Crafting a reaffirming oasis in a cold, dark world.
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Hancock & Moore Novella Sofa (top), Braiding Chair (left) and Brandi Chair.
It’s never too early to start thinking spring—especially when we can conjure it inside, in the cozy warmth. These pieces from the semi-bespoke designers Hancock & Moore and Jessica Charles riff on the Pantone Color Institute’s color of the year, Greenery, a “zesty yellow-green shade that evokes the first days of spring.” Or money. We’re all thinking it, given the climate. But the dollah-dollah bill’s closer to Pantone’s Treetop shade, y’all. That doesn’t mean, however, that the air of contention that shrouds everything anymore wasn’t part of the consideration. “We know what kind of world we are living in: one that is very stressful and very tense,” Leatrice Eiseman, the executive director of the Pantone Color Institute, told The New York Times. “This is the color of hopefulness, and of our connection to nature. It speaks to what we call the ‘re’ words: regenerate, refresh, revitalize, renew. Every spring we enter a new cycle and new shoots come up from the ground. It is something life affirming to look forward to.” Manifested in furniture like this that would skew edgy even if it was upholstered in a penny loafer shade of leather, yeah, it’s a deep breath of fresh air, but it’s also a little rock ‘n’ roll, which is an attitude that could serve us all well long beyond this interminable winter. —Scott Edwards
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From left: Jessica Charles Hug Chaise, Ronnie Chair and Lucy Ottoman.
Photos courtesy Hancock & Moore and Jessica Charles
A new twist on low-impact modern living is assuming a familiar but substantially upgraded form.
By Scott Edwards
The nature of the work was very different 14 years ago, when Blue Forest Tree House Design and Construction opened up shop in the Sussex countryside. Gradually, though, the elaborate jungle gyms became modest treehouses and then elaborate treehouses, the kind that kids not so much escaped to as adults, with sprawling entertainment centers, wet bars, fire pits and decks with unfamiliar views, all of it fueling a genuine sense of detachment even as it resided literally feet from home.
Remember those basic, precarious treehouses you built as a kid? These are very distant relatives.
The more indulgent the requests became, the more mindful Simon Payne and his brother, Andy, who founded Blue Forest, seemed to be of maintaining the treehouses’ essence, of integrating them into their backyard settings rather than supplanting them. And in doing so, they became a model for a larger trend that began to emerge: low-impact modern living.
Tree Houses Reimagined: Luxurious Retreats for Tranquility and Play, released last fall by the Chester County-based Schiffer Publishing, features nearly 30 such creations, some of which describe an even bolder future: modular, pod-like, even temporary treehouses intended for camping or rental properties. In including site plans and drawings, they’re empowering a new generation with accessibility. The sorts of treehouses that the Brothers Payne are going to build across the United Kingdom over the years to come are only going to look and feel more like actual living spaces. But even without that kind of disposable income, a treetop escape’s increasingly inching within reach of the rest of us.
Are the majority of your clients adults interested, primarily, in building a treehouse for themselves or their kids? I’m guessing the former.
Simon: I would say almost all the treehouses have something for the younger kids. But, we don’t often build for the kids, if we’re honest. And, regularly, the stuff that’s for the kids is probably slides and swings and things like that. And then the treehouse, the actual room itself, could be anything from somewhere for people to have a party to an office to just a place to hide away and read a book. But, yeah, I think you’re right. Probably 95 percent of them are built for grownups.
We’ll just continue to play it, then, like we’re doing something worthwhile for the kids.
Just making a good excuse for it. I think it’s part of the fun. People want to spend time with their families and that type of thing. But, yeah, I think it’s also a grownup indulgence.
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You credit growing up in Kenya with helping to send you down this path. What did your childhood treehouse look like?
Well, there were quite a number of childhood treehouses. They were often like other kids’, sort of two old pallets wedged up in the branches. Generally, you had to climb up through the tree to get in there. They got more elaborate as we grew up and we started to add walls and windows. And then when we were teenagers, we moved to the UK and lived on a farm. We’d set up all sorts of crazy additions, like zip wires, jungle swings, anything that could be deemed as slightly dangerous.
Your childhood sounds pretty typical. I don’t want to say I grew out of treehouses, but at some point I did stop making them. Why do you think you didn’t?
I think there’s an element of, if you enjoy that part of your life, it seems a shame to stop it. I’d been away to university, looked at quite a different career. I worked in Latin America with [a nonprofit] called World Relief for some time and then moved back to the UK. Andy started Blue Forest a couple of years before that. We started working together on a kind of temporary basis, really. And it became a much more permanent thing. We didn’t kill each other. Actually, in truth, we really enjoy working together. It just seemed like a natural thing to do.
I’m sure there’s a part of it that that challenge of constantly coming up with something new that we may not necessarily know how to build right in the beginning, but you have to figure it out, that’s part of what drives both of us. If the structures haven’t evolved with us, I suspect we may have lost the interest. But because the challenge is always there to come up with something different, and bigger and better, it’s kind of kept us hooked, really.
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Do you have your own treehouses now?
Yeah, we do. We built one as an office when we started the business. Actually, we’ve outgrown it, so we’ve turned it into a holiday accommodation, so people can come and stay there. It’s called the Bensfield Treehouse. So, although we do have one, it’s not for the kids. [Simon and Andy each have three, ranging in age from just under two to 11.] The kids are harassing us daily to build them one. But, up until now, theirs have been much more like the ones that we used to build when we were younger. And I think there’s a lot of fun in building it yourself and doing it with the kids in a lower key way. But they are getting more and more dissatisfied every time they see another cool treehouse.
