of my own maternal grandmother.

During the Depression, she would invite homeless men who came to the back door for a meal with the family.

My aunt later said she and her siblings resented this. But my grandmother said, “We have, so we give.”

My aunt never forgot that. Her door was always open and her table always set for family, friends, contractors, strangers. I confess I am not that hospitable.

My carefully curated house and, above all else, my writerly solitude mean too much to me.

But I believe the words of the Precious Moments figurine my aunt gave me: “Those who give have all things.”

Georgette Gouveia is the author of the new “The Penalty for Holding” (Less Than Three Press) and “Water Music” (Greenleaf Book Group). They’re part of her series of novels, “The Games Men Play,” also the name of the sports/culture blog she writes at thegamesmenplay.com. Readers may find her novel “Seamless Sky” on wattpad.com.

r

FROM SHELF LIFE TO SELF LIFE:

THE RIPENESS OF THE OLDER WOMAN

BY GEORGETTE GOUVEIA

12

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In a world where women are still treated like commodities, older women are seen as past the sell-by date.

Older men are considered distinguished, sexually viable, still in the game. Whereas older women are viewed as fading into less — less attractiveness, less relevance — caught somewhere between the facelift and facelessness.

“Absolutely,” Sheila Nevins says, “or I wouldn’t have had a facelift to preserve the outward shell.”

In her smartly observed new book “You Don’t Look Your Age… and Other Fairy Tales,” Nevins, the tough-minded president of HBO Documentary Programming, writes about facing that facelift at 56.

“You see, I must be young at any price. Young was in. I worked in media. Nobody wanted advice from an old broad. My bosses wanted a young audience.

Had it occurred to them that an older brain could think smart and young?”

An older brain may be able to think smart and young — and an older voice may be able to sing smart and young, too — but they face an Everest of challenges in a visual culture. Witness the great sopranos Natalie Dessay and Renée Fleming, who have taken leave of the operatic stage. Their stratospheric voices haven’t deepened and darkened, which would enable them to shift to supporting roles. Instead those voices remain suited to the coquette and heroine roles that the singers, in their 50s, can no longer plausibly sustain.

“It’s not that I’m leaving opera,” Dessay told the newspaper Le Figaro in 2013. “It’s that opera is leaving me.”

Tellingly, Fleming chose for her leave-taking, at The Metropolitan Opera , the role of the Marschallin in Richard Strauss’ “Der Rosenkavalier,” who relinquishes her young lover to the ingénue he falls for.

If the older woman is deemed somewhat ridiculous, the older woman with a younger man is considered even more so. The older man-younger woman has long been accepted — whether it’s President Donald J. Trump and wife Melania, George and Amal Clooney or Derek and Hannah Jeter — even the majority of American women marry a man who is no more than five years older. But the older woman in such a relationship is viewed as a.) a beard for a closeted gay man; b.) a vulnerable senior in danger of being exploited; or c.) a sexual virago.

That view may be changing. Recently, the New York Post ran a story on this subject with a headline that read: “Once derided, older women and younger men are now the hottest couples.” The ascendance of newly elected French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife, the former Brigitte Trogneux, may also shed light on the richness in being an older woman (and being with one). Critics have scoffed at how they first met. (He was a 15-year-old schoolboy and

Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore are among the December-May couples who throughout history haven’t lasted, including Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine, Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon and Napoléon and Josephine. Courtesy dreamstime.com.

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she, his drama teacher, married with three children and 24 years his senior, though they have stressed that they didn’t begin their sexual relationship until he was of age.) Others have tried to demean her by calling her everything from a grandmother (a factual compliment) to a bimbo (an absurdity).

What has emerged in the press in recent weeks, however, is a portrait of an enduring marriage of equals who are also complements, with Brigitte Macron serving as sounding board, shield and adviser — exhorting her wonkish hubby to eat right and appear more accessible at the podium and championing women’s rights and education for the underserved.

Mme. Macron has also joined the likes of Oscar winner Helen Mirren to suggest that just because there’s snow on the roof doesn’t mean there isn’t fire in the furnace. Whether in leather leggings and moto jackets or mesh, beaded LBDs that show off her lithe legs, Macron is the quintessential Frenchwoman and older woman — sexy, sophisticated, vibrant and assured. Even her powder-blue Louis Vuitton inaugural ensemble, which some say parroted Melania Trump’s Ralph Lauren outfit, was vastly different in cut and effect — less Jackie and more Brigitte.

But don’t expect Macron’s debut and example, as sparkling as Champagne, to change society’s ambivalence toward older women overnight and singlehandedly. There are millennia of nature and nurture conspiring against the older woman.

Nevins — who writes about menstruation and menopause in a chapter called “Eunice’s Period.

Stopped.” — sees this conspiracy more in evolutionary, Darwinian terms. “Getting your period is the first turning point,” she says. “The second turning point is when your period stops, and you can’t make a baby anymore.”

It’s the reason Henry VIII divorced his first wife, Catherine of Aragon (six years older) and Napoléon divorced Josephine (five years older).

Men, too, have their cycles (as the deathless supply of erectile dysfunction commercials keeps reminding us). But their ability to keep procreating creates the illusion of sexual desirability, even as studies show that older fathers put their offspring at risk for autism, schizophrenia and other psychiatric disorders.

Women’s cycles, however, are more overt in marking the passage of time and the inexorable march to the grave. In an adolescent culture like America, time is the great enemy and death, the great fear. As Nevins puts it, “If they can make a car without a driver, why can’t they make a me that lasts?”

But if nature were all that was at play here, men would be the “fairer” sex, as males are in the remainder of the animal kingdom. True, men offer women accomplishments on the ball field and in the board and bed rooms, along with houses and jewelry — the equivalents of the male bower bird festooning his 14

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Newly elected French President Emmanuel Macron poses with his wife, Brigitte, at the Élysée Palace after the handover ceremony with his predecessor, François Hollande, on May 14 in Paris. Photograph by Patrick AVENTURIER/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images.

bower with pieces of colored glass, shells and blueberries to entice the female. But men have long since ceded their peacock plumage to women. Why? Power. As human consciousness developed and civilizations rose — men not only retained physical power over women but attained political and economic power over them as well. They objectified women, for to objectify someone is to control her.

Yet women proved adept at this chess game, turning the objectification of their youth and beauty into a kind of power that gave them status and,

IN AN ADOLESCENT CULTURE LIKE AMERICA, TIME IS THE GREAT ENEMY AND DEATH, THE GREAT FEAR. AS (SHEILA) NEVINS PUTS IT, 'IF THEY CAN MAKE A CAR WITHOUT A DRIVER, WHY CAN’T THEY MAKE A ME THAT LASTS?'

more important, security for their children. (The beauty game can be a trap, though: For every Melania, there’s a Marilyn, who, facing a lonely middle age and waning movie career in 1962, killed herself.)

Mainly, however, women are buttressed in their pursuit of youth and beauty by the multibillion-dollar cosmetics and media industries. What would happen to Chanel and Vogue if women abdicated their roles as mighty Aphrodites?

We don’t have to imagine this, anymore than we have to imagine what women’s growing economic and political clout will do to the balance of power between the sexes (tempting though the latter is).

All we need consider is that for the older woman, societal loss is individual gain. The freedom from procreation and the sometimes unwanted male gaze opens the door to greater intellectual creativity.

Opera may be saying “goodbye” to Dessay and Fleming, but Broadway and the concert stage are saying, “Come on in.”

As Nevins writes at the end of “Eunice’s Period.

Stopped.”: A graying woman forthright though blond a rare avis to herself.

For Eunice would spread her plumage, a palette of feathers sans red burning brightly, a kaleidoscope changing, glorious and necessary, lustful and powerful with infinite possibilities….

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BAKING A SENSORY EXPERIENCE IN NORWALK

BY PHIL HALL PHOTOGRAPHS BY SEBASTIAN FLORES

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If you are trying to locate Wave Hill Breads on High Street in Norwalk strictly by sight, it will require more than a little concentration. Its functional but nondescript storefront blends in with the other buildings on the street. But if you bring your sense of smell to the search, you will have absolutely no problem finding it.

Indeed, the extraordinary aroma created by Wave Hill’s baked goods has an intoxicating effect.

Or as a FedEx courier puts it, eyes widening as he surveys the lineup of freshly baked breads, “Wow, this place really smells good.”

“We get that all of the time,” owner Tim Topi confides as he hands the deliveryman a croissant in gratitude.

Wave Hill Breads first opened in Wilton in 2005 under the ownership of Margaret Sapir and Mitch Rapoport. They named the company after historic Wave Hill in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, a public garden and cultural center where the couple held their wedding ceremony. Trained in traditional French baking methods by artisan baker Gerard Rubaud, Sapir and Rapoport initially focused on a single item — a crusty, dense pain de campagne (French for “country bread.”) When they relocated their operation to Norwalk in 2011, they introduced two additional breads — a ciabatta with olives (Kalamata and green) and roasted red peppers, and a whole-grain multigrain boule.

One year later, they added Topi to their staff. The Albanian-born Topi had begun his career in Rome as an apprentice in a bakery near the Vatican and within three years he rose to the rank of master baker. Arriving in the United States with his wife, Angela, in 2012, he fielded several inquiries from Connecticut bakeries before zeroing in on Wave Hill Breads’ offerings.

“Their bread was the best I had to sample,” he recalls. “I was at bakeries that were much more famous and were willing to pay me more. I knew I was getting paid a few dollars less here, but I didn’t care.”

Two years ago, Topi and his wife purchased the business from Sapir and Rapoport, who retired to Puerto Rico. Topi has carried on the mission of the founders by placing greater emphasis on the quality of his output than the quantity of items. He stresses the importance of using as many organic ingredients as possible and grinding the grains onsite to ensure freshness in the baking process.

Thus one striking aspect of the retail section of

Tim Topi, owner of Wave Hill Breads in Norwalk, says it’s all about quality, not quantity.

the bakery is that it is not overstuffed with items.

Also unusual about his retail setup is having the breads displayed on open racks and on top of the main counter, not hidden behind glass displays.

“The bread ferments at room temperature,” he says. “This way, it gets more crust with more flavor.”

Topi has taken the product line further with new recipes and offers. His sourdough bread, with its substantial crust and heavenly interior, has become a customer favorite — although he whispers, somewhat sheepishly, “I don’t like sourdough” — while his croissants are marvels. Topi also hit upon the perfect recipe for monkey bread, creating a playful, Frank Gehry-complex circular design with an ingredient mix that refrains from the excess sweetness often drenching this baked goodie.

Creating these wonders is no mean feat. “The majority of our production takes place after 8 p.m.,” Topi says, adding that although he has upwards of eight staff members during peak output, he’s usually in the bakery well past 2 a.m. to ensure evWAGMAG.COM

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erything is ready for the coming day. Outside of the retail bakery, Wave Hill Breads offers its goods at wholesale to local restaurants, with retail locations including several Whole Foods stores in Westchester and Fairfield counties.

Spring and summer are particularly busy for Topi. “During the summer, we are at 11 (farmers’) markets every Saturday,” he says.

Topi has made several connections at the farmers markets that have led him to lease one of his kitchens to local start-ups. One person who can be found at the stove during the week is North Pumiwat Shutsharawan, who sells a line of bone broths and Thai noodle soups.

“Without them and without the space, we wouldn’t be where we are,” Shutsharawan says. “It is too difficult to find a space to do what we’re doing, with hot liquids and cooling and having access to refrigerator and freezer space.”

For the near future, Topi is debating whether to reintroduce an on-site café that the original owners briefly had, and he is still experimenting with new recipes for product line expansion. But the idea of opening additional Wave Hill Breads locations has him slightly apprehensive.

“With too many, I am afraid of losing control of the quality,” he says. “I want to make sure the quality will stay the same. I want to make sure we have something special.”

For more, visit wavehillbreads.com.

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RISING FROM DARK SHADOWS

BY AUDREY RONNING TOPPING

Traditional Malaysian shadow puppet show. Courtesy dreamstime.com

Traditional Chinese shadow play, a popular folk art for 2,000 years, met its virtual demise when the Communists came to power in the 1950s and Chairman Mao Zedong denounced the freedom-loving puppets as “bourgeois.” Then during the Cultural Revolution (1966-76), Mao’s wife, Jiang Jing, banned shadow puppets in favor of her seven boring, propagandistic “revolutionary operas.” However, after the fall of the scurrilous “Gang of Four” and Jiang’s suicide in 1976, the treasured silhouette puppets ascended again like red phoenixes, to the delight of generations both in China and the West.

Shadow puppets began to emerge from the dark shadows in the early 1980s when the folk art spontaneously reappeared at traditional rural marriages, funerals, banquets and special occasions. Besides entertainment, the story plots of this performing art extol the loyalty, strength and honor of legendary generals during historical battles — generals who are now trending.

According to Chinese historical records, shadow puppets were originally created by a Taoist monk during the Han Dynasty (206 B.C.-220 A.D.) — contemplating how to console the brokenhearted Emperor Wudi, who was grieving over the death of one of his favorite concubines. The Taoist experienced an epiphany while watching children playing under parasols in the noonday sun and became inspired by the lifelike power of the moving shadows. He fashioned a stone image WAGMAG.COM

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of the emperor’s departed concubine and placed it in a tent illuminated by burning candles, which cast a flickering shadow of the emperor’s lost love.

Emperor Wudi saw the resemblance and sensed her spirit. He was comforted. Sadness passed and shadow play was born.

Over the next 2,000 years, the stone figures were gradually replaced by cow and goat-hide leather silhouette images with movable limbs adorned with brilliant, almost psychedelic costumes. Puppeteers with dexterous hands maneuvered the charismatic puppets from attached strings, enabling them to stroke their beards, nod their heads, kick their legs, wave their arms and carry swords. Skills and complex techniques developed. Voices were added so they could curse their enemies and sing their stories in falsetto like old Chinese Opera performers. Music, accompanied by drums and gongs, was added and the puppets became backlit works of art.

Shadow Play is now popular throughout Southeast Asia as well as in China, where a group of passionate artists have protected the tradition against all odds. One of the main leaders is master puppeteer Wang Bao from Langzhong in Sichuan province, who comes from a family that

ACCORDING TO CHINESE HISTORICAL RECORDS, SHADOW PUPPETS WERE ORIGINALLY CREATED BY A TAOIST MONK DURING THE HAN DYNASTY (206 B.C.-220 A.D.) — CONTEMPLATING HOW TO CONSOLE THE BROKENHEARTED EMPEROR WUDI, WHO WAS GRIEVING OVER THE DEATH OF ONE OF HIS FAVORITE CONCUBINES.

has been performing shadow puppetry for seven generations. With the support of a national fund, Wang is bringing attention back to the ancient art. He broke the tradition of teaching only male students by including females and is now training 22 chosen students in the techniques needed to master the art of puppetry. Wang was taught the art by his grandfather, a renowned shadow puppet performer. He told China’s Xinhua News that it takes years before puppeteers are ready to go onstage.

“Every movement has to be on point.” Wang said. “You need to memorize the whole script and sing the lines of many different characters while showing their emotions with the puppet strings.”

The complex yet sophisticated designs that have evolved in shadow puppetry carry with them China’s human history. The whole enactment in shadow play, including the vibrant costumes, has symbolic or allegorical meaning. Every puppet is an amalgamation of Chinese philosophies, imagery and love of harmony. In June 2011 China adopted a law protecting intangible cultural heritage. Shadow Puppetry was added to the UNESCO list of “Intangible Cultural Heritage.”

Intangible, yes, and priceless.

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HOT AND SPICY

BY GEORGETTE GOUVEIA

w

hen chef/restaurateur Barbara Lynch met fellow New Englander Julia Child at a garden party at the latter’s Cambridge, Massachusetts, home, the two talked S & M — and we don’t mean shallots and mushrooms.

“Maybe it was safer to discuss sex with her than food,” Lynch says, reading from her salty new memoir, “Out of Line: A Life of Playing With Fire” (Atria Books, $26, 292 pages) at the third Literary Luncheon at The Inn at Pound Ridge by Jean-Georges.

So the awestruck Lynch, by then the owner of the smash Boston eatery No. 9 Park, listened as Child held forth about a sadomasochistic club in Quincy — Lynch pronounces it the proper New England way, “Quinzy” — that had been in the news.

She remembers thinking: “This is not happening.

I can’t really be talking to Julia Child about d-----.”

The two chatted for hours, with Lynch too spellbound to relinquish her place or her hostess for the buffet line. When pastry chef Stephanie Hersh, Child’s assistant and caretaker, served a beautiful chocolate cake, Lynch offered to share a slice.

“Oh, dearie, I never share cake,” Lynch recalls Child saying, imitating “The French Chef’s” distinctively breathy, high-pitched voice.

“So I got up with her for a slice of cake,” Lynch writes. “We each had two. I felt that I’d been blessed.”

If ever there were proof that the blessings meant for you in this world will be there no matter what, Lynch is that proof. One of six children of a widowed mother — her father died a month before she was born — Lynch grew up tough, defiant and dyslexic with attention deficit disorder in Southie, the Boston neighborhood then ruled by mobster Whitey Bulger. But she was also an autodidact — she never finished Madison Park High School in

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Barbara Lynch. Photograph by Michael Prince.

Roxbury, let alone attend cooking school — with a passion for cooking and a determination to transcend the Projects.

“I wanted to be something,” she tells WAG as she signs copies of her book after a lunch of roasted hake with a stew of spring onions, carrots, peas and saffron. “I wanted to be good at something and move my mother out of the Projects.”

In truth, her mother never left. And neither has Lynch. Though she is the owner of the multimillion-dollar Barbara Lynch Gruppo, which contains seven restaurants; has won multiple James Beard awards, an Amelia Earhart award and the Relais & Châteaux designation of Grand Chef; and been named one of Time magazine’s Most Influential People for 2017, she remains that girl from Southie.

Clad in black pants, top and peplum jacket and gold booties, she peppers her reading and conversation with f-bombs.

“She certainly is unvarnished and unfettered,” we tell our grandmotherly luncheon companion.

“Oh, I don’t think so,” she responds. “If she were, she would never have been able to attract investors and have done all she has.”

Yet as Lynch talks to the Literary Luncheon patrons, she reveals that she is separated from her husband — father of her beloved daughter, Marchesa, to whom her book is dedicated — in part be-

THOUGH SHE IS THE OWNER OF THE MULTIMILLION-DOLLAR BARBARA LYNCH GRUPPO, WHICH CONTAINS SEVEN RESTAURANTS; HAS WON MULTIPLE JAMES BEARD AWARDS, AN AMELIA EARHART AWARD AND THE RELAIS & CHÂTEAUX DESIGNATION OF GRAND CHEF; AND BEEN NAMED ONE OF TIME MAGAZINE’S MOST INFLUENTIAL PEOPLE FOR 2017, SHE REMAINS THAT GIRL FROM SOUTHIE.

cause she doesn’t want to divorce and pay him. If that isn’t unfettered, we don’t know what is.

As is often the case, though, that tell-it-like-it-is style masks a sensitive nature — and a woman in a man’s world protective of herself and her daughter.

“I’m strong on the outside, insecure on the inside,” Lynch tells WAG. Still, that didn’t stop her from learning all she could under chef Mario Bonello at Boston’s St. Botolph Club (“I saw food I had never seen before”); working on a Martha’s Vineyard boat and at the Harvest restaurant in Cambridge’s Harvard Square; studying in Italy; and cultivating former Stride Rite chairman Arnold Hiatt and businessman/philanthropist Jack Connors as investors. (“I was committed to paying them back and I paid them back in three years,” she says.)

A “f------- nothing or all” person, whether it comes to boxing or Ashtanga yoga, Lynch cares less about the food she eats. (She’d be happy with the comforts of peanut butter and jelly, tuna fish or oatmeal.)

What she loves is cooking and extending the hospitality of a well-prepared meal on china and fine linens to her patrons.

“This is your life,” she tells the Literary Luncheon crowd. “You’re going to work 110 hours a week. But you’re going to love it.”

For more, visit barbaralynch.com.

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Ron Gallo

PRESSURE COOK RON GALLO’S MORE THAN

A MATCH FOR THE HEAT IN THE KITCHEN

BY GEORGETTE GOUVEIA PHOTOGRAPHS BY JOHN RIZZO

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hen he was a child, Ron Gallo relished the big Italian family meals hosted by his grandparents in Massapequa on Long Island. He had become interested in cooking at a young age. The second youngest of five sons in a family in which both parents worked, Gallo learned the importance of fending for himself and his younger brother in the kitchen. But it was those family dinners on the Island that would cement his career path.

“I wanted to recreate that experience,” he says.

Today Gallo does so in the most glamorous of ways as the chef de cuisine at The Inn at Pound Ridge by Jean-Georges. While this is a new post for Gallo — he’s been at The Inn about 10 months — he has worked for Jean-Georges Vongerichten, WAG’s March 2014 cover guy, for 28 years.

“I worked for him mostly in the city,” Gallo says.

When Jean-Georges was chef de cuisine at Restaurant Lafayette, Gallo — fresh from The Culinary Institute of America and a stint at the legendary La Côte Basque — was one of his line cooks. It was a position he held when Jean-Georges opened Vong in the early 1990s.

At Jean-Georges — the restaurant that Gallo calls the jewel in Jean-Georges’ culinary crown — Gallo served as chef de cuisine and then became the first chef de cuisine at JoJo, a position he held for 13 years (2003-16).

“Last summer, Jean-Georges asked if I’d be interested in coming up to The Inn at Pound Ridge,” Gallo says. He and wife, Kathleen, who works for Financier Patisserie catering, evidently liked what they saw. The Brooklynites now live in Stamford, closer to Gallo’s work.

As chef de cuisine at The Inn, Gallo oversees the kitchen and the application of the Jean-Georges philosophy in a place not far from the revolutionary chef’s home. ( Jean-Georges lives in neighboring Waccabuc.) He was one of the first chefs, along with Alice Waters, to take a natural, organic approach to cooking. Certainly, he has galvanized French fare on the East Coast, which had previously relied on heavy cream sauces instead of light, plant-based ones.

“I remember when we were at Restaurant Lafayette and he said we were going to make asparagus juice, and I said, ‘Chef, I don’t think asparagus has any juice,’ and he said, ‘Get me the juicer and the asparagus.’”

It was one of many revelations. Others revolved around leadership, with Jean-Georges leading from the front, not merely directing staffers but working alongside them, yet still knowing when to delegate.

While Gallo may consult with Jean-Georges on a new menu, he’s free to run his kitchen. There is a trust and a loyalty between these two men.

“He also taught me that a chef doesn’t just cook,” Gallo says. “A chef has to taste.” And what he’s tasting for is that subtle balance of flavors and textures. Gallo’s achievement of that balancing act was evident in his menu for one of The Inn’s recent Literary Luncheons featuring The New York Times food writer Melissa Clark and her new book, “Dinner: Changing the Game.” (See cover story on Page 68.) The brook trout on a bed of peas — the perfect hommage to

Gallo in his kitchen.

spring — was tangy and sweet, crunchy and melting.

Of course, Gallo had us at his creamy, savory truffle pizza, which could induce the kind of reaction Meg Ryan simulated in “When Harry Met Sally.” The secret to great pizza?

“You have to have a feel for the dough,” he says.

And a respect for it. “It’s a living, breathing organism, if that’s the right word,” one, he says, that responds to atmospheric conditions like dryness and humidity. So in summer, the dough needs to be by an open window.

Ingredients are important. The Inn uses “topof-the-line” truffles and New York’s much coveted, much purified water.

Like that water, Gallo is a product of New York City — born in Brooklyn and raised on Staten Island, where he attended private and public schools before going on to The CIA. There he met his wife. With a daughter at the University of California, Davis and a son who graduated from Pace University, the Gallos are empty nesters, so it was a good time for a move, Gallo says. At home, he likes to whip up chicken and fish tacos. It’s a more relaxed atmosphere chez Gallo than the restaurant world. But this is one chef who can stand the heat in the kitchen.

“There’s always a deadline and you have to be ready,” he says. “It’s one of the things that drew me to the business and one of the things that still drives me.”

For more, visit theinnatpoundridge.com.

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A NOVEL POUR

BY MARY SHUSTACK

The NovelTeas team gets into the spirit of The British Collection. From left, Jorgen Stovne, Johnny Pujol and Mitch Kraemer. Photographs courtesy NovelTeas.

Just the names elicit a smile.

There’s “Don QuixoTea” and “War and Peach.”

And that’s not to mention “The Picture of Earl Grey,” “Oliver Lemon Twist” and “Pride and Peppermint.”

What, you may be asking, are these pun-embracing titles all about?

They are among the selections of NovelTeas, billed as “Tea Tins With a Novel Twist.” And NovelTeas, which blend wordplay with world-class tea, is carving out quite a following among lovers of tea — and literature.

Not bad for an idea that got its start in a New Canaan kitchen.

It was some three years ago when Johnny Pujol was home for the holidays and having tea with his two younger sisters.

“My mother’s British, so tea has always been in our home,” Pujol says.

They were, he says, goofing around, when he was asked if he had brought them a gift — and he playfully suggested the wet tea bag.

“We riffed on it for a while,” Pujol says.

Eventually, he would head back to California, but that light moment continued to steep into a product idea that’s as creative as it is fun.

“This is a great idea,” Pujol says he realized. “People read books. People drink tea. There’s a lot of juice to squeeze there.”

