By Marli Guzetta

People often decamp to Nantucket from their mainland sturm und drang to lead the lives they’d prefer to live. In this pursuit, a tradition of giving is handed down from one generation to the next as sure as any summer home or beloved old sailboat.

Philanthropy is typically defined as a contribution of time, talent or treasure that has a significant effect on a cause. This summer especially, non-profits are coalescing around a new generation of young philanthropists, aged 45 and under. Since the mid-to-late 1990s, a good segment of the summer social scene has been dedicated to philanthropic events.

Early on, Nantucket AIDS Network set the standard for high-end galas, remembered long-time gala attendee and professional jeweler Susan Lister Locke, who has spent her summers on Nantucket since the 1970s. “Before then, there were only a few events each summer, like the Shipwreck Ball and the house tours,” she explained. “As more visible money started coming to the island, people wanted to give more and get more involved. Now I see a lot more young people taking initiative and supporting and running these events.”

It would take an entire magazine to include the countless other islanders who show up reliably for events and causes. We couldn’t include them all here, but when you’re out and about you’ll have the pleasure of meeting some of Nantucket’s most charming, hardworking and intelligent young resources at many island fundraising efforts. People like Geoffrey and Stephanie Silva—who make their living as an owner of Galley Beach restaurant and a nurse, respectively—are dedicating their time to causes like Hospice Care of Nantucket. Associates groups like the one at Nantucket Conservation Foundation, comprised of younger activists, create new fundraising opportunities and tap into new demographics through events such as NCF’s annual Race for Open Space, while dedicated individuals like Courtney and Greg McKechnie, ages 31 and 34 respectively, serve at what seems like second jobs as presidents of boards and chairs of major fundraisers for community non-profits like the Boys and Girls Club. Fundraising talent in the likes of Nantucket Atheneum supporter Mia Matthews, in her early forties, is able to bring in other young donors, while other donors such as 36-year-old Jason Briggs set a tone with single contributions that jump-start new traditions in giving.

“When I started at the Nantucket Conservation Foundation seven years ago, this younger group—many of them younger family members of board members—came to me and said, ‘We want to get involved. How do we do it?’” remembered NCF’s youthful director of development Gage Dobbins. Since 2003, donors age 21 through 40 have raised $1.5 million for the Nantucket Conservation Foundation, $225,000 of which has been through membership fees, according to Dobbins. The associates’ primary event is the Race for Open Space, “which has been hugely successful,” said Dobbins.

One of the original associates is Daphne Mitchell, owner of Daphne Mitchell Stationary. Her grandfather, Alfred “Teeny” Sanford, and father, George Fowlkes, both served as presidents of the NCF board. A member since age 18, Mitchell, now 39Nantucket Magazine and a mother of two, focuses on passing down the tradition to younger members beginning with her own kids. “I’d like to see all my children and all my friends and their children take our places,” she said. Many younger island philanthropists get drafted as Mitchell did through family connections. NCF associate Charles Veysey, 32, was recruited by his cousin Michelle Stewart and her husband. Director of Partnership Development for Charity Partners, Veysey in turn recruited his two brothers, Quinn and Graham, as well as his brother-in-law Brian Morris.

“You spend all this time on Nantucket and love it for its beauty and its charm, but you don’t realize there’s a lot of effort that goes into preserving that,” he advised.

Many of the NCF’s associates have young families, which has led to their interest in attending educational and field days with their kids on the properties as well as creating a Junior Membership for children under 18, which kicks off with a barbeque, Sunday, August 3 at Jetties Beach. “Some people are paying for their children’s memberships, whether they’re two or ten. When they’re eighteen, they can say, ‘Okay, now it’s your turn to carry this on,’” Mitchell said.

Next generation

Nantucket Conservation Foundation isn’t the only island organization to begin targeting the under-45 years of age demographic. This year, Nantucket Preservation Trust will offer a new “Next Generation” ticket to attendees under age 40 — discounted from $150 to $100 — for its August Fete on August 7.

