When Randy met Mari

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When Randy met Mari, it was loathe at first sight. “She’d just moved back (to Northern Michigan) from California,” said Randy Chamberlain, who is today the chef-owner of the Glen Arbor restaurant Blu. But when Randy met Mari Patton, he was sous chef, the deputy head chef at Windows, an Elmwood Township restaurant. This was the 1980s, and Mari Patton had brought back with her all sorts of West Coastisms, including “purple highlights” in her “wavvy” hair. “So before there was any interaction or conversation, (I) immediately had an impression of her,” Randy said of Windows’ newly hired server. “It was something you’d sneer at.”

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Whaddaya do up there all winter?

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I’ve fielded the “Whaddaya do up there all winter?” question. A lot. I’m a seasonal employee at a retail establishment in Glen Arbor. My place of employment is visited during the summer and fall months by out-of-towners, many of whom express a reasonable curiosity about life UpNorth after summer’s omnipresent sunny-ness fades. One such inquisitor was completely sold on Glen Arbor in the summer. But the winter? Not so much, she said.

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Tis the season for PJ Party, tree lighting and holiday marketplaces

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It’s here again. A Glen Arbor original, “better than a bustling city’s Black Friday,” our version of the day-after-Thanksgiving shopping, is the annual PJ party, on Friday morning, Nov. 28, from 5-8 a.m.

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Grocer’s Daughter Chocolate celebrates 10th birthday

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Join the staff of Grocer’s Daughter Chocolate to celebrate the company’s 10th birthday in Empire, between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. Founder Mimi Wheeler will make a special appearance from 10 a.m. until noon to serve complimentary chocolate birthday cake while it lasts. Grocer’s Daughter will launch a brand new chocolate bar and will preview a soon-to-be-released Michigan-made wholesale packaging.

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Is Sugar Loaf deed transfer imminent?

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Last week the Leelanau County Register of Deeds office received documents from a title company in Troy to record the deed transfer for Sugar Loaf resort. But Register of Deeds Dorothy Miller reportedly found errors in the paperwork, including discrepancies between Kate Wickstrom’s signatures in the documentation from March 2013 and now. The signatures may have been forged. Miller confirmed that, as of today, the deed to Sugar Loaf has not been transferred.

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Tiffany’s in Empire offers free ice cream

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Megan Schous, whose family owns Tiffany’s cafe and the Empire Lakeshore Inn, reports that Tiffany’s will offer free ice cream today, Oct. 13, from noon until 2 p.m. and at random hours throughout the week.

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Watercolorist Andy Evansen to teach at The Homestead

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Andy Evansen, renowned watercolorist from Minnesota, returns to Glen Arbor to teach a four-day workshop sponsored by the Glen Arbor Art Association at The Homestead resort, Oct. 13-16. Born in Wisconsin in 1965, Evansen was educated at the University of Minnesota and has studied with watercolorists Skip Lawrence, Eric Weigardt and Alvaro Castagnet.

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Chateau Fontaine: Fruit-forward wines, great hospitality

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Dan Matthies, proprietor of Chateau Fontaine in Lake Leelanau (along with wife Lucie), still remembers the day over 30 years ago that he saw a tiny advertisement in the Leelanau Enterprise: “Looking for farmers to grow wine grapes.” Matthies and his wife had been fascinated with wine and the idea of wine making since they’d first tasted the beverage in the 1970s — but they’d never seriously considered the possibility that their land, acres upon acres of steep hills with south-facing slopes, would be an ideal spot for following the lead of wine maker Bernie Rink. Rink, a neighboring farmer who’d planted a test plot of French-American hybrid grapes as well as a few vinifera varieties on 16 acres of rolling Leelanau County land back in the mid 1960s, had debuted his Boskydel winery, the first winery to open in Leelanau County, in 1975.

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Laurentide: history in a bottle

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Fall is here, and Susan Braymer, who along with her husband Bill, owns and operates Laurentide, a Lake Leelanau winery that opened its tasting room in the summer of 2012, finds that this is a season at the end of which she breathes a sigh of relief. “It’s a rushed and stressful time,” she said, “but after the harvest, you get relief. The grapes are off, and they’re on their way to the next point of their journey.”

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Fall For Art in Leelanau

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Fall For Art in Leelanau (FFA) is a self-guided tour of the peninsula’s galleries. Now in its ninth year, FFA takes place over the Columbus Day weekend (Native Peoples’ Day), Oct. 10-12, and for good historical reason.

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