So he enlisted his airbnb guest, Jorgen Stovne. The native of Norway just happened not only to have a background in marketing and advertising but had worked with a fitting client, Lipton.

Stovne was game from the start.

“Johnny’s passion for the project was what attracted me initially, but over time I think we all fell in love with the process of making the tins,” he says. “I’ve also always been fascinated by old book covers, so this was a great excuse to spend unhealthy amounts of time researching the right look.”

Also heavily involved is Mitch Kraemer — a friend of a friend who’s also an avid reader. “He’s technically an investor, but he works with us day to day,” Pujol says.

With a team in place, what began as a joke suddenly became serious when the initial investment was buoyed by an incredibly successful Kickstarter campaign.

Pujol, chatting with WAG in New Canaan during a recent visit home, says people were connecting with the company’s offbeat take on the importance of literature — something lost in what he calls today’s “YouTube culture.”

These great works are, he notes, “classics for a reason.”

ANOTHER CUP OF TEA It all came about at the perfect time for Pujol, the culmination of a journey from New Canaan High School to a bachelor’s degree in economics from Boston University to less-than-fulfilling work on Wall Street.

“I think part of the problem was I was losing some creative excitement,” Pujol says.

He ended up relocating to Berkeley, California.

“I love Berkeley,” he says. “I want to be the mayor of Berkeley.”

By example of his devotion, he points to a nearby tree. “This tree is nice… Have you seen the trees in Berkeley?”

There, he’s earned a graduate degree in water engineering from University of California at Berkeley and is founder and CEO of water-testing firm SimpleWater Inc. He can talk at length about water, contaminants and climate change, but that passion extends to NovelTeas.

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THE PERFECT BLEND

KEEP THE KETTLE ON

It’s essentially a two-part process, Pujol says, starting with the artwork that will interpret the spin on a classic title.

The company works with an ever-growing roster of independent artists from Seattle to Spain, who share the NovelTeas vision.

“The best recipe is finding artists who’ve loved the books,” he says. “It’s been giving us this cool reach into the world of art.”

The teas themselves, though, are no joke — with each flavor custom blended.

“It’s all about creating these teas that reflect the book,” Pujol says.

The company has been approaching small-batch tea companies, often to a great response.

“They want the challenge of making a flavor that tastes like a book,” he says.

Take the “Don QuixoTea,” which is said to be “Cervantea’s tea blend — Man of La Manchai.” It’s designed as a “delicious and adventurous brew of organic and traditional chai spices: red cinnamon, cardamom, black pepper and the root of ginger.”

Integral to the company’s continued growth has been crowdfunding, from Kickstarter to more recently Indiegogo, with the latter supporting the launch of book-shaped refill cartons seen as the paperback versions of the tin’s “hardcovers.”

“We use a recycled paper product, so it’s a bit of ‘feel good’ there,” Pujol says.

As the NovelTeas library continues to grow, Pujol notes the company may one day bring the concept to other products.

It’s also balancing a strong social-media push with reaching out to potential customers the old-fashioned way, in person. That included a successful appearance at the San Francisco International Tea Festival in November that found the products, Pujol says, “gone before noon.”

At the moment, Pujol, Stovne and Kraemer all have day jobs — but NovelTeas is a passion, one in which New Canaan remains a strong tie.

It was, in fact, design solutions in town that gave NovelTeas its brick-and-mortar debut some two years ago — and continues to carry the tea tins.

Owner Pauline Dora, who has known Pujol for years, immediately connected with NovelTeas.

“Knowing Johnny and his sense of humor, it’s perfect,” she says. “It’s very clever.”

At first, she says, she promoted Pujol’s local roots, but in time NovelTeas didn’t need any justification.

“It stands on its own,” Dora says.

The NovelTeas team, she adds, has a key asset, something that it just happens to share with the best of literature — “It’s their imagination.”

For more, visit novelteatins.com.

NovelTeas are “tea tins with a novel twist.”

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KATHARINE THE GREAT

BY GEORGETTE GOUVEIA

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The Kate, Katharine Hepburn Cultural Arts Center. Courtesy The Kate.

While the Connecticut town of Old Saybrook has been home to many acclaimed women, it’s fair to say none is more famous than Katharine Hepburn.

American actress Katharine Hepburn (1907 - 2003), circa 1940.

Photograph by Silver Screen Collection/Getty Images.

Her name graces a pretty top-floor room with water views at Three Stories, Saybrook Point Inn Marina & Spa’s picturesque, pink property, which is dedicated to the town’s accomplished daughters.

And Paradise, her former 8,400-square-foot home in the town’s historic Fenwick community, is in the news once more, on the market.

But perhaps nowhere is her presence more strongly felt than at The Kate, as The Katharine Hepburn Cultural Arts Center on Main Street is lovingly called. The center, an imposing, colonnaded brick structure with a modern addition, has a small but choice museum with a permanent display on the actress and a 250-seat theater. It boasts 33,000 attendees a year for 232 performances that include live music, dance and comedy as well as films, especially Hepburn’s, and simulcasts of the Bolshoi Ballet, The Metropolitan Opera and the National Theatre.

“We have the blessing of Hepburn’s estate,” says Brett Elliott, the center’s executive director, including

for “The Kate” — a performance series produced by Connecticut Public Television that has gone national.

That blessing is no small thing. Hepburn (19072003) was a formidable woman who did not suffer fools gladly or give herself lightly. Making her first appearance at the Academy Awards in her golden years — she holds the record for most Best Actor trophies with four — she said it took her years to learn to be unselfish. Her Paradise estate contained a sign that read “Go Away,” says John Lombardo, general manager of the Saybrook Point Inn Marina & Spa. He remembers when Hepburn came over to the marina for a reunion with the steamboat The African Queen, which appeared with her and Humphrey Bogart in the 1951 movie of the same title. “She was to the point,” Lombardo says.

He likes to tell the story of two contractors who went over to her house. Hepburn offered them a drink. One asked for bourbon and the other for a glass of white wine. “‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ Hepburn WAGMAG.COM

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said to the oenophile, ‘Have a real drink.’ That tells you what she was like,” Lombardo says.

“If you obey all the rules, you miss all the fun,” she once said. Feisty and forthright, Hepburn learned to color outside the lines in a progressive family headed by urologist Thomas Norval Hepburn and his wife, the former Katharine Martha Houghton, a suffragist and birth control advocate. Their daughter, the second child and eldest girl in a brood of six, tasted early success after a rocky theatrical start — and early failure. In the 1930s, she was labeled “box office poison” despite a breakout performance in “A Bill of Divorcement” and star turns in what are now classics — including the savvy “Stage Door” with Ginger Rogers and the uproarious “Bringing Up Baby” with Cary Grant — that tapped into her unusual dramatic gifts and a persona that mixed Thoroughbred hauteur with a surprisingly deep well of vulnerability and compassion.

Undaunted, Hepburn rebounded with “The Philadelphia Story” (1940), also with Grant, and went on to a storied career that featured a charismatic partnership with her off-screen leading man, Spencer Tracy. It was a relationship that would be criticized, including by feminists, as it cast Hepburn on the backstage of the married Tracy’s life. But Hepburn sailed on — working into old age; playing golf and tennis, skills showcased in the Tracy-Hepburn film

IF YOU OBEY ALL THE RULES, YOU MISS ALL THE FUN. — Katharine Hepburn

“Pat and Mike;” and doing her own housework at her Manhattan townhouse and at Paradise.

“She was super unique,” Elliott says. “She did what she wanted to do.”

The center that bears her name is in many ways like the woman herself — a survivor with many chapters. It began life four years after Hepburn in 1911 as a theater.

“Brothers ran it then, then ran out of town when they ran out of money,” the genial Elliott says.

The building had a community, mixed-purpose use until 1960 when it became Old Saybrook’s Town Hall. The town’s offices moved to a new site behind The Kate in 2000. Nine years later, The Kate opened.

But not everyone was on board with a community idea to turn the vacant building into an arts center, courtesy of a renovation and addition by East Wharf Architects in Madison, Connecticut.

“I like to think we’ve won them over,” Elliott says with a smile. And how. On a recent Friday night, the joint was jumping for folk-rockers Stephen Kellogg, accompanied by his band, and Matt Nakoa, the opening act — performers graced with pleasing, wide-ranging voices, instrumental chops and a way with audiences and storytelling.

The Kate also offers Kate’s Camp for Kids, a three-season program, and partners with the Florence Griswold Museum in neighboring Old Lyme and the Lyme Academy College of Fine Arts. It was academy faculty member Kimberly Monson who designed the center’s Spirit of Katharine Hepburn Award. Dick Cavett was the first honoree last year. At the center’s Aug. 26 gala, Greenwich-born Bedford resident Glenn Close will receive the award, which is topped by a sculpture of Hepburn seated crosslegged in her signature shirt and slacks.

Somehow we think she would approve.

For more, visit katharinehepburntheater.org.

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AN OLD SAYBROOK WELCOME

BY GEORGETTE GOUVEIA

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When the Saybrook Point Inn Marina & Spa offered me its hospitality recently, who was I to say no?

Views of Saybrook Point Inn Marina & Spa. Photographs by Frank Gilroy. Courtesy Saybrook Point Inn Marina & Spa.

Nestled in the picturesque, historic town of Old Saybrook at a spot where the Connecticut River meets the Long Island Sound, the inn had long been on my bucket list, even though I already had more than a passing acquaintance with it. We at WAG had done a story on its colorful history for our February 2016 issue. And my sister Gina’s friends Kathleen and Robert Hansen own several businesses in town — including Johnny Ad’s, a guilty pleasure of a fish shack noted for its fried

scallops, lobster rolls, vanilla shakes and doo-wop soundtrack; and the pretty, new, Tiffany-blue Blow Dry at the Beach.

From the moment I spied the pink Victorian with its triple deck porch that is part of the Saybrook Point Inn’s French country-style complex on one of my family’s trips from Boston, I was determined to stay there. Now with Gina and her feisty Chihuahua mix Fausto once more on the open road — OK, a congested I-95 — I was about to see my dream come true. What I would discover is that while Old Saybrook offers an array of pursuits — from fishing and boating to bird-watching at an Audubon sanctuary to exploring lighthouses and Indian and colonial history — it was the simpler pleasures of writing and breakfasting in bed, taking a yoga class, having a pedicure, eating an ice cream cone on Main Street while window shopping, walking by the water and, especially, renewing old acquaintances and making new ones that held the most meaning.

Old Saybrook is one of those places that prove geography is destiny.

“What’s interesting about it is that it has no industry, because the water is not deep enough for commercial boats,” says John Lombardo, the inn’s general manager. But industry’s loss would prove to be tourism’s gain. From 1957 to ’80, the inn’s footprint was occupied by another hotel, the Terra Mar, which hosted movie stars and mobsters alike.

Frank Sinatra’s yacht docked there. And the 1961 film “Parrish,” starring Troy Donohue, was partly filmed there. But the Terra Mar was also raided by the FBI as a gambling den and fell into disrepair.

Enter Louis Tagliatela Sr. and wife Mary, who bought the Terra Mar at auction in 1980 and opened Saybrook Point Inn nine years later. Today, their children oversee a 105-key operation that is green and pet-friendly. There are 81 rooms and suites in the Main Inn, which also houses the 500-member Saybrook Point Health Club and the spa, Sanno, named for the Latin for “sound of mind and body.”

A junior suite shaped like a lighthouse rises like a sentinel from the marina, which has 125 fixed and floating slips, plus a dock for megayachts that can accommodate boats of up to 200 feet, Lombardo says. The Lighthouse Suite has been dubbed “the most romantic room in the Northeast” by Connecticut Magazine and it’s easy to see why with its snuggy, nautical bedroom commanding views that make you feel as if you are one with the sea.

Across the street are the inn’s 24 villas — three buildings of eight, seven of which are completely furnished — for short- and long-term rentals. They stand in the footprint of The Pease House hotel and restaurant (1871-1956), once the place to dine and stay in Old Saybrook. Next to these are the inn’s two guesthouses — the coral-colored Tall Tales, which Lombardo says has a “beachy, contemporary feel;” and the pink-colored Three Stories, a renovation of the 1892 Italianate-style home of railroad engineer William Vars that now contains a rose- and irisfilled garden with Chris Conner’s two-sided wood sculpture of Vars at work and at play with his dog.

(The floral gardens at the inn are by GM Lombardo’s wife, Darci, while East Wharf Architects of Madison, Connecticut, Silver Contract Interiors of Stamford and Anne Christie Landscape Design of Hampton, Connecticut, are responsible for the architecture, décor and overall landscaping of the complex respectively.) The South Cove Cottage, a rental property, completes the picture.

With so much to explore within the complex, we had to divide our time carefully between Main Street, about a two-mile walk from the inn, and the complex itself. Everyone should have such pleasant challenges. We took in a show at The Kate, the Katharine Hepburn Cultural Arts Center (see related story) after dining on contemporary cuisine at Livs that included a splendid warm pea soup and spicy shrimp and pork dumplings. (We would have

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traditionally hearty fare, including a nicely battered fish and chips, the next day at Penny Lane Pub, which the Hansens once owned.)

I looked for home items at The Shops at Saybrook Country Barn, browsed Harbor Books and relished a soft-serve vanilla gelato cone at Sweet Luna’s. But the inn kept calling me. I walked the adjacent causeway, reveling in the wind at my back, a shower of sunshine and the exhilarating sight of sea and sky. I did hatha yoga in a subtly challenging class taught by Erin Bartolome at the health club that had me feeling the pleasurably aching effects the next day and had a relaxing pedicure with Samantha Magnotta at Sanno. And Bob, Kathleen, Gina and I relished a “farewell” dinner of shrimp, tuna tartare, veal and pasta at the inn’s Fresh Salt restaurant, framed by a sunset glow.

I might, however, have been just as content to stay in “my” pink house, with its blush accents, soft classical music, morning fruits and scones and room tributes to the great women of Old Saybrook. (I was in the Miss Anna Louise James Room, a vibrant red and green-accented space honoring Connecticut’s first woman pharmacist.)

Not all the great ladies of Three Stories are historic. The grandmotherly Anna Trenta Pratt — a friend of “Mrs. Tag’s,” as Mrs. Tagliatela is affectionately known — lives nearby and serves as the concierge of the building. Encountering her one morning at a desk off Three Stories’ common area, I fell into a conversation about the meaning of life. It wasn’t long before we were exchanging addresses.

Amenities, it turns out, can’t be measured merely in toiletries or minibars. Some reach out to touch your soul as they offer you a touch of home.

For more, visit saybrook.com.

(Clockwise from top) Three Stories, one of the guest properties of Saybrook Point Inn Marina & Spa; the common area; and the Miss Anna Louise James Room, named for the daughter of a slave who became Connecticut’s first female pharmacist. Photographs by Georgette Gouveia.

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Orthopedic surgery so advanced, you can move freely into tomorrow.

At Greenwich Hospital, we believe in health care that enables your active life. Our advanced orthopedic surgical techniques include minimally invasive procedures that get you back to the life you love. And the commitment of our specialists is ongoing, from diagnosis to postsurgical therapy. In fact, the Joint Commission* recognizes our program as one of the best in the country. It’s why people like Linda are once again enjoying tennis and other activities they love – within weeks after hip-replacement surgery. That’s the Greenwich Hospital experience. greenwichhospital.org/surgery

*Certification by the independent, nonprofit Joint Commission is recognized nationally as a symbol of quality that reflects a healthcare organization’s commitment to the highest standards for patient care.

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EXTENDING HOSPITALITY THROUGH CONNECTICUT

BY GEORGETTE GOUVEIA

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With 11 hotels in Connecticut and Texas, the Greenwich Hospitality Group is all about the h-word that is its middle name. WAG readers know it as the parent company of the sophisticated Delamar Greenwich Harbor, the charmingly countrified Delamar Southport and the serene Four Columns in Newfane, Vermont. Now there’s a new Delamar sibling.

The Delamar West Hartford is set to open this summer. (It joins the newly refurbished The Goodwin in neighboring Hartford; Hotel Zero Degrees in Stamford, Danbury and Norwalk; and The Hotel Limpia, The Holland Hotel and The Maverick Inn in Texas as other properties in the Greenwich Hospitality Group portfolio.)

Located in tony Blue Back Square — a community that is also a shopping and dining destination The Delamar West Hartford.

Courtesy Greenwich Hospitality Group.

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and a hub since the 17th century — the Delamar West Hartford will boast more than 100 rooms and suites; 12 unfurnished extended stay suites; more than 5,000 square feet of banquet and conference space; the largest Delamar Spa; and the third and biggest Artisan Restaurant Tavern and Garden, overseen by Frederic Kieffer, who is also executive chef of the Artisan restaurants at the Delamar Southport and Four Columns and l’escale restaurant bar at the Delamar Greenwich Harbor.

Kieffer — who described his passion for farm-totable, seasonal fare and sharing that approach with staff and patrons alike in a July 2016 WAG cover story— will have a chef’s garden at the Delamar West Hartford.

“I am looking forward to collaborating with Renee Giroux, an amazing young and passionate organic farmer,” he said recently. “All of her heirloom vegetables and plants will be started at her farm and then transplanted to the Artisan garden. Whatever is not grown at our garden will be sourced from her farm primarily.”

If it’s anything like the fare at l’escale, Artisan West Hartford patrons are in for a treat. Recent-

I AM LOOKING FORWARD TO COLLABORATING WITH RENEE GIROUX, AN AMAZING YOUNG AND PASSIONATE ORGANIC FARMER. ALL OF HER HEIRLOOM VEGETABLES AND PLANTS WILL BE STARTED AT HER FARM AND THEN TRANSPLANTED TO THE ARTISAN GARDEN. — Frederic Kieffer

ly at l’escale, we savored a piquant Watermelon Mosaic of cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, pickled watermelon and French feta, dressed with a basil Moscatel vinaigrette; a smooth Shrimp and Pappardelle pesto dish laced with ribbons of asparagus; the House Smoked Salmon and Burrata with artichokes, avocado, mache greens and a Muscatel reduction; and an equally luscious Ricotta Gnocchi “Printanier” of Oregon morels, asparagus and English peas flecked with Parmesan. These seemed to murmur “summer” in our ears as we sat on the terrace under brilliant sunshine overlooking Greenwich Harbor and the Delamar’s new 10-seat pontoon, which accompanies its navy-and-white six-seat boat, the Whisper.

“You can order oysters and wine and other fare from l’escale and charter these boats for a cruise,” said Delamar spokeswoman Lisa Johnson. Or Delamar Greenwich Harbor guests can board the town ferry that runs every two hours for an island beach where they can spend the day.

Added Johnson: “It doesn’t get more summer fun than that.”

For more, visit greenwichhospitality.com.

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PINK OLIVE WHIMSY

BY MARY SHUSTACK

t

he warm welcome to Pink Olive in Cold Spring begins before you even step inside the paper goods and gift boutique.

Simply glance down at the front stoop where tiles spell out the company’s signature phrase, “You Are Loved.”

Inside the airy, artistic space, those words come to life in a decidedly thoughtful — and often playful — manner.

And it’s with good reason, since Pink Olive founder and chief buyer Grace Kang is no newbie to the field. This bright corner shop is the latest entry in Kang’s mini empire, joining sister shops in Manhattan’s West and East villages along with Park Slope and Williamsburg in Brooklyn.

Expanding into the Hudson Valley with an early-March opening at 80 Main St. seemed a fitting way to commemorate the company’s 10th anniversary.

“It’s not like ‘OK, the city thing isn’t working, so I wanted to go upstate,’” Kang assures with a laugh.

Instead, it was a natural outgrowth of time spent in the region to complement life in the city — and she and her husband purchasing an Orange County weekend home a few years ago.

The search for a Hudson Valley retail space led her back to the Putnam County village she had often visited.

“This town just resonated,” she says.

As in all Pink Olives, this is the place to dip into whimsy, to find a greeting card that will make you (and your recipient) laugh out loud, to sniff

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Grace Kang in Pink Olive. Photographs by Kevin Almeida. Courtesy Pink Olive.

uniquely scented candles, to debate over the cutest baby gift or simply treat yourself when you need a little pick-me-up.

That could range from a tote bag shaped like a lemon slice to “The Carry On Cocktail Kit” — or maybe one of those namesake Pink Olive soy candles in an ever-expanding range that already includes apple clover and fig and rosemary.

“I always say as a retailer it’s good to start building your brand with your own collection of things,” Kang says.

Goods here represent a few national brands, but there is an emphasis throughout on sourcing unique work by often-regional designers and art-

ists. For example, Kang came across Ciaran Tully at a fair years ago, began carrying his work in Pink Olive and asked the East Village photographer to expand his portfolio to include Cold Spring images. A cross section of his work is prominently displayed here over a mantel, one of many old-fashioned touches.

From the first Pink Olive, in the East Village, Kang knew she would have multiple locations, a reflection of the drive she has had throughout her life.

She was especially encouraged by her father’s reminder — to go after her dreams. “What he always said was, ‘Pick one thing and go all the way.’”

It’s advice she has taken to heart.

She tailored her courses at Cornell University to fit her needs, with studies on her way to a bachelor of science degree touching on subjects ranging from hotels and hospitality to business to fashion.

Kang credits her first professional experience with setting her on a successful path.

“I was very fortunate that after college I learned about Bloomingdale’s, and I learned about the buying program.”

Teaching her the nuts and bolts of retail, the program would lead to future work as a buyer for Barneys New York and Saks Fifth Avenue.

Along the way, Kang has been aware of balance.

She says that her early days in California — the family moved to New Jersey when Kang was in eighth grade — shaped her outlook, allowing her to know, “when to take a step back and enjoy.”

Observing Kang interact with a steady stream of customers on an early June morning, it’s clear she loves what she does.

“I always say, ‘I’m not one way in business and another way in life.’”

She’s warm and genuine whether chatting away with day-trippers or helping a local select

a last-minute gift.

Kang says it all goes back to that “You Are Loved” theme, those reassuring words that appear many times within Pink Olive, on mugs, key chains, gift bags and more — by design.

“It’s a message we want to spread in a bigger way,” Kang says. “Obviously, ‘You Are Loved’ is the heart of what we do here.”

Her goal was to create a “space of calm, to rest, to inspire yourself… be inspired by all the creativity” and leave everyday stress behind.

That extends to the secret garden, a special-event space behind the boutique that Kang was to unveil formally with a mid-June celebration.

Looking over the shop, Kang seems happy with the way Pink Olive has progressed.

“I think people really appreciate our picks and our curation.”

As for the name, it’s a spin on Kang’s favorite colors back then, pink and green … and something green she loves.

She says the words combine to be “all about the energy, the inspiration and mixing things you might not have imagined.”

Sounds like Pink Olive indeed.

For more, visit pinkolive.com.

Pink Olive is noted for its handpicked selection of paper goods and gifts.

1 VAN DER DONCK ST, YONKERS, NY 10701 • CAFEHUDSON.COM • (914) 338-7542 WAGMAG.COM

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s A PLACE TO

‘SAVOR’

BY GEORGETTE GOUVEIA

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Well, they had us at Mozart.

As we sipped ice coffee from Bluestone Lane, the sounds of the marvelously martial third movement of Wolfgang Amadeus’ Piano Concerto No. 24 in C minor wafted through the woodsy, blue, white and silver space — prefiguring Mozart’s great pupil, Beethoven; melting the centuries away; and signaling that Savor Westchester is a classy update of The Westchester’s former food court.

Part of Simon’s multimillion-dollar renovation of the mall, the versatile new 350-seat dining venue — accented by skylights, glass and stainless steel — features a fireplace, an event space and an outdoor patio overlooking White Plains.

“After many months of planning, it is so exciting to see Savor Westchester come to life,” Paula Kelliher, The Westchester’s director of marketing, said in a statement. “We look forward to the opening of more unique restaurants in the coming weeks.”

At the moment, you can select from four. Jonesing for java? The Melbourne, Australia-inspired Bluestone Lane serves blend and single origin espresso coffee, wellness lattes that include a beet latte and a new range of cold-pressed juices. And that’s not all. The eatery is the toast of toast, whipping up a classic avocado smash, tumeric sweet potato hummus toast, a smashed pea and coconut yogurt toast and a salmon toast. Should you go, don’t forget your plastic. Bluestone doesn’t do cash, making things oh-so-much easier. ’Tis the season for barbecue, so head on over to the Mighty Quinn’s Barbecue, the first of the metro-area franchise’s offerings in Westchester County. The Quinn’s all-natural meats and poultry are seasoned with spice blends and slow-smoked with wood, making every day Fourth of July.

Top to bottom: Fare from Mighty Quinn’s Barbecue, Whitmans New York and Bluestone Lane at Savor Westchester, The Westchester’s new food court. Courtesy The Westchester.

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Another first for the county is Whitmans New York, where country home meets Manhattan nostalgia. It’s comfort food with a twist as the Peanut Butter and Bacon and “Juicy Lucy” burgers attest.

Meanwhile, Tomato & Co. offers a taste of old Napoli with wood-fired pizzas, pastas, salads and gelato.

On deck are Juice Generation, with raw juices and foods, smoothies and organic bakery items, slated for this month; and Hai Street Kitchen, a theater-style eatery that allows you to watch your Shrimp Tempura, Sushi Burrito and Chargrilled Chicken being prepared, opening in August.