This marks the beginning of an effort to recruit younger members. “A lot of museums in L.A. and New York do this kind of thing to build memberships with younger people,” explained August Fete chair Lydia Sussek. “We want to bring to the next generation of stewards of Nantucket homes the importance of understanding the beauty of antique houses. We’re also working with the schools now to help spread the message to young families with kids that conserving these homes is essential to the history of Nantucket.”

In addition, the Nantucket Historical Association is organizing the first meeting of its newly created associates program this month. “One of the audiences we want to serve better is the younger audience,” said NHA executive director William Tramposch. “These will tend to be younger people in their thirties through their fifties who don’t have a lot of time in the summer but have an interest in being part of a larger discussion, with more substance than you would find in the activities circuit in the summer.”

The NHA is planning to provide private lectures and events for its associates to help them become better stewards of money they may choose to donate. “We’re trying to encourage people to think to the future,” said the NHA’s director of external relations, Judy Wodynski. “You may not have the money now, but you may have it to leave when you die.”

Dobbins indicated that the internet has been helpful in approaching younger potential members. “That’s how they communicate with each other, get together, figure out who’s going to be here when,” she said. Associate Dave Anderson, for example, suggested creating a group for NCF on Facebook, which now has 1,300 fans and has generated new memberships for the foundation. “Being involved with a lot of charities, I know there’s a point at which people who are involved hit a wall,” expanded associate Grant Gund, 40, who spends his work week at a private equity firm in Boston. “It’s imperative that you bring on new people, because they bring a new energy which can permeate the whole organization.”

Even though the associates are bringing the NCF into the 21st century, members like 37-year-old Ande Grennan, owner of Sperry Tents, enjoy working with and observing their elder counterparts.

“They believe in sitting down and discussing things, whereas we discuss them via a conference call or online conference,” Grennan said. “I actually think it’s remarkable that they have that kind of dedication.”

One benefit of being a younger philanthropist on Nantucket is learning from a pretty remarkable pool of senior members. Nantucket Boys and Girls Club president Greg McKechnie said that when board members like Adobe Systems founder Chuck Geschke talk, his ears are open.

Co-owner of Great Point Properties, McKechnie finds that his role as the club president is like a second job. At 34, he is the youngest non-profit board president on the island. His wife, 31-year-old Courtney McKechnie, owner of Core Pilates, is the club’s Summer Groove gala chair. They became involved with the club together even though they have no children of their own yet.

Opportunity strikes

“You can’t get any purer than children,” said Greg, who adds that the work of the club’s donors eases a large financial burden for island families. “It only costs $25 for a family to send their child to the club for a year of after-school and other services worth about $2,500,” he said. “That’s because of what we do.”

Though a good number of their friends assist in charitable work, like Nantucket Lightshop owner LuAnn Burton, who is on the Events Committee with Small Friends of Nantucket, and Great Point Properties co-owner Bill Liddle who is a board member and assistant treasurer with the Nantucket New School.

The McKechnies said they would love to see more of their peers donating their time, talent or treasure, as the saying goes, to local non-profits. Former financial wunderkind and now owner of the Manchester Millrats basketball team, Jason Briggs also tends toward child-related causes in his giving “because it seems like they have the most immediate impact,” he said.

Briggs, who went to grade school on island through the fifth grade, tends to be off-the-cuff with his giving, making out checks as opportunity strikes. “I was hitting baseballs out at the field when I saw the director of the Little League and remembered I had been meaning to contribute to the league. So I wrote a check right there,” said Briggs, whose most significant single contribution to date has been a $100,000 high school scholarship donation that catalyzed the Nantucket Golf Club scholarship.

Also like the McKechnies, Briggs would like to see more of his peers under 45 supporting Nantucket non-profits.

“It just seemed like there was a need to have someone younger donate money with the hopes of having other people come in and give more,” Briggs said. “I wanted to do that on a large scale and publicly, so that hopefully other people would come in and give. It makes me proud that the Golf Club came in, and now I’m second in line, not first. I hope that continues.”

The national non-profit watchdog Guide Star reports over 200 non-profits raising money on Nantucket, with most of their donations increasing steadily since the late 1990s despite reports of market downturns. That’s in keeping with national trends. Charitable giving in the United States is estimated to have been $306.39 billion in 2007, up from 2006 and exceeding $300 billion for the first time in history, Giving USA reported in June. Charitable giving was 2.2 % of gross domestic product for 2007.

