Julia's Local

A Place on Heart's Content Road

Illustration by Susanna Chapman

By Julia Joern¹

I used to be a partner at a blue-chip gallery in New York City. I arranged rowdy and fancy dinner parties in London, Venice, Hong Kong, and Cologne. I lunched with editors from The New York Times, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, and Vogue. I organized special events spanning an international roster of top museums and lofty universities. I spent years with world-famous artists in their studios in Brooklyn, Memphis, Frankfurt, Paris, Antwerp, and Amsterdam as they shared stories about their lives, with a dusting of art history sprinkled in for good measure.

For over twenty years, I used my big city, cacophonous job as an escape and distraction from the unresolved trauma of witnessing my young husband, Jay, painfully and slowly be destroyed by leukemia. I never cared about a so-called career, and my addiction to work filled a massive void after he died. My job provided structure to my days and invented a warped permission to avoid grieving. I was stupidly convinced that my job was helping me heal, as I buried myself in it, digging deeper with each passing year. It gave me an excuse to focus on others and the assigned tasks, and I was relieved to have conversations that were not about cancer and cliches about hope. I became an excellent listener as a way not to talk about myself. I was super busy being super busy.

But all of that avoidance eventually caught up to me and came crashing down. Even though working in the arts gave me access to amazing people and filled my brain with ideas and my passport with stamps, I was ultimately reminded that the body does, in fact, keep the score. The ugly mess manifested itself as panic attacks on the subway and a ringing in my head that would not stop. I blamed the constant noise of urban living and endless jet lag. I eventually sought professional help and was diagnosed with what a doctor called a mini-stroke of the inner ear, which could not be treated successfully, leading to years of suffering with tinnitus and then vertigo. Imagine a large seashell covering your ear with a distant, hollow-sounding but high-pitched, piercing alarm clock going off continuously, while the room is spinning. For far too long, I remained in denial and was able to white-knuckle it and function through tremendous fatigue, until my body and mind simply gave out on me. With advice from my doctor, therapist, and family, I ditched the city abruptly, leaving behind colleagues I adored without ever really saying goodbye.

I packed my things and headed to the sleepy small upstate New York town of Round Top, to the house Jay and I had bought together soon after we were married, believing one day he’d be cured and we’d live happily ever after. Weary and miserable, I crawled into bed and felt so defeated. I had less-than-zero future plans and no ambitions in sight.

The very next day, out of nowhere and without warning, my old friend Henning appeared in my driveway, desperate for a place to crash for just a few days of rest after what I soon learned was an epic pile-on of crappy months grinding away in his own restaurant.

Even though Henning had always been a wonderful chef, he moonlighted helping folks with fixer-uppers between cooking gigs. He had found his calling for cooking at an early age, but also had a knack for building things with his hands. I had actually met him a few years after being widowed when I answered an ad on Craigslist that simply read ‘Norwegian carpenter,’ and I spontaneously wrote back: ‘You’re hired.’ Soon, we embarked on a few easy and rewarding home renovation projects.

I never wanted this DIY creativity (or my guilty crush) to end, so I kept thinking up projects he could do around my house. He built a cabin in the forest, kitchen cabinets, a brick fireplace, a cute library, and a deck I really did not need. But my little fever dream ended when he opened a restaurant of his own, Henning’s Local, in another part of the Catskills. There was no more time for his side hustle.

Over the years, I occasionally visited his restaurant and admired everything about it, from his delicious food to the rustic tables he built himself. But I still fantasized about doing more renovation projects together. So when he reappeared at my place in Round Top as a last-ditch resort, I instantly and instinctively knew my life’s trajectory was about to change. We were now getting to know one another again, each licking the wounds from our own respective lowest points, bruised, battered, and equally fried.

We spent that summer taking walks, listening to music, and talking. We talked over coffee on my back porch. We talked on long road trips around the Hudson Valley. We talked while drinking expensive champagne and lying in my hammock by the stream. Eventually, he pulled himself together and went back to working in his restaurant, returning to Round Top every chance he got.

Fast forward a year. A humble building with excellent bones came up for sale just around the corner from my house. Located on Heart's Content Road, I bought it using every penny I had saved, and my wish to collaborate with Henning on a soup-to-nuts project seemed to come true and quickly started to take shape.

From doing carpentry at my house, I knew we shared a similar work ethic and aesthetic. He’s Scandinavian. For him, one chair and one table might feel too crowded in a room. And since I attended architecture school at the peak of what is now deemed ‘Minimalism,’ we were a good match.

And still our talking seemed to never stop. We talked about what this place could become and how we would design it. We imagined throwing big communal dinner parties. Henning could teach cooking classes and I could host workshops. And we envisioned only serving the daily harvest from a garden we would one day grow ourselves.