Adjacent to Savor Westchester are two entertainment spaces — PLAY, a 2,300-square-foot interactive, educational play area sponsored

by Maria Fareri Children’s Hospital that uses the principals of STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Math); and CONNECT, a tech lounge with nine flat screens in a 16-foot by 9-foot viewing wall featuring news, sports and entertainment. It also contains complimentary charging stations for phones and iPads.

Sounds like there’s a lot to savor at Savor.

For more, visit simon.com/mall/the-westchester.

A view of the newly renovated food court at The Westchester. Courtesy The Westchester.

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SWEET SOUNDS

BY GREGG SHAPIRO

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Matthew Sweet. Photographs by Evan Carter.

Matthew Sweet’s first new studio album of original material in six years, “Tomorrow Forever” (Honeycomb Hideout), is a marvelous return to form. If you fell in love with Sweet’s power pop revivalist sound via his breakout album, 1991’s “Girlfriend” — containing the hit singles “Divine Intervention,” “I’ve Been Waiting” and the title cut — then “Tomorrow Forever” is sure to please.

The Kickstarter-funded, 17-song album, with its retro Maio cover art, features an all-star lineup of guest musicians and includes outstanding tunes such as “Entangled,” “Country Girl,” “Nobody Knows,” “Music For Love” and “Finally.” Sweet answered a few questions for WAG in advance of his concert tour, which includes an early fall date at the Tarrytown Music Hall.

After releasing a couple of albums in the late 1980s, you had a considerable commercial and critical breakthrough with 1991’s “Girlfriend.”

Do you remember how the favorable response to that disc made you feel? “(Laughs) I think I realized what was happening with it, because of how busy I got, how much demand (there was) for talking about it. I remember being in a boardroom at (record label) Zoo Entertainment, doing a bunch of interviews. Someone asked me a similar question to yours and I was kind of like, ‘Wow. I guess it is starting to happen.’

I think I was happy. It was something I didn’t expect at all and it was slightly shocking. The real way it changed my life was just the intensity of the amount of promotional stuff that I had to do. It was a mixed bag of knowing that something was happening, but I was also working harder than I ever had in my life.”

Matthew Sweet will play in Tarrytown.

In 2006, 2009 and 2013, you released collaborative albums with Susanna Hoffs of The Bangles as part of the “Under The Covers” series.

How did that musical partnership come to pass?

“I met Susanna back in the ’90s. She came to a show of mine and brought Mike Myers with her.

That’s how we all ended up hanging out and eventually doing stuff for the ‘Austin Powers’ movies.

That’s how I got to know her better, still not as well as I did once we did the (‘Covers’) project. I went to a Bangles show to sing on something at this

little Los Angeles acoustic club called McCabe’s.

The Bangles were doing a Bangles & Friends thing where various people would join them onstage.

“Backstage, I told Susanna that I always really liked her voice and said I’d love to do something together if she was into it. I thought we might write songs together for an album of hers. I wanted to hear her, not me singing. It so happened that she was in discussions with (record label) Shout Factory. She brought me up to them and they were interested in the two of us doing something. They wanted us to do something that was more of a novelty than just making an original record. That’s how we came up with the idea of doing these covers records. We thought we were just making one.

When the first one came out, it said, ‘Volume One.’ We thought that was really funny. We had no idea if we were even going to make a second volume. But they stuck with their original idea and, in fact, we did make all three volumes.”

Another member of The Bangles, Debbi Peterson, is one of the musicians performing on “Tomorrow Forever.” How did that musical collaboration come about?

“I got to know Debbi when I produced a Bangles record a few years ago. I knew she was a really good drummer. There was a point during the work on ‘Tomorrow Forever’ where (drummer) Rick (Menck) couldn’t get the time to record and I was on my third batch of songs and trying to keep it rolling, because I was already late in terms of my Kickstarter deadline. I thought of Debbi. I was really flattered that she would travel all the way out here to my studio in Nebraska to record. She had the unique task of playing on a lot of the slowest songs that I wrote. We did get in one upbeat song, ‘Come Correct,’ which was sort of a sleeper.”

In addition to being released on CD, as well as a download, “Tomorrow Forever” is also available as a double LP. What do you think of the vinyl revival?

“I love it. I think it’s fun. Still, I think it’s sort of a novelty, although everybody thinks of it as being a huge boom in people listening to vinyl. I think the numbers are still pretty small. The great thing about it is that everybody seems to want to make vinyl now. There are people who want to buy it.

The diehard fans, if they have a setup where they can play vinyl, they like to get it. It’s funny that you brought it up. I just received my first copies of the vinyl. It looks gorgeous. Right before we started our interview, my wife came into my studio, where I’m sitting at my computer desk and set one of the vinyls in front of me. (Laughs) I’m looking at it right now. I think she thought it would be encouraging to have it sitting in front of me (Laughs).”

Matthew Sweet performs Sept. 22 at the Tarrytown Music Hall. For more, visit tarrytownmusichall.org.

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WHERE GREAT DINING MEETS GREAT VIEWING

BY JENA A. BUTTERFIELD

52 WAGMAG.COM JULY 2017 Dining near water adds an extra touch to a meal.

Something happens when you’re sitting on a deck by the water.

You breathe the salt air and feel the sun on your face. Maybe a boat glides by and a seagull hovers. Then a cold beer arrives at your table — or a cocktail — and a plate of oysters on ice. Next comes the fried clams with tartar sauce, chowder or fish tacos.

At some point, you turn to your friends and say, “It doesn’t get much better than this.”

And you mean it. So why postpone this kind of happiness until vacation?

There’s a reason why all those seagulls are hanging around our shopping center parking lots. We live by the water. So, whether you go for the Long Island Sound or the Hudson River, you’ll need our select list of waterside eateries to help put you in that state of rapture. Get your flip-flops and sunscreen ready for a summer full of staycations and save the Hamptons, the Cape and the Shore for when you’re fortified enough to put up with the traffic.

ON THE SOUND

The deck of The Restaurant at Rowayton Seafood. Courtesy The Restaurant at Rowayton Seafood.

bartaco, Port Chester — Have a margarita with your upscale street food or small plates, then watch the boats from the patio overlooking the Byram River. This trendy restaurant is inspired by the beach cultures of Southern California, Brazil and Uruguay. bartaco.com The Crab Shell, Stamford — The bustle of the city melts away like the butter you just got with your lobster when you’re standing on the deck by the bar at this Stamford Harbor institution. You can even arrive by boat and dock at one of the restaurant’s dedicated slips. Or enjoy the drinks and live music and take a free water taxi home. crabshell.com Dudley’s Parkview, New Rochelle — The deck at Dudley’s is open seven days a week, year-round, right on New Rochelle’s waterfront. dudleysparkview.com L’escale restaurant bar, Greenwich — Looking for something a tad more upscale? Enjoy seasonal Mediterranean cuisine on the waterfront terrace overlooking Greenwich Harbor. You’ll feel transported to the Côte d’Azur at this Riviera-style restaurant, located in the Delamar Greenwich Harbor hotel. (See related story on Page 40). Lescalerestaurant.com Harbor Lights, Norwalk — The outdoor patio is a prime location to watch the sunset as boats bob in the harbor. Fresh seafood prepared with flavors of the Mediterranean make this waterfront spot the place to be. harborlightsrestaurant-ct.com Mediterraneo, Norwalk — For something slightly different, try this restaurant, with an interior reminiscent of a yacht. Grab one of the tables perched over a waterfall. Feel the spray and take in the sound of the tumbling water. The feeling of well-being is transportive in this bucolic river setting. zhospitalitygroup.com Overton’s, Norwalk — There’s no inside seating here. Grab some family-style seafood, burgers WAGMAG.COM

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ON THE HUDSON

and hotdogs at the takeout window and enjoy them at picnic tables on the large waterfront deck.

Then grab the kids each an ice cream for $1. overtons-seafood.com Ocean Grille, Rye — The former location of Seaside Johnnies overlooks Oakland Beach and the Long Island Sound. The outdoor seating space has been recently refurbished. And you can enjoy “breakfast on the beach” since the restaurant is open at 7 a.m. theoceangrille.com The Restaurant at Rowayton Seafood, Rowayton — You can dock your boat if you’re so inclined at the restaurant, where deck seating is on a first-come, first-served basis but the views from the large windows are spectacular. Tucked alongside the restaurant is Rowayton Seafood Market, housed in an old fishing shack. rowaytonseafood. com Sono Seaport Seafood, Norwalk — Grab an umbrella-topped picnic table overlooking historic Norwalk Harbor and stop by the on-premises fish market on your way out. It’s that clam shack you’ve been searching for. sonoseaportseafood. com Sunset Grille, Norwalk — Situated on the water in Norwalk Cove Marina (which houses more than 600 boats and yachts), this restaurant and bar is a seasonal pleasure. So enjoy gourmet seafood on the deck for a memory you’ll have all winter long. sunsetgrille.net

40 North, Hastings — The restaurant, located upstairs in the Hasting Tennis Club but open to the public, has decks on two stories. Whether inside or out, enjoy panoramic views that include the Manhattan skyline and the awesome expansiveness of the Hudson. forty-north.com Dolphin Restaurant, Yonkers — OK, technically there is no deck, but outdoor seating spans the sidewalk and the restaurant is right on the Hudson so you can watch the boats glide by as you eat brunch, lunch or dinner.

Afterwards, walk a few steps to the Victorian pier that houses X20, chef Peter Kelly’s riparian venture. (See below.) The views are outrageous and the waterfront in this part of Yonkers has undergone an impressive renovation. Grab a water taxi into the city and make a day of it. dolphinrbl.com Half Moon, Dobbs Ferry — The extensive outdoor seating includes decks and benches for casual lingering where you can take a few steps to the rocks that edge the Hudson and look south to the Manhattan skyline. Need we say more?

Floor-to-ceiling windows mean there isn’t a bad seat in the house. halfmoonhudson.com Harvest-on-Hudson, Hastings-on-Hudson — Watch the sun set over the Palisades from Harvest’s huge patio or outside bar. Or meander through its vegetable and herb gardens en

route to chef David Amorelli’s gourmet Italian cuisine. harvesthudson.com Red Hat, Irvington — Whether you’re inside or out, there isn’t a seat that doesn’t face the spectacular view of the Hudson. Enjoy French-American modern bistro fare while you sit on the patio, inside or on the rooftop lounge and imbibe at the waterside cocktail area. redhatontheriver.com Sunset Cove al Ponte, Tarrytown — Located in the Washington Irving Boat Club, Sunset Cove boasts views of the wide Hudson, the cliffs of the Palisades and the Tappan Zee Bridge that are breathtaking. Enjoy brunch, lunch or dinner from the seafood-heavy menu at this Mediterranean-inspired restaurant. Sunsetcove.net Xaviars X20 on the Hudson, Yonkers — As mentioned before, this Peter Kelly restaurant sits on the only turn-of-the-20th century pier still in use on the Hudson. Feast on Mediterranean-inspired cuisine with Asian accents and vistas of the George Washington and Tappan Zee bridges as well as sunsets over the Palisades. xaviars.com *Coming Soon: Hudson Farmer & The Fish, Sleepy Hollow — This highly anticipated farmto-table restaurant will sit 12 feet from the river and include a 300-foot promenade. After Farmer & The Fish’s success in North Salem and Manhattan, the opening of the Sleepy Hollow outpost is imminent and anticipated. farmerandthefish.com

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DECADENT DELIGHTS STORY AND PHOTOGRAPHS

BY DANIELLE RENDA

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I know it’s not polite to stare, but I couldn’t help myself.

Before me sat a sugar cone topped with homemade mint chip ice cream, a dollop of delicately torched, homemade marshmallow sauce and a pinch of rainbow sprinkles. Certainly, it was a treat for the eye, but the explosion of natural mint would transfix my taste buds as well.

The Holy Cannoli milkshake.

It’s hard to anticipate anything but scrumptiousness from Chef Nick Di Bona, a former winner of the Food Network’s “Chopped” who is also the owner of Madison Kitchen in Larchmont and creator of Bona Bona, a collection of restaurant-crafted ice creams.

Di Bona found that the key to guaranteeing great taste is to create ice cream from scratch — syrup toppings included — and let the flavors speak for themselves.

“The more homemade, the better it is,” Di Bona says. “We have good technique, we use good ingredients and everything is homemade.”

The menu covers the dessert basics — waffle sundaes, brownie sundaes, milkshakes, cones and bread pudding. But the flavors — which include Nutella S’mores, Salted Caramel, Rainbow Cookie, Brownies and Cream, Guava and Coconut Sorbet — are what make the experience delectably memorable.

“I like to keep it simple,” Di Bona says. “As sophisticated as most people’s palates could be, at the end of the day, they kind of just want something simple. And if you could hit more people

with an idea, it’s usually the way to go.”

Di Bona strives to create desserts that appeal to all ages. So aside from fine-tuning each flavor, he offers treats that are sexy to look at and appropriately portioned.

During my visit, I had the pleasure of sampling the Holy Cannoli milkshake, a heavenly blend of cannoli ice cream topped with homemade whipped cream — referred to as “whip’d by” Bona Bona — and rimmed with rich vanilla frosting, crushed pistachios and mini chocolate chips. Before the creamy beverage made its way to the table, I reminisced on the overwhelmingly large strawberry milkshakes that I used to order at the local diner as a kid. Much to my relief, Di Bona’s milkshake was served in a tall, slender glass that was perfect to share — and even better to sip solo.

“It’s a great way to end your meal on a high note,” he says.

(And it was certainly date-night approved, at least in my book.)

Like many great ventures, Di Bona’s ice cream business was unplanned.

Shortly after the opening of Madison Kitchen in September 2013 — a chic New American-style restaurant and lounge offering globally inspired tapas plates — The New York Times published a restaurant review that suggested the ice cream was so delicious, Di Bona should consider selling pints.

And the young chef and entrepreneur took that idea — and ran with it.

Di Bona, a native of Yorktown, began visiting the local farmers market just blocks away from Madison Kitchen, where he bought many of his ingredients and started selling pints using an ice cream cart. This season, the 2-year-old business has grown to include an ice cream truck — which is available for private parties — that visits various Brooklyn locations on weekends, as well as Cortlandt’s Hemlock Hill Farm on Fridays. The ice cream is also offered at the Fortina family of restaurants, with locations in Rye, Armonk and Stamford.

But in the near future, Di Bona aspires to move Bona Bona out of Madison Kitchen and open a separate location dedicated exclusively to desserts.

“It would be Mr. Softee meets brewery,” he says.

“It could be our Bona Bona ice cream trucks meet creamery.”

And he is looking to expand the truck’s weekly route to include locations in Fairfield County.

“We’re working hard on getting the ice cream on a level where it could really sustain itself,” he says.

WAG is certainly looking forward to revisiting Bona Bona in the near future — and sampling the new desserts, of course.

For more, visit mklarchmont or bonabonaicecream.com. Follow Bona Bona on Instagram @BonaBonaIceCream, or share your flavorful experience by using the hash tag #BonaBonaIceCream.

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EXPERTISE IN ALL PRICE RANGES

1 VISTA AVENUE | $3,695,000 | VISTAAVE.COM Private assoc. with water access in Old Greenwich. Light-filled 5 bedroom, 5 bath home in pristine condition on a .56 acre oversized level lot. Walk to town.

Daphne Lamsvelt-Pol | 203.391.4846

21 KNOLLWOOD DRIVE | $3,495,000 | 21KNOLLWOODDR.COM 6 bedroom, 4 full and 2 half bath classic colonial on 2.4 acres in the heart of the golden triangle minutes from private/public schools, GRW Ave & train.

Cheryl Makrinos | 203.912.1699

HILLSIDE COLONIAL | $2,950,000 | 59HILLSIDE.COM Classic 1930’s 4 bedroom home renovated and expanded. 1.5 park-like acres, close to town, school, and places of worship. Possible pool site.

Michele Klosson 203.912.8338 | Leslie McElwreath 917.539.3654

520 NORTH STREET | $2,895,000 | 520NORTHST.COM Stunning conversion of antique barn offers a welcoming five bedroom home, surrounded by a gorgeous oversized 4 acre property with heated pool.

Martha Drake | 203.249.8713

RIVERSIDE AVENUE | $2,825,000 | 150RIVERSIDE.COM Timelessly appealing Riverside home in premier Riverside location, minutes to train and schools. Totally updated. Multiple outdoor living spaces.

Steve Archino | 203.618.3144

470 TACONIC ROAD | $2,795,000 | 470TACONICROAD.COM Greenwich country compound on nearly 5 acres, including extra building site, with 2 bedroom garage apartment, and additional studio for guest/staff.

Joseph Barbieri | 203.940.2025

GREENWICH BROKERAGE | 203.869.4343 One Pickwick Plaza | Greenwich, CT 06830

sothebyshomes.com/greenwich

Sotheby’s International Realty and the Sotheby’s International Realty logo areregistered (or unregistered) service marks used with permission. Operated by Sotheby’s International Realty, Inc. Real estate agents affiliated with Sotheby’s International Realty, Inc. are independent contractor sales associates and are notemployees of Sotheby’s International Realty, Inc. Equal Housing Opportunity.

EXPERTISE IN ALL PRICE RANGES

23 RIVERSIDE LANE | $2,095,000 | 23RIVERSIDE.COM Immaculate 5 bedroom 4 bath colonial with open floor plan. Level fully fenced yard with terrace. Master suite with fireplace and large walk in closet.

Debbie Ward | 203.808.9608

COGNEWAUGH ROAD | $1,785,000 | 311COGNEWAUGH.COM Lovely private property, spacious interiors including living room with cathedral ceiling and fireplace. Family room opens to backyard and pool.

Ana Vilaseca | 347.739.1125

21 STANWICH LANE | $1,685,000 | 21STANWICHLANE.COM Four bedroom, two-plus bath on a quiet street. Large living room with fireplace and spacious family room. French doors to stone terraces and gorgeous yard.

Edward Mortimer | 203.618.3160

SCENIC CUL DE SAC SETTING | $1,649,000 | 22FERNCLIFFRD.COM Welcoming 5 bedroom Colonial home beautifully sited on landscaped 2 acre property. Sunny FR with skylights, fantastic room scale. North St. School.

Susie Quinn 203.856.2495 | Martha Drake 203.249.8713

IN-TOWN GEM | $1,450,000 | 18ANNJIMDR.COM Minutes to schools, parks & shopping. Light filled rooms and updated walls create a perfect flow for entertaining. North Street school district.

Steve Archino | 203.618.3144

56 NORTHRIDGE ROAD | $1,350,000| 56NORTHRIDGE.COM Stylishly updated home in the heart of North Mianus. Spacious open kitchen and dining room has stairs leading to the full walk out lower level.

Marje Vance Allocco | 203.983.3806

GREENWICH BROKERAGE | 203.869.4343 One Pickwick Plaza | Greenwich, CT 06830

sothebyshomes.com/greenwich

Sotheby’s International Realty and the Sotheby’s International Realty logo areregistered (or unregistered) service marks used with permission. Operated by Sotheby’s International Realty, Inc. Real estate agents affiliated with Sotheby’s International Realty, Inc. are independent contractor sales associates and are notemployees of Sotheby’s International Realty, Inc. Equal Housing Opportunity.

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PLATING A BRIDGE BETWEEN FOOD AND TABLE

BY EMMA MCCORMICK PHOTOGRAPHS BY SEBASTIAN FLORES

Connor McGinn at the Clay in Port 60Art Center WAGMAG.COM Chester.

JULY 2017

As we follow Connor McGinn through the labyrinth of studios and firing rooms at the Clay Art Center in Port Chester, it is hard to imagine him anywhere else. With his styled red beard, distressed jeans and plain black T, McGinn exudes artiste.

Connor McGinn’s one-of-a-kind plates hold an array of dishes at The Twisted Oak in Tarrytown.

His Instagram feed and overflowing studio speak to a fertile mind. The rustic-yet-sleek plates that are his work bridge food and table. If plates could have feng shui, his would be models of perfect harmony. Among them, you assume that McGinn has worked with clay his entire life. But creating custom dinnerware for farm-to-table restaurants was never his plan.

Indeed, McGinn’s original plan was to work in finance and business. However, after graduating from the George L. Argyros School of Business and Economics at Chapman University in Orange, California, he could not fathom working behind a desk 9 to 5. Two years of work with the Peace Corps in West Africa, his time away from the hustle and bustle of American life, led him to acknowledge his passion for food. Back in New York, he took himself off to the kitchen of Restaurant North in Armonk.

“I walked in and said, ‘I know nothing (about food). I want to learn’… They gave me a chance,” says McGinn, who learns by creating.

Three years later, he found his calling in ceramics as the owners of Restaurant North sought to display their culinary creations on unique, homemade dinnerware. Seeing the expensive yet uninteresting plates they were prepared to buy, McGinn declared, “I can make you something better.”

Despite his limited experience in ceramics, McGinn set out to create his first line of dinnerware.

Now he has made full sets for more than 10 restaurants in New York and Connecticut, including Blue Hill at Stone Barns in Pocantico Hills, The Twisted Oak in Tarrytown and soon, at Taproot, opening in Bethel. He is making individual sets for private homes as well.

McGinn tweaks his designs to fit a restaurant’s or individual’s aesthetic. The designs fall into two categories, either rustic edges or clean edges, but no two sets look alike. That’s in part due to the matte and gloss glazes he experiments with, often going through up to six trials before landing on the right colors and textures.

Even after this laborious process, variation in tone is inevitable. But then, in the art of ceramics, nothing is deemed a constant as even a change in the weather can alter the appearance of a glaze.

While this aspect of clay can be agitating, it draws clients even more to McGinn’s work, as each piece possesses a unique character.

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different, people notice that right away,” he says, nodding toward the table in his studio as if he can precisely picture four distinct plates in front of us.

“It adds to the value. It adds to their experience.”

As requests from high-profile clientele pour in, McGinn stays humble. While he may be confident calling ceramics his full-time job now, he admits that six months ago he would not have been able to do the same. The fear of “crashing and burning” plagues any artist. One day he will be on a high after working with Blue Hill and a handful of other restaurants. Yet when he opens the kiln to see that half of his works are complete junk, he is grounded once again like the dirt and sand that comprise his clay. Yet he remains ambitious.

“If I didn’t keep an open mind to opportunity in the first place, I wouldn’t be here,” he says. Despite his go-with-the-flow attitude, he looks toward to opening his own space. He says it must be a place with plenty of “foot traffic” and an “open floor plan” in order to create a relationship among buyer, art and artist. He imagines his kiln and wheel would sit directly behind the display of his work.

“People aren’t just paying for the object. They are paying for the story behind it.”

For more, visit connormcginnstudios.com.

Connor McGinn creations at Clay Art Center.

WESTCHESTER’S LARGEST COIN, CURRENCY AND GOLD DEALER Neil S. Berman

Author of “Coin Collecting for Dummies” and “The Investor’s Guide to United States Coins”

We buy your Gold, Silver, Jewelry, Diamonds & Watches Visit us at; Mt. Kisco Gold & Silver 139 E. Main Street, Mt. Kisco, NY 10549 914-244-9500 www.bermanbuyscollectables.com Hours: Tuesday thru Saturday 10am-6pm (Closed Sunday /Monday)

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Arriving FRESH Daily...

Right from the SOURCE!

CONNECTICUT

Norwalk • Danbury • Newington

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See this week’s specials at StewLeonards.com

east meadow!

AUG.UST 2017 WAGMAG.COM

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WARES

Courtesy dreamstime.com.

DRAMATICALLY CASUAL DINING

BY JANE MORGAN

f

ood has become a cult phenomenon in entertaining these days with a lot of fuss being made about locally sourced, farm-raised, antibiotic, hormone-free, small batch, free-range and environmentally friendly meals. Not to speak of the plethora of nut-, soy-, dairy- and gluten-free vegan treats for dessert. All of this is to be washed down with ethical bean, fairly traded coffee laced with a broad range of nut milk and organic sweeteners. That’s a mouthful in every sense of the word.

This trend is called “high/low,” which means that the best ingredients and preparation techniques are used with even the simplest food. I think of it as bringing drama to the everyday.

What has followed is a design trend that reflects this vibe, namely open-plan dining spaces, which are considered great for entertaining by every home decorating show host on HGTV. Indeed in recent years, new construction developers have shunned dining rooms completely in favor of the “great room,” where everyone eats, watches TV, works, cooks and all but sleeps. As the pendulum is now swinging back, separate dining rooms are

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again gaining favor. Instead of returning to a formal dining atmosphere, I believe we can translate the “high/low” trend of eating into a spatial concept by bringing drama to a more casual lifestyle.

Formal dining rooms went out of vogue, because they felt too precious, turning into museums filled with inherited pieces that may or may not have worked. Then in an effort to cram in as many people as possible, there was frequently too much furniture, making it hard to get in and out of the room.

No one enjoys climbing over other guests just to visit the loo. You can create a stunning space that feels more suited to busy lives by keeping it comfortable while adding unusual details. The following are some guidelines for achieving this balance : Use round or square dining tables. There is no social hierarchy and no one is stuck at the end. Forgo the iron chairs that are a sculptural ode to Industrial Age machinery. If you want people to relax at the table, choose comfy seating no matter what era it’s from. The trick is to mix the style of table and chairs to create interest. Don’t get a matched set.

Use an area rug under the table both for a cozy feeling and as another opportunity for pattern and color. Paint the walls a bold or dark color or invest in statement wallpaper. Take more risks with artwork by going with oversized prints. Make sure the furniture is varied in materials, incorporating metals, fabric, wood and glass.