Was there much of a market there before you guys came along?
I think over the 14 years that we’ve been going, it’s become something that people are a bit more aware of. The idea that you could create a fairly elaborate lodge or treehouse, back in the day, it was definitely a very unusual idea. But it was popular.
When people say it goes back to the treehouse you built when you were younger, I think, although the structure’s quite different, the desire people have to do it is the same thing. They want to be outside. They want to be spending time with their kids. Do something that everyone will enjoy. It’s just that it gets done in a more grownup way because you can. When you start seeing the ideas, it’s tempting to want to do something similar.
Tell me about your most elaborate build to date.
It was primarily a family hideaway. They had a large, large garden. And it was just a space to get away, have parties with friends, sleepovers for the kids. And it was all made to a 75-year design life—stainless steel fixings, hardwood oak structure. The whole thing was over about [1,600 square feet] of floor space, and there was a kitchen and wet room. And then upstairs, a kind of domed ceiling for sleepovers. But through the glass roof, you could see up into the canopy. It was just amazing.
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The most eccentric request you’ve fielded, accommodated or not?
You know, one that comes to mind is quite a simple one. We did a project once for a woman who asked for a door for the fairies. I thought she was joking, so I laughed. And then when she wasn’t laughing, I realized she was being serious. I said, “Well, how big is the fairy?” She thought for a second and said, “About a foot high.” So we made an actual little door next to the main door for the fairies. And then recently, we had a request for an inflatable waterslide, a 20-meter-high waterslide to come off the top of the treehouse. That was quite a challenge. In the end, we found someone in the luxury yacht design business that invented this kind of escape chute, a little like the slides that come off airplanes when they have a fire. So we had one made for the treehouse. It can be completely put away or it can be inflated instantly and turn into a waterslide that comes off the treehouse deck.
You do sometimes get to be a kid again and think what you would most like to have if you were building yourself a treehouse. Really, you don’t need to be a kid again, do you? You just need to think, What would you most like to do? And we’re fortunate, occasionally, to have the odd client that can just do it.
You’re equal parts eternal kid and groundbreaking architect.
Yeah, it’s true. Maybe a mainstream architect would think first about all of the practical implications of their design. Sometimes, we’re just thinking about adventure and fun. And then we’re trying to figure out how to deliver it afterwards, which means you may push the boundaries a little bit more. And that’s why people come to us. They don’t want something normal; they want something unusual.
Photos courtesy Schiffer Publishing (top) and Blue Forest Tree House Design and Construction (7)
We may be forever fixated on NYC and LA, but some of the freshest clothes and accessories around are coming out of our own backyard.
By Jenna Knouse
Kendall Jenner? Nope. Gigi Hadid? Nah. New York City’s the only name making fashionistas fangirl. Run by pink-haired style bloggers, celeb culture and megabrand HQs, the Big Apple is American fashion’s Big Cheese. But, cheese is better on a soft pretzel, and soft pretzels are best in Philadelphia.
So look to your backyard—past the sandbox and Steven Starr restaurants—you’ll spot fashion talent bringing cool to a lukewarm industry. Sure, big brands meet a need: They’re the whitespace, the canvas. But, small brands fill a void: They’re the paint, the personality. Forget the sweater everyone’s wearing. Shop homegrown one-of-a-kinds instead. To get you started, here are five labels that are pushing to become nationwide names before the year’s out.
Concrete Polish Jewels
Angela Monaco overhauled granny’s heirlooms. The result? Concrete Polish Jewels. Working out of Northern Liberties, Monaco fuses metal to mineral in timeless but edgy design. And, she’s good at it—her brick-and-mortar, Ritual Ritual, won Best Jewelry for Philadelphia Magazine’s Best of Philly 2016. Why? Concrete Polish is wow, and so are its other offbeat brands. Peers helping peers. Can I get an amen?
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Lobo Mau
Mod is the mood, and Nicole Haddad brings it. Born from a South Philly studio, Lobo Mau is bold and sophisticated, a combo reflecting its Portuguese translation: Big. Bad. Wolf. Nothing’s bigger or badder (in a good way) than a well-dressed woman. Especially if she’s comfy. Win. Oh, and Haddad’s all about collab—fine artist Ryan Parker creates her prints. Share that brotherly love.
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Rebeca Imperiano
Structural, moody, lustrous. Rebeca Imperiano’s eponymous label’s the lovechild of architecture and fashion. Fitting because the designer holds a bachelor’s in architecture and a master’s in fashion. (Shout-out to my alma mater, Drexel University, for the second degree). Out of school only three short years, Imperiano’s aesthetic is impressively mature. Sleekness your weakness? Watch James Bond, buy Rebeca Imperiano.
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West Oak Design
Christie Sommers makes fashion by making an eco-friendly statement. Dress scraps become a shirt, and shirt scraps, a clutch. Her process wastes zilch, and her products are top-notch. Think air-dried, hand-dyed fabrics and easy shapes. Handcrafted locally in Wyndmoor, West Oak Design is earthy, crunchy cool. Look good, feel good and save Mother Nature in the process.
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jenna k.
After graduating in June, I founded jenna k. I’d write a blurb, but I’m too biased to not gush. Check me out online instead or follow me on Instagram.
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Photos courtesy (from the top): jenna k., Concrete Polish Jewels, Lobo Mau, Rebecca Imperiano, West Oak Design, jenna k.
Don’t worry. Your drive’s probably even shorter than it was. And with that convenience comes even more incentive to grab your apron and put those new knife skills to the test.
