Neighborhood Nourishment #279

Briana Volk:

I mean, I'm in like the food and wine community and I love food and wine, but my knowledge of wine, I can't speak like a sommelier and I don't think most people can and I know it. If I like, like if I taste it and I like it, great. But you know, it's really hard for me to necessarily like pick out great wines and stuff. So I try to, I don't know, I like talking about wines and those things in the way that I would hope someone would talk to me about them.

Briana Holt:

One of the things that kind of jump started me, even if it took a break in me with the baking was working at that place I mentioned earlier, that old bakery. It was, it was quite, quite, you know, like wobbly wooden planks and huge industrial sized mixers that were made in the 30s. Looked like they could have been on a warship or something. And you know, like I said, I made donuts and things there and it was just had this huge wooden table in the middle, just huge, like larger than a king size bed, longer like two king size beds. And that's where everybody kind of worked rolling things, you know, across from each other, next to each other. And I just loved it.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

This is Dr. Lisa Belisle and you are listening to Love Maine Radio show number 270, Neighborhood Nourishment, airing for the first time on Sunday, January 22, 2017. Eating is an inherently social activity.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

We choose where we eat based not

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

only on the type of food we seek, but the community we want to be part of. Today we speak with three Portland Community creators, Brianna and Andrew Volk, owners of the Portland Hunt and Alpine Club and upcoming Little Giant restaurant, and Brianna Holt, head baker at Tandem Coffee and Bakery. Thank you for joining.

Andrew Volk:

Easy.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

today I have with me in the studio Andrew and Brianna Vogue, who own the Portland Hunt and Alpine Club, a James Beard nominated cocktail bar in Portland's Old Port. This year, which is 2017, they are opening Little Giant, a restaurant and bar in Portland's West End. The accompanying shop is open daily, currently 8am to 8pm thanks for coming in.

Briana Holt:

Thanks for having us. Thanks for having us.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

You guys are very busy.

Briana Holt:

Yeah, I guess so.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, I would say, I mean, we like being busy. Yes. Well, Portland Hunt and Alpine Club is how many years old now?

Andrew Volk:

Three and a half.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And you have a child who is how many years old now?

Andrew Volk:

Two and a half.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And you have another one who is five months away. Exactly. And then you already have Little Giant the store, and you're working on Little Giant the restaurant. So do you sleep Sometimes?

Andrew Volk:

Sometimes.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, I love.

Andrew Volk:

I mean, we, you know, we really like what we do and we're fortunate enough to be able to do it as often as we need to. You know, we get time to relax. But. But also for us, I think working is in certain parts of our work at least are relaxing and refreshing at least.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, I was gonna say I love the enthusiasm that you have for all the things that you do. And I know that you work a lot with us here at Maine Magazine, that you're often helping us out with events. You bring your daughter with you sometimes. And you do seem to really kind of love what you're doing and live what you're doing too, which is important because I think there are people that believe that we can truly separate the jobs that we do, the work that we do, and the lives that we live. But I think the happiest people tend to be the ones who kind of kind of walk in between.

Briana Volk:

Yeah, I mean, I think that's what works for us. I've, in all my working career, have always had jobs where I've never been able to separate from it, but I like getting totally wrapped up and absorbed in what I do. So that's what makes it fun and makes it not as much of a job.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, and it is Important to say that it's what works for you. You're right. Some people, they need to have that separation. And so this is good. So each of you were born and raised elsewhere. You are now Mainers. This is your adopted state on purpose. Adopted state.

Andrew Volk:

We love it.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

How did you find your way here? I know, Andrew, you're from Vermont.

Andrew Volk:

Yeah. So I grew up in Vermont, but went to school in Waterville and when I was a kid, worked summers, had summer jobs on the coast, Rockland area, spent a lot of time here, you know, spent the four years in Waterville, which is a wonderful, funny little town, and then graduated and moved away and didn't really know what I was going to be and what I was going to do. And we met. Brianna and I met out in Portland, Oregon, where I was living and where she grew up. She was working in advertising at a really great ad shop called Whiteman Kennedy. Got a job offer in Mobile, Alabama, and we both said, hey, we've never lived in the South. Let's give it a try and see how we do. And we gave it 12 months and we moved away in 11 months. And we started looking for a job in the Northeast. I had family here. I think Brianna had an idea that we should give that a try. Having done the Northwest and the south, we were looking at places, looking at jobs, had job offers and opportunities in bigger cities, New York and Philadelphia and the typical big cities in the Northeast. And Brianna had a job offer here in Portland.

Briana Volk:

Yeah, I mean, I think in the course of an ad career, it always makes sense to be in major cities like New York. So we were looking really heavily in New York. And then actually Andrew's father, who owns an ad agency in Vermont, recommended via to me to look at. And I sent off a resume and heard back from them and came up for 24 hours maybe and loved the space and loved the agency and trusted Andrew that Portland was great and we're both from smaller towns. I actually grew up just a little bit outside of Portland in a town of around 10,000 people and stuff. So we knew we would end up somewhere smaller and New York would have just been a stopover for us. So we decided to skip that whole step and just come here and try it out.

Andrew Volk:

Five and a half years later, here we are still.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So what is it about Portland that has worked for you versus Mobile, Alabama, which did not. Oh, my God, everything.