The hottest news in design right now is light-

ing. The International Contemporary Furniture Fair recently exhibited exciting forms that looked like floating sculptures. New strides in LED technology have created an opportunity for subtle artistry beyond what was previously possible. Even if your taste is not modern, use traditional fixtures in an unusual way. Hang two small chandeliers over a table instead of one large one.

The drama is in the details.

I’ve read a lot of advice given by so-called experts on how to make a small dining area function better.

A banquette or a bench used as seating looks stylish, but I wouldn't want to be trapped on one if the conversation goes south. Those collapsing tables that attach to a wall seem versatile, but nobody ever bothers to adjust them. In reality, they either stay down and useless or up and in the way. And does anybody ever really use those mobile bar carts that are touted as "fun and space-saving alternatives"? If you ask me, they take up more space than they save and scream "single-girl kitsch.” I feel like I should be looking for a princess phone nearby.

My advice? If your eating space is too small to fit a reasonable size table with adequate circulation space around it, find someplace else to eat. Nobody wants to be monitoring his elbows. Instead, get an oversized farm-style coffee table for the living/family room and set it with placemats, trays, candles and your best china, using large floor pillows for seating.

Think outside the box. Reinvention is the name of the game in 2017.

For more, visit janemorganinteriordesign.com.

A GLANCE AT OUR HOSPITALITY PARTICIPANTS GOOD E ATS AN D G RE AT VIEWS

THE SE ASON ’ S HOT TEST PL ACES TO WINE, DINE AND TR AVEL TO

CUISINART RESORT

2000 Rendezvous Bay Anguilla, British West Indies 264-498-2000 cuisinartresort.com

Nestled in the crescent curve of Rendezvous Bay on the tranquil island of Anguilla, CuisinArt Golf Resort & Spa celebrates the ultimate Caribbean escape. With a choice of 98 luxurious suites and villas, guests are enticed by the magnificent beach, fine dining and culinary activities, including cooking classes and wine tastings.

FORT WILLIAM HENRY HOTEL AND CONFERENCE CENTER

48 Canada St. Lake George, N.Y. 12845 518-668-3081 fortwilliamhenry.com

Upscale lodging accommodations with the mix of historical elegance and today’s conveniences. For the traditional grace of the Grand Hotel to the comfort of the Premium East and Standard West rooms, guests enjoy access to amenities, including an indoor pool with sauna and Jacuzzi, Olympic-size outdoor pool and three restaurants on all resort grounds.

THE LODGE AT WOODLOCH

109 River Birch Lane Hawley, Pa. 18428 800-966-3562 thelodgeatwoodloch.com The Lodge at Woodloch teams with Mother Nature for a truly nurturing experience. By offering choices for relaxation, fitness and wellness classes, outdoor adventures, creative discovery workshops, cooking demonstrations and wine tastings, as well as opportunities for personal development through unique speakers and events, a pathway to awakening is beckoning.

THE CAFÉ HUDSON

1 Van Der Donck St. Yonkers, N.Y. 10701 914-338-7542 cafehudson.com

THE DOLPHIN RESTAURANT

1 Van Der Donck St. Yonkers, N.Y. 10701 914-338-7542 cafehudson.com

These are two of the finest, contemporary and stylish restaurants in the region, offering a delicious seafood menu with fantastic proximity to the Metro North and New York City. Offering breathtaking views of the Hudson River, banquet facilities and party rooms are available for all special occasions.

MUSCOOT TAVERN 105 Somerstown Turnpike Katonah, N.Y. 10536 914-232-2800 muscoottavern.com

Voted one of New York state’s “Best Hole in the Wall Restaurants,” Muscoot Tavern is where the food is extraordinary and the charm unforgettable! Try our famous Mussels Muscoot, thin-crust pizza, a juicy steak or chop. Happy hour from 4-6 p.m. daily, lunch and dinner served seven days a week.

THE HEIGHTS AT BROTHER VIC’S

920 Oakridge Drive South Salem, N.Y. 10590 914-704-8427 theheightsatbrothervics.com

Entertainment and dining at its best! A full-service restaurant and catering venue with a lakeside setting, featuring national and regional music performances every weekend.

KISCO RIVER EATERY

THE INN AT MYSTIC

3 Williams Ave. Mystic, Conn. 06355 860-536-3400 innatmystic.com

Book your next getaway at Inn at Mystic in quaint Mystic, Conn. Situated on 14 green acres overlooking Fishers Island Sound and Mystic Harbor, the Inn offers relaxing accommodations, including rooms with ocean views, Jacuzzis and wood-burning fireplaces.

RELA CAFÉ

222 E. Main St. Mount Kisco, N.Y. 10549 914-218-3877 kiscoriver.com

25 S. Regent St. Port Chester, N.Y. 10573 914-935-7845 portchesterrestaurant.com

Kisco River Eatery is the go-to destination for those seeking a superb dining experience. Stop in and enjoy our fresh raw bar and impressive variety of steaks, chicken, seafood and pasta selections. Dine alfresco or in the coziest restaurant in town. Happy Hour from 3-6 p.m. daily, lunch and dinner served seven days a week.

Port Chester’s newest fine dining restaurant! A superior dining experience and event space, open every day for lunch and dinner. Join us for Happy Hour with drink and food specials, Sunday through Thursday, at the bar from 4-7 p.m.

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SELLING HOMES TO THE RICH AND FAMOUS

BY JANE K. DOVE PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY SALLY SIANO

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“I’ve had a wonderful life and a wonderful career in real estate,” says Sally Siano, founder of Sally Siano & Associates Real Estate Inc. of Bedford Hills. “I have met kings and queens, titans of finance and industry, well-known figures in entertainment and the arts, the ultra-wealthy and some pretenders. I wouldn’t have missed one bit of it for anything in the world.”

Siano is one of the leading Realtors in the Westchester-Fairfield area, known for her love of classic, beautifully built and exquisitely appointed homes and estates, along with her uncanny ability to match clients with properties, sometimes on the first visit.

She has honed her stellar skills in real estate over more than four decades and attributes her success to a combination of factors, including a sincere desire to see her clients happy in their often palatial homes as well as wanting to help them put down roots in their new communities.

DAUGHTER OF IMMIGRANTS Siano's journey to the heights of the luxury real estate market had a humble beginning. ”I was born in Providence, Rhode Island, after my parents, two young Russian Jews, had immigrated to America early in the last century,” she says. “They were only 18 and 19 at the time, met here after arriving separately and had three children, me and my two brothers.”

Times were hard for the young family with Siano's father working as a peddler and her mother making wool stockings.

But they persevered and after a few years, Siano’s father became a salesman for a local company and saved enough to buy a small house in New Rochelle. “The day before I graduated from New Rochelle High School was a momentous one for me and our family,” she says, “because it was the last day of my father’s life. He gave me a graduation gift of a bathing suit and later dropped dead of a blood clot at the age of 42.”

The life-changing event set the course for Siano’s future.

“My brothers and I decided to go to work immediately to support our mother and keep the house.

I worked in a dentist’s office in New Rochelle and my brothers also got jobs.” Siano went from the dentist’s office to the first medical group associated with New Rochelle Hospital. She met her husband, Joseph, by chance on his 30th birthday. She was 21 and they went out on a date the same day they met.

Joseph was in construction at the time. He had already served in the Navy during World War II

where he was a gunner in the Philippines and suffered a partial loss of hearing that was a drawback to him being fully employed for parts of his life.

OPPORTUNITY KNOCKS The couple decided to marry early on, facing opposition from Siano’s Jewish relatives but being warmly embraced by the Siano family. “Joseph had 11 siblings and every one of his brothers married Irish girls,” Siano says. “They had absolutely no problem with my Jewish heritage. I always had a great relationship with the Siano family and will never forget those huge family gatherings and wonderful meals.”

The young couple had two children, Steven and Craig.

Siano left the medical group to care for her young children and, as luck would have it, Joseph got a job building homes in a large subdivision in Yorktown Heights. The couple decided to buy one of the model homes for $19,900 with an $800 down payment provided by Joseph’s mother and sister.

She says, “We moved into the subdivision, called The Crossroads and the owner took a liking to me and offered me a job working for him selling units in the 250-home subdivision, with a commission of $800 per house. I sold out the entire subdivision and that was the beginning of my real estate career."

Impressed by Siano's sales abilities, Joseph Lauria, a prominent local broker, asked Siano to join his firm. “I went to work for him and stayed until 1971,” she says. “He had a lot of dealings in highend Mount Kisco and Bedford real estate and this gave me my initial toehold in Bedford.”

Siano says she realized quickly that Bedford was the place to be. “I saw immediately that the most expensive, high-quality homes attracted the most willing and most qualified buyers,” she says.

“But when Mr. Lauria died, his son took over the business and told me I was out.”

At this point, Siano decided she knew the high-end Bedford market well enough go to into business for herself. “I had met a very wealthy woman, Dorothy Karns, who had faith in my abilities and we formed a partnership based at 275 Main St. in Mount Kisco. We were enormously successful right from the start. Unfortunately, we had some disagreements and I decided to break off the partnership.”

ON HER OWN But Siano had saved ample funds to go it alone and bought her current space at 52 Babbitt Road, Bedford Hills in l971. Sally Siano & Associates Real Estate was born.

“I have had my guardian angels throughout life,” she says. “I truly believe that overcoming obstacles is a part of who I am. My husband, despite his hearing impairment, was always a wonderful partner for me and provided total

emotional support over the years, working as a plumber as he grew older.”

Joseph Siano passed away last year after he and his wife had been married for 60 years.

Now the sole owner of her own firm, Siano spread her real estate wings and developed a style and reputation that has flourished over many years.

“I developed clients who had the attitude of ‘the sky is the limit’ when they were looking for a home,” she says. “They wanted the finest product available and I knew how to provide it.”

Siano says she focuses on marketing vintage homes on large pieces of property, some of them historic in nature and built 100 to even 200 years ago. Many of the architects were famous in their day and the large parcels of property that came with the homes have always been a key marketing element.

“My ultra-wealthy clients always wanted plenty of privacy along with distant views of the rolling Bedford countryside,” she says.

The homes Siano sold over the Bedford boom years that started in the l980s ranged in price from $3 million to $10 million and up and up. “The price was of little concern to my clients,” she says. “They wanted a very large, beautifully designed home with a gated driveway for privacy. They didn’t want the home to be visible from the road and demanded all the amenities of pools, tennis courts, barns, paddocks, other outbuildings, you name it.”

Siano says she calls it this homebuyer attitude “Shut the gate and leave me alone.”

“I built my reputation marketing palatial homes in pristine, private settings,” she says. “Buying a home is a very emotional experience, no matter what the price, and I was always able to make a good match right from the start. I took the time to educate my clients, especially the newly wealthy, about the points of true value of a desirable home, including it being ‘a proper house’ with a well-designed, traditional floor plan and a lovely and long, approach from the road.”

Siano has sold homes to Michael Crichton, Susan and George Soros and the late industrialist Charles Bluhdorn to name only a few high-end clients. The vast majority of her clients want their privacy protected.

“The calls for my services still keep coming,” she says. “I rarely use the Multiple Listing Service, because I simply don’t need it. I have had many ‘oncein-a-lifetime opportunity’ listings in Bedford and know how to guide my clients to an estate that will provide them the peace, harmony and balance they are looking for.”

Siano says she has succeeded by following her own instincts.

“Clients know that I know what a true ‘Bedford house’ really is,” she says. “And they come to me and my two sons to get it. My clients are seeking a very special lifestyle, with price of little consequence, and want to luxuriate in the Bedford experience.”

For more, visit sallysiano.com.

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?

WHAT’S FOR DINNER? MELISSA CLARK HAS THE ANSWER

BY RYAN DEFFENBAUGH PHOTOGRAPHS BY JOHN RIZZO

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Just cook one more night a week.

That’s the mission Melissa Clark has for her readers.

“If you're already cooking once a week and maybe you are ordering in the rest of the time, I want you to cook twice a week,” Clark said during a recent talk at Barnes & Noble’s concept store in Eastchester. “Even if you're just cooking once a month, I want you to make that jump to twice a month.”

For the crowd that filled the store’s lobby, it was likely not the first time they’ve received cooking advice from Clark. She writes the popular weekly “A Good Appetite” column for The New York Times, for which she also appears in weekly cooking videos, and has written or co-written dozens of cookbooks.

Safe to say, she’s an authority on good eating.

Still, she recognizes that even a seemingly modest request, such as one more night of cooking a week, can be easier said than done.

“Even people who love to cook on the weekends become overwhelmed during the week,” she said.

“They say, ‘Oh my God, dinner, again? I have to make dinner again?’”

Clark’s latest cookbook, “Dinner: Changing the

Melissa Clark reading from her latest cookbook at The Inn at Pound Ridge by Jean-Georges.

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Game,” published in March, attempts to break through the barriers — a lack of free time or inspiring ideas, even intimidation — that prevent people from cooking. The book offers a huge range of inventive dishes, but Clark said the actual cooking methods should be approachable for anyone.

“I always say that this book is all about simple techniques,” Clark told WAG. “All the recipes are familiar, like roast chicken, seared steak, but the flavors are different. That's where I can help people sort of change it up."

The book offers more than 200 recipes total, ranging from chorizo pork burgers to maple-roasted tofu to butternut squash pizza. Dishes “designed to help you figure out what to make for dinner without falling back on what you’ve eaten before,” Clark writes in the book.

In the introduction, Clark describes a gap between what people want to eat when they are out at restaurants and what people are willing to cook at home. Home meals, she writes, are still caught in the old-fashioned approach to meal planning — “a protein and two sides.”

While people are willing to try new things at a restaurant, Clark said, they’re a little more cautious at home.

“When you're cooking for your family, you have to say, ‘OK, is my kid going to eat this?’” she said. “‘Is my husband going to eat this?’ And so it is riskier, and I think it's harder for people to take that step.”

Recipes in the new cookbook incorporate diverse ingredients, such as kimchi, quinoa and pork belly, into “one-pot” meals that help home cooks escape the “tyranny of a perfectly composed plate with three distinct elements in separate little piles,” as she writes in the introduction.

Clark said she’s always looking for new ingredients to introduce to her readership and is quick to embrace whatever is trendy.

“I jump on all the bandwagons,” Clark said. “I'm like, ‘kimchi, cool. Pomegranate molasses, I'm there.’

If there is a new ingredient flying around, I am there.

“You need somebody to be the intermediary between gochujang, which is this amazing Korean red pepper paste I'm absolutely obsessed with,” she added. “I write a recipe for it and then people start to ask in the supermarket for it, then they start to stock it and people get it. So that chain has to start somewhere and I'm happy to be part of it. I'm happy to just help people get more interesting ingredients and make their dinners a little more exciting.”

Clark grew up in Brooklyn, where she still lives with her husband and daughter. Growing up, her parents would “do the Julia Child thing,” as she described it, and cook elaborate meals and invite friends over for dinner parties.

That established her love for food that would eventually pair with a passion for writing, which she said she has been doing for as long as she could hold a pen.

Snipping away in her Brooklyn home.

"As I was writing stories, food was always my metaphor,” she said. “It was my lens for how I saw the world."

She graduated with an MFA in writing from Columbia University and left college at what she said was the “right place, right time,” to pursue a career as a food writer. It was the mid-1990s and publications were just starting to migrate over to internet publishing.

“These companies were getting their feet wet and trying it out,” Clark said. “They needed to fill the space and I needed a place to write about what I wanted to write about. So it was a great opportunity.”

The more she wrote, the more opportunities opened up. She said she was an automatic “yes” whenever contacted by an editor for freelance work.

That attitude led to her first published cookbook.

“Someone came to me and said, ‘Do you want to write a bread-machine cookbook in six weeks?’”

Clark recalled. “I’d never written a cookbook in my life. I’d never used a bread machine in my life. But I said, ‘Yeah, I’ll figure it out.’”

THE MOST FAMOUS RECIPE IN THE BOOK MAY BE THE GUACAMOLE WITH PEAS DIP. THAT TITLE SHOULD SOUND AT LEAST VAGUELY FAMILIAR TO ANYONE WITH A TWITTER ACCOUNT. CLARK PUBLISHED IT IN A COLUMN IN 2013, BASED ON A DISH SERVED AT CHEF JEAN-GEORGES VONGERICHTEN’S MANHATTAN RESTAURANT, ABC COCINA.

It took four bread machines running 24 hours a day, but Clark managed to put together 200 bread recipes in six weeks.

She began freelancing for The New York Times in 1998 with a column that answered readers’ cooking questions. Her "A Good Appetite" column started in 2007. She became a staff writer in 2012.

She’s written 38 cookbooks total, including collaborations with such well-known chefs such as Daniel Boulud, Claudia Fleming, David Bouley and Bill Yosses. She has no official tally, but estimated that she’s written at least a couple thousand recipes.

That’s a process that involves constant refining.

A particularly tricky banana blondie recipe for The Times took more than 20 different iterations before publishing. “I'd bring them into work and my editor would be like, ‘They're fine, stop,’” Clark said. “And I'd say ‘No.’ I had this vision in my head and I was like, ‘No, they're not that.’”

One of her favorites from “Dinner” is a spatchcocked (split open) roasted chicken with grapes.

The grapes are drizzled with vinegar and provide a bright background for the chicken.

“It's like fancy company food, except that you can make it on a weeknight in under an hour,” Clark said.

For good summer meals, she recommends a pork chop with peaches recipe from the book.

“Peaches come into season in July, so that will be perfect.” Or, “if you want to eat peaches and you don’t want to turn your oven on,” there’s a burrata salad that incorporates peaches as well.

The most famous recipe in the book may be the guacamole with peas dip. That title should sound at least vaguely familiar to anyone with a Twitter account. Clark published it in a column in 2013, based on a dish served at chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s Manhattan restaurant ABC Cocina.

The recipe didn’t draw a ton of attention until two years later, when The Times’ Twitter account pulled it from the archives and tweeted a link to it. The tweet said, “Add green peas to your guacamole. Trust us.” The suggestion was pounced on by thousands of angry or sarcastic respondents, deriding the twist on the beloved dish. Even President Barack Obama weighed in, tweeting: “respect the nyt, but not buying peas in guac. onions, garlic, hot peppers. Classic” Clark said she was at the doctor’s office that day when her Twitter account started to explode with notifications. “I got back to the office and I'm just like, ‘What's going on?’” Clark said.

While she admitted being a bit bothered at the time to see one of her columns so maligned, she stands by the recipe. There’s enough room in the world for all kinds of guacamole, Clark said, and it’s good to try new things.

“People should have an open mind. And they should try things before they decide they like them or not. And I say the same with my kid. I say ‘Try it.

Try it.’”

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WAY

A PLACE FOR SPLENDID

COUNTRY ENTERTAINING

BY GEORGETTE GOUVEIA

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PRESENTED BY SOTHEBY'S INTERNATIONAL REALTY

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You look at the house on Round Hill Road in Greenwich and the imagination runs wild. Early summer nights sipping drinks on the screened-in porch that commands views of gardens, meadows and mature groves.

Or maybe small talk in the double-height great room with its antique beams, three exposures and French doors opening onto a stone terrace and veranda.

Cozy get-togethers in the family room before a vintage stone fireplace — the state-of-the-art gourmet kitchen just a step away. Elegant, chatty dinners in the formal dining room with its built-in china cabinets a sure conversation piece.

But most of all, that two-level vintage barn: Wouldn’t that be magnificent for the country weddings that are all the rage now?

After all this entertaining in your $9.4 million home, you might just have to reserve some quality downtime in the library/office, curling up with a good book from one of the custom shelves.

With more than 11,000 square feet of space, this 5-acre, 17-room estate marries a thoughtful renovation of the original antique house with a spectacular new addition to create an unparalleled, sun-dappled residence. The grand double-height living room features a beamed ceiling and wood-burning fireplace. A lovely bedroom with an en suite bathroom is ideal for guests.

A graceful curved staircase leads to the second floor. The gracious master suite includes a bedroom with multiple windows overlooking the property, a comfortable sitting room with a balcony, a luxurious spa-like bath and two large custom closets. Additionally, there are four double bedrooms with beautiful en suite bathrooms.

Characterized by multiple windows, the expansive lower level offers a billiard room, a family room, a potting room, a home gym, an office with a private entrance and access to a three-stall stable.

A comfortable two-bedroom apartment and a heated pool are just a few of the other amenities that make this compound an exceptional playground.

For more, call Brad Hvolbeck at 203-9400015 or 203-618-3110.

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I FEEL SO POWERLESS. WE HAVE TO WATCH HER EVERY MINUTE. FAMILY AND FRIENDS STOPPED COMING AROUND. HE KEEPS SAYING: “THERE’S NOTHING WRONG WITH ME.” IT’S DESTROYING OUR FAMILY. I FEEL SO GUILTY WE HAVE TO MOVE HER INTO A HOME. IT’S SO HARD TO CARE FOR SOMEONE WHO’S MEAN TO YOU. HE HIDES THINGS ALL THE TIME. I’M GRIEVING THE LOSS OF SOMEONE WHO’S STILL ALIVE. WE DON’T EVEN KNOW WHERE TO START.

LIVING WITH FTD IS HARD. LIVING WITHOUT HELP IS HARDER. THERE’S COMFORT IN FINDING OTHERS WHO UNDERSTAND. WE FINALLY FOUND A DOCTOR WHO GETS IT. I GOT SO MUCH ADVICE FROM OTHER CAREGIVERS. UNDERSTANDING MORE HELPS ME DEAL WITH HER SYMPTOMS. SEEING THAT OTHERS MADE IT THROUGH, I KNEW I COULD TOO. WE HONOR HIM BY ADVOCATING FOR A CURE. NOW I’M BETTER AT ASKING FOR HELP. NO MATTER HOW BAD IT GETS, WE KNOW WE’RE NOT ALONE. It can feel so isolating and confusing from the start: Just getting a diagnosis of FTD takes 3.6 years on average. But no family facing FTD should ever have to face it alone, and with your help, we’re working to make sure that no one does.

The Association for Frontotemporal Degeneration (AFTD) is dedicated to a world without FTD, and to providing help and support for those living with this disease today. Choose to bring hope to our families: www.theAFTD.org/learnmore

WEAR

ROCKIN’ NEW LOOKS

BY DANIELLE RENDA PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY DINA MACKNEY

d

ina Mackney wasn’t expecting to launch a jewelry business on that fateful day.

Pregnant with her first child, she was shopping for a comfortable getup while wearing a comfortable getup. But marvelously contrasted against Mackney’s loungewear was handmade gold jewelry — the products of a new hobby. Unable to wear her favorite clothing throughout the pregnancy, Mackney relied on jewelry to add pizzazz to her everyday looks. And it wasn’t long before her designs caught the eye of a store owner who wished to buy the very jewelry she was wearing.

Now, more than a decade later, Dina Mackney Designs continues to elicit awe with geometric structure and the use of intense color.

“I would say it’s classic styling with a modern twist, because everything is bezel set, so it’s a really clean aesthetic,” Mackney says of her collection.

Mackney’s pieces call attention to the purity of precious and semiprecious stones, the focal points of each item. The signature bezel setting enhances this look by wrapping the rim of the stone for safekeeping while also underscoring it.

This is in no way accidental, as Mackney’s signature style was inspired by a lifelong love affair with the arts and sparked by a fascination with natural stones.

“Growing up, I had the biggest rock collection of anyone I knew,” Mackney has said. “Fast-forward many years and it is still my inclination to begin all of my jewelry collections with finding the most beautiful, natural stones for my designs.”

And since Mackney’s jewelry includes exotic stones — like Australian prehnite, Mexican fire opal, tourmilated and rutilated quartz and Sleeping Beauty turquoise — it appears that her rock collection is still growing, more refined, that is.

“My jewelry is really meant to let the natural beauty of the stone shine,” she says.

As a busy mother of two, an entrepreneur and 76

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Dina Mackney

an artist, Mackney designs for modern women who juggle many roles, like herself. Noticing a need for convenience in her own schedule — as well as a desire to look and feel good — she designed her pendants as enhancers, complete with a hinged bail, which allows the client to mix and match pendants while sporting the same chain or beaded necklace.

“I always design with this goal in mind — not just what is interesting for art’s sake, but what will make women look their best and complement their look,” Mackney has said.

With this added versatility, clients can transition

their jewelry from day to evening in seconds — or simply experiment with different styles.

“Either for traveling out of town or maneuvering from function to function in town, I found it an easier way to switch looks quickly and get a lot of different looks with just a few pieces,” she has said.

Described as timeless, not trendy, Mackney’s designs are available in 22-karat gold vermeil, fine sterling silver and solid 18- to 22-karat gold in all shades and hues, for rings, necklaces, earrings, bracelets and cuffs, pendants, chains and other forms of fine jewelry.

For more, visit dinamackney.com.

Available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble

thegamesmenplay.com

WEAR

The brand’s eclectic products pop against the modern, clean interior of a Marc Cain store. Photograph courtesy Marc Cain.

FLIRTY FASHIONS

BY DANIELLE RENDA

s

he’s sexy. She’s confident. She’s bold.

She’s the Marc Cain woman — and she’s shopping at the luxury brand’s newest store, at The Westchester in White Plains.

Based in Germany, the brand caters to the free-spirited, laidback woman who’s sophisticatedly spunky and comfortable in her own skin.