By Kendra Lee Thatcher
Ian Knauer and Shelley Wiseman, our trusted guides in this bountiful but sometimes-confounding new landscape.
While you were having a good ol’ time last month, what with all the eggnoggin’ and mistletoin’, one of our most creative and entertaining kitchens picked up and moved about 15 minutes downriver. News of The Farm Cooking School’s relocation to Gravity Hill Farm in Titusville, New Jersey, came as a bit of a surprise. Its chef/owners, Ian Knauer and Shelley Wiseman, appeared to be planting roots at Tullamore Farms, with talk of additional Airbnb rentals there and programming that catered to those overnight guests.
Gravity Hill, though, offers what Tullamore could not: a more central location. Lambertville (and New Hope) sits about 10 minutes to the north and I95, about 10 minutes to the south. There’s also a larger movement unfolding there, in which The Farm Cooking School will be playing a prominent role. Whereas, at Tullamore, Knauer and Wiseman were the farm’s one and only draw, for the most part. Coinciding with the move, Roots to River Organic Farm is taking over Gravity Hill’s fields and its onsite weekend market, where Knauer and Wiseman will be selling prepared foods. (Roots to River owner Malaika Spencer is a former Gravity Hill apprentice.) The impetus for all of this? A new facility called The Barn at Gravity Hill, which’ll be used for workshops and retreats with the aim of turning the farm into a sort of locally-grown hub.
Knauer started The Farm Cooking School about four years ago. From its inception, he and Wiseman nurtured a loyal following of aspiring cooks and enthusiastic eaters through a user-friendly—actually, friendly, period—approach to locally sourced cooking that preaches fundamental techniques and constant enjoyment. Their quaint teaching kitchen at Tullamore became known, through both an extensive roster of classes and regular dinners, as the place to savor elevated food of almost every kind in decidedly unpretentious ways.
Most of us have entered this brave new world through a farmers market only to then discover we’re pretty much on our own to piece the rest of it together. Sure, there’s no shortage of blogs, cookbooks and shows, but little of it is personalized to our experience, living here in this moment, and none of it is interactive. Which makes Knauer and Wiseman practically necessary, whether you’re simply curious (craft an authentic French brunch) or all-in (butcher a side of venison and make terrine with it). And now, with some breathing room, you can expect the subjects and dinners to only become more adventurous—Northern Central European cooking, real-time recipe testing. After all, this is unchartered territory.
Photos courtesy The Farm Cooking School / Guy Ambrosino
A retrofitted bank barn in Solebury illustrates that intimacy and wide-open spaces can coexist quite well, thank you.
By Scott Edwards · Photography by Josh DeHonney
Kristin Duthie and Scott Minnucci moved into their spanking-new home in January 2015. And then again, this time for real, a few months later. Such is the real-life experience of filming an unscripted home design show.
The construction of their retrofitted barn home was featured on “Barn Hunters,” the host of which, Sean Tracy, is the owner of the Bedminster-based Bucks County TimberCraft and an old friend of Minnucci’s. They worked together on a few prior occasions, Minnucci drafting renderings for Tracy’s clients, but the familiarity of their relationship couldn’t smooth over every awkward bend in what verged, constantly, on becoming an unsustainable pace.
On one occasion, the producers suggested they build a man cave, because it’s what their audience wanted to see. “So I was like, ‘I’m going to do it, but not right now,’ ” Minnucci says. But they pressed, so he, perhaps as much out of fatigue as accommodation, relented. What they ended up with, Minnucci is telling me as we descend a spiral staircase into the basement—and suddenly we’re upon it. “We call it The Implement Wall,” he says.
The custom-crafted, first-floor bar and living room, highlighted by the impossible-to-miss “Implement Wall” (below)
Duthie and Minnucci have adorned their home with tasteful, relatively conservative elements. That said, they’re not beyond making a statement. The Implement Wall, however, is more of a threat, or at least it would be in almost any other home. A floor-to-ceiling installation of rusted (and some free-swinging) tools, it borders one side of their bar, which also fits within the unique context: once mighty barn-turned artifact-turned modern home.
They didn’t have to make it themselves, at least. When Duthie and Minnucci think back now on the filming, the moments that still sit within reach are the late nights—midnight, 1 a.m.— when they were staining and painting, staining and painting. For much of it, it was just the two of them. They managed to lure their most compassionate (and thirsty) family and friends over on the weekends. Toward the end, they started to wonder, How much beer does it take to build a house?
Come January, the home was hardly finished, but the producers needed their gratifying conclusion. So they filled it with furniture, filmed, emptied it just as quickly and finally left Duthie and Minnucci in peace.
A most impressive hay loft Old Bunker Hill, as Duthie and Minnucci named their home after the Revolutionary War holdout in Solebury Township atop which it sits, is constantly shifting shapes before your eyes. Turning off of Phillips Mill Road, just north of New Hope, onto a gravel driveway that meanders through dense woods, the home presents itself as a majestic estate embedded in a cliff, only to shrink down to a modest suburban home once you land at its entrance. A few steps inside the front door, the tongue-and-groove ceiling vaults 24 feet up, and the walls—hand-plastered and tinted to jibe with the dark beams—reach for it, like outstretched arms. Yet we settle into a corner that’s been cordoned off as a living room and it immediately feels intimate. And that experience repeats itself all over the home.
