Valley girl stays connected to Minnesota roots

Cindy Pawlcyn cooks and sews, makes pottery and stationery. She owns 5,000-plus books and actually has read a lot of them (and written three). She's an avid gardener and world traveler, largely to glean ingredients and inspiration for the three hugely successful restaurants she owns and runs.

This Renaissance woman is also a Napa Valley icon, and in her approach to work and life -- her demeanor, even her diction -- she could hardly be more Minnesotan.

"She just has a fantastic spirit," said fellow Napa chef and Food Network host Michael Chiarello. "She's hard-working, gracious and has really, really stayed true to her Minnesota roots."

Well, except for one teeny-tiny detail: "I'm not a very good casserole cook," Pawlcyn admitted. "My mom didn't like things you cooked in one pan. We had to beg her to make macaroni and cheese."

She has cooked most everything else, during a career that started at Chicago's Pump Room and Minneapolis' New French Café and then veered west. In the Bay Area, Pawlcyn helped open a dozen-plus restaurants, including San Francisco's Fog City Diner and Napa's Tra Vigne. The first one she could call her very own, Mustards Grill, celebrates its 25th birthday this month. She has since launched Cindy's Backstreet Kitchen in 2003 and Go Fish in 2006 and spends time daily at each of the three restaurants. That's daily, as in five days a week. "I make a huge point of taking care of myself," she said. "I take two days off a week about 90 percent of the time. I wouldn't be able to do this career if I didn't go home."

Tied to some strong roots

That kind of common-sense approach speaks to her roots, as does the work ethic.

"I don't think she has changed at all," said Mary Pawlcyn, who owns the Indigo exotic-imports store in Minneapolis. "She's still incredibly honest, extremely empathetic. She still has a lot of friends from high school, and she has always kept a really close relationship with our mom [Dorothy], despite the fact that she works harder than anyone you or I will ever know."

Somehow, the Golden Valley native finds a way to get back home a half-dozen or so times a year, most recently to wed John Watanabe at her mother's Minneapolis high-rise on May 25.

Two days after the ceremony, at which each guest received a Pawlcyn-created salt dish, she took John on a culinary sojourn, Upper Midwest-style. Not to La Belle Vie or Manny's, but to Taylors Falls for some patty melts and root-beer floats, al fresco.

"I definitely have classic American taste. I like unintimidating, real food," said Pawlcyn. "I'm not a food snob. I do better at a rib joint than at [the esteemed Napa restaurant] the French Laundry."

The love of ribs comes naturally. "In our family room we had a barbecue so my dad [Stephen] could make his ribs year-round, or this really good lemon barbecue chicken," Pawlcyn said. "Dad did the fun cooking, like making doughnuts on snow days."

'Just no stopping her'

But cooking was hardly young Cindy's whole life. She went to the University of Wisconsin-Stout to study business at her father's urging, and made quite an impression on roommate Mary Tradewell.

"She had very, very good taste, beautiful jewelry and a wonderful collection of shoes," said Tradewell, a close friend to this day. "She's always had such a strong sense of her own style. You can see it in her cookbooks, her stationery, everything. You see it and just know 'that's Cyd.'

"Her name has changed now to Cindy, and her husband calls her Cynthia. But Cyd is a fitting name because it's so unique. Even back in college, she did things the rest of us hadn't considered, like pottery. She was driven; there was just no stopping her. You could sense that she would be a huge success, but with this basic, firmly grounded-to-the-earth mentality.

"And she hasn't changed. I've been having kids, and she's been having restaurants."

The menus rotate, although removal of such beloved items as the "Famous Mongolian pork chop" at Mustards Grill and the Chinatown duck burger at Cindy's Backstreet Kitchen probably would prompt an open revolt. "[Customers] don't even let you change the vegetables seasonally, like the cabbage with the pork chop," Pawlcyn said. "Something green in summer? No way, they'll say. How 'bout coleslaw? No!"

Keeping the food approachable and affordable always has been a Pawlcyn hallmark, according to Chiarello.

"That casual, exquisite-quality approach she brought here still holds," Chiarello said. "There was a crossroads where Napa could have become very high-end, and she gave Napa permission to enjoy fantastic food at affordable prices, and the attitude to go with it,"