On the surface, it would be a restaurant. But for me, it would have a deeper purpose. Even though creating this place together would marry each of our distinctive backgrounds, what I really yearned for was a way to make sense of my life now.

Immediately after being given the keys, we furiously started cleaning out the building, which had been a tired but beloved German bakery for over sixty years. We tore out carpets, jettisoned broken equipment, and jerry-rigged plumbing.

It was all wishful thinking, though, because shortly after we began our renovation, Henning got sick. Really sick. Decades of alcohol abuse had wreaked havoc on his body and mind, landing him in the I.C.U. for a solid week. Now the only man I had ever truly loved, besides Jay, was in a hell I never imagined I’d be thrown back into: the hospital. Navigating through many excruciating months of doctor appointments and emergency hospital visits, I toggled between anxiety, anger, sorrow, and an untapped personality akin to Shirley MacLaine’s character in Terms of Endearment. I researched and eventually found a superb team of liver specialists who put Henning on a long and steady path to sobriety through a controlled detox, thanks to cutting-edge medications. But there were so many unknowns. And I was scared to death.

But time marched on, and despite the odds, he gradually got better, day by day.

He also changed. He seemed like a different person to me. He was distant, cold, and preoccupied. I was obviously grateful he was completely done with drinking, but his sobriety took center stage in a way I wasn’t expecting. His burst of independence, clear thinking, and strength to go on inspired me. And all of a sudden, he was funny. His jokes were quick and smart. I liked that. But I was troubled by his inability to recall many of our important conversations about life and work, and depressed by his absolute refusal to revisit the past. He had no recollection of an earlier (and, in hindsight, drunk) marriage proposal, which I had accepted. While he was healing physically and mentally, I was stuck in purgatory and calcified in stress, still in a state of shock. Horrible memories of Jay’s years in the hospital haunted me. Henning became self-absorbed and had little patience for my feelings. I cried a lot. We fought often. We talked less.

He eventually returned to work a bit—again, in his restaurant— while we took cautious steps on our own Round Top project. We gingerly began sourcing and stockpiling tools and materials, like rough-cut lumber and sheetrock. Maybe things were looking up. Then the pandemic hit. The gears shifted. Again.

To keep my spirits up and some cash coming in, we quickly started a home delivery service, bringing simple comfort food right to people’s doorsteps. Henning cooked. I drove.

Love and loss can make us do unpredictable things. A global pandemic did the same.

Now I was delivering homemade chicken pot pies, meatloaf, pea soup, and chili con carne out of my well-worn VW Bug along rural roads throughout the Catskills. Voices in my head murmured that this entirely new version of myself wouldn’t want to change places with the old me. But I wasn’t too sure, even though there really was no turning back. We did this on and off over 18 months, I logged 20,000 miles.

And those remain some of the most meaningful memories I have of starting what is now our restaurant, Julia’s Local. All those hours of solo driving gently opened my heart to my own recovery. While floating along gorgeous country roads, I finally began confronting and accepting the loss of my husband. I was forced to unravel my past workaholism by allowing both pride and shame to do their yucky business. While starting to question my now complicated and confusing relationship with Henning, I wondered if a restaurant with him now was even viable. I developed a whole new appreciation for the natural beauty of where I lived.

But what really led me to find my voice again was meeting all the people who opened their doors along the way. And knowing that we were all going through something universal, even in isolation.

Keeping my COVID distance, I managed to have profound and sweet conversations with strangers who now frequent our restaurant. I learned firsthand from folks about what was happening in their lives week by week, their challenges, like how their kid had been accepted into college but was now stuck at home with mom and dad. I heard from the single parent who just wanted some adult company and was tired of cooking, the independent film producer still trying to get his movie made while hunkering down in their bubble, and the gentleman who lost his job while his partner was stuck behind a computer ‘working from home’ dealing with more and more demands from her remote MotherShip.

I hung out with a photographer who shared his extraordinary archive with me. I met an extended family of three generations living together in a historic house that had been part of the Underground Railroad. I delivered loads of food to a kind lawyer whose mother had passed away during the pandemic. Yet, he and his wife still had the wherewithal to gather his family for a backyard memorial lunch cobbled together by Henning.

I was taken on leisurely walks in the woods and was treated to distanced cocktails.

Perhaps my fondest memory is when a woman in Australia contacted me with a request to drive Henning’s food to her elderly friend who had recently lost his wife. His house was way up in the mountains and well out of my delivery radius. But I sheepishly and begrudgingly made the seemingly endless trip only to discover an energetic dynamo. He may have been 90 years old, but he was full of life and brimming with stories of his dashing Mad Men career on Madison Avenue, and showing off how he aced the Sunday New York Times crossword puzzle in pen.