Galley restaurant owner Geoffrey Silva, 43, and his wife, maternity nurse Stephanie Silva, 40, believe it’s Nantucketers’ civic duty to volunteer their time somewhere. They became involved with Hospice when it assisted Geoffrey Silva’s ailing grandfather, Robert Currie, over a decade ago. Today, Geoffrey Silva is first vice president and president elect for Hospice’s fundraising foundation, which is responsible for the group’s Dreamcatcher gala.

“The sense of community is what makes Nantucket tick,” he said. “When you have this great life, you can’t sit back and use it all up. You have to give something back.

Nantucket MagazineNantucket Atheneum supporter and actress Mia Matthews “inherited” the island when she married regular summer resident and Point Breeze developer Bob Matthews. “We try to support as much as we can while we’re here,” she said, “because we recognize that without the support, these organizations won’t exist.” With two young daughters, the Matthews family has been using the Nantucket Atheneum’s services since the girls were in strollers, which made Matthews keen to assist when the library asked for her help.

“My early volunteer work was kind of like the movie ‘Robots,’” Matthews said. “It was like, ‘Find a need and fill it.’” As Matthews became more settled, however, she was instrumental in creating Circus Flora, the Atheneum’s most successful annual fundraiser, with fellow under-40 board member Melinda Puljic and Nan Geschke.

Matthews is now in her fifth year of organizing the gala dinner that helps underwrite the circus. Last year and this year, the Point Breeze has produced the dinner. “The point is bringing together young families. We are the next generation of philanthropists and we have to be role models,” said Matthews, who encourages her daughters, both under age 10, to hold their own lemonade stand to raise money for Autism Speaks. Matthews conceded that it can be a challenge to elicit the support of people who are “in vacation mode” during the summer.

“They say, ‘Oh, when I’m home, I give all year in San Francisco or Greenwich or Palm Beach,” she said. “But you have to remind people that you have to support where you are, otherwise we won’t have what we enjoy. For me, it’s really important to try to get the younger people who come out here to realize that they have to give back to this island.”
Supporting island non-profits is not without perks. “You certainly meet incredible like minded people whose hearts are in a good place,” Matthews said. “It also feels good to be able to help. I can walk into the Atheneum or into a special Atheneum program that would not have existed if Circus Flora hadn’t come, and that makes me feel good.”

As a relative newcomer to Nantucket, Matthews added that her family’s philanthropy has helped them to really get to know Nantucket in a way that one can’t as a vacationer.

“You can come here, go to the beach, go to dinner or wherever, and you don’t know Nantucket,” she said. “Giving your time really helps you to get to know this island that we love, intimately, firsthand— not as an outsider.”

For in-depth reports and information on nonprofit organizations both on Nantucket and elsewhere, see www.guidestar.org.

By Marli Guzetta

Rowland Hussey Macy, native son of Nantucket and founder of Macy’s department store, knew better than anyone else the nostalgic power of the island’s whaling era. He harnessed it in the form of a single red star, now one of the country’s most recognizable logos, which he first packaged with a sailor’s yarn when he opened his Manhattan store in 1858.

Now in its 150th year, Macy’s department store has become an inextricable part of our national culture— it introduced things like the tea bag, the Idaho baked potato, the colored bath towel and the first female executive— while also melding its brand consciousness with American holidays through the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and the classic Christmas-time film “Miracle on 34th Street,” which chronicled Macy’s conception of the in-store Santa.

But in 1837, Macy was only a boy of about 15 and expected to assist in the island’s whaling industry. He set off on his first whale ship voyage as a cabin boy for the Emily Morgan, remembered Macy’s official historian and director of event operations, Bob Rutan. “While he was with the ship, there was a bad storm, and the only navigational tool they had to go by was the North Star, which in this storm appeared to have a reddish glow to it,” Rutan related.

