16 PUNCHMAGAZINE.COM to bring the relaxed vibe of a traditional Turkish wine house to the Peninsula at Meyhouse Palo Alto. (Page 57) And if spending all day in the kitchen wasn’t your grandmother’s thing, you can always learn how to make traditional dishes from someone else’s. Johanna Harlow takes you inside a San Carlos home for a hands-on lesson in making kimchi with Moon Soon Choi at a “Grandmas from Around the World” cooking class. (Page 62) In the pages of our April issue, you’ll meet people who are preserving family traditions in other ways, too. Jeannine Cranston is a fanciful interior designer whose bold style draws inspiration from her grandmother’s antiques. (Page 69) Teen NASCAR driver Jesse Love credits life lessons from his father for his success behind the wheel. (Page 27) Making your home in a new place is a leap of faith, one that can give flight to a world of new possibilities. Artist Ramona Stelzer, whose large abstract floral paintings have won acclaim, says it was only after leaving her native Germany for the Peninsula that she found the creative freedom to truly embrace her muse. (Page 74) The exuberant springtime beauty of the Bay Area also fired up two other artistic eyes this month: Paulette Phlipot offers flower-embellished recipes that are a feast for the eyes as well as the taste buds (Page 116) and Robert Siegel, a Stanford University microbiology and immunology professor who also teaches nature photography, captures the imagination with his images of the Bay Area’s wild winged creatures. (Page 48) Find all this and more to inspire you in the pages of our 69th issue. After all, the best thing about spring is the promise of a new beginning! Andrea Gemmet andrea@punchmonthly.com {editor’s note} might have guessed from my chosen profession, I am in it for the stories, real or imagined, as I try to fill in the gaps that marriage licenses, census data and draft cards simply can’t. Some branches of my family have been here so long, or became so thoroughly Americanized, that they passed down no discernable traditions from their old lives, speaking to their children only in English for fear of saddling them with an accent. Other branches embraced their roots and passed along photos, stories and recipes. I always felt bad for my great-grandmother, who left her parents’ farmhouse in rural Slovakia and emigrated by herself at age 16, before she’d learned to cook. Languages and histories may get lost over the years, but the connection that comes from preparing a dish your family used to enjoy back in the old country is a visceral— and delicious—way to keep your cultural heritage alive. For me, that usually means cooking Italian food. On a recent trip to Italy, my daughter tucked into a plate of swordfish bathed in a sauce the menu referred to as “Ligurian,” the coastal area where my North Beach grandmother was born. Considering the delicious puddle of caper- and olive-studded tomato puree redolent of white wine and herbs, she said, “Mom, this isn’t exactly like the sauce you make, but I can see how they’re closely related.” Those culinary ties that bind us to a distant homeland are among the many enticing reasons to plan a trip to Petaluma, one of Wine Country’s overlooked gems. There you’ll find Quiote, a Mexican restaurant run by two brothers that features their mother’s recipes from her native Jalisco—and Stockhome, Roberth and Andrea Sundell’s tribute to the Swedish capital’s contemporary cuisine. (Page 41) Closer to home, business partners Omer Artun and Koray Altinsoy went beyond the menu Like many Americans, my ancestors came here from somewhere else, hoping for a better life that would offer more opportunities. The earliest American relative I can trace landed in Massachusetts in 1620, and the most recent immigrants settled in San Francisco’s North Beach in the late 1920s. I became the keeper of the family tree when my aunt entrusted me with an outdated floppy disk containing all the information she’d painstakingly compiled over the years. It was not necessarily a job I wanted, but one that I have grown to love. My interest in genealogy has ebbed and flowed over the years—I like how it piques my interest in historical events and places, and offers me context about current events—but all those lives reduced to lists of names and dates can feel a little dry and impersonal. As you
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