Occasionally, you find yourself in a position where it’s impossible to not appreciate the largeness of the perspective—the second-floor landing, the back porch that stretches across most of the rear of the home and looks down on a steep, grassy slope—but far more often, you’re wrapped in a warmth that’s missing from homes with 10 times as many walls and accessories. Duthie and Minnucci moved here from Village 2, a former resort colony in New Hope where the townhomes are notoriously cramped. Still, they barely added any furniture in the transition.
The iron-and-cable staircase at the center of the home is the lone modern accent in an otherwise rustic design scheme.
They spent a year shopping for fixer-uppers or property when they came upon this lot, just separated from the home at the base of the hill. They’re prolific DIY-ers, so they were open to starting from scratch. Minnucci already designed and built a timber-frame home in Bedminster. They had a friend who bought three-bay hay barn back then but never did anything with it. The natural slope of the land suited the barn’s bank style. Mason John Lanzetta recreated an aged stone wall that mimics a portion of the livestock pen that resided behind the barn’s original iteration and a walk-out basement was built in the area where the animals were once fed.
Tracy and his crew erected the 900-square foot barn—atypical because they generally run rectangular, not square—in a few days. The rest of the house, which Minnucci designed himself, took about a year to complete. He added extensions to the north and south sides, so the barn comprises the home’s core, which makes the large cupola its literal center. The kitchen, a dining area and a living room fill the main floor, along with an iron-and-cable spiral staircase, the home’s only real modern fixture, which winds up to a landing that provides access to a guest bedroom and bathroom and an office. Beyond the kitchen, on the other side of the barn, there’s a walk-in pantry, a powder room, a mudroom and the home’s only hallway.
“I like a lot of flow in a house,” Minnucci says. “I don’t like to interrupt it with a lot of hallways and stairways.”
Any idea how many pieces there are to the barn, I ask. “We didn’t even put them all in,” Minnucci says. “You’ll see a lot of open holes where there were probably a lot more cross-braces.” I visually measure the vertical beam right in front of me and then peer into one of those holes, and just like that, the barn expands and contracts.
Blooming Glen designer Roger S. Wright is responsible for the kitchen cabinetry and much of the home’s furniture.
Simple luxuries
Strangely, the space that feels the most expansive in the home is one of the few rooms with four walls. A dressing room segues from the main-floor master bedroom to the en suite bathroom, where a massive soaking tub anchors a far corner. There’s also a sizable shower with a stream-bed floor, which Duthie and Minnucci installed themselves. Actually, they laid all of the tile in here. The dual-sink vanity was custom-crafted by Blooming Glen furniture designer Roger S. Wright, as was the kitchen cabinetry and much of the furniture throughout the home. For now, a framed, rectangular opening stretches the length of the vanity near the ceiling. I think it’s by design—maintaining the flow—until Minnucci says that it’ll eventually be filled with a hand-blown stained glass window that’s being made by David Duthie, who operates a nearby studio called Bucks County Hot Glass.
They installed a window in the shower because Minnucci really wanted an outdoor shower, and they’re still going to add one, but the window’s a satisfying compromise for the meantime. It is the only compromise, though. The Implement Wall aside, the home’s few obvious indulgences—the spa-like bathroom, the commercial-grade cooking range, the obscenely engineered kitchen faucet—can all be credited as corrections to their former arrangement, which afforded them one full bathroom and a galley kitchen. If they want to soak and cook with room to breathe, it’s understandable.
Duthie and Minnucci laid all of the tile in their master bedroom themselves.
What hooks my attention, however, is a network of old-looking, plantation-style fans that runs across the barn ceiling, connected by belts to an exposed motor on the wall. They were made by Woolen Mill Fan Company, in York County. They seem like such a seamless fit, as do so many of the other details that almost go unnoticed. The flooring is quarter-sawed, reclaimed, re-milled pine, the grain of which is noticeably tighter than what you’ll find in today’s pine boards. And in the kitchen, they’ve hung an old wooden ladder over the island and strung a few pendant lights from it. Turns out, their electrician, Fred Vocke, gave it to them. I expected it to be part of the barn. Nah, Minnucci says. They saw a similar look somewhere else and liked it.
“The neat thing with the barn is you can’t really mess it up,” he says. “You can do just about anything and get away with it, like throw a ladder up like this.”
The heart wants what it wants
Even if they hadn’t endured the onslaught of decisions that come with crafting a home from the foundation on up under the ever-present surveillance of a camera crew, Duthie and Minnucci would be perfectly settled now. A space of their own design, nestled in the woods, all to themselves. Thing is, though, they’re not a couple who ever really wanted it all to themselves.
You must not miss Village 2, I suggest. “Well, we do, because we had such great neighbors,” Duthie says. “And I, particularly, had lived there for a long time. And Maggie [their dog] grew up there, three, four walks a day, barking at all her friends going by. So I miss that part of it. Up here, it’s so nice and private. We have space, and she doesn’t have to be on a leash. But you also miss, when you’re snowed in, I used to bake cookies all day and deliver them. Now I bake cookies and eat them.”
That’s not to imply that they have any regrets or don’t fully appreciate every grain of wood. It’s just to say that there are only so many things you can account for, the home being more than a simple structure where we seek shelter.
In the hope that we won’t be having this conversation come this time next year, some easy-to-follow advice on how to make those New Year’s Resolutions stick.
By Todd Soura
With all due respect to your desire to improve yourself, a resolution’s only as good as your commitment to it. So my aim here is for us to avoid having this conversation come this time next year. I want to channel all of your enthusiasm toward making this not only a worthwhile experience, but an enjoyable one. After all, if leading a healthier, fitter life doesn’t hook you on some deep personal level, you’re just going through the motions, and we both know where that’ll lead.