Andrew Volk:

No, I mean, what's so wonderful about Portland is there's a really strong sense of community. There's a really supportive community. Here especially, you know, a lot of the worlds we travel in are advertising and PR and restaurants. And everybody in those, in those worlds here are really supportive of each other and kind of cheer on each other. And, you know, when somebody's looking for something, they. They connect you with somebody else. And it's, you know, it's the thing that we both, growing up in small towns across the country from each other, we both experience that. That, you know, you help out your neighbor and you look out for each other and you support each other. Everything we know is a community exists here, and we were quick to embrace it, and it was quick to embrace us.

Briana Volk:

Yeah, I think people. You hear a lot of times people talk about the idea of, like, people from away and how it sounds very unwelcoming to people who are from away, but I feel that we never really experienced that to the degree that you hear, actually people talk about it and coming here. Like, we met amazing people right away and, you know, as we were able to be involved as much as we wanted to be involved in the community with. And people took us with open arms, which was great. And that was not something we experienced living in the South.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, you and I were. Both of you and I were joking about the fact that you were not from here. And I've said multiple times that even though I have lived most of my life here, I actually was born in Vermont. So I can officially say that I am also not a Mainer.

Andrew Volk:

I was born in Brooklyn and my parents moved to Vermont when I was one. So I experienced that experience that in Vermont as well. I'm not even a Vermonter. I just. I don't have a home. Take me.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, and that's an interesting thing because I think in these deeply rooted communities, sometimes it can be an issue that people can say, but you don't have that kind of depth of background. But then it just gets silly. You know, if you've lived somewhere, it doesn't really matter. It's sort of how engaged you are with the community and how much you want your children to be engaged with the community.

Andrew Volk:

I think that's very much how we approach it. You are where you engage. And if you're engaged in the community, if you're actively living in that community, working in that community, spending your time and your energy to make that community better, then you're just as good as the person next to you who's doing just as much.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So what was it about Portland that you brought from the other Portland to this Portland? How have you sort of Infused the local scene with the place that you grew up in. Brianna. Oh, that's a tough one.

Andrew Volk:

I think we both out in Portland, Oregon. Sorry not to answer for you.

Briana Volk:

No, go ahead.

Andrew Volk:

Experienced in our respective industries and advertising and restaurants, this really supportive creative community. And I think that any place like our Portland, like Portland Maine, really benefits from an infusion of outside ideas bringing, you know, whether it's. It's a fresh idea about how to do something or a fresh approach or you know, whatever it is, bringing something and making it a part of Portland, Maine is really refreshing and important for a community to grow. And for us, what we took from Portland, Oregon was this really supportive creative community that we both existed in and lived and worked in. And we were able to, I think we very actively try and create that feeling here and enhance that feeling here. You know, it's very much here but you know, bring our perspective to it, bring our taste to it and bring our energy to it.

Briana Volk:

You know, we also lived in Portland, Oregon at a time where we watched the city kind of go from this like, eh, west coast city that no one really cared about to like now Portland Oregon's like, you know, Portlandia and people talk about it all the time and want to go there and visit and you know, it has an amazing vibrant restaurant scene and an amazing vibrant art community. And so being there and both being part of it in our own ways, for me working in advertising and Andrew working in cocktail bars, I think was something that coming here we were able to recognize that happening here, which was really exciting for us and really gave us energy of wanting to be part of that because we have seen firsthand like how amazing a city can grow when people work together and really actively are part of their community to make a city better.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

When I went this weekend to Little Giant, I brought my daughters and was talking with Andrew about the wine and the food. And one of my daughters was noticing some of the labels that you had written and really liked them. Very creatively done. Definitely showing like maybe a little quirkiness of mind and spirit, which my decade

Briana Volk:

of copywriting paying off right there.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, but it's great because it really drew her in. It really caused her to look at this and be like, wait, is this the name of this wine or is

Andrew Volk:

it called like Want to Get Weird?

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Want to Get Weird one that she was picking up? It's a weird wine. It's a weird wine.

Andrew Volk:

Deliciously.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

But doesn't that speak to the fact that, you know, you can sometimes a product is a product, but Sometimes there's a bigger story that needs to be told about it that brings people in.

Briana Volk:

Oh, absolutely. I mean, my background in advertising for actually over a decade was as a copywriter. And, you know, one of my favorite things is telling stories, and I love telling stories, and I love telling other people's stories and product stories that I love and our story. So it's nice to be able to do that and find ways to do that with Hunt Alpine or with Little Giant that maybe aren't like the traditional paths you would see in shops or restaurants. It's putting some of my skills to use, which is nice, I guess. And I also. I mean, for me, too, I'm not. I mean, I'm in, like, the food and wine community, and I love food and wine, but my knowledge of wine. I can't speak like a sommelier, and I don't think most people can. And I know it. If I like. Like, if I taste it and I like it, great. But, you know, it's really hard for me to necessarily, like, pick out great wines and stuff. So I try to. I don't know, I like talking about wines and those things in the way that I would hope someone would talk to me about them.

Briana Holt:

So I think that's.

Andrew Volk:

That's one of the really cool things about wine in particular in the restaurant world. But. But, I mean, food and spirits and all this to their own extent, but wine has these great stories. Every single product, every single label has these phenomenal stories to them. And to be able to, you know, bring people in and share a little bit about the stuff we're excited about is just one part of Little Giant that we're really thrilled about.

