INTERMIN CHAIR

Pierre Friedrichs, has been a member of Slow Food East End for the past eighteen years serving as Treasurer, Vice Chair and Chair. A Moveable Feast is Slow Food East End’s fundraiser for the School Gardens project where he helped organize and coordinate in partnership with the Joshua Levine Memorial Foundation. He also was the Co-chair of the Chefs to Schools Initiative that he helped launch.

Pierre grew up on Mill Bank Farms, an 80-acre farm outside of New Orleans that has been in his family for 130 years, where they raised their our own livestock, poultry and vegetables. Most of the food the family ate was raised at the their farm – as Pierre says, “they always knew who they were eating”. His career has been focused on food retailing — as a corporate caterer at Rockefeller Center, restaurant owner and front of house manager, and independent caterer and private chef. He is a chef, farmer and beekeeper, engaged in many aspects of local farming, food and community. The past several summers he served as a private chef for summer families on the East End of Long Island, incorporating not only products from his own farm, but those from many local growers and purveyors on the East End, a region where there is an abundance of farmers, food producers, fishermen/women, and vintners etc.…who embrace the tenets of Slow Food.

In April 2018, Pierre moved to the Hudson Valley in East Chatham, NY where he and his husband, David, bought a 125 acre farm — “Overlook Farms” — that is home to 9 alpaca, whose fleece is harvested for spinning, beef cattle, chickens for meat and eggs, and of course his favorite — guinea fowl for pest control. In the near feature they will be adding pigs to the mix.

Pierre is excited to carry on the mission of Slow Food as part of the advisory board for Slow Food East End and as Vice-Chair of Slow Food New York State.

VICE-CHAIR

Amy Hess is a career chef and co-conspirator at Quinnie’s New York in Hudson. A graduate of The Culinary School of the Rockies (Denver, CO), Amy learned early on about the importance of the Slow Food movement from her first chef, Patrick Dupays. She has spent her entire career working with local and sustainable foods from Colorado to New York City and now Hudson. She is an avid gardener and spends Summers volunteering at Overlook Farms in Chatham.

SECRETARY

Julie Fels has been a Hudson Valley resident for over 30 years. A 1992 graduate of Bard College with a degree in literature, Julie fell in love with the Hudson Valley and decided never to leave. A librarian for many years, Julie and her husband, Theo, founded Feisty Brown, a design and communication studio in 2017. Julie is Lebanese on her father’s side and wanted to share some of her favorite foods with residents of Columbia County, where food from the eastern Mediterranean is underrepresented, so in 2022 Julie and Theo began Hamrah’s Seven Spice, a traditional Lebanese foods business that showcases local and organic meats and produce in their products. At this time, Hamrah’s sells their food at both the Kinderhook and Hudson Farmers Markets and at the Hawthorne Valley Farm Store. Julie has two children: Felix is graduating from Bard College Conservatory of Music with a dual degree in Horn Performance and Philosophy this year, and Phoebe is finishing her second year at the Fashion Institute of Technology in Advertising and Marketing Communication. Julie and Theo live with their two labradors, Bee and Juniper, in Kinderhook and love gardening, cooking, reading, playing backgammon, and sometimes just doing nothing.

BOARD MEMBER

Robin Touchet first learned about the Slow Food movement through a wine job in Oregon in the early 90s. She then spent a decade in Italy, where the Slow Food snail of approval figured daily in her shopping and dining choices. She learned to embrace seasonal eating, anticipating the arrival of the season’s first strawberries and asparagus, and coming to appreciate their brief windows of availability. Robin loved being immersed in the Italian culture, traveling and learning about regional specialties and how local people preserve their traditions. Food and wine then became windows into agriculture and culture and she brought those passions back home with her, working in wine distribution for over a decade. Robin and her husband Kevin put down roots in the Hudson Valley in 2012 and founded Branchwater Farms in 2014. They grow grains using organic, Biodynamic and regenerative farming principles, which they then turn into spirits in the old dairy barn they converted into a distillery in 2020. They also raise chickens and ducks for meat, eggs and entertainment. Robin is excited to help promote the Slow Food mission of good, clean and fair food for all with her Hudson Valley community.

TREASURER

BOARD MEMBER