Be the tortoise
Whether you’re coming off a long layoff or you’re starting from scratch, begin slowly and you’ll greatly enhance the likelihood that you’ll remain consistent. And consistency is the most important thing here. I know everything you’ve churned up online over the last couple of weeks has harped on intensity—and that is a close runner-up—but until you get your legs beneath you, it’s better to imagine yourself as the tortoise rather than the hare.
A big part of that is being realistic in your initial expectations. Don’t plan to workout six days a week when you hardly know what once or twice feels like. Two to three sessions a week is a safe place to start. And try to schedule them for a time you know you’ll always be available, even if it means getting up a half-hour earlier. When the enthusiasm starts to wane, and it will, the last thing you’ll want is built-in excuses, which is pretty much all of life.
Suffer with pride
Look, this is never going to be easy. And if it is, you’re not doing it right. If you’re expecting to reach a place a month from now where you’ll be able to run for miles and miles and do 100 burpees consecutively without breathing all that hard, you better check yourself before you wreck yourself.
Exercise is hard even for the fittest among us, and that would be pro athletes and Olympians. When it stops being hard, they set a new set of goals and adjust their training regimens accordingly. For the rest of us, exercise is the most unpleasant hour of our days. But, on the flipside, you’ll feel like you can get through anything else the day throws at you once you’re done. So put in the work, breathe hard, sweat profusely and suffer with pride, because you’re going to come out of that hole and meet a far sunnier day.
Subtract by addition
As far as your diet goes, I’m sure you’re already well aware of the ultimate goal: to delete as many of the bad foods on a daily basis as you can manage. Which is probably why you’ve avoided doing so until now. In drawing such a line in the sand, we tend to color our foods in extremes. What isn’t healthy is going to kill us. And that, of course, gives a really sour flavor to all the good stuff and a sweet one to everything we’re forsaking. In other words, we’re setting ourselves up to fail.
Instead, don’t be so intentional in revising your diet. Yes, of course, you’ll want to pass on that bagel smothered in half a pound of cream cheese at breakfast. But you’re only going to end up romanticizing it if you sit down tomorrow morning to a bowl of oatmeal. So try this instead: Make yourself the oatmeal, along with a hard-boiled egg and the bagel. Eat the oatmeal and the egg first and, if you still have room, eat the bagel, too. Give it some time. The better you feel and the more you see the connection between what you eat and how you move through your day, including your performance during your workouts, the less you’ll want the bagel. And when the day comes that you finally eliminate it altogether, you won’t even miss it.
The overriding theme here is patience. Be persistent in your workouts, your recovery and your nutrition, but give yourself a wide berth. Start slowly, accept the missteps with the progress and focus on what’s in front of you. That’s all you can control anyway.
Weeks 1 and 2 Workout: Monday, Wednesday, Friday Exercise: 20 minutes of resistance (weight) training and 10 minutes of interval (cardio) training Intensity: 2 out of 5 (1 = a casual, easy-to-maintain pace; 5 = an all-out effort that you can hold only for short bursts at a time.)
Weeks 3 and 4 Workout: Monday, Wednesday, Friday Exercise: 30 minutes of resistance training and 15 minutes of intervals Intensity: 3 out of 5
Weeks 5 and 6 Workout: Monday, Wednesday, Friday Exercise: 30 minutes of resistance training and 20 minutes of intervals Intensity: 4 out of 5
Weeks 7 and 8 Workout: Monday, Wednesday, Friday Exercise: 30 to 40 minutes of resistance training and 10 minutes of intervals Intensity: 5 out of 5
Kristin Donnelly is a mom, an author, a photographer, a chef and an entrepreneur. And with her first cookbook just out, a household name-in-the-making.
By Kendra Lee Thatcher · Photography by Josh DeHonney
If you don’t already know Kristin Donnelly, you will shortly. She’s seemingly everywhere at once, the way a small flame suddenly catches the kindling.
A regular contributor to the likes of Food & Wine, epicurious, EveryDay with Rachael Ray, Women’s Health and Prevention magazines, Donnelly dropped her first cookbook this summer, Modern Potluck: Beautiful Food to Share (Clarkson Potter), and already has another one in development. She also writes an online journal, Eat Better Drink Better, that’s gripping in its intimacy. An excerpt from the day after the election:
It’s 3 pm on a Wednesday. I’ve finally showered. I lit a candle and I burned sage. I walked to the mailbox and to the new bakery in town and cried with a new friend and ate the quiche she made. I’ve also received tone-deaf PR emails with titles like “Politics suck. This ladle doesn’t.” and resisted the urge to respond with vitriol.
When she’s not writing, or shooting or developing a recipe, Donnelly’s tending to her organic lip balm line, Stewart & Claire, which she developed with her husband, Philip, and to her daughter, also developed with Philip. It all seems too much to be true, so we visited her at home in New Hope and asked her to walk us through a day in her life.
7 a.m. | She’s up. And making coffee straightaway. One Up One Down Coffee brewed in a Chemex Pour-over. “I love the ritual of it,” Donnelly says. “I also love the fact that it’s delivered every other week, so it’s one less thing I have to think about adding to the grocery list.”
7:20 a.m. | As her husband and daughter, Elsa, begin to stir, she makes Elsa’s lunch. “I like to make a big pot of lentils on Sunday to use for lunches during the week. But that doesn’t always happen.” This is one of those instances, so Elsa’s ending up with her favorite lunch: a cream cheese and jam sandwich, a side of broccoli and a couple of apples they picked over the weekend.
