Andrea Baumgardner is the Baum in BernBaum's, a bagel shop and restaurant in downtown Fargo, North Dakota. Baumgardner's interest in food has roots in her high school job at Leeby's, an old-school bakery and delicatessen that featured gruff, knowledgeable butchers and serious farm-style bakers who turned out perfect cake donuts, pies, and lefse. While attending Macalester College, she spent a year in Spain and France, greatly expanding her palate--and her pants size. A graduate of San Francisco's California Culinary Academy, Baumgardner externed at Chez Panisse before cooking on the line at Vivande and Eos in the Bay Area and at Boxer and Cobras & Matadors in Los Angeles. In 2003, she returned to Fargo as the opening executive chef of the Hotel Donaldson. She was a partner and chef of Green Market Kitchen before creating BernBaum's with her husband, Brett Bernath, in 2016. A 2015-16 Humphrey Fellow in Public Policy at the University of Minnesota, Baumgardner is committed to teaching children to cook as a form of justice. She is a 2020 semifinalist for Best Chef: Midwest from the James Beard Foundation, a believer in pickles, and counts her retired physician father as one of her prep cooks.

Sarah Strong is a traveling flâneur, photographer, cook, and mostly lifelong Minnesotan who thrives on documenting the simple bits of everyday life--ideally, people cooking and eating together.

"For anyone who had the chance to experience the magical delicious wonderland that was BernBaum's, this book is a true gift. A perfect legacy of a perfect restaurant. And for everyone else, know that the beauty and enchantment described within these pages was so real and so special. While the physical space may no longer exist, we are so lucky that we get to bring a little slice of BernBaum's into our own kitchens with the cookbook."

-- Molly Yeh, host of the Food Network cooking show Girl Meets Farm and author of Sweet Farm! More Than 100 Cookies, Cakes, Salads (!), and Other Delights from My Kitchen on a Sugar Beet Farm

"Andrea Baumgardner nourished the body and soul with her unparalleled cooking. Thankfully, we have her new cookbook so we can recreate some of the magic. [...] For years I had the luxury of walking out my front door and strolling down the street to have lunch or a break at Bernbaum's. Even though I ate there almost everyday, it was fresh, new and satisfying every time. The reason was Andrea; she wasn't slinging food, she was making art--art we could eat. Her new cookbook gives us the opportunity to bring her art into our kitchens."

--Greg Danz, owner of Zandbroz Variety

"Andrea is a treasure, and this book one of her many gifts."

-- Karen Stoker, entrepreneur and activist

Publisher: Dottir Press

Pub date: 2026-01-06

Length: 248 pages