Briana Volk:

And we think, like, food and drink should be fun. You should. When you have a cocktail at Hunt Alpine, you should be having, like, ideally, you're having fun there, whether it's a shot and a beer or it's not work or a fancy cocktail. Like, it shouldn't feel like that when you're drinking wine. Like, all that stuff, eating all of it should be fun because it's fun for us. So we want it to be fun for everybody else, too.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, this is a conversation that I've had a few times recently, and that is that food, when it becomes. Or wine or beer or coffee, when it becomes so precious that you're spending all your time analyzing it, then there may be something that you're missing out on. I mean, and I don't have any problem with people who really. That's the way they enjoy their food. Wine, coffee, whatever. But it's really more about the experience. So wherever it is that you're going to. It's about the interaction with people. It's about feeling like you're, I don't know, part of something. There's an emotional response that I think that is important to have.

Andrew Volk:

You know, I think that bringing it back to Portland, Maine, what we really appreciate up here, and I think what the people that thrive and love Portland, Maine, appreciate is authenticity. You know, there are a thousand ways to enjoy wine or coffee and whatever, and professionals that want to, you know, really dive in and nerd out. There's definitely a place for that, and there's a place for that up here. But a lot of people come to Maine for this sense of authenticity and the sense of, you know what? We're doing it because we love it, and we're doing it because this is our place. And I think for wine and food and beer and cocktails for us, that's what we try and bring to this, that this is meant to be fun. This is meant to be good. This is meant to, you know, you're not. This isn't. This isn't supposed to be work. This is supposed to be, you know, a good time. And we truly enjoy. Enjoy that aspect of it.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

What do you think it was or is about the Portland Hunt and Alpine Club that won you the James Beard nomination?

Andrew Volk:

Are you looking at me?

Briana Volk:

I mean, I think a lot of it was Andrew in the bar program. He put together. You know, he. We have an amazing staff there. Our bar manager, Trey, is absolutely incredible and one of my favorite people of all time now. But we have. We have an incredible staff that Andrew has been able to lead and train and work with, and they all bring really wonderful things to the table. And I think Andrew's really good at seeing those great things and, and pushing those and letting people flourish in ways that make them the best and make them really happy to come into work every day. So it's not this, you know, so not everyone's doing the same thing or having to dress the same or present themselves in the same way. People get to be themselves. And I. I think that personality comes out when people come in is they see that the people working there have a great time and really care about their job and care about the guests experience. And, you know, I would like to think that's.

Briana Holt:

That's why.

Andrew Volk:

Yeah, that's great.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And how will the new restaurant, Little Giant, that's opening up this spring, how will that be the same and different

Andrew Volk:

I think the thread through for us that we always talk about and that really makes. That drives us professionally is a sense of hospitality, a sense of feeling comfortable and welcome in a place that you can. You as a guest, an individual can walk in and start making it your own. You know, with Hunt and Alpine, we. We certainly had an idea of what we wanted and what we wanted to create. But we also, you know, wanted two people to walk in the door and have a conversation with us. And you know, it's. I've never seen it successfully done where you're. You're ramming something down somebody's throat and say, you need to like this. You know, it comes back to that sense of we want people to tell us what they like and we want to, you know, maybe push their boundaries of what they're comfortable with a little bit. And you know, oh, you like vodka? Why don't we try gin and see how you like that. Things of that nature. So Little Giant, you know, I think is going to be a place that people are going to feel comfortable and have a good time and eat really good food. You know, it's going to be very different from Hunt Alpine in a lot of places. In that Hunt Alpine is a bar. It's very much a bar that's intended for the downtown Old Port of Portland. And Little Giant's a restaurant that's intended for the West End community and much more of a neighborhood kind of place. It's going to be a full restaurant. You know, you're going to be able to a place that we're very much intending where you can take children and have a nice time. You can also go on a first date and feel comfortable and you can take your grandparents and they're going to have a great time too. And to really embrace the community that we're in is something that we've all. We've always loved about Portland and we're very excited about to be doing that in the West End.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

What type of food will you have?

Andrew Volk:

Continental, European, neighborhood style food. You know, it's really going to be simple, simple stuff that's done better than you would have hoped it would be done stuff that you want to go back and have again the same week or in the same month. You know, it's not. We're not really trying to create a special occasion kind of place. We're just trying to create a neighborhood. A neighborhood spot.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Yeah.

Briana Volk:

I mean, I think with all our space with Hutton Alpine and both with Little Giant, like, we really love the idea of what's it called like the third space? Yeah, where like you have your home and you have work and then like you have this third space which is like a coffee shop or a bar somewhere. And we want to create those spaces where people feel comfortable and can hang out. And you know, one of our, one of our favorite places, which is in Portland, Oregon. And actually where, where we met Andrew was my bartender there is this place called Clyde Common. And like it's been this place that's been open, It'll be for 10 years this year actually. And it's kind of like we've evolved with it and it's evolved with us. So we met there, we went on numerous dates there, Andrew proposed to me there. Now we go back with our daughter and hang out with our daughter there. So it's just been this kind of like central location in this city for us that every time we go back we always end up there. And so we want to create spaces like that where people can have these stories and throughout their lives be able to tie it back to Hutton Alpine or tie it back to Little Giant and create those memories and kind of have these places feel like a home base for them.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I was struck, I think it was two summers ago now, but it might have been last summer because time does go by with how socially your daughter is and how willing she is to engage in conversation, interaction, whatever you want to call it. Because like you, I bring my daughter or daughters or son, whoever is available with me to social events. I've always thought it was important because, you know, we don't exist in vacuums as human beings. And your daughter clearly is very comfortable with this idea. Is this something that she. Did she spring forth this way? Is this something that you've.