The clothing embodies an eclectic mix of forward prints, colors and styles that is designed for every type of function. As the company website says, “Marc Cain is a love letter to all women.”

This season’s soaring temps call for flirty, feminine, beach-to-brunch wear — because when she finally has a moment to herself under the sun, clothing should be the least of a girl’s worries.

Marc Cain’s beach collection is a celebration of wildlife with a fierce jungle motif of leopards and a tropical rainforest, offset by black-and-white 78

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FOR THOSE SPICY SUMMER NIGHTS, THE CUBAN SOUL COLLECTION FEATURES FREE-FLOWING FABRICS IN VIVID, TROPICAL COLORS.

stripes and polka dots, with fuchsia as a binding accent color. Items include elasticized bikinis, silky tunics and capes, cotton beach towels, sundresses with drawstring tassels at the waist, printed, rubber sandals and woven bast hats with wide brims.

For those spicy summer nights, the Cuban Soul Collection features free-flowing fabrics in vivid, tropical colors. Made for the dance floor, it has

flares, flounces and rivets that encourage movement. Straight-cut, satin dresses are offset by appliqué decorations, including prints of palm trees, butterflies, blossoms and parrots, with sequins and netting creating points of emphasis.

A selection of items, including silk scarves, add to the Latin feel by incorporating images of Havana.

And while the cooler months feel like light-years away — or so we hope — Marc Cain’s innovative “Knit & Wear 100 Percent Made in Germany” line offers seam-free pullovers, skirts, cardigans and coats with knitted-on pockets. Using a special knitting technique and yarn sourced from Germany and Italy, 100 machines work around the clock to produce imaginative patterns and designs in just one simple step.

To have one of these Marc Cain designs is to own a piece of fashion’s future. These items, made at the company’s headquarters in Bodelshausen, demonstrate the brand’s focus on improving sufficiency, reducing its carbon footprint and remaining as fashion-forward as possible.

This is the second Marc Cain store to open in the states, following one in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania. Marc Cain, which offers women’s clothing, accessories, bags and shoes, is on the first level near the Neiman Marcus wing of The Westchester at 125 Westchester Ave. For more, visit marccain.com.

The Gift of Caregiver Relief.

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anaging a loved one’s healthcare can be taxing and all-consuming, which is why it’s so important for caregivers to take the time to rest, relax and rejuvenate. Waveny’s caregiver relief solutions can help seniors and families receive the services they need to make the most of everything, together.

During the week, take advantage of our vibrant Adult Day Program with free local transportation for daytime peace of mind. Or, plan a getaway knowing overnight respite guests with Alzheimer’s and dementia can stay with us for as short as a week at The Village, our award-winning Assisted Living community. Our trusted care can even come to you – whether personalized assistance or just a helping hand – through Waveny’s home-based services. Or, choose any combination of our services and programs to meet your unique needs and preferences.

Conveniently located in New Canaan, Waveny’s continuum of care flows fluidly within a single nonprofit organization, without any expensive buy-in fees or long-term commitments.

So if downsizing into a caring and compassionate independent or assisted living community is something you’re considering, now is the perfect time to sample senior living with a 3-month trial at either The Inn or The Village.

Discover more by dropping by, calling 203.594.5302 or visiting waveny.org.

WHERE'S EUROPE?

c

CARBONARA WARS – FRANCE VERSUS ITALY

BY MARTA BASSO

Traditional carborara. Courtesy dreamstime.com.

Imagine a world in which a mistake goes viral. Imagine the mistake being mocked all over the internet. Imagine newspapers like The Guardian talking about it, and trying to put their spin on it.

Imagine this news making more noise than international politics, economic policies and even — this is weird - sports. No, it is not covfefe. It is pasta alla carbonara — the French way.

What I will call the incriminating YouTube video demonstrates a quick French recipe for carbonara that involves putting sliced onions, diced pancetta and Barilla Farfalle in a pot filled with water and cooking this for 15 minutes. The dish is then garnished with crème fraiche (mon Dieu) cheese, salt and pepper and parsley and served with a raw egg on top.

If you are wondering why all this matters, let’s just say the Italians and the French have been fighting for culinary supremacy — in cheese and wine particularly — since basically forever. French cheesecake is denser, creamier; Italian cheesecake, made with ricotta, lighter and lemony even.

Vive la différence, you might say with the French.

But the difference lies in the culinary boundaries. Italians have never been so presumptuous as to demonstrate how to make Crêpes Suzette.

To all of us Italians, it was as if the French had crossed a line. Things got serious, as the trending hashtag #CarbonaraGate testified.

There have been, of course, quite a lot of Italian video responses to the “mistake,” from renowned chefs to popular YouTubers and local newspapers. Indeed, the legacy of the mistake remains: Italians have started an online war against different websites that create popular culinary content, among them Tasty by Buzzfeed, and basically anyone who dares call his recipes “Italian.” There even exists a Facebook WAGMAG.COM

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page, translated into “Italian-American Decay,” which, according to its description, “Welcomes you to the world of Italian food interpreted by Americans — ready to get scared?”

All in all, food to us Italians is not a necessity.

It is an art. We do not like to feed ourselves. We love to eat. And, perhaps, I dare say, if we are one of the healthiest nations in the world, we are entitled to set an example.

Just to crunch some data, not only are Italians considered the slimmest people in Europe, Italy is the only European country where the average weight has dropped since 1980. And yet, we manage to avoid dieting, we eat carbs every day, and we even enjoy a daily glass of one of our amazing wines.

If you ask me, a random Italian, or celebrity chefs such as Gino D’Acampo, the tricks are quite simple, ranging from switching to extra virgin olive oil, eating regularly good amounts of fresh fruits and vegetables, limiting portions and varying the type of protein intake. Last but not least, the secret that no super diet book is telling you is this: Take your time to prepare and cook your own meal. And here comes my sincere hope and my wish for this column.

Italians become haters on websites such as

ALL IN ALL, FOOD TO US ITALIANS IS NOT A NECESSITY. IT IS AN ART. WE DO NOT LIKE TO FEED OURSELVES. WE LOVE TO EAT. AND, PERHAPS, I DARE SAY, IF WE ARE ONE OF THE HEALTHIEST NATIONS IN THE WORLD, WE ARE ENTITLED TO SET AN EXAMPLE.

Tasty because people try to “ruin our dishes,” as in pineapple on pizza, pasta with cream and chicken and so on. But there is a stronger, subtler reason: We cannot stand express-cooking.

As I said before, Italians love eating as a journey, even if it’s one taken solo. They love the vorfreude (German for “anticipation”) of mixing and matching ingredients in the most sacred room of the home — the kitchen.

Therefore, as an Italian, here is my piece of advice to these creators of cooking content all over the internet, which, especially in the U.S., is gaining increasing popularity day by day. With great power comes great responsibility. Use this power wisely. In a country in which more than 120,000 avoidable deaths are caused by obesity every year and where obesity-related health care costs exceed ones related to drinking and smoking, even the smallest effort toward prevention is important. A platform like Tasty, which enjoys millions of daily views, has the power many doctors, nutritionists or personal trainers do not possess — the power to influence.

I’m not saying viewers should heed the haters and stick to Italian traditional recipes. But they ought to mine the diamonds in the rough amid the enraged comments.

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t

THE BIG FOUR – TOKYO’S FINEST

BY JEREMY WAYNE

For cutting-edge design, superb on-property bars and restaurants and service that anticipates your every wish, Tokyo’s hotels are hard to beat. Here are my top four: PARK HYATT, SHINJUKU Let’s get the obvious out of the way shall we?

This is the hotel where Bill Murray stayed at in the film “Lost in Translation.” I enjoyed that movie but unlike Bill’s complex character, the aging movie star Bob Harris, I could never be lonely at Park Hyatt, Tokyo. For one, there’s the smiling staff, affable and outgoing and for two, the people-watching opportunities are endless. The New York bar (coals to Newcastle? I hardly think so. This place is manic.) rocks every evening until the small hours. And for early risers, the Club on the Park, Park Hyatt’s 47th floor state-of-the-art pool, spa and fitness center, opens at 6 a.m. So far, so good — I haven’t yet had a moment to be lonely.

And here’s another thing. Park Hyatt’s rooms are brilliantly well thought out. Six kinds of whiskey in the minibar, a safe the size of a bank vault (Do Park Hyatt guests just have bigger laptops — or jewels? — than other hotel guests?) and — clever this — an electric urn (as opposed to a kettle) for hot water on tap. I also loved the eclectic selection of books on my recent visit, including Bono’s brilliant “Sons of the Fathers,” in which sons talk frankly about their famous dads. To be honest, you could sit by the window of your 51st-floor guest room, Tokyo laid out at your feet, reading Bono and drinking tea from your urn around the clock, but, of course, there are more exciting things to do in Shinjuku. Honestly, Bill — or Bob. You need to be more self-sufficient. parkhyatt.com MANDARIN ORIENTAL, NIHONBASHI When I first stayed at the Mandarin Oriental, Tokyo, soon after it opened 11 years ago, Nihonbashi was a ghost town after office hours. Luckily, the hotel was a world within itself, with a total of 15 restaurants and bars and a spa that knocked spots off other hotel spas, even in Tokyo, which has never been short of excellent spas. More than a decade later, though, and Nihonbashi is humming, with great shops and restaurants, the intimate, highend Coredo mall opposite, and the Mitsukoshi department store, with its spectacular basement food court, just a block away. The irony is, once installed at Mandarin Oriental, I’m still disinclined to leave, no matter what’s on offer in the ’hood.

Occupying the top nine floors of the Mitsui Tower, the 179 guest rooms are among the largest

The pool at the Park Hyatt, Shinjuku.

Coutesy Park Hyatt.

in Japan, and while I’m not crazy about the semisee-through bathrooms (which can, I admit, be fully screened off for privacy), in every other respect these guest rooms are ace. I love the Lorenzo Villoresi bathroom products and the beautiful yukata (kimono-style robes) provided in two mouth-watering pastel colours. And a great touch are the binoculars, with which I fancy myself a kind of Jimmy Stewart ninja, playing “Rear Window,” Tokyo style —spying on the Imperial Palace garden and the shinkansen bullet trains pulling out of Tokyo station before they gather speed, all from my 34thfloor eyrie.

Mandarin Oriental is still up there, too, in the food stakes, serving to my mind the most dazzling and inventive hotel food in Tokyo. Try its Michelin-starred Tapas Molecular bar, where the 15-course menu is unfurled on a tape measure; or go for classic “Edomae” sushi, prepared by veteran sushi chef Yuji Imaizumi in Mandarin’s 38th-floor, eight-seat Sushi SORA restaurant. Even the breakfast buffet is sublime here (a claim that cannot be made for many breakfast buffets) — sweet, peach pine “milk pineapple” from Okinawa; creamy butter from Hokkaido Prefecture; Caspian Sea yogurt laced with mango and individually cooked orange-hewed eggs from Yamanashi chickens, fed on rice husks and hibiscus. Bliss. mandarinoriental.com AMAN, TOKYO, CHIYODA-KU Aman, Tokyo is a horse of a different color.

Opened 18 months ago and occupying the 33rd to 38th floors of the Otemachi Building in downtown Tokyo, this 87-room hotel is prodigal with its use of space. Take the lobby: Almost 100 feet high, it rises through the height of five guest floors to around 328 feet. (That’s taller than St. Patrick’s Cathedral.)

Think of all the additional guest rooms they could have built. But no, that is not Aman’s style. Because on the grounds that in our overcrowded world space is the last real luxury, Aman, Tokyo, takes luxury to new levels. Conceived as an indoor garden with rocks and trees and surrounded by an engawa, a take on a traditional Japanese veranda, the vast space is strikingly austere, in keeping with the Aman aesthetic.

Guest rooms — also vast — mirror traditional Japanese homes, with shojo sliding doors that maximize light and space. “Every time a Japanese person closes a door,” Sakoto Iwakabe, Aman, Tokyo’s engaging public relations executive, tells me sagely, “he must ask himself whether or not he is closing his heart.”

As for my heart, it belongs in the Aman Spa, which at more than 26,910 square feet is the biggest

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in Tokyo. Size matters, yes, but so do amenities and this spa has them all, from an array of treatments based on nature and balance, to steam rooms and onsen (Japanese hot baths), to a drop-dead sexy swimming pool, to a fitness center featuring the very latest weight-training machinery and cardiovascular equipment. From Aman, of course, you’d expect nothing less. aman.com HOTEL CHINZANSO, MEJIRO If you prefer your feet nearer the ground, finding a luxury hotel in Tokyo can be a challenge. All the big players — Park Hyatt, Mandarin Oriental, Ritz-Carlton, Andaz and Aman, as well as the fabulous Conrad, occupy space starting on the 20th floor, or higher. So let’s zoom in on the lovely Hotel Chinzanso, please, a luxury, low-rise hotel in Mejiro. Still within spitting distance of the central Shinjuku district, Chinzanso boasts its own lush botanical garden, with a 500-year-old chinquapin tree, an ancient pagoda and a waterfall, where, just as I did last month, locals gather after nightfall in the summer months to watch the fireflies.

Yes, it’s a soothing kind of place, Hotel Chinzanso, just oozing charm — rare in a big-city hotel.

Guest rooms are old-fashioned in the best sense (read borderline chintz), low tech and utterly de-

Hotel Chinzanso main lobby. Courtesy Hotel Chinzanso.

lightful with specially sprung Sealy beds for the ultimate good night’s sleep. Of Chinzanso’s nine restaurants and bars, I recommend Miyuki, with its lively teppanyaki counter, while before or after dinner you may well find me in Le Marquis, the hotel’s clubby cocktail bar, where the bar list features 100 different martinis. It was here I made the acquaintance of my new favorite drink, the Rude

Cosmo — tequila, triple sec and pineapple. The brilliance of this cocktail is that it knocks you out while simultaneously refreshing you, which may indeed be a metaphor for Tokyo itself.

With room occupancy in the world’s biggest city already at record highs, and the 2020 Tokyo Olympics looming, my advice is to visit soon, while there’s still room at the inn. hotel-chinzanso-tokyo.jp

Westchester Philharmonic

Dream Kitchens and Baths CRAFT-MAID ■ BIRCHCRAFT ■ HOLIDAY ■ CABICO ■ STONE ■ QUARTZ ■ CORIAN ■ DECORATIVE HARDWARE

October 15, 2017 at 3 pm Jaime Laredo, conducing Jinjoo Cho, violin

Mozart, Dvorˇák and Beethoven.

December 17, 2017 at 3 pm Winter Pops! with Ted Sperling Laura Michelle Kelly, vocals

Special appearance by Kelly Hall-Tompkins, violin Broadway, American Songbook, holiday and classical favorites.

FA M I LY

O W N E D

A N D

O P E R AT E D

S I N C E

February 11, 2018 at 3 pm Ted Sperling, conducting Kelly Hall-Tompkins, violin

19 6 5

Beethoven and Saint-Saëns.

April 8, 2018 at 3 pm Edgar Meyer, double bass

KITCHEN & BATH, LTD.

soloist-leader

Bach, Bottesini, Meyer and Mozart.

164 Harris Road, Bedford Hills, NY 10507 914.241.3046 | www.euphoriakitchens.com H O U R S : T U E S - F R I 10 : 3 0 A M - 5 P M S AT 11 A M - 4 P M

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June 17, 2018 at 3 pm Jaime Laredo, conducting Anna Polonsky, piano Orion Weiss, piano

G C L I C . # W C - 16 2 2 4 - H 0 5

Rossini, Mozart and Mendelssohn.

Tickets: (914) 251-6200

Jinjoo Cho

or westchesterphil.org

Concerts are presented at: Performing Arts Center, Purchase College 735 Anderson Hill Road, Purchase, NY. Programs, artists, dates and times subject to change. ©2017 Westchester Philharmonic, Inc.

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STILL WORKING FOR YOU UNTIL THE INDIAN POINT NUCLEAR PLANT POWERS DOWN IN 2021, WE’LL CONTINUE PRODUCING ABOUT 25 PERCENT OF THE ELECTRICITY FOR NEW YORK CITY AND WESTCHESTER COUNTY, WITH VIRTUALLY NO GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS.

The Indian Point Energy Center has been powering New York’s downstate region for about 40 years. Today, many New Yorkers have questions about the plant’s early and orderly shutdown — What will change? What will stay the same?

For the next few years, much will stay the same. Until 2021, we’ll continue safely generating clean, reliable power round-the-clock for New York City and Westchester County. That power makes Indian Point the single largest source of clean electricity in New York State.

Safety will continue to be the top priority for everyone at the plant. Under Entergy’s ownership, Indian Point has established a strong safety record that we’re committed to maintaining. Until shutdown in 2021, Indian Point will remain fully staffed with our team of approximately 1,000 nuclear professionals. We will continue to invest in the facility, and independent full-time inspectors from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission will remain on-site to review operations.

Indian Point will continue to generate significant tax revenues and expenditures in the local economy. We’ll also continue to play an important role in the wellbeing of our community through the contributions we provide to many charitable organizations in the region, as well as the thousands of hours our employees volunteer and donate to these important causes.

At Indian Point, we’re still working for you, and it will continue to be an honor to operate one of New York’s cleanest and most reliable sources of electricity. If you have questions, please visit us at SafeSecureVital.com

Indian Point Energy Center

WANDERS

THE FIX IS IN

BY DEBBI K. KICKHAM

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nthony Melchiorri is a hotelier extraordinaire. A former U.S. Air Force protocol officer, he takes a no-nonsense approach as a fixer on the Travel Channel’s series “Hotel Impossible” and as the host of “Hotel Impossible: Five-Star Secrets,” as well as a presence on other TV shows.

In “Hotel Impossible,” now in its eighth season, Melchiorri uses his many years of hotel experience, plus a wealth of business strategies (and a terrific sense of humor) to rescue and revive struggling properties and put them — in just four days of taping — onto the fast track to success and profitability.

His past experience includes stints as the director of front office operations at The Plaza hotel and as general manager for The Lucerne Hotel and The Algonquin Hotel, which he developed into one of the top-ranking hotels in New York City. He was also vice president of Nickelodeon Family Suites. I spoke to Melchiorri by phone as he drove from his home in New York to an ailing property in Pennsylvania that was to be featured on the show.

What are the top three five-star hotel secrets you can share?

“If you want it — whether it’s a vintage Rolls-Royce or special tuna from Japan — as long as it’s legal, you will get it at a five-star hotel. That’s important to know. Five-star hotels want to be challenged, 100 percent, because we want you to go online and be your hotel of choice. Discerning guests are spoiled and used to a certain style of service. Discerning service people want to give you that.”

What’s the biggest misconception about the hotel concierge?

“The hotel concierge has carte blanche and has the ability to do whatever he or she wants. They are kind of like the freelance consultant of the hotel — the only employee that really doesn’t report to anyone and is not accountable. Of course they do, but we as hoteliers leave them alone. We don’t question them because it’s a personal relationship between guest and concierge.

They are trained differently. They’re entrepreneurs.”

What about tipping at a five-star hotel?

“A customary tip is based on the service. If someone made me a limo reservation, they’re getting $20.

The most important dinner reservations in all of New York City? That tip would be $100. Tipping a concierge is different than tipping a front desk clerk. Recently in California, I was at The Peninsula and I used the house car — I had a lot going on — and I tipped the driver $100. He was there when I needed him.

“The world’s best concierge is Carlos Freire, chef concierge at the Trump International Hotel (and Tower) in New York. He’s the world’s greatest.”

What can guests do to make their hotel stay even better?

“Go directly to the general manager. But, become his friend before you get there. Always call the GM

Anthony Melchiorri on set for “Hotel Impossible” in Cape May, New Jersey. Phototograph by Cyrus Marshall.

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beforehand — to say hello before you go. This is what discerning guests should do. It costs the GM nothing to take your call. When you’re playing at that level of guest (five-star), what’s the difference between the Four Seasons and Peninsula? When you’re working at that level, you are dealing with the most rich and famous in the world. When you call the GM, he is going to take your call.”

What should you do if you are at a hotel and you need your stay to be improved?

“Don’t unpack. Go to the front desk and tell them you’re upset. Immediately. Don’t settle in. Demand a better room or what you want. They’ll probably put you in a junior suite.”

What’s your favorite part of problem solving on “Hotel Impossible?”

“The desperation is both my favorite and least favorite. Time is running out — you only have four days — and there are things you don’t know. Sometimes it’s bankruptcy or foreclosures that you have no idea about until the second or third day you are there. You have to deal with those issues in order to save the hotel. The problems are traumatic for the Photograph by Sebastian Flores. owners and for me to hear. Those problems can really hurt the opportunity for success. I’m an adrenaline junkie, so the adrenaline that you get from that desperation is intense.”

Why do you think you have such a passion for the hotel industry?

“I had been in the Air Force and after that I needed to pick something, so I picked the hotel business.

Whenever I had previously visited The Plaza hotel, I was always fascinated with its grandeur and opulence, so I focused on that hotel early on in my career.

As a young manager, I just tried to be successful and tried not to fail. I remember I was working there once and a young woman walked through the door. She was 11 years old and looked like Shirley Temple. She walked in and yelled out to me, “Mister, where’s Eloise?” Exactly. And we didn’t have an Eloise tour. (Eloise is the fictitious 6-year-old in a series of 1950s books

by Kay Thompson and illustrator Hilary Knight. She lived on the “tippy-top floor” of The Plaza.)

“It inspired me. So along with my team member, Randee Glick, we created an Eloise tour. When they wanted magic, it was my job to find the magic. It made me want to disconnect people from the reality of their lives. All this little girl wanted to do was to find Eloise. When I was at the Nickelodeon Hotel, we had a young lady who had previously expected a SpongeBob celebration. So we did it. We reacted and got a SpongeBob party for her. Everyone cried. The passion comes from making people’s dreams come true … the great wine, the dinner, the big chocolate cake, the really nice room. …We try to connect. Being able to deliver — that is really something fun.”

Debbi K. Kickham is author of “The Globetrotter’s Get-Gorgeous Guide” and can be reached through gorgeousglobetrotter.com and marketingauthor.com.

WANDERS

Tourists goofing around with a piece of street art. (The bicycle is an actual bicycle, but everything else is painted on the side of the building.) Photograph by Eleen Holland.

HANGIN’ IN PENANG

BY CYNTHIA CATTERSON

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nce considered the Pearl of the Orient, the Malaysian island of Penang remains a gem of architectural, cultural and ethnic diversity.

Whether you select it as your vacation destination or hop over for a long weekend while elsewhere in Southeast Asia — it’s a quick hour flight from Singapore, three from Hong Kong and an hour’s drive from the southern border of Thailand — Penang offers the opportunity to explore and experience a rich heritage whose colonial chapter dates from more than 500 years ago, when it was one of the main trading posts linking East and West.

It was Capt. Francis Light of the British East India Company who colonized the island in 1786. It became part of a British Crown colony some 90 years later and remained as such, except for the brief period of Japanese occupation during World War II, until Malaysia gained its independence in 1957. As the center of spice production for Southeast Asia, the island’s bustling commerce has attracted people of various religions and ethnicities from across the region. Today, roughly 60 percent of the population is Chinese Malay followed by mainland Malay, Indian, Thai and Eurasian.

For Western travelers, this translates into an exotic, yet still English-speaking locale at an affordable price. At current exchange rates for the local currency, the ringgit, it is possible to stay at the Shangri-La’s five-star Rasa Sayang Resort & Spa,

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in a king-size room with a veranda overlooking the pools and sea beyond and fantastic multicultural breakfasts included, for $125 a night off-season.

If you enjoy lounging under palm trees by the pool, the Rasa Sayang does the trick. If you’re after a fabled beach experience, though, you are better off at the pristine beaches of Bali or Phuket, Thailand. The sand at the Rasa Sayang beach is a bit gravelly and, with the large shipping traffic, a fair amount of debris is washed up on the shore. That being said, CHI, The Spa, with its assortment of Chinese and Malay treatments, delivered some of the best massages I’ve had at a resort in a long time.

To me, however, you don’t want to waste an entire trip to Penang Island lounging around. Instead, you’ll want to explore the capital, George Town, which is designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. There are a number of hotels in the center of the city where you can pick up Heritage Trail maps to guide you through several days of exploration.

The Eastern & Oriental Hotel, established in 1885, is a must, whether you stay in its stately rooms or just stop by for a drink in the old English-style Farquhar’s Bar. The colonnaded colonial architecture will likely remind you of the hotel’s more famous, younger sister, Raffles in Singapore.

The historic downtown of George Town is small enough to be a walker’s delight, but you can hire a trishaw or a tour guide to get you around. It is a working city where you’ll find the many historical points of interest in the middle of a street or around a corner, surrounded by cafés, temples, mosques, ancient Chinese shop houses and other businesses.

Plan plenty of time, and make note of the visiting hours for the colorful, ornate 19th-century mansions of the wealthy Straits Chinese. There you’ll find examples of the richly carved furnishings, finely detailed carpets and wall art of the period.

Also of note are exhibitions of dishes, period clothing and jewelry worn by the upper-class Chinese.

Elsewhere in the city, you can appreciate the co-

lonial great houses of the British Raj, the still-operational government buildings and the Church of the Assumption, founded in 1786. You can buy colorful flowered garlands and sarongs in Little India, and find all manner of souvenirs among the ramshackle huts on stilts that line the historic Clan Jetties.

Some of those huts still house the descendants of the original Chinese Clan settlers.