“That’s how they got their bearings and stayed on course. After that trip, R.H. Macy never went back to sea, but he got a red star tattoo because he always considered that to be a lucky thing for him.” The red star tattoo remained only a personal talisman for a while, as he pursued various ailing business ventures.

Macy’s historian Robert M. Grippo is the author of “Macy’s: The Store. The Star. The Story,” due out this fall from Square One Publishers. According to Grippo, R.H. Macy’s father and brother both owned dry goods stores in Nantucket and Boston, respectively. Inspired by his older brother, R.H. traveled to Boston, where he opened his own store sometime between 1843 and 1844. When it failed, Macy and his brother relocated to Marysville, California in 1850 to open a dry goods store during the Gold Rush. That also went belly up, however, and Macy returned to Haverhill, where he opened a store from 1851 to 1857 and adopted a temporary crowing cock logo. According to Rutan, “There weren’t a lot of retailers trying to logo at that point.” Then, in October of 1858, Macy moved his location yet again, this time to the site that would make it famous, the corner of 14th Street and Sixth Avenue in New York City. It was a rebirth for both store and owner, as Macy began trying his hand at creative advertising copy, while also allowing people to believe that he had been a whale ship captain back home on Nantucket.

“Throughout the 1860s, 1870s and even into the 1880s, people referred to him as ‘Captain Macy,’” Rutan said. “For 30 years, the company tried to play on this idea of Macy as a Nantucket whaling captain, which was not the truth. They got very sketchy with it.”

At one point, the store displayed a wooden carving of R.H. Macy in full captain’s regalia, according to Rutan. “A long-term captain on a whaling ship is a better story than cabin boy for one trip.” Macy began using images of the star in his advertising copy shortly after relocating to New York. Rutan said the earliest existing image dates back to 1863. In newspaper broadsheets containing 50 to 60 ads, the star graphic, sometimes made of dots or asterisks, was an eye-catching way to draw attention to an ad. Additionally, Macy summoned rNantucket Magazineomantic images of navigational stars in poetic ad copy, as Grippo showed by including in his book a poem entitled “Westward Ho!” from one of the earliest star-themed ads.

Freemason origins?

To document the tattoo in his book, Grippo went so far as to find Macy’s death certificate and burial records from Woodlawn Cemetery, where Macy was interred after dying in France in 1877. They include no mention of tattoos. But other biographers claim that Macy had several tattoos from the time he spent at sea during the years 1837 to 1841, including a red star on the back of one of his hands.

Grippo believes the star could also represent Macy’s involvement with the freemasons. As suggestive evidence, Grippo cited the inclusion of Macy’s freemason certificate in a scene from “Miracle on 34th Street.”

However, it’s entirely probable that Macy had a star tattoo. Nautical star tattoos have been common for centuries. Even in the past two decades, versions of a star tattoo have found renewed popularity among punk, rock, biker and other communities of young adults. We even thought about getting them with some of our historically minded friends. William Tramposch, director of Nantucket Historical Association, politely declined the invitation to get the tattoo with us, as did whaling documentarian Ric Burns, who’s creating a new film about that era and one on the history of the NHA. We didn’t even try to contact Macy’s celebrity designer Martha Stewart. Ultimately, we decided against the tattoos because there exists no hard proof that Macy even had the star tattoo, according to Rutan and historian Grippo.

Reports of the tattoo have it located at various places on Macy’s arm and hand. According to Rutan, there were also variations for the first 12 years in the way Macy depicted the star in his logos. It wasn’t until the 1870s that Macy settled on its current, solid red incarnation, which he used for a private in-store label with which he sold popular books, clothing and food and transferred to the store’s façade. Even after Macy passed away, the store continued to perpetuate the lore of its founder’s whaling origins.

In 1953, the Nantucket Historical Association’s “Historic Nantucket” magazine published a story about Macy’s “Whale of a Sale.” That event, organized by Macy’s executive Paul Hollister for the New York store, featured relics of Nantucket’s whaling days, including “unusual prints, models, tools and facsimiles of log pages.”