Andrew Volk:

From the beginning. And it's as much a function for us philosophically as parents as it is practically as the, you know, we work for ourselves, both of us, and we, you know, don't have the ability to have full time nanny care for our daughter. I mean, she's come with us to events, she's come with us to work every day since she was born. I think she was what, 7 days, 2 weeks old?

Briana Volk:

She was 17 days.

Andrew Volk:

17. 17 days old. We went to an event in Rhode island that, you know, professional event where, where I was serving drinks and they were putting us up at a hotel for a weekend on, so on and so forth.

Briana Volk:

I had her strapped to me, walking

Andrew Volk:

around saying hi to people, you know,

Briana Volk:

been to cocktail conferences when she was four months old in New Orleans,

Briana Holt:

which

Briana Volk:

you probably shouldn't do with a kid. But she doesn't remember.

Andrew Volk:

They said nobody would know, but now. Now they know.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, presumably you weren't having her taste things?

Andrew Volk:

No, no, of course not. No.

Briana Volk:

She was just hanging out.

Andrew Volk:

Yeah. Around people who were tasting. I mean, it's, you know, it's both a function of the parenting philosophy and just practicality that she's. She's grown up in bars. That's. That's where we spend our time, because we run a bar, you know, so she hangs out there. She sees deliveries coming in. She sees people coming in. She, she, you know, sure. I like to think some of it is that she gets her social nature from us and that we're inherently people who can deal with these situations. But also it's a function of the nurturer and the growth that she's. The time she spent in restaurants and bars.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, I, personally, I think it's very important. I think that sometimes by creating the. Mom goes to work, dad goes to work, kid goes to school. And these, you have these sort of life silos that it's the strange artificial barriers that people experience. Whereas if you can, if there are opportunities to bring your child with you. Now, obviously it doesn't make sense all the time, but, you know, this is life. This is the reality of the relationships in the community that we live in. So. And I know that for you, you talked about Little Giant as being a place where people. People will bring. Obviously they can't necessarily bring their small children to the port and hunt and knock Alpine Club, necessarily.

Andrew Volk:

People. Do we get newborns in there? People. I mean, as you well know, I'm sure remember when you have a newborn and they're sleeping like you just. You just go with it, make it work. And if you need to grab a bite or whatever, then we see people in the bar at 8, 9 o' clock with a sleeping newborn having a drink. Because that's life. I remember early on when Una, our daughter, was born, talking to our friend Chris Kast, who said, look, you kind of get two choices as a parent. You either can conform to whatever your child dictates, or you can help them conform to your life. And they can either run with you or you follow them. And it's a choice you get to make. And we've very much always believed, you know, she's gonna come along with us and gonna live our life and she's gonna adapt to that. And certainly, you know, we have adapted our life plenty to her. But, you know, she. She comes with us wherever Wherever we need to be.

Briana Volk:

I mean, and I think more and more, at least with our generation or our friends who are also parents, we're seeing people who are really making those conscious efforts to have their kids involved in their lives and not have that separation and not, you know, and choose to bring them into. To work if they can, or take them out to dinner and stuff. I mean, we go out to dinner with friends who have kids and we all bring our kids and most of the time they're wonderful. Absolutely.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And Little Giant will be more of this. Little Giant is a place that you want people to bring their children, their parents, their grandparents, and I guess I wonder how we got to a place where we needed to be separate from children. I don't know that you guys can

Andrew Volk:

answer this question, but that's for the generation before us. I don't know.

Briana Volk:

I mean, I think for us we just work so differently than our parents work in a lot of ways. I mean, my father's a longshoreman and so it's not like you can bring your kid to work because that would be frightening for many reasons. So, you know, I mean, so it's just he can't. He didn't have that luxury to do that. And I mean, and we were incredibly lucky that we made the conscious effort to have to do this. I left full time agency work to have my own clients and work with Hutton Alpine and work with Little Giant and so we could be home with our daughter and take turn, you know, take turns taking care of her if one of us has to work. I mean, the nice thing about me having clients during the day and him running a bar is our schedules are very different. I work during the day and he works at night for the most part. So it's been fairly easy to do. But like we consciously made that decision and that's something we wanted.

Andrew Volk:

Yeah, very much so.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Do you think this will shift with the addition of another member to the family?

Andrew Volk:

Oh, we haven't thought about that yet. Let's find out when he comes.

Briana Volk:

I mean, I think we're in a nice position that our daughter's in preschool now, so that'll take. I mean, she's there a couple days a week, so that takes a little bit of load off taking care of two kids at once. And at least from her with him, he'll be hanging out at meetings with me while he's, while he's little. So we'll cross that bridge when we get there.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I think that's wise. You can't really know until you're actually there and see what the child's personality is like and what everything around is going on. So what is your hope for, for this year besides get the restaurant started

Andrew Volk:

and welcome our son into, into our family? I think. Is that not enough?

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Okay, that's great.

Andrew Volk:

No, no, no. Brianna's got more political.

Briana Volk:

Do you want me to do political?

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Do you want. I guess I was thinking more personal. Yeah, maybe just keep that.

Andrew Volk:

No, I mean, I think, you know, for us for 2017, it very much is. We have a lot of work that we've, we've kind of laid the, laid the plans for and it's the executing of the work, which for us, frankly is the exciting part. The part that we really enjoy is going out and opening a restaurant, putting together the program, putting together the staff, getting, you know, putting, putting it all in place and getting those doors open and then seeing how people in the community, how they approach it, how they use it, how they enjoy it, and then certainly welcoming our son into our family. And it's gonna be something we're excited about and gonna spend a lot of time on.