7:50 a.m. | Breakfast varies from day to day, but Donnelly’s recent go-tos are muesli with kefir or whole grain toast slathered with jam.
8:25 a.m. | With Elsa off to school, Donnelly dresses.
8:55 a.m. | “I’m really very systematized,” she says, reaching for a leather-bound notebook that’s filled with pages of neatly written notes. “At the beginning of each month, I write a list of goals. Then on Sundays, I write my weekly to-dos. And at the start of each day, I put together my tasks and schedule.”
The window by her desk is filled with a grid of yellow and green Post-its. More lists? “Those? No. No, that’s my daughter’s ‘artwork,’ leftover from a sick day,” she says, laughing.
9:15 a.m. | “I like to start my day with the most brain-taxing tasks first because I simply have the most energy in the morning.” They range from packing Stewart & Claire orders to pitching new accounts to writing.
10:55 a.m. | Herbal tea break.
11 a.m. | “I need mental time to transition from one task to the other,” Donnelly says. Right now, that means scanning her inbox and updating social media.
11:20 a.m. | Writing. Her approach is simple, but strict: Don’t wait for the deadline. And don’t stare at a blinking cursor. She sets aside an hour each day to write. No more, no less.
12:25 p.m. | “On my best days, I have lunch planned out—a hearty salad with lentils,” she says. “I love an energizing lunch.” Today, however, leftovers will suffice.
1 p.m. | Donnelly’s afternoons are reserved for testing recipes, photo shoots, producing podcasts and exercising. What that often means is that work and dinner are knocked out in one act.
3:35 p.m. | Coffee break. Donnelly walks over to Factory Girl Bake Shop to meet a friend over an ancient grain scone.
4:15 p.m. | “I sometimes choose between working out and straightening up,” she says. “Working out has been winning.” Yoga is her go-to exercise, but, when the weather was kinder, she also liked to ride the towpath.
5:30 p.m. | Donnelly picks up Elsa from school and heads home to make (or polish off) dinner. Inevitably, a dance party breaks out. Anything by Taylor Swift and Bob Dylan’s kids station are their tracks of choice. All the while, Elsa’s helping to stir, peel and set the table.
6:30 p.m. | “We sit down to dinner as a family every night,” Donnelly says, glancing into the dining room. Here, being present is sacred.
8:30 p.m. | The dishes are done and Elsa’s tucked in, which leaves a small, fleeting window. “I’ll either do something luxurious, like read my favorite food magazines or cookbooks, or something real,” Donnelly says, “like watch ‘Gilmore Girls’ and fold laundry.”
Though our suburban dining scene isn’t always hip to the food world’s latest and greatest, the poké revolution is no ordinary trend. It’s the culmination of several widespread trends: raw fish features prominently, along with a rainbow of healthy ingredients. It’s served in a bowl and it adapts easily to fast-casual dining.
Poké (pronounced poke-ay)—the name is derived from the Hawaiian word for cut—is traditionally made from cubed, marinated ahi tuna served over rice, a style that originated with fishermen as a more appetizing vessel for their leftovers. Chefs, however, have been treating poké more as a technique than a recipe, opening it up to an endless array of variations.
Enter Andrew Danieli, a Jersey Shore surfer who fell for poké during a tour of Oahu’s North Shore, where it’s served everywhere in every shape—roadside snack, appetizer, entrée. Danieli’s also a restaurant veteran. This fall, he claimed his spot at the head of the curve with the opening of PokéOno in Ardmore, which provides yet another twist: build-your-own bowls.
Where’s he draw the line? Poké should remain “within the realm of the ocean,” Danieli says. “Salmon, shrimp, other shellfish, sure. But cut-up pieces of chicken would be too much.”
Novices should begin with the Shoyu Classic, which highlights traditional flavors before moving on to the radical-by-comparison Umma’s Tofu, a Korean-inspired blend named after Danieli’s girlfriend’s mom. If it wasn’t already obvious, he’s a perceptive guy.
A rash of craft distillers is now freckling our region, all of them making some truly elevated hooch. Reforms passed in Pennsylvania in 2011 and in Jersey in 2013 ignited a small-batch spirits boom, the likes of which our region hasn’t seen since the halcyon days before Prohibition, or even much further back in some areas.
You’ve likely heard of (and probably tried) the first to bear fruit—Dad’s Hat, in Bristol; HEWN, in Pipersville; Manatawny, in Pottstown—now the established guard of the movement. But the landscape’s filled in around them over the last year or two. Whiskey, vodka, rum, even if you’ve been a lifelong drinker of one or the other, this latest generation of artisans is finding its niche in nuance, crafting variations that are, in equal shares, truer to form and far more exotic than anything you’ve tasted before.
With some long, gray months ahead of us, the time’s come to meet the most appetizing of these new makers. After all, their spirits may become our sole salvation.
After a 25-year career in the military and far too many nights spent away from his family, Chad Butters’ retirement plan was purely personal in its inception: Run a family business. Nearly a year in, Eight Oaks is, above all else, just that. His daughter oversees the tasting room, where his son tends bar. Her husband is the master distiller. His sister is the distillery’s attorney. And her husband, Jesse Tyahla, is Butters’ partner. (It took me a few passes, too.)
In the waning months of his service, Butters and Tyahla attended distilling workshops at Michigan State and Cornell universities and toured about 25 distilleries. Then, they interned at another in Spokane, Washington. When they returned home, full of confidence, Butters and his wife promptly sold their home and bought a farm, where, in short order, they began growing grain—wheat, rye and barley, along with corn—and constructed the distillery.