Attuned to the marketability of Macy’s island past, Hollister was also the man who drafted Nantucket and New York artist Tony Sarg to create the first in a long line of the Macy’s Parade signature hot air balloons: a sea serpent that Sarg premiered at Jetties Beach on Nantucket in 1937

“We’re not sure what made him tick, but he was a man who had a good idea and that drove him. He could be gruff and tough, but he tried to be honest in business, which was instilled in him through the Quaker ethic of his upbringing,” Grippo said. In his obituary, the Nantucket Inquirer and Mirror remembered R.H. Macy’s early days in New York City: “He was looked upon as an adventurer, and he could command no credit. He braved all this opposition, however, and good luck attended him. With tact and pluck he first established his credit, and it was not long before he became known as a prudent, energetic and painstaking merchant.”

In many ways, the star evolved with Macy, from an image in Nantucket’s whaling scene to an eye-catching display with more ambition than substance and then, finally, to something with real gravitas, a symbol of American industry. “The star went from being a lucky image for him to a neat advertising gimmick to symbolizing of what his brand was,” Rutan synopsized. Since its 2007 merger with Federated Department Stores, Macy’s keeps its corporate headquarters in Ohio and operates almost 900 stores in the United States, including the Bloomingdales chain of stores. Even though the company found its success in New York and has its home in Ohio, a part of it will always remain on Nantucket, where R.H. Macy began the myth of his captainship, and possibly the gimmick that helped him break through in a faraway city, with a bad night at sea and a red star tattoo.

Even in the parade now, we have the Showboat Float,” Rutan noted. “And for the last five years, it’s had Captain Macy up in the pilot’s house.”

For more on “Macy’s: The Store. The Star. The Story,” see www.squareonepublishers.com.

By Lyndon Dupuis
Photography by Terry Pommett

Take one dark and gloomy New England post and beam house of no distinction. Tear out all the interior walls. Allow the house to sun itself and breathe by replacing tiny windows with generous ones. Blend in French doors for more light and views. Add buckets of white paint. Stain floors a lovely rich walnut. Allow everything to dry. Frost with white upholstery and sprinkle with carefully selected antiques. Move in. Enjoy.

Entertaining and enjoying their home with friends in a casually elegant atmosphere is what this island retreat is all about, said Lee Bierly and Christopher Drake, who make up the accomplished design duo of Bierly-Drake Associates, based in Boston and Palm Beach. “We have a formal Boston town house and a gracious 1930’s colonial house in Palm Beach,” said Chris, “we wanted life here to be easy and casual.” “After all, we’re two guys and a dog, spending summer days here; What else do we need?” added Lee.

The “guys” didn’t go so far as to label the original house a dump, but their repetition of the words “brown” and “dark” Nantucket Magazineaccompanied by grimaces of distaste conveyed their impression fairly accurately. Lee laughingly said that one of their friends, who can’t believe the transformation, was at first so aghast that she wouldn’t step inside when her realtor drove her to view it. “This place sat on the market for three years with no offers,” Lee explained. Not only was the house forlorn and unloved, but the property measured up to the structure. “It was all just pine and scrub,” he noted.

Because of their vision and talent, today Orion’s Rise is a pristine Nantucket-style grey-shingled house accented with glossy white paint. It sits above a gracious, gently sloping lawn dotted with specimen trees and framed by verdant green borders. A trip to France to study local horticulture resulted in a Provencal style garden at one edge of the lawn. “Our growing conditions are much the same,” explained Lee.

Large, strongly textural black and white checked wallpaper defines the entry of the house, accessed through an unimposing front door at one end of the front porch. The foyer, though not large, houses several pieces of furniture, including a vintage wing chair upholstered in a red and white striped quilt. Various country antiques Lee Bierly guides guests through the Nantucket retreat he shares with partner Chris Drake. charmingly, but not cloyingly, accent the small space.