Briana Holt:

Yeah.

Briana Volk:

And beyond that, just personally, I wanna have more dinner with friends.

Andrew Volk:

Yeah, there we go.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So is that why you created a restaurant? So people just come hang out and

Briana Volk:

have dinner with you?

Andrew Volk:

You'd think that it would be that easy. When you open a bar or restaurant, you don't necessarily get to spend a lot of downtime there, nor do you want to. I mean, Hunt, Alpine. It took us a couple of years at Hunt and Alpine to really be able to go in there and not be working. I still go in and I'm always working. But it does definitely you create these places that you're excited to spend time in. Our approach to restaurants and bars very much is we're trying to create a place that we want to spend time in. And then of course, the cruel irony is that we, when we spend time there, we're working.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So you want to have dinner with friends, but maybe not.

Briana Volk:

Yeah, no, I got our hops. I want to cook dinner for friends.

Andrew Volk:

We like entertaining people.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Okay, well, now it's out there. So you'll be having people calling you up and saying, hey, let's have dinner. I've been speaking with Andrew and Brianna Vogue, who own the Portland Hunt and Alpine Club, a James Beard nominated cocktail bar in Portland's Old Port. And this year, our opening Little Giant, a restaurant and bar in Portland's West End. They are also the parents to one fully formed and one in formation, Human being so good job with all of the work that you're doing and keep up all the creativity and I can't wait to see well your your little child and your and your little giant.

Briana Volk:

Exactly.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Thanks for coming in.

Andrew Volk:

Thank you for having us.

Briana Holt:

Thank you.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

me I have Brianna Holt, who is the head baker at Tandem Coffee and Bakery in Portland. She moved to Maine in 2020and helped owners Will and Kathleen Pratt open the bakery on Congress street in 2014. Thanks for coming in today.

Briana Holt:

Thanks for having me.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So that's a pretty fun place to work over at Tandem, I would imagine. I don't want to assume anything, but

Briana Holt:

it's a total blast every day. It's really fun. I think if you get to work with your closest friends it can be challenging and fun. But mostly it's fun for us.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, I have a I brought both of my daughters this weekend to Tandem. I was doing a little tour around Portland.

Briana Holt:

Oh, awesome.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And I've been to the Tandem over. I think it's where the coffee is actually roasted.

Briana Holt:

Yep.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

In East Bayside in East B side. And I'd never been to the bakery and oh my gosh, my daughter's 21, 16. They were both like, when can we come back here again? I mean, it's such a fun vibe, but the food is really great.

Briana Holt:

Thank you.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So tell me about baking for you. Why is this your thing?

Briana Holt:

Well, I think that's a huge question. Let's see. There's a lot of reasons. I started doing it when I was really young, watching my grandmother and mother do it all of the time, which was pretty special. My grandmother, my mom's mom was from Austria and so she had like a little bit of an Eastern European bent to her cooking and her baking, which was really interesting. And so I Got into it there, and I started baking pretty young. Thirteen, I think I was when I got my first baking job, which was at this really tiny bakery down the street from my house that had been there since the late 30s, early 40s. And I just made donuts and hermits and lemon bars and all kinds of, like, weird vintage, you know, old school pastries.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I actually know what hermits are. This is what my Memere. My grandmother used to make nice for me.

Briana Holt:

I think of them as a Massachusetts thing because people have them all over the place there, but really they're just kind of like a flower. 40s,'50s bakery staple.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Yeah, they have. What do hermits actually have in mind?

Briana Holt:

Molasses. They're like a molasses thing.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And they have raisins.

Briana Holt:

Yep. Normally raisins, sometimes nuts. But I think that's sort of a divisive, polarizing ingredient.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And a little powdered sugar on the top sometimes.

Briana Holt:

Unclear. I don't know the answer to that.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I think my hermits did used to have those.

Briana Holt:

Ours did. Not at. At the place where I worked, but I was also 13, and I don't really remember, to be honest. I may have just forgotten the powdered sugar, which could be what I'm remembering.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, I'll have to go back to my Memere on that. Find out if I'm actually just misremembering this. But doesn't this speak to something interesting that you've just kind of brought up a whole bunch of different, really fascinating themes. And one is kind of the cultural aspect of food, and one is almost the historical, historical aspect of food. And if you're talking about hermits being from the 40s and 50s, like, how is it that something gets baked for a few decades and then doesn't get baked anymore?

Briana Holt:

I think it's. It's a really interesting question. I think it's a lot of different reasons. I think you've got, you know, the idea of food trends, which, believe it or not, is not a new thing. You know, people wanted in the 40s and 50s, they wanted things that were really easy. You know, that's when kind of like industrial food started really making its way into everyone's homes. Things in cans, things in boxes, boxed brownie mix, stuff like that. And so that kind of changed people's tastes a little bit. I think anything can fall out of favor, especially if it's hard. You know, things that people used to make that their grandmothers used to make, things you'd have to roll out a lot. Puff pastry, strudel things you have to, you know, strudel. My God, like my grandmother would make it. But you need, you know, a farmhouse table, and you roll out this dough, and it's like 10ft long and really thin, and then you just keep doing it and keep doing it. So people don't want to do that anymore. So things, you know, that are troublesome or tricky, I guess, become. Fall to the wayside and things take their place. But I don't know. I think people come back to flavors a lot, is what it is. You know, something that's comforting or exciting because they haven't had it in a while, I think. And then, I don't know. I think now there's this huge resurgence of whole grains, heritage grains, and I think it's really wonderful. But I also think what it does is it reminds people how things maybe used to taste, and then they start to look elsewhere for those older flavors or older ways of baking or making things.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Yeah, that's. That's an interesting point. I think that we got to the time of Wonder Bread where even the bread was basically blank.