WHAT THEY MAKE Vodka, gin, rum and applejack (In the works: rye whiskey, bourbon, aged applejack and spiced and aged rums.)
THE LOWDOWN What you get in Eight Oaks is a self-contained process steeped in tradition. “Really, for us, it’s back to that whole concept of grain to glass,” Butters says. “That sounds simple. And it sounds a little bit like a marketing term. In reality, the application is exceptionally difficult.”
With so many variables at play in the distillation, not to mention the farming, Butters defers to the historical precedent as often as it’s appropriate. And science when it’s not. In fact, the very first spirit that came out of Eight Oaks’ still was a nod to the craft’s history.
As rum grew scarce during the Revolutionary War, farmers stumbled upon applejack, which Butters describes as “the original American spirit.” It’s basically fermented cider—that grew more potent as the winter wore on and the farmers removed the ice. When we talked, Butters was favoring a far more subdued version, an applejack hot toddy, as a cold remedy.
Like so many other great ideas, Skunktown Distillery was born during a liquor-fueled night around a bonfire. “I said, ‘We’re smart guys. Let’s figure out how to make this.’ We both kind of laughed it off,” Caine Fowler says, referring to himself and longtime friend Paul Hyatt. “The next morning, he called me up and said, ‘You know, you had a really good idea last night.’ I said, ‘No. That was a stupid idea.’ ”
Fowler (pictured, left) is an IT project manager in the pharmaceutical industry. He’s traveled all over the world for his work and drank just about everything there is to drink in the course of it. But Hyatt (pictured, right), a tile-setter, has the far more sophisticated palate between them. He comes from a long line of drinkers. Not happy-hour mainstays. Drinkers.
“He can say, ‘This is what’s good. This what’s pretty good,’ ” Fowler says, “Everything does the right thing to me but tastes kind of harsh.”
Once they began to realize just how well they complement each other, the idea of a distillery started to sound a lot less, well, drunken. They founded Skunktown in September 2015 but only received the last of their licensing this month. When you’re the first distillery to launch in the county in 200 years, the scrutiny’s relentless, apparently.
WHAT THEY MAKE Vodka, whiskey and rum. (They’re expecting the first bottles to be available by Christmas.)
THE LOWDOWN The official line: Fowler and Hyatt are aiming for simple and pure, just as they regard the town in which they both live and after which they named their distillery. That would be Sergeantsville, NJ, formerly known as—I kid you not—Skunktown. No one’s entirely sure why. The obvious answer seems to be the most plausible: Lots of skunks at an unfortunate time, when naming rights were still up for grabs. But I digress. They’re using basic, local ingredients, doing little to them and distilling in a copper still, which is the oldest way, and still the truest.
The unofficial line: These are two old drinking buddies basically egging each other on. (Read: This could get fun fast.) They’re already working through the recipe for a scorching pepper vodka. Fowler, a lover of all things spicy, grows the Carolina Reaper, the hottest variety there is. “But that’s not the recipe that’s going to be bottled,” he says. “Don’t worry.”
Boardroom launched 10 months ago as an escape plan from corporate life, fueled by a renewed appreciation in heritage. Brothers Marat and Vlad Mamedov are Armenian. Zsuzsa, Marat’s wife, is Hungarian. Both are strong brandy cultures. Trouble is, ours isn’t. Another obstacle: Distilling brandy isn’t as forgiving as distilling the likes of vodka, gin and whiskey.
“If you mess up picking the wrong fruit, if you mess up fermentation, if you mess up distilling, you’re pretty much done,” Marat says.
So they opted to build their brand with the basics and revisit the brandy in the near future, being the experienced strategists that they are. With the help of a distiller in Europe, they spent a year working through recipes—85 in all. Once they settled on a line, they hired a master distiller here. Marat, Vlad and Zsuzsa stick to their strong suit: managing the operation. If a single, prevailing thought came out of the recipe trials, Marat says, it’s this: What I like doesn’t really matter.
WHAT THEY MAKE Vodka (straight and infused), gin, rum and a beet spirit. (In the works: whiskey and brandy.)
THE LOWDOWN Precision-crafted. No eyeballing here. The Lansdale distillery is the North American showroom for Hagyo Distilling, a Hungarian manufacturer with a reputation for state-of-the-art innovation. Where most small-batch makers will build their brand around the handcrafting, not here; everything’s fully automated.
Boardroom’s aim is to cherry-pick spirits from all over the world and turn them into household names here. “But at the same time, we want to make sure that we’re very precise in our distillation process”—it came up more than once—”so that they ring true to the category,” Marat says.
Example A: Their beet spirit, which was introduced this fall. They hauled in 2,000 pounds of beets, ground them down, then fermented and distilled them like a brandy. It’s the first installment in their periodical table-themed series. Thus, the capital B on the label. Next up: apple (A) and carrot (C).
“We want to keep things simple and let pure, natural flavors shine through,” Marat says. “When it comes to crafting our spirits, it’s all about, how do we derive the flavor naturally?”
Curiosity compelled Andrew Martin to follow his friends into home-brewing. Soon after, he happened upon distilling, and he immediately understood why they were all so entranced. He dropped brewing then and there and started reading everything he could find on distilling.
Martin grew up in Lancaster County and moved back to Lancaster proper 16 years ago. Every distiller in this portfolio carries a profound appreciation for the craft’s roots and their regions, but only Martin’s built his own still from scratch. And he named his distillery after a bird that’s become synonymous with Lancaster. Among the countless hex signs that appear in Pennsylvania Dutch folk art, known as fraktur, you’ll often find a bird. That bird is a thistle finch, and it’s meant to represent happiness and good luck.