Other treats that await the intrepid traveler are the occasional modern and whimsical mixed media murals and sculptures that adorn otherwise nondescript sides of buildings. One of the twisted ironworks designates the shoe shop where Penang’s most successful son, Jimmy Choo, first learned his trade.

Penang is also known as the food capital of Malaysia because of the multiethnic influences that make up its cuisine, most notably Chinese, Thai and Indian. There are so many opportunities to indulge in the flavorful dishes and, here again, the ringgit-to-dollar exchange rate works in your favor.

A four-course meal at Kebaya Restaurant, considered one of the best restaurants on the island, runs about $30 a head, not including alcohol. The more adventurous can eat with the locals at a wet market, an area crammed with hawker stalls, where fresh food is dished out daily for about $1 a plate.

When packing for your trip, leave your jewelry at home. Gruesome tales of pickpockets and worse are a topic of conversation among the British expats. Also, while Malaysia is constitutionally a secular society, Islam is the state religion. It is common to see women in hijabs and full black burkas. Out of respect, it’s better to give the tight and skimpy outfits a pass. Plus, Penang has the same hot, tropical climate found elsewhere in Southeast Asia.

Lightweight, flowing fabrics are the only way to go if you want to survive the at-times overwhelming heat and humidity.

If you can take the heat, however, this is one truly hot vacation.

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WONDERFUL DINING

DOUBLE FEATURE

DINNER AND A MOVIE AT IPIC THEATER STORY AND PHOTOGRAPHS

BY ALEESIA FORNI

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or decades, dinner and a movie has had expectant moviegoers juggling reservations and film start times. But that tradition is getting a twist thanks to a new theater and restaurant in Dobbs Ferry — as we discovered when we took in “Wonder Woman,” the it movie of the summer, while enjoying the culinary delights of the iPic Theater.

Opened in May, the 580-seat multiplex is among the new spaces in the budding Rivertowns Square development. Along with the eight-screen theater, the Boca Raton-based iPic launched an adjoining 4,600-square-foot, chef-driven restaurant, City Perch Kitchen and Bar — allowing moviegoers to order dinner or drinks while screening the latest blockbuster.

The seasonal, American eatery mixes cool sophistication with inviting warmth. A recent visit found the bar area mostly illuminated by the open floor-to-ceiling windows that line the restaurant’s front. A more formal dining area is situated behind the bar, while a large patio gives diners a chance to enjoy their meal outdoors.

An extensive beverage menu of local craft beers enables diners also to step outside their comfort zone. You’ll find no Budweiser or Michelob here.

Instead, our knowledgeable waitress, Kyla, gave us hints as to what selections might suit our taste.

My guest decided to try a Radiant Pig Gangster Duck. With a name like that, how could you resist? It offered just the right amount of sweetness. I sipped on a Checkered Cab Blonde Ale, which we were told is one of the restaurant’s most popular brews.

The dinner menu seemed just as varied as the beverage offerings, with a surprisingly wide array of seafood options and pizzas.

We started with tuna crudo, which came with a delightful fried avocado and was drizzled with yuzu aioli and chili oil and topped with sprouts.

Never able to say no to a restaurant’s signature sandwich, my guest chose the Perch Burger, which featured a thick, juicy beef patty, slices of crispy bacon and a red onion marmalade. A side of fries was served warm and perfectly crispy. I chose something from the sea — a line-caught sea bass served over a tasty zucchini and eggplant ratatouille and basil pesto.

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Plush movie theater seats allow guests of iPic Theater to relax comfortably while servers deliver food and beverages.

A salami and arugula pizza was the unexpected hit of our evening, offering the perfect blend of cheeses and a pleasant kick from sliced pepperoncini.

The menu is a bit pricey for portion sizes. Most small appetizers range from $14 to $18, and my ratatouille felt undersized for the $26 price tag.

But though dinner had come to an end, our night was just beginning.

We make our way to the adjoining theater and took our seats. But to call them “seats” seemed like an understatement. Our two-person “pod” was stocked with blankets, pillows, space for our bags, a table and fully reclining leather chairs.

OPENED IN MAY, THE 580SEAT MULTIPLEX IS AMONG THE NEW SPACES IN THE BUDDING RIVERTOWNS SQUARE DEVELOPMENT. ALONG WITH THE EIGHT-SCREEN THEATER, THE BOCA RATON-BASED IPIC LAUNCHED AN ADJOINING 4,600-SQUARE-FOOT, CHEFDRIVEN RESTAURANT, CITY PERCH KITCHEN AND BAR. Menu options at City Perch include, clockwise from top, a juicy Perch Burger, a salami and arugula pizza and tuna crudo.

iPic brands itself as a luxury theater and I don’t find that description off the mark. While in the ladies’ room, I actually heard a woman exclaim, “These are the bathrooms? I want to live in here.”

Because we chose “premium plus” tickets, we were treated to unlimited popcorn. Buttons within the pod enabled you to beckon one of the servers — called ninjas — to deliver menu items, from nachos and sandwiches to beer or cocktails.

It seems to be a theme for the venue — both food and drink menus for the screening rooms were extensive and wide-ranging, featuring items like filet mignon sliders, lobster rolls and sushi.

Reclining in our lounge chairs evoked the feeling of enjoying a cozy movie night in your own basement — that is, if your basement happened to be fully equipped with a 50-foot screen and servers.

The only downfall of our visit was a single group of chatty teenagers to our left who seemed to feel as though the relaxing environment gave them permission to have a few louder-than-necessary conversations of their own. (If only Wonder Woman herself had come down from the screen to silence them.)

Despite those few chatty moments — and the accompanying “shushing” from other moviegoers — the theater remained surprisingly quiet despite the ninjas performing their duties.

Maybe it was the top-notch service, my delivered glass of Rosé, or perhaps it had something to do with watching Wonder Woman battle the bad guys and break through a male-dominated genre.

In any case, my evening at City Perch and iPic was truly one of the most fun nights I’ve ever had at the movies.

For more, visit ipictheaters.com.

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CONFESSIONS OF THE FAR-GRAZING FOODIE

BY JENA A. BUTTERFIELD

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I have a problem. I’m told it’s an addiction — but I don’t like to think about it like that.

I’m in deep and the frequency of my habit is increasing.

I told myself I was done for good.

But that was yesterday. And now here I am with my baseball cap pulled down low in case I see someone who recognizes me.

I always do that when I’m getting my fix — deep in line by the peanut butter dog lollipops — at the checkout counter of Stew Leonard’s.

Or is this Trader Joe’s? After a while, they all start feeling the same.

But here’s the rub: They are decidedly not the same. Instead they are like fragmented puzzle pieces that, once assembled, create a perfectly stocked kitchen. It’s a game that’s driving me and my friends nuts.

Did I say nuts? Darn, the nuts I like are an extra 15-minute car ride away. But I digress.

Most of us spend hours a week zooming from market to market in order to satisfy the complex dietary needs of our families. We complain about being frantic and no one appreciating the effort.

(This is true, they don’t.) But do we really need to shop this way? Or is there a place in our deepest depths that wants us to shop this way?

In other words, are we having fun?

‘MULTICHANNEL’ SHOPPERS According to a 2016 study of grocery shopping trends on Hartman Group’s fmi.org, more adults are sharing shopping responsibilities — not because of fairness but because of fun. The study has even tracked our allegiance away from traditional food stores — which keep trying to reel us back in with promotions, giveaways and events as well as produce — to boutique food markets farther afield. We have become “multichannel” shoppers and are loving every minute of it.

White Plains resident Leah Kaplan gets excited when she talks about the bounty at Costco in Port Chester (with more locations in Yonkers, New Rochelle and Norwalk) but notes she still needs to make a Stop & Shop run (In the same complex downstairs) to complete her list. “It’s more because I like the stuff better,” Kaplan acknowledges, “not because I need it.”

Tara Monaco of Bronxville and Kerry Kusic of Yonkers make frequent trips to Stew Leonard’s (with locations in Yonkers and Norwalk) but shop elsewhere for things like paper towels and healthy snacks for picky kids. “I just can’t get everything I want at one place,” says Kusic as she heads off to ShopRite (with locations in Yonkers, New Rochelle, Scarsdale, White Plains, Stamford and Norwalk) for her kid’s favorite chewy granola bars.

Monaco feels the dairy at Stew’s is superior. She can grab a ball of mozzarella for the next two days of school lunches and she prefers the in-house brand of coffee over any other.

Milk and eggs are indeed popular at Stew’s (as those of us who know it well affectionately call it)

Shoppers choose multiple markets to supplement their pantries and satisfy their tummies. Photographs courtesy Stew Leonard's.

and so are the deals on meat and wine. Then there’s the free ice cream or coffee with every receipt of more than $100. You can buy plants in the summer and Christmas trees in the winter and children can push a button to make a banana dance.

Did I mention the free samples?

ETHNIC CHOICES But then there’s Trader Joe’s (with locations in Hartsdale, Scarsdale, Larchmont, Stamford, Danbury, Darien, Fairfield and Westport), which has an extensive selection and competitive pricing on those darn nuts I’m looking for. Plus, if you’re going to eat frozen fettuccine Alfredo (a personal favorite), you’d be a fool to go elsewhere.

If you’re looking for a home-style cooked dinner or something for the grill along with your light shopping, then head to Balducci’s (in Scarsdale, Rye Brook, Greenwich, and Westport), for prepared foods, or fresh fish at New York City’s biggest outpost of Citarella in Greenwich.

Fairway, on the other hand (with locations in Pelham and Stamford) has an olive oil section that makes me giddy, an array of sparkling water that will satisfy any bubble snob. Plus, it sells French apricots to go with a wide array of cheeses and wines at its adjacent shop.

And then there’s Whole Foods Market. Let’s face it, we all need Whole Foods (with locations in Yonkers, White Plains, Port Chester, Greenwich, Darien and Westport) to satisfy our nation’s obsession with…well…whole foods. I mean who eats berries if they’re not organic?

Or what if you snack on seaweed and are particular about your ramen and wouldn’t mind sipping on bubble tea as you shop? Then H mart is the place with two (yes, two) locations on Central Avenue, serving towns along the northern and southern stretches of the commerce hub. There’s an extensive fish department and a choice of eatin or takeaway Chinese, Japanese and Korean.

It is a dizzying amount of choices that is creating a mania in our communities. Admittedly, these are rarified problems for neighborhoods that are near major cities, with inhabitants living on a predominantly middle-class income. Nevertheless, it’s getting ridiculous.

Today I decided I would finally end the insanity and head to Stop & Shop (with locations in Yonkers, Dobbs Ferry, New Rochelle, Eastchester, White Plains, Port Chester, Greenwich and Stamford), where I could get my organic berries and a granola bar alternative for my kid and cat food and detergent and sushi. Take that, friends, I’m cured.

“Mom,” said my son as I unloaded my bags. “Did you get that yogurt I like?”

Don’t worry, spoiled child, I thought to myself.

Mommy’s got your back.

I’ve done it. Kicking this nasty habit wasn’t so hard after all.

“Hon,” said my husband in passing. “Stew’s is running a sale on rib eye steaks this weekend.”

Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.

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WINE & DINE

ROTHSCHILD VINTAGES THAT ARE TRULY ‘LÉGENDE’-ARY STORY AND PHOTOGRAPH

BY DOUG PAULDING

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iane Flamand has a wonderful job: She is employed by the Rothschild wine family currently in their sixth generation of ownership of Lafite-Rothschild, certainly one of the most recognized and respected names in all of wine.

Wines from Lafite-Rothschild sell for many hundreds of dollars and often reach into the thousands for select vintages. Lafite is one of the first-growth wines of Bordeaux, a classification of wine excellence dating from 1855. It is a special occasion wine for people lucky enough to inherit a bottle or two, lucky enough to be able to afford it or lucky enough to have good friends who can afford it. I have tasted wines from Château Lafite-Rothschild several times.

It is always a noteworthy event not to be forgotten.

The Château, in Pauillac, France, has bought up properties or entered into partnerships all over

the world, from Chile and Argentina to Languedoc-Roussillon and Sauternes closer to home. It has recently planted vines in China to test the grape-growing terroir and the markets of Asia. Any Château Lafite-Rothschild first-growth wine is very expensive and can take decades of patience to reach its full expression and potential. Flamand was hired as the winemaker for the Légende line, known for its affordable and easy “drink-now” wines made with the Lafite touch. Or, as she told me, “The Légende line of Lafite-Rothschild wines is made with finesse, elegance and balance.”

The grapes on the estate of the Château are all called for, so how do you get the fruit you need to make these Légende wines? Flamand works with local regional winemaking cooperatives where she has the opportunity to oversee all aspects of grape cultivation and winemaking. There was a time when wine cooperatives made dull and uninteresting wines. Grape growers were encouraged to increase the yields of each vine, as they were paid by the weight of their deliveries. Today, the growers are encouraged to deliver a smaller yield consisting of more flavorful berries, which will make a significantly better wine. The Légende Bordeaux Blanc and Bordeaux Rouge use grapes from various sources in Bordeaux. They also produce better and more nuanced wines, specifically from nota-

Diane Flamand, winemaker for the Lafite Rothschild Lègende line of wines, in Manhattan recently.

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ble growers in the Bordeaux subregions of Medoc, Saint-Emilion and Pauillac.

Our tasting was at Vaucluse restaurant on Park Avenue at 63rd Street in Manhattan. Owner and chef Michael White crafted an outstanding multicourse meal to enhance each wine. The wines were poured as each course was being delivered.

These wines can stand alone to be consumed just with friends over conversation, but they rose to another plateau when tasted with food.

Our first wine was the Légende 2016 Bordeaux blanc. At 50 percent Sauvignon Blanc, 40 percent Semillon and 10 percent Sauvignon Gris, it showed citrus flavors with lovely aromatics. There was a mineral contribution of flint and limestone. No oak contribution enhanced the fruity flavors. This was followed by the Légende 2016 Bordeaux Rouge.

This wine was 60 percent Cabernet Sauvignon and 40 percent Merlot and showed dark and red cherry notes with hints of blueberry. There was a touch of oak aging for texture, not flavor.

Our next pour was the Légende 2015 Medoc. At 70 percent Cabernet Sauvignon and 30 percent Merlot, it threw a peppery and pleasantly spicy dark cherry flavor. Flamand told me, “This wine, as all the wines of this line, can be drunk now. But it also will benefit from aging.” Her 2014 Saint-Emilion showed a pleasant earthiness, owing to its 85 percent Merlot. The 15 percent Cabernet Sauvignon lent dark cherry flavors with balanced tannins.

Our final red was a 2014 from Pauillac. This was a classic Bordeaux blend with more body, more spiciness and hints of tobacco. Flamand said, “This is a beautiful and approachable Pauillac.” Approachable means affordable and it over-delivers.

In 1984, the Château acquired an estate, Château Rieussec in Sauternes, a region made famous for botrytis, a fungus that attacks and concentrates grape flavors. This produces a lovely and unctuous sweet wine mostly served with dessert. A 2014 vintage from the estate’s second label, Château de Cosse Sauternes, was a perfect finish as the sweetness was balanced by a beautiful acidity. These wines can be bought for about $18 for the Bordeaux Blanc and Rouge, $27 for the Medoc, $45 for the Saint-Emilion, $54 for the Pauillac and around $30 for a half-bottle of the Château de Cosse. It is likely that case discounts will apply at your local store.

Beautiful flavors, affordable prices, the Lafite-Rothschild touch: Now that’s ‘Légende’-ary.

Write me at doug@dougpaulding.com.

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WHETTING THE APPETITTE

Photograph by Sebastian Flores.

A SOUP FOR SUMMER SAVORING

i

remember last summer going to a restaurant and having fresh asparagus soup. I was completely floored by how great it tasted. I was lucky enough to ask the chef how he prepared it. Of course, I tweaked it myself and came up with a wonderful summer soup. There is no cream or butter in it. All you will taste is the freshness of summer asparagus. Enjoy!

For more, contact the Saucy Realtor at jacquelineruby@hotmail.com.

Tableware courtesy Casafina.

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FRESH ASPARAGUS SOUP INGREDIENTS: • 1 pound fresh asparagus • 6 small white potatoes • 1/4 teaspoon black pepper • 1/2 teaspoon sea salt • 4 sun-dried tomatoes • 1 shallot thinly sliced • 1 tablespoon finely chopped parsley • 2 tablespoons olive oil • l/8 teaspoon fresh, grated nutmeg

DIRECTIONS: 1. Clean and trim asparagus.

2. Drop asparagus into a frying pan with boiling, salted water – enough water to almost cover the asparagus.

3. Cook about 3 minutes.

4. Take asparagus out and let cool. Chop into 3-inch pieces. Save asparagus water.

5. Boil potatoes or microwave until done.

6. Take off skin and mash together.

7. Blend asparagus and 1 cup of asparagus water at a time.

8. Then add potatoes, shallot, parsley, sun-dried tomatoes, nutmeg, salt and pepper and 1 tablespoon of oil.

9. Blend together and add more water as needed.

10. Drizzle remaining oil on soup. Serves 4.

Come for the food.

Stay for the love.

430 Bedford Road | Armonk, NY 10504 | 914.730.0001 | www.ModerneBarn.com /ModerneBarn

@ModerneBarnRest

@ModerneBarn

WHERE ARE THEY NOW?

FLAT-OUT FLAIR FROM ETHAN ABRAMSON

BY MARY SHUSTACK

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AG introduced Westchester furniture designer Ethan Abramson in the pages of our June 2014 issue, having met him at that year’s Architectural Digest Home Design Show in Manhattan.

The feature detailed his designs, including handcrafted chairs and tables, as well as his commitment to being a New York-based company devoted to American-made, environmentally conscious handcrafted furniture.

It was another unplanned meeting, this time at ICFF in late May, that sparked this follow-up.

Abramson’s booth at ICFF, the prestigious International Contemporary Furniture Fair held at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, featured a striking example from his Steel Forest collection.

Assuring us he was still “chugging along,” he

shared that, “We jumped into metal this year.”

Fans of Abramson’s distinctive handcrafted wood creations need not fear, however. He pulled out his phone to show us examples of the Flat Bowl, an innovative tabletop design — a contemporary touch for any kitchen or ideal hostess gift. Available in cherry, walnut or white oak, the bowl resembles an artist’s palette ready to cradle an array of fruits or vegetables.

With Abramson sharing his ICFF booth with fellow Mamaroneck designer Luke Kelly, of Luke Lamp Co., the guys were — as they should have been — all about making connections and showcasing their work. As it wasn’t the most conducive setting for an interview, we asked Abramson to share more details after the show had closed.

Tell us a bit about ICFF — why you chose to exhibit there, how the show went for you, etc.

“I have shown at ICFF for the last three years and it has always been good to me. Whenever that many furniture and design-minded people converge into one space, that’s where I want to be.

This year was the best show yet, with an amazing response to the shop’s new line.”

You mentioned having added metal work — and we saw that lovely table at ICFF. What are your latest designs — and what led you to start working in metals?

“This year I introduced the Steel Forest Series,

The Steel Forest series by Ethan Abramson features his signature creativity applied to a new material.

Photograph by Jenny Gorman. Courtesy Ethan Abramson.

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pieces made from steel with wood accents. Metal has always been present in my custom pieces, but this year I decided to make it the feature. After building solid-wood furniture for almost a decade, it is very freeing to work with a new material. Design ideas that used to be impossible with wood are now open to me.

“This has been a big year for firsts, having added mirrors to the collection as well. We also showed our new Cornerstone Mirrors to very positive reviews.”

Tell us about the Flat Bowl, a really striking design.

“The Flat Bowl is an idea that I have always played with but never took to the next step.

When I decided to add home goods to my production line, it was the obvious first choice. I like the fact that there is no right way to use it.

You can stack and restack in any display you are drawn to.”

How’s it going in Mamaroneck? What makes it continue to be a good space for you and the business?

“The area I work in Mamaroneck is great. I need to be inspired by things outside of the furniture world as much as I can, and here there are so many different industries going on that every day I see something new.”

For more, visit ethanabramson.com.

The Flat Bowl is Ethan Abramson’s latest home-goods design. Photograph

by Luke Kelly. Courtesy Ethan Abramson.

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105 Somerstown Turnpike, Katonah, NY (Corner of Rt. 100 and Rt. 35) www.muscoottavern.com 914 • 232 • 2800

WHERE ARE THEY NOW?

A dining area at Ousia. Photographs courtesy The Livanos Restaurant Group.

OUSIA BRINGS GREEK ESSENCE TO THE WEST SIDE

BY GEORGETTE GOUVEIA

i

n WAG’s 2016 issue, “Celebrating Family,” we wrote about the family behind The Livanos Restaurant Group. Siblings Nick, Bill and Corina oversee the organization, which includes City Limits White Plains, Moderne Barn in the family’s hometown of Armonk and two Manhattan eateries — the flagship Oceana and Molyvos, named for the ancestral hometown on the Greek isle of Lesbos that the family returns to each year.

At the time, the Livanoses were looking to add to the family portfolio with a new place in Via 57West, described as the gateway to the hip, happening residential block the Durst Organization has developed on the West Side.

“We chose this location, because it was in a burgeoning neighborhood with a lot of opportunity for growth,” says third-generation restaurateur Johnny Livanos. “Only a block from the West Side Highway with more than 14,000 new apartments being built, we saw a need for a new dining experience for the community and for those who are traveling into the city who need easy access to a more sophisticated dining scene.”

We’re happy to report that the family’s plan became a reality in February with the opening of Ousia, where we had the pleasure of dining on a recent Saturday night.

Ousia is Greek for “essence” or “flavor” and there

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were plenty of flavors to relish amid the striking décor, with its woodsy base notes and a blue and yellow palette that evokes the contrasting primary colors saturating Vincent van Gogh’s Provençal canvases (with a touch of Giorgio de Chirico in the restaurant’s surrealistic paintings).

“The design intent of Ousia was to create an atmosphere that reflected the spirit and essence of Greek cuisine without identifying with one specific area or iconography,” says Kim Nathanson of the Niemitz Design Group, who designed the 7,200-square-foot space. “The interior finishes — such as cypress wood on the walls and bar, encaustic cement tiles on the floor and a mixture of marble and stone for the bar top can be representative of many locations throughout the Mediterranean.

They are all rich in texture and color but are balanced in their use.

“The space itself is designed as an open plan, including a partial view of the kitchen. The bar’s location serves as a central dividing tool along with other fixed furniture, creating intimate seating areas but always allowing the customer to share in a unique communal experience.”

Complementing that design, Johnny Livanos, general manager and Nick’s son, named for the grandfather who started it all in 1957; director of operations Kamal Kouiri, who oversees the wine

The Far West Side Cocktail at Ousia – vodka; Mastiha, a Greek liqueur; lemon; muddled cucumber; and mint.

program; and executive chef Carlos Carreto have put together a Greek-infused Mediterranean menu that is all kinds of savory, creamy, sweet goodness.

“Greek food has always had a special place in our lives and our hearts,” Johnny says. “We wanted to create a restaurant that offers Greek cuisine but also be a neighborhood restaurant. Greek food is a comfort food, so we wanted to create a very warm and casual environment for residents and visitors in the community.”

From a classic hummus, in which we ravenously dipped pita bread; to a melting Greek take on pizza; the expertly seared lamb chops; the superbly crispy cod, served with beets on a bed of skordalia (a Greek garlic, potato spread); to the baklava trio, the food never stopped coming and we never stopped talking, laughing and eating.

Granted, we know the owners. But at Ousia, everyone seems to be a friend of the family. Standing outside afterward on a warm, breezy night — taking in the sleek, buzzing surroundings and reluctant to let a magical evening in movie Manhattan end — we watched as Nick held the door open for an elderly patron.

Great food, great décor and great service from the owners on down.

That’s the “essence” of Ousia.

For more, visit ousianyc.com.

Contemporary Seafood Restaurant Causal Fine Dining Atmosphere Metro Chic Bar/Lounge Alla Fresco Dining Overlooking The Hudson River Private Parties from 15 to 200 Guests 1 Van Der Donck Street ] Yonkers, NY 10701 914.751.8170 ] www.dolphinrbl.com

WHERE ARE THEY NOW?

NEW TRAVELS, NEW FLAVORS STORY AND PHOTOGRAPH

BY MARY SHUSTACK

i

t didn’t surprise us that Yamini Lal, the blogger known as the Fairfield County Foodie, offered to meet close to WAG’s Westchester offices for this sequel to our July 2016 profile.

After all, Lal savors the chance to explore new tastes, whether around the world or just down the highway.

The Weston resident — who introduced us to East African cuisine via Teff in Stamford last summer — was more than open to meeting at a Rye patisserie: “Sounds great! Never been.”

Anticipating another lively chat with Lal — and we were not disappointed — we settled into a cozy table for a midmorning update.

Within moments, we were again dazzled by Lal’s knowledge of — and enthusiasm for — all things culinary.

Upcoming, we heard, remains a constant.

“It’s such a global society,” she said. “One of the reasons I want to travel… You can’t live in a bubble and write about everything and say ‘I’m the judge,’” without having a reference point.

Upcoming travels, she shared, would include Vienna and Prague — accompanying her husband on a business trip, as she often does — and then a Paris-to-Normandy river cruise to celebrate her mother’s birthday.

The thread tying it all together?

“I’m totally expecting to do some serious eating.

Definitely,” Lal said, with her trademark laugh.