Briana Holt:

Yeah.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And now we're getting back to a

Briana Holt:

place, I wonder what's in there.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

It's exactly right. And now we're getting back to a time where we want to kind of recognize the little bits that are actually popping out of the crust in our whole grain breads.

Briana Holt:

Yeah. And where they came from and who grew them. Yeah.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So you grew up on Martha's Vineyard.

Briana Holt:

Sure did.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Not to be confused with Nantucket.

Briana Holt:

Not to be confused with Nantucket, A smaller, fancier island, but it's still an island. Yeah. The Vineyard.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Yeah. So what was that like?

Briana Holt:

It was pretty special and wonderful and perfect. I really love it there. I loved growing up there, even if I wasn't clear at the time on how wonderful it was, which I guess you're not when you're like 14 through 17. But. But I loved it. It's small, and it is surrounded by the big, beautiful ocean, which I love to be around. It is full of farmers, dairy farmers, artists, cooks, musicians. And I think that I am so lucky to have grown up in a place like that. I think. I think it breeds a desire for creativity and also a really strong sense of being interested in things, you know, I mean, I guess if you're the right person. And for me, that's. That's what it did. I think being surrounded by farms and cooks was pretty intrinsic to learning that. I loved food and wanting to know what ingredients are or how to use them or why you know, this cheese is different from this cheese or whatever. So I'm pretty lucky to have grown up around that, I think.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So trace your steps from growing up on Martha's Vineyard to getting to Maine in 2013. What was your path?

Briana Holt:

Well, it was varied. One of, one of the things that kind of jump started me, even if it took a break in me with the baking, was working at that place I mentioned earlier, that old bakery. It was, it was quite, quite old, you know, like wobbly wooden planks and huge industrial sized mixers that were made in the 30s. Looked like they could have been on a warship or something. And, and you know, like I said, I made donuts and things there. And it was just had this huge wooden table in the middle, just huge, like larger than a king size bed, longer, like two king size beds. And that's where everybody kind of worked, rolling things, you know, across from each other, next to each other. And I just loved it. Even though I was young. I worked there from 13 to 15 probably. And so then I got through high school and went to college and kind of tried to find that culture, you know, anywhere that I could. I worked at a macrobiotic hippie kind of restaurant when I was in college in Northampton, which was pretty funny. Mostly it was brown rice and salmon that was served there, but there were some really good baked goods and I kind of learned about using less sugar and things like that. So that was fun to do. And I would come home to Martha's Vineyard in the summers and work at this kind of dingy, sweaty little pie shop in the back of a general store in my hometown called Ali's. And the little pie shop was called Back Alleys. We served sandwiches and breakfast sandwiches and stuff, and I made all the pies there and the muffins. Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of muffins. And I don't make muffins now because I can't. It's like some sort of ptsd. But so I worked there in the summers and then it's actually funny, I came back. Well, I worked at a few different places while I was living in western Massachusetts. But then I came home to Martha's Vineyard and lived for a couple of years. My mother, my mother was dying of cancer. And I came home after college and lived with my parents to spend as much time as I could. And then, and then eventually I. I found my way to Montauk, Long island, where I was the pastry chef at a very, very fancy pants kind of yacht club called the Montauk Yacht Club. And Montauk is a very weird place. It's pretty strange. It's a little bit like Martha's Vineyard, maybe a little bit like Portland. It's full of weirdos. It's full of people who truly believe they've been abducted by aliens and experimented on. There's an old army base with a lot of, like, ghosty stories surrounding it, but there's also quite a bit of money and several really fancy yacht clubs. And so I had this opportunity to sort of run a very fancy kitchen. Lots of employees, plated desserts, the whole nine yards, which is sort of a step in a different direction than, you know, anything I had ever done before. And it was really a really great learning experience on how to kind of tighten everything up, make everything really professional, work in a more efficient manner, learn to make things ahead of time. You know, it was sort of like the grown up version of everything I had been doing. So that was pretty special. And then I moved to New York City, where I became one of a couple of bakers at a place called Pies and Thighs, which is a really wonderful fried chicken shack in Williamsburg. And that place had been owned by a couple of friends. And so I was again, kind of moving forward in my baking career. Kind of always, like, step by step, like, working with people that I already knew and loved. And so, you know, I feel like not everybody gets to do that. And that is pretty. That's pretty special. So I baked pies and donuts at this place in Brooklyn for about four and a half years. And that was really great. I made a lot of connections there and met a lot of people. And working in New York City is really, really great. And I think that if anybody ever gets the chance to do it, they should. It's exciting. It's really hard. It's really romantic. It's just, you know, you take the train to work at 4 in the morning and, you know, walk through the streets of Bushwick. I don't know, it's just. I loved it. I loved every second of it. And then I moved back to Martha's Vineyard, where I ran a very tiny little pastry kitchen at the renovated dingy pie shop that I had baked before. Some other friends of mine, Dan and Noni, took it over and turned it into a beautiful, beautiful spot called 7A. They have a little farm. They grow vegetables, they bring them there, they make sandwiches, soups, salads. And I took over one little corner with a table and made pies and scones and biscuits and stuff. And I did that for two seasons, while my dear friends Will and Kathleen were here building their coffee roasting company, Tandem. And then I kind of, like heeded the call and showed up here, and I was actually a barista in East Bayside for a little bit. And then. And then we found this really great garage on Congress Street. It sort of fell into our laps in this funny way and. And we couldn't say no. And so we jumped at the chance and built a kitchen. And now that's where I go every day.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

It's also where there seemed to be. I think we were there at five o' clock on a Saturday or something, and there were still tons of people there and little families. It was the sweetest thing to see that there were moms and dads and their toddlers, and people just seemed really relaxed. And the people who are working there knew the people who were eating there. It was like this little community.

