Sam & I met in Brooklyn in 2009. I was just finishing up at the French Culinary Institute, where I studied the pastry arts; Sam was traveling for work, and we just happened to meet at the home of a mutual friend. It was love at first sight - really. We got engaged a couple of months after that.

 

We were married at Sam's parents’ house in Eastern Connecticut. We made all of the appetizers and desserts ourselves (I even baked my own cake), and started thinking about how much we'd like to open our own place someday. I was working at a bakery/coffee shop in Brooklyn at the time, and we started looking around, trying to find a good place to open a small bakery on the East Coast. We fell in love with the Northwest Corner of Connecticut, an area where Sam had spent lots of time fishing as a kid, and so we took over the existing Black Forest Bakery and, after a couple of years, were able to purchase a house just down the street.

 

Our older son, Daniel (named for Sam's dad), was born in 2016, and Kevin (named for my Dad) was born in the spring of 2019. We opened the bistro in the fall of 2018 and have more-or-less been working non-stop ever since! Between the two restaurants and two very active (and very sweet) boys, we have our hands full, but we love life in Canaan, and love what we get to do every day.