Inside the open living-entertaining area, a sea of white woodwork is capped by a white bead-board ceiling soaring three stories to a cupola. Black shows up again in the stone surround of the crisp whitemantled fireplace and in the honed granite countertops of the kitchen. Custom woven kilim rugs from Stark anchor the open floor plan and are another bold statement in wide black and off-white stripes. “We chose our black-white color scheme because we thought it would stand up to the strong interior architecture,” noted Lee. This space, which claims the rest of the 1,600 square-foot first floor, is punctuated with posts that divide the area into 13- and-a-half-foot modules. “Because we couldn’t make this work in a conventional sense,” explained Lee, we did a typical Bierly-Drake thing and created a huge island, which actually bisects the open kitchen and forms a natural partition between it and the dining space. Two sitting “rooms,” a dining area and the kitchen are all visible here and flow from one to the other. A 13-foot-by-2- foot island is constructed with a large counter-height prep area with raised sections on each end to stash glassware and dishes. “They are just high enough to allow people to lean on them and kibitz while we cook, and to serve as buffet tables for dinners,” noted Chris.

The two ingeniously created storage throughout the kitchen while eschewing upper cabinets, enhancing the sleek look they wanted. The award-winning designers—the two were inducted into the New England Design Hall of Fame last year—chose furnishings that include extremely generous custom English roll arm sofas and chairs upholstered in white muslin.

You’d better have very long legs or prepare to curl up. Simple Louis XVI bergeres sport white painted frames and are also upholstered in white. Pale raffia covers the seat cushions on a pair of antique Orkney Island host chairs at the antique English dining-library table. Reproduction zinc garden tables serve as end tables for one sofa. “Our furnishing concept is really a combination of ‘formal and garden,’” smiled Chris.

For this house, the Bierly- Drake team favors traditionally-flavored semi-formal furnishings set off by the clearly casual including the bamboo and canvas director’s chairs flanking the dining table and art and accessories. A loft sitting room, master bedroom, guest bedroom and two baths—all are small but sumptuous—compose the second story. Climb a beautifully crafted ladder and you are up in the cupola, looking out over the idyllic landscape. A really lovely golden retriever named Speedo waits alertly on the lawn for one of her masters to chuck a tennis ball. Chris obliges her. What more could two guys and a dog ask for?

Written by Marli Guzzetta
Photography by Terry Pommett

Nantucketer Matt Zadorozny is the kind of young culinary talent you could see winning a show like “Top Chef,” except for the fact that he doesn’t need or want exorbitant grandstanding.

At 29 years old, he has studied in several countries and under some of America’s most progressive head chefs, including New York City’s Thomas Keller of Per Se, Mike Anthony of Grammarcy Tavern and Wiley Dufresne of WD 50.

He has also developed a name for himself at DeMarco and Company of the Cauldron, both on Nantucket, where he worked as head chef before scaling back his hours to focus on more intimate dinner parties as a private chef. “I’ll do whatever you want, I just want to do it well,” he explained. “If your preference is highly technical, well-researched food with all the toys and tricks, like sous-vide and liquid nitrogen, I can do it. If you want hand-rolled pasta and rustic Italian dishes, I can do that too.”

Developed by French chef Georges Pralus in the 1970s, sous-vide cooking is a method of slow-cooking ingredients in vacuum-packed plastic bags so as to not disturb the integrity of the food. At the Nantucket home of David and Gretchen Callahan in June, their favor tended toward the highly technical, as Zadorozny and his kitchen staff and best friends Steve Ripley and Daniel LaPoint set out a liquidnitrogen immersion circulator and various different thermometers. Having worked in island restaurants before, LaPoint helped in the kitchen preparation while Ripley acted as maitre d’, sommelier and waiter.

“I’ve worked with him at Company of the Cauldron and DeMarco, and he really has a command of the room,” Zadorozny said of Ripley. “He’s one of the best I’ve ever seen. He knows his wine and knows how to keep everyone happy and the room working in a good tempo.” “The room” for the evening’s dinner was the open kitchen and dining space of the Surfside home that David and Gretchen Callahan share with their little dog, Clicquot, so named because she is “French, white and bubbly,” said Gretchen Callahan, who is enthusiastic about entertaining at home. “It’s much more relaxing to me,” she said. “Some people need to be seen, but that’s not my thing.”

Invited over for dinner: Natalie Jacobson and Craig Wiggins as well as Buzz and Susan Goodall, who have all been good friends with the Callahans for years. Originally, the women bonded over their shared passion for golf.

