2009 Hands
Dakota Soifer. In 2009, Dakota came on board our kitchen bus, and our Meadow Lark troupe was eager to follow his lead. Before joining Meadow Lark, Dakota cooked and learned at Zuni Café, in San Francisco; at Julia’s Kitchen, the restaurant of Copia, the Napa Institute of Food and Culture; and at The Kitchen, here in Boulder. He was also this close to landing a plum job as back-up dancer for Mariah Carey. Now, Dakota is serving up small plates of Mediterranean-inspired fare, prepared from ingredients sourced as locally as possible, at his own restaurant: Café Aion.
Abby Saunders. Abby grew up along the east coast—on her native Long Island, attending Hamilton College in Upstate New York, and exploring New Hampshire's White Mountains. In search of taller peaks, Abby came to Boulder and found a fancy corporate job at Spyder Sportswear. But she gave it all up to join Meadow Lark. As it turns out, she's a genius when it comes to coordinating the untold number of logistics that go into a farm dinner—and she's got a knack for finding the perfect spot to set our table. Abby couldn't get enough of our circus and, lucky for us, she's came back for one more season. When she wasn't running around with a clipboard and checking off to-do lists, she was more than likely backcountry skiing on the slopes of a 14er, or extoling the virtues of craft beer. After Meadow Lark, Abby joined the team at Avery Brewing and fell in love with a certain crew member of Cure Organic Farm. Now, she and her husband—the aforementioned field hand!—live outside of Portland, Maine, where they started Bumbleroot Organic Farm.
Katrina Mohr. If you happen to subscribe to Hang Gliding & Paragliding magazine, Alpinist magazine, or the Boulder Daily Camera, you might already know Katrina’s work. What you didn’t know, though, is that she wields her chef’s knife just as deftly as her pen. She’s been working in the restaurant business since she was wee little—she’s done just about every job in just about every sort of dining establishment. We were thrilled to steal her away from her position as a mountain-top pastry chef in Jackson Hole.
Jamyra Brown. Jamyra came to Meadow Lark from the middle of the Midwest, Iowa City, Iowa, where she helped open a falafel restaurant—yes, a falafel restaurant. Anyone who can proselytize so successfully for truly great hummus is a hero of ours. And, when she wasn’t assessing the chickpeas or tahini, she was completing culinary school and selling beautiful artisanally produced cheeses, or, as she puts it, “killer barnyard stuff.”