WHAT THEY MAKE White rye whiskey; black pepper rye whiskey; black coffee rye whiskey; straight, two-year-old rye whiskey; gin and vodka
THE LOWDOWN In case it wasn’t already obvious, Thistle Finch specializes in rye whiskey. The white rye whiskey, an unaged whiskey that Martin describes as “kind of like a high-class moonshine,” was the first spirit he bottled three years ago. Cut to present day, Thistle Finch just bottled a two-year-old, straight rye whiskey, becoming only the third distillery in Pennsylvania to offer it. “That’s definitely the biggest milestone since we opened,” Martin says.
“We’re doing rye whiskey because that would have been the historic spirit made here in eastern Pennsylvania,” he says.
Typically, farmers around here planted rye in the winter to help preserve the soil. As such, back in the day, it was the cheapest grain that distillers could get their hands on and why rye whiskey was so prolific. But those distillers fell off the map with prohibition. This latest boom has brought a new wave of them, but few are like Thistle Finch.
Martin may be a traditionalist at heart, but he’s not making a traditional rye whiskey. The standard recipe calls for 100 percent rye or two-thirds rye mixed with a third of corn. Thistle Finch is making its from 60 percent rye, 30 percent wheat and 10 percent malted barley, which is what’s referred to as a “high-wheat rye” by those in the know. The thinking behind the move is that, where rye possesses a dry, spicy flavor profile and corn is sweet, the wheat will introduce a smoother, more robust taste. Basically, your grandfather’s rye whiskey, this is not.
Tara Buzan and Alex Hardy are hopelessly in love and they want the Main Line to know it. There won’t be any PDAs, don’t worry. Just lots of impossibly good eating.
By April Lisante • Photography by Matthew J. Rhein
They met by chance, a year ago, two chefs with everything and nothing in common. Alex Hardy is a tattooed culinary renegade, honed for more than a decade in Philadelphia’s greatest kitchens. Tara Buzan is a Main Line native whose passion for food and family inspire her home-cooked, catered meals. When they met, both had been on the local restaurant scene for years, having never crossed paths.
“He made me Chilean sea bass for our first date,” Buzan says. “It was the first time anyone had ever cooked for me.”
Last month, Buzan and Hardy unveiled At the Table BYOB, their first joint venture. It’s a 20-seat, upscale-American bistro in Wayne, just a stone’s throw from the Wayne Hotel on Louella Court. They want it to be a celebration of their love and a tribute to the passion they share for food.
After graduating from the University of Massachusetts with a degree in hospitality, Buzan began her food career in 2001 with a small catering company called To the Table Catering, delivering meals to Main Line homes. As one of three children, she says, “I grew up in an Italian family, and the idea of not sitting down to dinner with family was foreign to me.”
The catering business, featuring her soups, salads and homemade comfort foods, quickly burgeoned. After operating for six years from a storefront in Eagle Village in Wayne, she had a son (now six) and became a private, in-home chef for Main Line families.
Hardy, who graduated from Johnson and Wales at 21, was thrust into the frenzied Philadelphia restaurant culture and loved it. Working for a who’s who of chefs, he trained with Peter Gilmore, Patrick and Terence Feury, Georges Perrier and Daniel Stern, the Le Bec Fin prodigy who earned Perrier’s Michelin Five Star rating. Hardy learned to approach food with a scientific reverence. And tweezers.
“People always say, ‘Why do you use a tweezer to place microgreens?’ ” says Hardy, who most recently applied his classical French training as sous-chef at the new Autograph Brasserie in Wayne. “That’s how I see the food. I’m the type of guy where, even if it comes out great, I say it could have been better.”
Buzan and Hardy fell in love at first sight, and quickly began to discuss their ultimate dream, an intimate BYOB where fresh, local flavors and Hardy’s creativity could shine. Last July, they purchased the former French café Creperie Bechamel at the corner of Louella Court near Lancaster Avenue, and the plan came to life.
“I originally was thinking of turning this into a lunch café, but now that he is the chef, I am able to do what I truly wanted to do,” says Buzan, who now lives with Hardy. “I can do now what I wouldn’t have the capability to do without him.”
The white-linen dining room evokes a date-night—or, more likely, engagement-night—experience. Its postage-stamp kitchen promises plates constructed with careful attention, relying on monthly menu changes. Hardy’s debut menu features appetizers ranging from $16 to $26, and entrées from $31 to $42. The appetizers include potato bisque with parmesan and truffle infusion ($16) and foie gras with blackberry purée and asparagus ($26). Among the entrées: Wagyu beef tenderloin with charred white onion, carrot and peas ($42) and Tasmanian Sea Trout with hen egg purée (Tara’s favorite) ($35). A special tasting menu runs from $65 for five courses to $95 for eight.
Buzan will manage the front of the house, along with private parties and the catering, while Hardy will man the kitchen nightly. They plan to shave truffles tableside when dishes call for it, and aren’t averse to switching up ingredients daily.
At the Table will likely see overflow from the Wayne Hotel’s Paramour (where entrees range from $27 to $42). The aim is to evolve into a special-occasion and “luxurious-dining” destination.
“Our goal is that every night, we have our chefs have the mentality that we are going for the next Michelin Five Star,” says Hardy, who is hoping they can make this a family venture.
“I feel like if you are a family, and you stick it out together, you can do anything. “