The Callahans live year-round on Nantucket, where David is a broker and co-owner at Jordan Real Estate while Gretchen is a winter real estate agent in the Dominican Republic. The Goodalls are Nantucket summer residents. Jacobson’s primary residence is Nantucket, but as long-time Boston WCVB TV news journalist and anchor, she spends much of her time off island, as does her boyfriend Craig Wiggins, the most recent and welcome addition to the circle of friends. Wiggins was president of the New York City-based advertising agency Foote, Cone & Belding and met Jacobson through a mutual friend.

“Having it in our house was interesting because, with the dining room and kitchen combined, we could do our own thing and watch while he did his,” David Callahan said. “I don’t think people get that kind of insight with professional kitchens,” Gretchen Callahan added.

And it was quite the meal to observe. The chefs began the meal with a sampling platter of crispy sweetbreads flavored separately with quail, blue cheese, buttermilk, celery and hot sauce, a take on the flavors of buffalo chicken wings. “I love applying a sense of humor and a sense of science to the traditional dishes I love to eat and that Americans have grown up with, and this is a good example,” Zadorozny said. “We used a protein glue to adhere chicken skin to the sweet breads, so the skin would get nice and crispy while we prepared the sweet breads sous-vide and then fried them.”

In a riff on the traditional Rueben, Zadorozny served for the main course a sous-vide Liberty Valley duck breast with rye bread puddings, much like classic pan perdu, or French toast, as well as kraut speztle, thousand island and a Swiss cheese consommé, which he made by simmering a good Swiss with onions for an hour, then freezing it with the liquid nitrogen and thawing it slowly over 24 hours. During the meal, a political but polite conversation on immigration led to a personal one. With all four of her grandparents originally from Serbia, Jacobson is a second generation American.

“The current controversy regarding immigration in America, and the animosity some people feel is not new,” she said. “As a second generation American, that makes me sad. Most people, when they come to America, look to better themselves and the lives of their children. They generally want to improve and educate themselves. That is a beautiful part of immigration.” Zadorozny and Ripley add that they are both first- generation Americans who’ve been close friends since they were teenagers.

Both have fathers from other countries: Zadorozny’s father is Ukranian and Ripley’s is Polish. This fostered a special bond, which often included quirky similarities between the families. Ripley’s and Zadorozny’s fathers both had small farms and gardens in the middle of the cities where they lived.

LaPoint and Zadorozny grew up as best friends across the street from one another in Utica, New York. “My dad moved here with my grandfather, and they grew their food in the old country, so they didn’t think anything of doing it here,” Zadorozny said. “It wasn’t until I was in my teens and getting into food that I started appreciating what it was to be able to eat our own produce… nothing is as unbelievable as when you pick it out of a garden.”

As a cheese course between the meal and the dessert, guests ate Spana de Cabra, a Spanish goat cheese bruleé with sugar, and accompanied by an orange peel puree and pumpernickel juniper cookie. “I like the cheese course because, when I’m done eating beef or duck, I don’t like to go right into a sweet dessert,” Zadorozny said.

A duet of créme bruleé and yogurt panna cotta ended the meal, though to show off his kitchen equipment, Zadorozny used his liquid-nitrogen on the spot to create ice cream out of passion fruit juice and a few egg yolks. Getchen Callahan was mildly amazed to see the cold smoke billowing off the ingredients. “That seemed like something so new, kind of shocking,” she said. The desserts on the menu already had some ‘wow’ factor Using gelatin and PVC pipes, the chef fashioned crème brulee in tube form. “It looks cool and fun on the plate, but you still get that nice crispy skin,” Zadorozny said.

Zadorozny is aware that not everyone is excited by outré food, and so he is quite happy to servetraditional dishes, and so are Ripley and LaPoint. “We’re all good friends and we eat all over the world, so can get kind of bored with the same foods,” he explained. “But if we like the flavor combinations, we try to make these classic dishes with new techniques and presentations — not to change it, just to give it a different appearance.”

The Callahans weren’t put off by the presentation. “He makes it fun food, so it doesn’t become intimidating,” David Callahan said. “It was delicious, especially because the combinations were so different and the sauces so concentrated.”