Lal has been cooking at home a bit more recently, thanks to her new schedule. She left her marketing job with fashion-jewelry firm Carolee late last year, deciding not to participate in the company’s relocation from Stamford to New York City.

The blog, she shared, has become “much broader because I’m traveling a lot, because I’m not in Connecticut as much lately.”

While recent posts have shared details of her “Perfect Saturday Morning” visit to a secret Fair-

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Yamini Lal.

field destination for artisanal bread and her embracing the new season of the Westport Farmers’ Market, she’s continued to spread the word about destinations farther afield, from a New Haven food-truck experience that created “A Party in the Mouth — Vietnamese Style!,” all the way to Washington, D.C., where she enjoyed a “Molecular Gastronomy Bonanza” at one of the properties of the ThinkFoodGroup.

As Lal and her husband look to an eventual move to California, she said would like to parlay her food knowledge into a professional role.

“I do feel I’ve made it my business to learn a lot about food.”

Tied to Lal’s doing more cooking at home is her work on a project to gather the recipes prepared by her mother when Lal was growing up in India.

Family food traditions, she said, are part of your personal history.

“I think it’s such an important thing for my son and his children, for my brother and his children.”

Throughout her culinary adventures, it’s always about sharing the passion that finds Lal “inspired by things I eat all the time.”

She spoke of the quest for the perfect French om-

elet, of discovering stroopwafels in the Netherlands and of replicating an appetizer sampled in London, a burrata memorable for its unusual spices.

“It tasted so Indian. It talked to me. It spoke to me,” she said.

With her son about to start his career, the proud mom was already dreaming of dining opportunities when she visits.

“He starts a job in Boston, which I’m very excited about. Boston is a great food city.”

But Lal remains committed to finding food not only delicious but that also resonates with her on many levels.

“It’s the quality of the ingredients and where they are sourced,” she said of some of her most memorable experiences.

And those, it seems, are destined to keep coming.

A couple of days after our Rye reunion, we got an email from Lal telling us she may have forgotten to mention her very next destination — the Atlanta Food & Wine Festival.

As she wrote from Georgia, she was exploring Southern food, drink and “Having a blast here…”

Of course she was.

For more, visit fairfieldcountyfoodie.com.

WEAR

ADDING DIMENSION TO YOUR HAIRCUT STORY AND PHOTOGRAPH

BY BRIAN TOOHEY

i

t was a Friday afternoon and the salon was buzzing with the sound of hair dryers and conversation. My next appointment was a student in for a haircut. I expected to see a teenage girl with long hair who only wanted a trim.

Suddenly there appeared two young women

with a little girl about 3 ½ feet tall standing between them. I wondered if this could be my new client.

And it was. She was quiet and poised as I leaned over and extended my hand and introduced myself as if I was meeting a young princess. She graciously received my hand and said, “I am Madeline.” As we moved toward the dressing room, I asked her sisters what she wanted to do with her hair.

Madeline’s hair was all the way down her back so I expected to hear, “just a trim.” I was shocked when they said, “She wants a bob.” I was amazed and with great enthusiasm I told them she was in the right hands.

After the shampoo, this darling little girl walked confidently between her sisters. They helped her climb onto the cushion we provided so she would sit tall enough in the chair. As I combed through her hair, I asked her how much she wanted to cut and she said, “I want to cut it off.” With some caution, I stopped the comb just below her collar and asked if that was OK. She said, “yes” and then with a pause added, “with an

Shape and balance cut by Brian Toohey, as modeled by Susan Monahan. Going short is a trend Toohey's young client, Madeline, also tapped into.

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angle in the front please.”

At that moment, I knew she would have a fabulous style. She had my complete focus and attention as I shut out the sounds around me as well as the watchful eyes of the audience forming around us.

It was as though Madeline and I were of one mind as she had complete confidence in what I was doing. One of her sisters commented that she had never seen her sit so still. After putting the finishing touches on the angle we created around her face, she was so pleased that her lively blue eyes opened and there we saw the beautiful princess truly come to life. As she walked away enjoying her new style, all eyes were on her.

This 8-year-old was right on trend as hair is definitely going shorter. You may have noticed in the fashion magazines and on newscasts that this trend is taking hold. In one day I had three clients asking for shorter hair, and I was able to design each style so it had individual flair. I just love it when their eyes are fixed on the image in the mirror, and I hear them express how much they love the cut and their new look.

This new shorter hair doesn’t necessarily mean short. It can just be longer hair cut to just above the shoulder, as I did for Madeline. The right length can be just the start; if appropriate, long layers are added to release swing and movement.

I can’t help but get a kick out of the fact that this 8-year-old knew without a doubt what the trend was.

As with any haircut, you want a style that has finesse and sophistication. Begin by asking your stylist what he/she sees as the right shape and balance for your haircut. The accompanying photograph of Susan Monahan, a stylist here at Warren Tricomi, demonstrates this perfectly. When I cut Susan’s hair, shape and balance were uppermost in my mind.

I have developed a technique for cutting hair that has been described by a stylist in my training program as three-dimensional hair cutting.

The process builds shape as opposed to a two-dimensional cut, which is flat and tends to grow out more quickly. My technique of building shape three-dimensionally creates a form that continues to evolve beautifully no matter how long it grows.

I have clients returning after six weeks and I ask, “Why are you here? Your hair looks great.”

And the response is usually, “I know, but because it was six weeks, I thought it was time.”

Please feel free to come in for a consultation. I would be happy to offer my thoughts about your style and, perhaps, even have you model for a class. And maybe, like Madeline, you can be the inspiration for the next column.

Visit Brian at Warren Tricomi Salon, 1 E. Putnam Ave., Greenwich. To book an appointment with him, call 212-262-8899. For more, email Brian at btoohey2@optonline.net.

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AUGUST 12 & 13, 2017 Wine, Spirits and Cider Tastings, Breweries, Arts & Crafts, Food Vendors, Live Music, Cooking and Mixologist demos, Children’s Activities and more.

11am-6pm Saturday |11am-5pm Sunday Iron & Wine Restaurant & Westview Golf Driving Range

3191 Route 22, Patterson, NY 12563

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Part proceeds to benefit Green Chimneys.

For vendors/sponsorship/volunteer info call: 1-800-557-4185 ext 3., or Lauren at 845-494-4654.

WELL

In the aerial yoga class, yogis use these colorful hammocks, above left, to help with stretching, resistance and meditation.

Right, the merchandise at Soul Flyte includes fitness wear, aromatherapy oils, natural bath blends and bracelets.

REACHING NEW YOGIC HEIGHTS STORY AND PHOTOGRAPHS

BY DANIELLE RENDA

a

erial yoga made me taller.

Well, an inch taller.

While being guided through some intense stretches at Soul Flyte in Nyack, I could feel the tension in my neck and lower back release and flow out of my body.

But the deep stretches — and deeper meditation — loosened up more than just my muscles. During the class, I experienced a profound, transcendent sense of weightlessness, relaxation and serenity.

And though the workout was challenging at points, it felt quite freeing.

Every month, I look to visit a fitness boutique that offers a new experience, and this month proved no different. I had always been interested in aerial yoga and the gracefulness of its poses, evocative of ethereal fairies from a children’s storybook speckling the sky.

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But I was especially intrigued by the serenity that comes with creating the space to connect with the inner self — a common thread in all forms of yoga. And I now understand that all yogis — who seek to flow from one asana, or pose, to the next while staying present in the moment — are in search of this connectedness. We’re all united by this common cause.

On a rainy, humid Friday evening, I parked a few blocks from Soul Flyte — located near Main Street, a thoroughfare bustling with food, music and performing arts. The timing was right, as I reached Soul Flyte as the rain became less forgiving. Owner Shira Turkl-Rubin was there to welcome me into a space redolent with incense and burning candles that also offered an array of merchandise, including aromatherapy oils, natural bath blends and yoga gear in eclectic patterns.

Class attendees trickled in, addressing Rubin — who was also the instructor — as an old friend, a reflection of her objective for the business.

“I always wanted to bring the community together,” she says.

And that has become the essence of Soul Flyte. Having launched in August 2014, the studio reopened at its current location on April 1 and continues to grow in size. Instructors participate in frequent team-building exercises and company meetings, with emphasis on forming friendships that go beyond the studio’s walls. And, according

to Rubin, class attendees share similar experiences of fellowship.

When the class began, each attendee was asked to select a hammock, which was lowered to meet specific needs. Then, for the next 75 minutes, Rubin guided the class through a series of midair stretches, some of which required using the hammock for resistance or simply to meditate.

Comforted by soft music in the background, I found it easy to get lost in my thoughts but, in true yogi fashion, always acknowledged this and came back to the present moment.

The movements were slow, calculated and carefully addressed. Since the class was on the smaller side, Rubin was able to walk around the studio, make suggestions and tweak poses. The one-onone aspect was crucial, as I didn’t feel intimidated to ask for help or get lost in a crowd of experts.

The time spent airborne eventually came to a close and our final poses were done lying on the floor. But the class wasn’t officially over until Rubin said, “Thank yourself for showing up to take care of you.” And together the class responded, “Wisdom. Freedom. Love. Namaste.”

In addition to aerial yoga, Soul Flyte also offers aerial dance, flying fitness, barre, core and resistance, flow yoga, free meditation and stretch and core work. The studio is at 13 S. Broadway in Nyack.

For more, visit soulflyte.com or call 845-580-9240.

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WELL

‘FRENCHFRIES’ WITHOUT THE GUILT

BY GIOVANNI ROSELLI

a

s a fitness professional, I do more than teach my clients how to exercise. I try to instill healthy habits, including how they can better manage their food choices. Of course, this is easier said than done, especially with clients who are motivated to exercise but use it as a way to justify eating more than they should or to stick with unhealthy eating habits. Let’s explore a common food vice sabotaging weight loss and health — French fries.

Also called shoestring fries or hot chips, French fries are widely considered a necessary pairing to a burger or sandwich. Many people grew up eating deep-fried, cut-up potato slices, starting at a very young age. I could try to tell you the dangers of eating French fries — that they contain high fat, high cholesterol and high carbohydrates — but if you, like many other people, associate French fries with comfort food, breaking the habit will take time.

Probably the best way to curb an unhealthy eating habit like a French-fry addiction is to show healthier versions of this deep-fried favorite. You can have your cake — err, French fries — and eat it too with these recipes:

ZUCCHINI FRIES Do you know a relative who goes on and on about how great his kid is and it makes you wonder, “Can this child do no wrong?” Well, if your family were vegetables, then zucchini would be that child. You can’t ignore that this vegetable is nearly 50 percent lower in calories compared to other low-calorie vegetables like broccoli in the same serving size. You can’t ignore how zucchinis are loaded with potassium, which is a nutrient that helps to lower the risk of stroke. You also can’t ignore how the vegetable is so versatile. It can be used as a replacement for noodles — when prepared like this, they are often called “zoodles” — used in bread, and of course, used as a healthier version of French fries.

Making zucchini fries only takes the vegetable, flour, eggs, breadcrumbs and other seasonings.

AVOCADO FRIES This fruit is known as a “superfood” for its abundance of nutrients, healthy fats and flavor, but what also makes this fruit super is its versatility. Of course, there are the obvious other uses for avocados such as guacamole, salads and sandwiches, but they also make a great alternative to deep-fried French fries. Avocado fries are pretty easy to make. Most avocado-fry recipes call for panko crumbs, a sprinkle of seasonings and oven-baking for 20 minutes.

SWEET POTATO FRIES Maybe this list of healthier French fries should have started off with sweet potatoes. They offer the starchy taste that fries are known for, yet they contain a slightly higher amount of fiber, which can help people feel full and satisfied.

Sweet potatoes also have a lower glycemic index, which means blood sugar doesn’t rise as high compared to eating typical French fries.

However, keep in mind that if the sweet potatoes are deep fried, people lose out on the nutritional benefits. So if you order sweet potato fries from the restaurant, they need to make sure that the fries are either baked or roasted. Baking helps to maximize the nutritional benefits without adding extra calories or fat from oil.

Sweet potato fries. Courtesy dreamstime.com.

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CARROT FRIES If you don’t want a recipe that involves adding breadcrumbs, then carrot fries are an easy recipe and a great alternative to regular fries. All carrot fries usually need is a coating of olive oil, salt and pepper. Bake them at a high temperature and remove after 20 minutes.

French fries, shoestring fries and hot chips: No matter what you call them, they’re a no-no. This summer, make fit food choices without taking a bite out of taste.

Reach Giovanni on twitter @GiovanniRoselli and his website, GiovanniRoselli.com.

PET OF THE MONTH

JOHNNY BE GOOD

t

wo-year-old Johnny is a big lover of people and other pooches.

He’s a low-maintenance, easygoing kind of guy. You’d never guess when you meet this outgoing, smiling, well-behaved boy that he was actually part of a cruelty case last year and was seized by the SPCA’s Humane Law Enforcement Unit. (His owner was arrested for animal cruelty.) Luckily, his rough start in life has not affected his sweet disposition.

Johnny is smart and does great with training. Recently, he passed his Canine Life and Social Skills test with flying colors. Well done, Johnny!

To meet Johnny, visit the SPCA of Westchester at 590 N. State Road in Briarcliff Manor.

Founded in 1883, the SPCA is a nokill shelter and is not affiliated with the ASPCA. The SPCA is open 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays and 1 to 4 p.m. Sundays. To learn more, call 914- 941-2896 or visit spca914.org.

Photograph by Sebastian Flores.

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WHEN & WHERE

THROUGH JULY 29 “Where’s Waldo?” In Fairfield, celebrating his 30th Anniversary with the locals. The iconic book character will be hiding in 25 downtown Fairfield businesses through July 29, following a noon July 1 kickoff at Saugatuck Sweets, 28 Reef Road. Meet Waldo, pick up your passport and start the hunt. It wraps up with a “Waldo Shindig” and a chance to win Waldo books at the Fairfield University Bookstore, 1 p.m. July 29, 1499 Post Road; 203-255-7756, fairfieldbookstore. com

July 6

July 11 through 26

Lyndhurst and Jazz Forum Arts present “Sunset Jazz at Lyndhurst,” featuring the Rocky Middleton Sextet. The performance is part of the concert series held on the sweeping lawns of the Tarrytown estate.

Grounds open 4 p.m., with music from 6:30. Lyndhurst, 635 S. Broadway, 914-631-4481, lyndhurst.org, jazzforumarts.org

The Greenburgh Public Library presents “Café a las Siete,” a series of events that focus on Caribbean culture. The lineup includes a discussion about travel to Cuba, the poetry and art of Tania Guerrera, dance classes with Latinshines! and a concert of Latin jazz, rock and salsa music by TimbaWáh. Times vary, Greenburgh Public Library, 300 Tarrytown Road, Elmsford; 914-721-8235, greenburghlibrary.org

July 6 through 9 and 14 through 16

July 11 through 29

Stamford’s Curtain Call presents “Julius Caesar,” producing its 14th annual free outdoor Shakespeare production at its Sterling Farms Campus. Park opens for seating at 6 p.m., with the show following at 7:30.

1349 Newfield Ave., Stamford; 203-461-6358, curtaincallinc.com

Westport Country Playhouse presents the 2016 Lucille Lortel Award-winning play, “Grounded,” a contemporary drama about a U.S. Air Force fighter pilot who is grounded by an unexpected pregnancy.

Times vary. 25 Powers Court; 203-571-1287, westportplayhouse.org

Through Sept. 10

July 8 through Aug. 20

July 12

Westchester Broadway Theatre brings the Tony Award-winning musical “Annie” to its stage. Annie is a spirited orphan determined to find her parents, who abandoned her years ago on the doorstep of a New York City orphanage run by the cruel Miss Hannigan.

Times vary, 1 Broadway Plaza, Elmsford; 914-5922222, broadwaytheatre.com

Silvermine Arts Center presents its 67th “Art of the Northeast,” an exhibit featuring all media and juried by the Whitney Museum of American Art’s David Kiehl. Noon to 5 p.m. Wednesdays to Saturdays, 1 to 5 p.m. Sundays, 1037 Silvermine Road, New Canaan; 203-966-9700, silvermineart.org

Author Samuel Schmitt delivers a lecture, “Silvermine: Celebrating Its Art, History and Beauty,” at Norwalk Historical Society’s newly renovated Mill Hill Historic Park. 6:30 p.m., 2 E. Wall St.; 203-846-0525, norwalkhistoricalsociety.org

Through Sept. 17 Hudson River Museum presents “Garden of Ornament,” a solo exhibition of works by Robert Zakanitch, a driving force in the Pattern and Decoration movement of the mid-20th century. The work will explore this artist’s depictions of floral beauty. Noon to 5 p.m., Wednesdays through Sundays, Hudson River Museum, 511 Warburton Ave., Yonkers; 914-963-4550, hrm.org

July 1 Meet Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum alumni artist Sharon Louden for a book signing and discussion of her second book, “The Artist as Cultural Producer: Living and Sustaining a Creative Life.” The collection of essays describes how artists extend their practices outside of their studios. 2 p.m., 258 Main St., Ridgefield; 203-438-4519, aldrichart.org

July 1 and 2 Historic Hudson Valley presents “A Night on Fire,” a fully choreographed display featuring A Different Spin, a comedic fire juggling troupe, plus pre-show entertainment by musician Jim Keyes. 8 p.m., with an additional show 9:30 p.m. July 1. Philipsburg Manor, 381 N. Broadway, Sleepy Hollow; 914-3666900, hudsonvalley.org

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July 9 Boz Scaggs and Michael McDonald team up to deliver a night of music at The Ridgefield Playhouse Summer Gala. Tickets include dinner by area restaurants and a silent auction. Gala starts at 6 p.m., with live auction and performance starting at 8. 80 E. Ridge Road; 203-438-5795, ridgefieldplayhouse.org

July 13 Enjoy the latest in the bimonthly “Design Night Out” series which explores the theme of water and how design is responding to water-related issues in Connecticut. Panel, open bar, food and networking.

6 p.m., HSW Building, 1115 Main St., Bridgeport; 203978-3011, dnoct.com

THE RIDGEFIELD PLAYHOUSE for movies and the performing arts

Non-profit 501 (c) (3)

JULY

7 JJ Grey & Mofro 16 Peter Yarrow & Noel Paul Stookey

of Peter, Paul and Mary

20 Toad The Wet Sprocket Special Guest Beta Play

22 Glenn Miller Orchestra 23 Judd Apatow 24 George Thorogood & The Destroyers “Rock Party Tour”

25 Pat Benatar & Neil Giraldo 26 Thunder from Down Under

MICHAEL MCDONALD & BOZ SCAGGS

The Ridgefield Playhouse Summer Gala

JULY 9

AUGUST

4 Echoes of Sinatra

Starring Steve Kazlauskas With Jack Lynn as Dean Martin

5 Tommy Emmanuel 8 Don Felder Formerly of The Eagles 12 Brett Dennen 13 An Evening with Colin Hay 19

American Ghost Hunter

Chad Calek Presents Sir Noface Lives Tour

20 Chris Botti

28 Dave Koz and Larry Graham

23 Kenny Wayne Shepherd 24 Robert Randolph & The Family Band 25 An Evening With The Neal Morse Band

29 Bernie Williams and His All Star Band

26 Gavin DeGraw 27 The Bacon Brothers

The Perfect Night Out with Friends

27 Preservation Hall Jazz Band Meet and Greet tickets available!

Side By Side Summer 2017

Charity Softball Game & Show

31 Choir! Choir! Choir!

As seen on YouTube!

AUGUST

1 Dweezil Zappa

Plays Whatever The F@%k He Wants

3 Sara Evans

Special Guest Cross Atlantic

september

8 Charlie Daniels Band 9 Stephen Kellogg

Special Guest James Maddock

10 UB40 Legends Ali, Astro & Mickey 13 Uncle Kracker 14 Guitar Army

John Jorgenson, Lee Roy Parnell, Joe Robinson

203.438.5795 • RIDGEFIELDPLAYHOUSE.ORG

July 14 Blue Door Art Center presents an opening reception for its “Hot & Cool Summer at the Blue Door” exhibit, on view through Aug. 26. The annual showcase will feature the diverse works of the center’s artist members. Reception from 5 to 7 p.m. 13 Riverdale Ave., Yonkers; 914-375-5100, bluedoorartcenter.org  ArtsWestchester presents a screening of the documentary “Saving Banksy.” The film tells the story of a misguided art collector’s attempts to save a painting by the world-famous street artist Banksy from destruction and the auction block. 7 p.m., ArtsWestchester, 31 Mamaroneck Ave., White Plains; 914-4284220, artswestchester.org

July 14 through 30 Thrown Stone Theatre Company presents “Milk,” a new play by Ross Dunsmore that explores the universal need to feed and to be fed, as three couples struggle to meet their basic needs. Enjoy “Cocktails With the Cast” July 23. Times vary, Ridgefield Conservatory of Dance, 440 Main St.; 203-442-1714, thrownstone.org

July 15 and 16 The juried 44th Westport Fine Arts Festival features the work of more than 140 national and international fine artists across 12 categories as it makes its return to its historic home on Main Street. 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., 203-505-8716, Westportdma.com

July 18 New Rochelle Public Library presents “International Music and Dance of Japan,” featuring costumed members of the Japanese Folk Dance Institute. Under the direction of Momo Suzuki, the “Minbuza” dancers will introduce the culture and history of Japan through various traditional folk dances. 7 p.m., 1 Library Plaza; 914-632-7878, nrpl.org

July 21 through 23 Little Radical Theatrics offers a production of the Tony Award-winning Broadway musical, “The Secret Garden.” When recently orphaned 10-year-old Mary Lennox is sent to live with her reclusive uncle, she discovers the key to one of the estate’s many wonders – a neglected garden hidden away on the property that will transform their lives. Times vary. The Grinton I. Will Library, 1500 Central Park Ave., Yonkers; 914589-1669, littleradicaltheatrics.com

"Garden of Ornament" continues through Sept. 17 at the Hudson River Museum.

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July 29

Australian roots performer Xavier Rudd plays on an array of instruments, including didgeridoos, guitars, stomp boxes, drums, banjos, harmonicas and bells. 8 p.m., The Warehouse at FTC, 70 Sanford St., Fairfield; 203-259-1036, fairfieldtheatre.org

Audiences are invited to an evening of music performed by the Yonkers Philharmonic at Untermyer Park. The program will feature works by Beethoven, Schubert, Tchaikovsky and more. The free event will also include a picnic and a tour of the gardens. 7:30 p.m., 945 N. Broadway, Yonkers; 914 631-6674, yonkersphilharmonic.org or untermyergardens.org

July 27 Music on the Hill presents Franz Schubert’s Mass in E-flat, one of the composer’s last major works, a rarely performed piece filled with the lyrical beauty for which he was admired. 8 p.m., St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church, 36 New Canaan Road, Wilton; 203529-3133, musiconthehillct.org

Presented by ArtsWestchester and the Cultural Alliance of Fairfield County.

For more, visit artswestchester.org and culturalalliancefc.org.

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Your Keys to Summer Music

Orchestra of St. Luke’s, Orchestra-in-Residence

Angela Meade / July 8

Daniil Trifonov / July 9

McCoy Tyner / July 15

Emmylou Harris / July 22

Sutton Foster / July 29

Summer Season June 17 – July 30 Classical / Jazz / Opera / Roots / Kids & Families / Gardens / Food + Drink / Group Discounts s

1 hour from NYC by car or train / Free shuttle from Katonah Metro-North Station / Located in Katonah, NY

Tickets & Full Calendar: caramoor.org 914.232.1252

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BIG NIGHT

The Junior League of Central Westchester (JLCW) raised more than $115,000 recently at its 70th anniversary celebration, “Big Night Out: 70 BIG Years,” held at Sunningdale Country Club in Scarsdale. The event honored Susan Fox, president and CEO of White Plains Hospital, and Janice Starr, past JLCW president and community leader. The evening’s festivities included a cocktail hour, dinner, music, dancing and a silent auction. Proclamations from city, county and state officials were presented to the JLCW and its honorees. Funds raised will provide essential financial support for the JLCW’s educational and charitable projects.

Photographs by Kevin Luker Photography.

1. Robert P. Astorino, Janice Starr, Meridith Alin, Susan Fox, Amy Paulin and Tom Roach 2. Angela Ho, Sharon Ho, Dolya Fleck and Tara Greenberg 3. Sherry Hsu, Marla Aboulafia, Danielle Marino and Jill Mickol 4. Michelle Memoli, Chandra Nottage, Thrusha Henderson and Wendy Armstrong

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GIVING HOPE TO KIDS

Hundreds of walkers came out to support Pediatric Cancer Foundation (PCF) at its 23nd annual “Give Hope Walk” in Riverside Park in Manhattan.

This 5K walk helped shine a light on more than 12,000 infants, children and teenagers diagnosed with cancer each year. On hand for special performances were “American Idol” season 14 finalist and pediatric cancer survivor Jax, as well as season 14 finalist Robbie Rosen. Special guests who participated in the ribbon-cutting included pediatric cancer survivors from Westchester County and New York City. The walk is one of many fundraisers around the country sponsored

by Pediatric Cancer Foundation, with proceeds going to funding research to combat this disease.

Photographs by Andi Hughes.

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5. Cheryl Rosen, Jax, Bonnie Shyer, Shelley Rome, Robbie Rosen and Danielle Dellilo 6. Sophie and Stephanie Mittman 7. The Bartell Family 8. The Rosen Family 9. Nancy Joselson, Marcia Walker and Dr. Jeffrey Lipton

proud to be

exceptional .