Briana Volk:

Yeah.

Briana Holt:

And I think that is, if anything, like the zenith of what we want to create is a little community hub. You know, all three of us care so much about having a place where people know each other and know the people working and come and feel comfortable. So I think in some ways we're just so. We're so happy that that's something that has happened. And it is a really warm, welcoming space. It's got those huge windows, it's got the awning. It's practically reaching out to you on the street. Yeah, I think we are. We're so grateful that that fun space, like, landed in our laps. You know, it's such a beautiful old building. Used to be a gas station or like a, you know, a place where they worked on your brakes and stuff. It still has that awesome sign that says brakes and shocks for a while. I don't know all the details about this. It would be fun to find out. But for a while, it was an ebay store. I think before it was empty for quite some time, it was an ebay store. So you could go there. If you didn't have the skills to open up your computer and sell your own items on ebay, you could pay someone a hefty fee to do it for you.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

You have a very lyrical bent to your descriptions.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So when you're describing the large tables and the working side by side and your grandmother rolling out the dough, I can picture it. I can feel it. I can be there. Where does this come from in you,

Briana Holt:

huh? I don't know. It would be fun to find out. I love music. Maybe that might have something to do with It. I love it a lot. Listen to it all the time. I certainly don't play, but I pretend I learn a song here and there on my roommate's ukulele or something. So maybe, maybe it's some sort of deep desire to also be a singer that is like reaching out through the ether. That can be it. Who knows, but that might be it. I read a lot, too.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

What did you study when you were in school?

Briana Holt:

Well, when I first went to college, that was at UMass Amherst and I was a. I studied film. I was taking all the avant garde film classes and film theory classes. Well, I guess I took as many as I could as a freshman. They also make you take all kinds of other classes that didn't seem important to me, so I didn't go. So eventually they kindly asked me to leave. When you only go to your film screenings, you can't really keep up your gpa. And when you live in a town like Northampton and you have just moved from Martha's Vineyard where your parents don't really let you do anything, you tend to take a lot of trips in your brand new 1971 Ford Ltd and you don't ever come back and go to class. So by studying film, really what I did was party a lot and go to film screenings. But I wouldn't change a thing. I met some really great people and I cemented my love of film, which is something that is really important to me. So I took a bunch of time off and then I went back to school at Greenfield Community College where I studied drawing. I. I majored in drawing and minored in photography, I guess. But really it was drawing for me, which I still do as much as I can or as often as I can. But taking a bunch of time off and going back to school was really great and I recommend it to anyone.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So it's interesting that you have this remarkably creative spirit and you physically create things that you are actually putting your hands in dough and forming it into shapes. And people eventually eat it.

Briana Holt:

Yeah. And that's like the drug for me is making the thing and pulling it out of the oven. Like that moment of pulling it out, you know, a tray of biscuits is when it comes out and they do the thing that I have asked them to do with my hands. You know, they pop up in the right way, the top looks right. They lean over just a little. That is the moment that keeps me doing it. Like that's the thing that I'm addicted to, I think. So it is kind of like drawing in a way. And I, I guess it's really important to me to share that kind of a thing with people, which is why baking, you know, in a bakery is so special is because I can't help it. I'm just like watching people look at the biscuit they're about to buy and like hoping and wondering if they notice how it looks or how it feels. Yeah, that's. It's really important to me to collaboration and sharing is really important to me. And I think that making a thing for a person and having them hold it and look at it and put it in their mouth and notice what it is that I've done is like, that's it. Like, that's the moment that I'm looking for every day, all day.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So it's interesting that this is something that's important to you. And yet we have a funny. In this culture and country, we have an interesting relationship with food. If we both want that, we want that intimacy, we want that beautifully created, carefully concocted peace. And then sometimes we just think, oh, I just need fuel. And we completely overlook the fact that somebody made something and put it in front of us. So that's kind of an interesting place for you to be that you're putting something out there into the world and you have no idea whether somebody's going to actually appreciate it or not.

Briana Holt:

Yeah. And in some ways that is like a meditation. It's almost like becomes a meditation and you kind of, or I at least think to myself, it doesn't even matter if someone notices in some ways, because I am making it and I am putting it out there and I'm doing it for someone else. And in a way that's like a kind of energy that moves forward regardless of what the end result is.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

That's very Buddhist of you.

Briana Holt:

I think that it is. Yep. And you have to practice non attachment in some ways. I think as a person who creates food, especially in a restaurant where you are kind of closed, I mean, you know, an open kitchen may not, it may not seem this way, but it can be this funny thing where the non attachment is harder to pay attention to because you make a thing, you watch a person take it away and so that I'm paying attention and I'm looking. But in other kitchens, you make your thing, you're looking at it, you're making it perfect, and then you send it away. And it is this funny combination of the desire to feed people and be nurturing and also just make something beautiful and just send it, send it off into the world and hope that it

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

does its job, which is not unlike art in general. Yeah, it's not unlike writing a song or writing a story or whatever it is that you create something and you hope somebody will appreciate it, but you just don't know.