Gretchen agreed. “That was quite the adventure, in terms of flavors. It was delicious and interesting and fun to be part of the prep as well as consuming the food.”

Though Zadorozny’s process is highly technical, he prefers the less erudite title of “cook” to that of “chef.” “I don’t want to be the guy who has the “Chef” title,” Zadorozny said. “I want to continue to learn all the time.”

For more information on Matt Zadorozny’s private chef work, call him at 617-218-7341.

Written by William Ferrell with Jenny Garneau
Photography by Nathan Coe

The French are credited with the notion that the more things change the more they stay the same. That thought could apply as well to Galley Beach, Nantucket’s only beachside dining room, where owners and brothers Geoffrey and David Silva recently unveiled a top-to-bottom updating of the restaurant.

For those who’ve stood up at their table along with other Galley Beach diners to applaud a spectacular sunset—Galley Beach is Nantucket’s only sea-level eatery with an unobstructed view of the setting sun— fear not.

David Silva’s wife and interior designer Eliza Newman Silva—the renovation was done by Sandcastle Construction, where her father and architect John Newman is a principal—has injected some “casual elegance” into what was rapidly becoming an “increasing dilapidated” building, as Geoffrey Silva characterized it.

But its earlier charm is preserved. Even the Silva’s mother Jane, the restaurant’s previous operator, whose parents Ema Lea and Robert Currie founded the place back in 1958, has given her stamp of approval to the recent redo. “My mother says it’s okay as long as we still have three windows, a door and a boat full of flowers out front,” said Nantucket MagazineGeoffrey Silva. Just outside the entrance of the larger, new shedand- shingle and now one-and-a-half story building, guests will encounter those familiar Galley Beach elements, albeit with fresh coats of paint and a modernist touch. Crisp white linens and bone white china still sparkle in the dining room.

In fact, the Galley’s origins as a lunchtime shack for the adjoining Cliffside Beach Club faded long ago. Jane Silva took over operation from her parents in the 1970s then opened it to the public in 1979 with her companion and former New York Colony Club maitre d’ Ivan Skender. Since then the expanding menu has been influenced mostly by French and continental cooking, reflecting in part Jane Silva’s love of France’s Cote d’Azur and the Silvas’ pursuit of classic cooking techniques in their “coastal continental cuisine.” Despite the inclination towards French style, “You’ll still find things like a misomarinated halibut on the menu,” Geoffrey Silva pointed out.

And after five years as Executive Chef, W. Scott Osif has developed bill of fare that includes New England Clam Chowder and jumbo lump Maryland crab cakes, a Niman ranch Pork Chop with Alsatian spatzle, wild King Salmon with Parmesan basil pistou broth and pan seared halibut with Thai vegetable bouillabaisse.

The strong Franco accents remain in garlic baked escargot, a goat cheese terrine, foie gras, flounder meuniere’ and other preparations. The Silvas have taken steps to invite more casual diners into Galley Beach. A new bar at the rear of the building, opening directly onto the sand, offers stools for sipping while gazing onto the ocean.

Tables on a new adjoining wooden deck allow sunbathers to step in off the beach for lunchtime bites including Lola burgers and a new midday menu for repast between lunch hour and evening dinnertime. The Silvas also own the popular Lola 41 and this year’s new Lola Burger takeout joint on Nantucket’s Broad Street “strip,” both along with their partner and loquacious Galley Beach general manager Marco Coelho.

The trio greets dozens of regular diners whose familiar faces might be seen at Galley Beach or Lola 41 several times weekly. Galley Beach hosts weddings and events as well, including the annual benefit for Hospice Care of Nantucket, a special interest of the Silva family.

During our recent visit, guests included Hospice Care director Charlene Thurston and her husband Barry Thurston, Bill Hourihan of Nantucket Bank and his wife Louise Hourihan, and Heather and Greg Keltz. Despite its trenNantucket Magazined towards informality, Galley Beach remains a place where the quest for fine service and food satisfies cosmopolitan diners from Nantucket, New York, Boston and beyond. And the setting sun and twinkling stars at night rarely fail to entertain.