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N AT I O N A L F O L K D A N C E E N S E M B L E O F C R O AT I A

“A n a u d i e n c e o f 5 0 0 0 c e r t a i n l y appreciated some of the most skillful and inventive performances of the national dance ever seen at the Royal Albert H a l l .”

EVENING NEWS – LONDON

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 3, 8PM

PERFORMING ARTS CENTER, PURCHASE COLLEGE 735 Anderson Hill Rd, Purchase, NY10577 t i c kets : w w w.Cro E x p o .c o m

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KIDS AT WORK (AND PLAY) Cartus, the global relocation company in Danbury, recently hosted a “Bring Your Daughters and Sons to Work Day.” More than 100 children between the ages of 7 and 12 participated in a variety of cultural and community activities, a tour of a moving van, visits by the local fire and police departments, lunch with ice cream, games and a fitness lesson and challenge. Photographs by Carol Gibson.

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Chelsea Devlin and Damian Hoffman Daniel, Fabiana and Nicole Hershfield Tyler Bosco-Schmidt Danielle Burdick

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SPRUCING UP THE PLACE Recently, members of the Fordham Alumni Chapter of Westchester County — including Children’s Rehabilitation Center trustee Marc Rosa and Elizabeth Seton Pediatric Center board member Catherine Franzetti and their friends — volunteered their time and gardening skills to the Elizabeth Seton Pediatric Center of Yonkers in celebration of Earth Day. A total of eight volunteers spent the afternoon cleaning the grounds of the pediatric center and planting pansies and lilies in front of the building and around its entryway to create a cheerful and welcoming environment for the children and their families.

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Katia Barker, Melina Barker and Matt Whittle Brian Harrington Dr. Carl Franzetti Mary Ann Williams and Ann Gannon

Named one of the region’s best hospitals for 2016-2017 by U.S. News & World Report and the highest on the list in Westchester

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J T Farm Lewisboro, NY

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icturesque 32 acre horse farm overlooking a professional equestrian facility, open meadows, a sparkling pond, and contiguous to the 4700 acre Pound Ridge Reservation. The horse compound consists of 25+ stalls, 4 huge pastures with run-in sheds, 8 acre riding field, all weather paddocks, an outdoor riding ring and grooms apartments. The handsome 4 BR, 3 1/2 Bath colonial includes a great room, with floor to ceiling stone fireplace, heated sunroom, in-ground swimming pool with spa, and a legal accessory apt. This stunning property is a true working horse farm, as well as a gentleman’s estate. Close proximity to Old Salem, Fairfield, Ox Ridge and Hits horse shows. 1 hour to NYC. MLS#4720785 Price: $6,950,000

North Salem

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Colebrook Farm Bedford

ountry Estate w/inspiring views & glorious space for gatherings. High ceilings, exposed beams, custom millwork, wide plank hardwood floors, floor to ceiling windows. Gourmet Kitchen w/sitting area & fplce.

Formal D/R. Fabulous Stone fplce. & Full Size Bar. Game Room. Office. 5 BR, 4 ½ Baths w/a 1st floor Master. Rooms flow into the Outdoor Landscape of multiple Stone Patios, Outdoor BBQ, Gunite Pool, Tennis Court & Basketball Court on over 8 Acres. 2,758 additional sq. ft. of Finished Lower Level provides a Playroom, Fitness Room, Guest suite & access to patio & pool. Generator. Adjoining 11.3 ACRE parcel available to purchase separately. MLS#4652365 Price: $1,999,000

riginal 1920 classic 4 BR 3.5 bath farmhouse w/recent renovations & additions. This sunny home strikes a perfect balance of vintage character married w/today’s amenities. Highlights in the house includes spacious rooms detailed w/cathedral ceiling, antique flooring, arched doorways, oversized windows, moldings, fireplace & walls of French doors overlooking the pastoral landscape. The country kit. w/Breakfast area features antique beams& butcher block counter top. Included is a full house generator. The guest house with 704 sq ft was originally a 1800’s school house. The bucolic setting w/ lush lawns, mature trees, pond, water fall & views overlooks the neighboring horse farm’s open fields. A truly special offering! MLS#4720006 Price: $1,950,000

Little Tree Farm, North Salem

Danbury, Connecticut

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orse Farm w/exquisitely restored C1840 Federal home. Cobblestone Courtyard. Kit. w/new appliances & poured concrete counters. Magical Titicus River that crosses property, glorious trees, footbridge & numerous sitting areas. LR w/built-in bookcases & gas fplce. Sun Porch off MB. Wide flbds. Waterworks Bths. Full basement w/rm for gym & office plus large cedar closet. 3 Stall Barn. Tack Rm.Wash Stall. Hay Loft. Separate 2 stall Barn w/equipment storage has studio/full bth above. Generator. 6 Paddocks. 2 with walk-outs from the stalls. 70’x 200’ ft. Outdoor Ring. On scenic dirt Road w/direct access to No. Salem’s riding trails. Min. to Ridgefield, CT. MLS#4717190 Price: $2,395,000

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arefree living in luxurious surroundings. Spectacular Denton Ellite on premium lot w/beautiful panoramic views. Open concept home w/top of the line upgrades. Stunning cooks kitchen w/Subzero refrigerator, Bosch dishwasher, large Thermador stove. Beautiful knob creek wood flooring, marble, granite, tray ceilings, walls of windows and oversized wood moldings. Great room w/picturesque windows, large fireplace & French door to deck. Master BR Suite w/ large luxurious bath & marble shower. Finished 860 sq. ft. walk out lower level w/full bath that leads to finished patio. Walk to the Rivington Club House w/indoor pool, outdoor pool, gymnasium, banquet room & much more. CT/NY line.

Price: 795,000

O N T H E G R E E N , B E D F O R D, N E W YO R K • 9 1 4 . 2 3 4 . 3 6 4 2 • V I N W H I T. C O M

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A JUST CAUSE

The Thursday Club — a group of women who are committed to the community, each other and the belief that friends working together with focus and compassion can improve the world around them — recently presented Pace Women’s Justice Center of White Plains with a check for $100,000.

The funds, raised through the club’s annual benefit dinner-dance at Abigail Kirsch at Tappan Hill in Tarrytown, will help support the center, which for 25 years has helped victims of domestic violence, sexual assault and elder abuse and their families move forward with their lives in safety.

Photographs by Eve Prime of Poppy Studio.

1. Cindy Kanusher, Alayne Katz and Pat Ellis 2. Nicholas Lowry 3. Connie Curran and Jinx Chapman

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A HECK OF A ‘BASH’ ArtsWestchester held its annual “ArtsBash” fundraiser at the arts organization’s White Plains headquarters. Visitors once again relished the featured food and drink samples as well as gallery exhibits and artist-studio tours. Photographs by Aleesia Forni and Leslye Smith.

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Angelica Hernandez Carmen Velazquez and Amelia Sherman Jennifer Winters and Leslie Lampert Joe Pugni Jr. and Louis Terilli Anne Lysonski Janet Langsam and John Crabtree Carrie Belk Robert P. Astorino

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Rec og nized as one of Ame rica ’s 100 B e st Hosp i t al s f or Pa tie nt Expe rie nce by the Women’s C hoic e Awar d ® .

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KENYA, TANZANIA, ETHIOPIA & RWANDA TOURS Exceptional Camps & Lodges | Authentic Experiences | Private tours for groups and families with children

LIONS, LEOPARDS, ELEPHANTS, GIRAFFES, RHINOS, WILDEBEESTS, CHEETAHS AND MORE See the Great Migration, Mountain Gorillas, the Maasai, & Tribes of the Omo Valley

All packages include photography lessons | John Rizzo is a former Newsweek photographer, has worked on 6 continents & winner of two Arts Alive Grants, 2013 &2016

John Rizzo Photography | 405 Tarrytown Rd. Suite 1302, White Plains, NY 10607 | (646) 221-6186 worldwide mobile | www.johnrizzophoto.com

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AUTHOR! AUTHOR!

In front of a sold-out crowd at The Bedford Playhouse, Lesley Stahl of CBS’ “60 Minutes” interviewed Sheila Nevins, president of HBO Documentary Programming, about her life and new book, “You Don’t Look Your Age…and Other Fairy Tales.” The two also signed copies of their books.

(Stahl is the author of “Becoming Grandma: The Joy and Science of the New Grandparenting.”

Oscar-winner Ellen Burstyn, the special guest, also did readings at the event, which inaugurated The Playhouse’s “Author Series,” designed to foster dialogue between authors and readers in our community. The Playhouse is currently under renovation and reconstruction and will reopen in 2018 as a state-of-cultural hub for Bedford and its neighboring communities. Photographs by Peter Michaelis.

1. Linda von Kouy, Laura Blau, Eva Kelly and Marlene Paltrow 2. Ellen Burstyn 3. Sarah Long 4. John Farr 5. Lesley Stahl 6. Alison Fackelmayer, Jennifer Stahlkrantz and Elizabeth Riddiford 7. Allison Ryan and Courtney McGinnis 8. Joni Evans and Sheila Nevins

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BURKE’S BEST Burke Rehabilitation Hospital recently presented its 2017 Burke Award Dinner at the Brae Burn Country Club in Purchase. The event, attended by more than 320 guests, is the institution’s largest fundraiser of the year. The Burke Award is the highest honor bestowed by the hospital’s administration and board of trustees, given to individuals or groups who contributed to the field of rehabilitation through personal achievements, scientific discovery or the establishment of programs and initiatives that improve the quality of life for individuals with disabilities. This year’s honorees were Barbara and Steven Kessler of Scarsdale and Dr. Michael James Reding of Yorktown Heights.

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9. Steven Tisser, Richard Sgaglio, Brian Swift, Cathy Dwyer, Barry Jordan, Jeffrey Menkes, Sandra Alexandrou, Annette Bucci, Jon Stewart, seated: Colleen Borelli, Wil Siegel and Janet Herbold 10. Michael James Reding, Barbara and Steven Kessler and Robert P. Astorino

Proud to be among just 7% of hospitals nationwide to achieve Magnet ® recognition for nursing excellence

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Westmoreland Sanctuary

Floral Lecture & Workshop Series

“Foraged Flowers”

Bell Jars and Cans Serve as a Base For Locally Sourced and Foraged Summer Flower Arrangements

Thursday, August 3rd 10:00 am - 12:00 Noon

“THE BUTTERFLY” LECTURE Guest Speaker: Don Riepe Director, American Littoral Society’s Northeast Chapter Published in National Geographic, Smithsonian, National Wildlife, National Conservationist, NY Times 10:00 am – 10:45 am FORAGED FLOWERS WORKSHOP Guest Speaker: Nadia Ghannam Bachelor of Fine Arts - Cornell University Masters of Arts - Queens University 10:45 am – 12:00 Noon Coffee, Tea and Cookies to Follow $35.00 – Materials Included To Register, Visit WestmorelandSanctuary.org 260 Chestnut Ridge Rd., Mt Kisco, NY 10549 914.666.8448 Series Dates SEPT. 21 DEC. 7 Late Summer Bouquets Winterscapes

Westmoreland Sanctuary.

Celebrating 60 Years of Preservation, Conservation and Appreciation of Nature.

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ABOVE THE BAR AWARDS About 200 were on hand at Whitby Castle in Rye on June 8 for the 2017 Above the Bar Awards.

P. Daniel Hollis, a member of the firm Shamberg Marwell Hollis Andreycak & Laidlaw PC, received the “Pace Setter” Award. Joseph Carlucci of Cuddy & Feder LLP was named “Most Socially Conscious Attorney.” The award for “Leading Land Use Attorney” went to Richard O’Rourke of Keane & Beane, PC. Georgia Kramer of Kramer Kozek LLP was cited as the “Leading Matrimonial Attorney.” Angelica Cancel, who graduated magna cum laude in May, was named “Most Prominent Pace Law Student.”

The Above the Bar Awards event was founded

by Citrin Cooperman, the Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University and the Westchester County Business Journal. Sponsors of this year’s event were Citrin Cooperman, Country Bank, Elisabeth Haub School of Law, The Kensington, Val’s Putnam Wines & Liquors, the Westchester County Bar Association, the Westchester Women’s Bar Association and Westfair Communications Inc. RBC Wealth Management was a supporter.

Photos by Sebastian Flores.

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Ada Sumber and Patricia Richard Ajay Shah and Adam Glatt Jordan Montoya and Angelica, Josie and Ted Cancel Laura DiDiego and Gary Karlitz Michelle Schaver and P. Daniel Hollis III Marilyn Piken, Ann Chomyk, Cheryl Kramer and Carol Bockner Alan A. Schachter, Robert A Modansky and Mark DiMichael Jack Geoghegan, Anthony Scarpino and John Colangelo Above the Bar winners: Joseph Carlucci, P. Daniel Hollis III, Angelica Cancel, Georgia Kramer and Richard O’Rourke Maeve Lucey and Joseph Carlucci Bill Null and William Cuddy Renee, Richard, Kathleen and Shannon O’Rourke Gary Sastow, Anne Jordan Duffy and Raymond Planell Alayne Katz, Patricia Hennessey, Neil and Allison Kozek and Mike Faust Georgia Kramer, Linda S. Jamieson and Amy Lippman

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International Wines, Spirits and Beers Free Wine Tastings on Friday and Saturday Daily Sales and Specials Corporate and Client Gifting Programs Event Planning Services

Classes, Seminars and Tutorials Private In-Home Tastings and Classes Free Delivery Service (inquire) Wine Cellar and Collecting Consultation We Buy Your Older Wines and Spirits

VAL’S TIP OF THE MONTH —

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203-869-2299

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203-813-3477

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JULY 2017 FAMILY OWNED SINCE127 1957

WAGMAG.COM

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AND JUSTICE FOR ALL

More than 400 people showed their commitment to and support for Legal Services of the Hudson Valley (LSHV) during its 2017 “Equal Access to Justice” dinner, held at The Ritz-Carlton New York, Westchester in White Plains. The sold-out event — which was co-chaired by Alfred E. Donnellan, managing partner at DelBello Donnellan Weingarten Wise & Wiederker LLP, and David Boies, chairman at Boies Schiller Flexner LLP — raised more than $425,000 for the nonprofit, which provides free, comprehensive, civil legal services to those who cannot afford them.

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Amy Paulin Vanessa Watson, Joe Halprin and Cathy Lueders Tara Rosenblum Josh Kimerling and Helaine Brick-Cabot Chris Cabanillas Barbara Finkelstein and Lucille Oppenheim Robert Hermann and Matt D’Amore Linda Ellis and Diana Russo Philip M. Halpern and Alfred Donnellan Fran Pantaleo and Tom Gabriel

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Eager Beaver Tree Service INTELLIGENT TREE CARE ARTISTIC DESIGN DETAIL ORIENTED LONG TERM PLANNING-IMMEDIATE RESULTS SATISFACTION GUARANTEED!

EXTRAORDINARY Serving Westchester and Fairfield 914-533-2255 | 203-869-3280 |

203-966-6767

www.eagerbeavertreeservice.com Doug Paulding | Dpupatree@aol.com

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FULFILLING DREAMS

Recently, the Children’s Dream Foundation held its 25th anniversary dinner at the Shenorock Shore Club in Rye. More than 200 people were in attendance to celebrate and raise funds for CDF’s work in improving emergency medical care for children in the Hudson Valley. At the event, the Foundation honored Dr. Frank Medici and presented its Medical Service Award to Dr. J. Anthony SanFilippo. Photographs by Tim Grajek.

1. Vinny and Joanne Marzella and Elaine and Jeffrey Allen 2. Judith Watson and George Coles 3. Msgr. John Brinn 4. Ida Doctor and Catherine and Dr. Anthony SanFilippo 5. Carolyn Stevens and Gerry and Laura Holbrook 6. Donald Murphy and John E. Martin 7. Richard Mermelstein and Michael Stevens 8. Dr. Timothy Haydock, Dr. Rajesh Gupta and Dr. Erik Larsen 9. Dr. Bruce Roseman, Dr. Frank Medici and Tess Raso 10. Dr. Daniel Rauch, Dr. Irina Zhabinskaya and Dr. Mindy Stimell-Rauch

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ASTORINO’S ‘HARVEST’ Westchester County Executive Robert P. Astorino was the beneficiary of a recent fundraiser hosted by Harvest on Hudson in Hastings-on-Hudson. More than 60 people attended the cocktail reception at the Tuscan-themed restaurant.

Photograph by Simon Feldman.

1. Robert P. Astorino and Bruce Bernacchia

OFFERING HOPE

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Lifting Up Westchester, a 38-year old social services organization recently celebrated its annual “Oasis of Hope” spring gala at Leewood Golf Club in Eastchester. More than 200 patrons and supporters attended the event, which raised more than $110,000. The money will enable the White Plains-based agency to provide services to more than 4,000 Westchester people in need over the coming year. Photographs by Andi Hughes.

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Walter Simon and Carol Schiro Greenwald The Munoz Family Zubeen Schroff and Anahaita Kotval Hannah Nelson, Joe Gallo, Paxton Lewis and Linda Gallo 6. Helen Hamlyn and Paul Anderson-Winchell 7. Sal D’Errico, Ashley Elliot and Robert Hough 8. Paul Anderson-Winchell, The Rev. Richard Kunz and Carlos R. Munoz

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BEATING BREAST CANCER The Breast Cancer Alliance (BCA) and JCC Greenwich teamed for the medical symposium “Taking Action Against Breast Cancer: Genetic Testing, Screening and Lifestyle Prevention” at a breakfast at Old Oaks Country Club in Purchase. A panel of leading experts in the field discussed new discoveries and technology that can play a significant role in improving risk assessment, prevention and early detection for breast cancer. This will help inform women about how to take action – for themselves and their daughters, mothers, sisters and friends. Photographs by Chichi Ubiña.

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Lisa Matthews and Patty Gelfman Linda laTrenta and Meg Russell Karen Kolodny and Marla Mehlman Jill Plancher Katherine Geoghegan Jane Weitzman and Debra Shore Julie Hochstin, Susan Meyers and Debra and Corinne Shore Staci Barber and Lisa Walsh Annie Knickman and Donna Hagberg Amy Katz, Sheri Warshaw, Lisa Cummins, Cindy Saul and Rachel Stern Leah Schechter, Pam Ehrenkranz, Ellen Davis and Yonni Wattenmaker Beth Cutler, Suzanne Katz and Jane Weitzman Mary Jo Razook, Annie Amato and Mary Quick Stacey Levine, Davena Levine and Hope Wolfe Andrew Dannenberg and Jeanne Maxbauer Jane Canning, Joan Whipple and Jaime Warner Stacey Levine, Nancy Schwartz and Ali Davis Laurie Cassoli, Lisa Matthews, Antoinette Griffith and Jill Ciporin Emily Ginsberg, Amy Knox, Leslie Todtfeld and Julie Gerstein

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HEINEKEN GIVES BACK

Heineken USA recently held its 10th annual “Day of Giving,” teaming up with GrowNYC and Ground Work Hudson to help transform the South County Trailway, a 14-mile paved bicycle and pedestrian path, in Ardsley. Working together, 110 participants beautified nearly a mile of the trailway, ensured the survival of 200 trees, moved seven tons of wood chips, painted 50 garden signs, built 24 garden beds and four picnic tables and contributed 480 volunteer hours.

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Nuno Teles Amanda Blanco Jeff Neuman Kristin Du Bree Dan Isleib HEINEKEN USA employees during the company’s 10th Annual “Day of Giving.”

Ike Anyanwu Ronald den Elzen Bernardo Moraes Spielmann, Carolina Atkinson and Hannah Dray Felix Palau and Mike Bronstein

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WAGVERTISERS J U LY 2017

AFTD – 75 theaftd.org/learnmore

Garrison Art Center – 30 garrisonartcenter.org

Moderne Barn - 99 modernebarn.com

Skinner – inside front cover skinnerinc.com

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Georgette Gouveia - 77 thegamesmenplay.com

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ONS - 55 onsmd.com

Sothebys International Realty – 58, 59 sothebyshomes.com/greenwich

Neil S. Berman - 62 bermanbuyscollectables.com

Greenwich Hospital - 39 greenwichhospital.org/surgery

Penny Pincher - 38 pennypincherboutique.com

Briggs House Antiques - 18 briggshouse.com

Greenwich Medical Spa - 43 greenwichmedicalspa.com

Pepe Infiniti – 33 pepeinfiniti.com

Cafe Hudson - 45 cafehudson.com

Greenwich Polo Club – 3 greenwichpoloclub.com

Prutting & Company- 105 prutting.com

Cannondale Generators - 89 cannondalegenerators.com

Gregory Sahagian & Son Awnings, Inc. - 83 gssawnings.com

Putnam County Wine and Food Fest - 107 putnamcountyWinefest.com

Herde de Ferme – 15 herdeferme.com

R&M Woodrow Jewelers - 1 woodrowjewelers.com

The Heights - 42 theheightsatbrothervics.com

Rela Café - 48 Relacafe.com

The J House - 7 jhousegreenwich.com

Ridgefield Playhouse - 115 ridgefieldplayhouse.org

Kisco River Eatery - 97 kiscoriver.com

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Kristals Cosmetics - 109 kristals.com

Royal Closet - 10 royalcloset.com

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LADO- 119 croexpo.com

Royal Regency - 35 royalregencyhotelny.com

Entergy - 87 safesecurevital.com

Manhattanville College School of Education - 6 mville.edu/soe

Saybrook Point Inn and Spa – inside back cover saybrook.com

Miller Motor Cars - 9 millermotorcars.com

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Caramoor - 117 caramoor.org Connecticut Basement Systems - 54 basementsolutionsnow.com City Perch Kitchen & Bar - 11 cityperch.com Cystic Fibrosis Foundation - 34 runway.eventscff.org Dolphin Restaurant Bar - Lounge - 103 dolphinrbl.com

Euphoria Kitchen & Bath - 86 euphoriakitchens.com First County Bank – 49 firstcountybank.com

Sportime Summer Camps - 25 sportimecamps.com/LISLE Stew Leonard’s - 63 stewleonards.com.

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SUSAN BARBASH

134

WAGMAG.COM

JULY 2017

LISA CASH

ANNE JORDAN DUFFY

BARBARA HANLON

MARCIA PFLUG

PATRICE SULLIVAN

Inside every cat lives the spirit of the wild.

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©2017 Blue Buffalo Co., Ltd.

All cats are descendants of the lynx, which means they share many similar traits – including a love for meat. That’s why we created BLUE Wilderness.® Made with the finest natural ingredients, BLUE Wilderness is formulated with a higher concentration of the chicken, duck or salmon cats love. And BLUE Wilderness has none of the grains that contain gluten.

If you want your cat to enjoy a meat-rich diet like her ancestors once did, there’s nothing better than BLUE Wilderness.

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Love them like family. Feed them like family.®

WAGMAG.COM

JULY 2017

135

WE WONDER:

WIT

HOW DO YOU SHOW HOSPITALIT Y TO OTHERS? *

Tina Accardi

Gina Badagnani

Joan Barrett

Courtney Caverzasi

Jen Hinman

Jill Holt

Tina Accardi Gem Designs, Jewett, New York, resident

founder, JODS equestrian apparel for women, Hershey, Pennsylvania, resident

Hingham Square Needlepoint, Hingham, Massachusetts, resident

owner, RIDE Equestrian-LifestyleSport, Shrub Oak resident

owner, SweetWater Farm, North Salem resident

West Lane Farm, North Salem

“I have a home in upstate New York and we have an open-house policy.”

“In the store, it’s going up to someone and asking what they are looking for. At home, it’s offering food and drink.

Hospitality is about putting people at ease.”

“By showing them the gift of needlepoint.”

“We always greet customers by saying, ‘What can we help you with today?’ We try to provide good service. We’re not pushy, but we always say we’re here to help.”

“With good food and good wine.”

“I give them a ride on my golf cart.”

Lynn Medeo

Katharine Page

Deb Pearse

Vanessa Smith

Gail Thomas

Camille Worrell

co-owner, Superior Equestrian, South Salem resident

owner, Katharine Page fine sandals and shoes for women, Mount Kisco resident

owner, Dark Horse Enterprises sculptures, Spooner, Wisconsin, resident

filmmaker, Bedford resident

SnugPups Pet Apparel, Spinnerstown, Pennsylvania, resident

designer, Chasse P’tit Loup vintage jewelry design, White Plains resident

“Wine and cheese and crackers is how I show hospitality.”

“My favorite way to show hospitality to others is to cook for them. I grew up in a large family and my mother would always cook... It’s a great way to be hospitable….”

“I open my house willingly to strangers, contractors. I say, ‘Come in’ and I feed them.”

“Hospitality has to do with trying to make beauty and relaxation around others. The writer Colette once famously wrote, ‘I'd rather have flowers on the table than diamonds around my neck.’ Hospitality is sharing and trying to enhance an experience, comfort someone or help someone.”

“I tend to walk right up to the person, look them in the eye and say, ‘Hello, how are you?’ Hospitality is about kindness.”

“I was raised by a mother who knew how to show hospitality to others. It’s so nice to have someone cook for you, put out the linens and dishes and show you around.

That’s hospitality, which I think is a disappearing art.”

*Asked at the Spring Horse Shows, Old Salem Farm, North Salem 136

WAGMAG.COM

JULY 2017