Briana Holt:

You don't know. In terms of food, the thing is, though, is that we're lucky because we do kind of know someone is eating it. You know, it is doing its job. But I do think there's like a brand new level of consciousness about what people are eating. That kind of. It's sort of meeting this idea in the middle, this idea of nourishing people. And now people who are consuming things and eating things, whether it's because healthier foods or local foods or, you know, farmed foods, are definitely a food trend. You know, it is a. It is by no means, you know, is definitely a trend. People wanting to know where their food comes from or who grew it, even if they're not sure why they want to know that. They just want to. Because it says so in this cool food magazine. You know, I don't care, because I think it's pretty great that that's happening. But I do think that. I do think we're working towards this thing where, like, you know, my desire to make something and nourish someone is meeting in the middle with someone else's desire to be nourished a little more than it has been in the last 10, 20, 30 years.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I like this idea of putting energy out there. And the energy of food is something that you can look at Chinese medicine or Ayurvedic medicine, or probably Western medicine.

Briana Holt:

Ayurvedics love butter. I will tell you that right now. That's. That is, they love it.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And I don't know what the energy of butter is specifically, but in. In other cultures, food actually has a specific energy to it. And so you're describing a human energy that is put into the food. And I think there's also this idea of energy that is put into growing a food. But I'm not sure that all of us. It seems like kind of a. It's almost an unprovable thing that there's energy that goes into this. And yet we know it's. So.

Briana Holt:

Yeah, Yeah. I don't. It's funny. I do feel like we all have to come together and in general in the world, especially now, but in some ways, you kind of have to get a little bit of the way on your own and figure something out. And sometimes I think that involves just trusting a feeling you have. And knowing, even if you don't understand necessarily what, like, you're saying, like, for instance, what a certain type of food, like, what kind of energy that has, which can come from anything. It can come from, you know, a culture or a religion, like saying, oh, like, oil has this property, this spiritual property. It can also come from, well, oh, this oil was produced in this type of way with this type of machinery and that produces this kind of energy and hires this many people. Like, all those things are real, that all those different energies are real. And I do think that in some ways you have to kind of, like, figure that out for yourself or hold that within yourself in order to offer it out. Yeah, I don't. It's something that I'm kind of growing and learning about right now as well. I think everybody is kind of coming together in this new understanding of what eating is and cooking, which is exciting.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, each of my daughters bought something that had a biscuit in it. And, you know, they get a lot of good food. They're very lucky that way. And one of them ate the biscuit, loved it, ate it right away. She just couldn't stop raving about it, thought it was wonderful. The other one, who. Who, you know, she's a little picky. If something doesn't taste good, she'll throw it away or compost it, whatever. She actually ate half of it and saved the rest for the next day and then went to the trouble of heating it up in the oven so she'd eat the rest of it the next day. So whatever energy it is or ingredients or combination of things even going to tandem itself and having that experience really made for these little special delicacies that. That both of my daughters appreciated.

Briana Holt:

That is so nice to hear. I love when someone doesn't finish something, saves it and heats it up, or even just eats it the next day. I think that's a true compliment. Something I know about myself is that I am very celebratory whether or not there's something that needs to be celebrated. I think that's kind of how I spend my days, getting excited about things and wanting to celebrate. And it comes out in my food. You know, if you stand at the pastry counter on a Saturday morning at 8, when everything is out, you won't really find too many things that don't have, like, a little bit of fireworks in them. You know, like some. There's a few things, more than a few things, topped with flaky sea salt. There's more than a few things that have Too much butter in them. There's more than a few things that are, you know, frosted with brown butter, cream cheese. Like, I.

Briana Volk:

It's.

Briana Holt:

It's something that's in me that I can't deny. And so. And so it's nice to hear when people get something there and eat it and feel kind of, like, celebratory in that way. I get excited, and I think it comes through

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

well. I encourage people to go to Tandem, actually, either one. But if they want to go to the bakery, then they need to go to Congress Street.

Briana Holt:

Yep. Although we do send every day some. Some tasty things down to the little shop.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, I will definitely be doing that myself. And I'm sure anybody who's listening now probably wants to go have a biscuit with maple butter on top of it on a Sunday morning. So that's probably gonna happen. So you've just now started a big stampede towards me.

Briana Holt:

I'm ready. I'm ready. I'm gonna make more.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

That's good. That sounds great. And I appreciate this. I appreciate the fact that you're bringing this great energy into the world and great food into the world. And thank you for feeding my daughters. That was.

Briana Holt:

You're welcome.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Very nice of you. I've been speaking with Brianna Holt, who is the head baker at Tandem Coffee and Bakery in Portland. I really appreciate the work that you're doing. Thank you so much.

Briana Holt:

Thank you. It is what I do, and I can't help it. And I just can't wait to do more of it.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

You've been listening to Lovemain radio show number 279, neighborhood nourishment. Our guests have included Brianna and Andrew Volk and Brianna Holt. For a preview of each week's show, sign up for our e. Follow me on Twitter as DrLisa and see my running travel, food and wellness photos as bountiful1 on Instagram. We love to hear from you, so please let us know what you think of Love Maine Radio. We welcome your suggestions for future shows. Also let our sponsors know that you have heard about them here. We are privileged that they enable us to bring Love Maine Radio to you each week. This is Dr. Lisa Bellayo. I hope that you have enjoyed our neighborhood nourishment show. Thank you for allowing me to be a part of your day. May you have a bountiful life.