I made the three-hour round trip every week for a very long time, and stocked his freezer full of Henning’s chicken noodle soup, cheesy lasagna-for-one, and Norwegian meatballs. He was lonely, but not alone. His two loyal Akita dogs kept him company, along with a person who came to help with chores and cooking. But the clincher was that he was actually already eating well. His kitchen was well-stocked, packed with dried goods and fresh produce, with barely an inch to spare. He didn’t need me, and he certainly didn’t need Henning’s food, but we both needed connection.

With each food delivery, I was excitedly prattling on about Henning’s cooking talents and our plans for Julia’s Local, promising that one day the restaurant would, in fact, be open. And after four years of renovations—detoured by Henning’s illness and the pandemic—it finally did.

Having never worked in a restaurant before, I was totally naive. I cockily thought, how hard could it be? Logistically, it seemed straightforward: Welcome and seat the guests, take orders, deliver the drinks and food. I never imagined the emotional ups and downs, from the financial roller coaster to the staffing hiccups. And the enormous physical strain. It was relentless, back-breaking work and I made an insane amount of embarrassing rookie mistakes.

I hitched my wagon to Henning’s and leaned on him hard. As a lifelong veteran of the industry, he mentored and supported me without judgment and always with encouragement and compassion. We were talking again.

Over time, I gained more experience and confidence, found amazing co-workers, and things got a whole lot easier. I was honored to serve Henning’s food, which was getting better all the time. When he wasn’t running on all cylinders behind his stove, he was ridiculously happy digging around in the dirt, from fencing our farm’s property to planting seeds and harvesting crops. He was on a roll, and I was truly dazzled watching him do his thing. In the meantime, Henning's Local was forced to close when his landlord sold the building. He miraculously made the best of it. And we were starting to have fun again in Round Top.

I began equating running our new restaurant to putting on a play every night, by being prepared enough to improvise. The dining room was the theater, we were the actors, and our customers were our audience. While I was busy juggling being a first-time business owner, I was surprisingly nostalgic for my COVID days of delivering food, as I missed connecting with my regulars and having our wonderful long chats. Eventually, one by one, they made it into the restaurant, and the conversations that started at their front doors continued into Julia’s Local.

Besides Henning, it was these familiar faces—along with each new guest—who kept me motivated. What’s been remarkable and astonishing to me is how Julia’s Local has allowed me to reinvent myself. And I am now becoming a small part of other people’s lives in beautiful and intimate ways.

A few weeks after we opened, I received a reservation for a group of ten, our biggest group to date. Upon their arrival, I learned this family spanned four generations. The great-grandfather, who was in a wheelchair and accompanied by a healthcare assistant at his side, positioned himself at the head of the table in full view of his loved ones. He has since passed away, but the swaddled newborn I met that sunny afternoon has been back numerous times, and Henning and I have watched him grow up quickly. He just celebrated his second birthday at Julia’s Local, sitting in his own big-boy chair and surrounded by his parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles.

I was brought to tears when a brother and sister made a reservation in our private dining room to mourn the loss of their father, who had only months before celebrated his 91st birthday at our place. As a fellow Scandinavian, he adored Henning and delighted in gifting me a mini bottle of aquavit every time he visited.

In just two years, countless birthdays, anniversaries, weddings, engagements, graduation celebrations, and other life milestones have taken place at our restaurant, with both regulars and first-timers taking a chance on us. But it’s the everyday dinners shared by family, friends, and lovers—or guests choosing to fly solo by finding comfort (mixed with local gossip) at our relaxed bar—that make Julia’s Local feel like a magical place.

With each person who walks through our restaurant’s front door, I am given another opportunity, both privately and publicly, to heal old wounds and become my new self, whoever she might be.

Henning and I head home every night, walk the dog, eat leftovers, and recount that evening’s service. This daily late-night ritual has given us our own chance to reconnect and reflect, as we talk about who came to dinner. I get to tell him all the personal stories and silly anecdotes shared in the dining room. I can relay a guest’s favorite dish that he lovingly and expertly cooked. We talk and talk and talk about pretty much everything and anything that happened over the past few hours. Good and bad. Then we pass out from exhaustion, wake up, have coffee, and begin again.

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Name drops: Julia’s Local

A special thank you to this week’s illustrator, Susanna Chapman². See more of her work here.

1. Julia Joern is a long time lover of the Catskills and Hudson Valley. Dog mom to Benji, thrift store enthusiast, and David Bowie devotee, she's also the owner of Julia's Local, a sweet little restaurant in Round Top, New York.

2. Susanna Chapman lives in Nashville and loves to make pictures and read books and make pictures in books.