Marika Hahn: A Woman with Talent to Spare
Most people know Marika Hahn for her delicious empanadas, scones and cupcakes she sells from her Sweet & Savory booth at the Community Center’s Farmer’s Market. She also caters private parties and events at places like Lamont and the Art Student’s League.
Marika grew up in Forest Hills with two brothers in a family that cooked. “I came from a family where food is love,” she says. “As soon as someone walks in the door I want to feed them.” She perfected her hand at baking while living in the Village after graduating from F.I.T. with a degree in illustration and advertising design. “I made tarts and galettes for a solid week, keeping notes and tweaking the recipes until they were just right,” she recalls.
In 1974 Marika met husband Lewis Hahn in, of all places, Bloomingdale’s bedding department. They were both shopping for duvets. They married three years later and the following year Samantha was born. Ten years later Aaron arrived. Lewis had wanted to be a jazz pianist but got an engineering degree at his parents’ urging. He was able to combine both fields when he got a job in the music industry at Atlantic Records as a recording engineer. A number of gold records hanging on the bedroom wall attest to his success.
The couple lived on Riverside Drive with a country house in Becket, Massachusetts. Marika got her first taste of fame winning blue ribbons at the Middlefield County Fair for her apple pie and blueberry muffins. In 1990 the couple decided to move to Palisades after the birth of son Aaron and settled on Oak Tree Road in a large house with a sprawling lawn.
Marika is not only a wonderful cook she is also a talented artist. Her first job was as a fashion illustrator at a New York ad agency. Three years later she took a job at Russ Togs, a manufacturing firm, where she turned designers’ ideas into illustrations. She was also free-lancing at magazines such as Glamour and Seventeen. She loved drawing children so she attended the School of Visual Arts to study children’s book illustration. Soon, with a roster of free-lance clients, Marika decided she could make it on her own.
Lewis encouraged Marika to take a booth at a Javits Center trade show where she displayed gardening and nature illustrations silk-screened on tee shirts. Mail order gardening company Smith & Hawken asked her to do them on kid’s tees. This led to the start of a children’s clothing business, which ran from 1991 to 2007. “My son was eighteen months old at the time and the only designs on boy’s clothing I could find were sports related. I did beetles, dragonflies, frogs and alligators with hand-lettered labels that were silk-screened onto tees. I knew little about sewing and pattern making. I had my son and two of his 1½ year old friends lie on brown paper so I could trace them for templates that I turned into patterns.”
With Lewis handling development, production and advertising, Marika focused on design. Her whimsical creations that incorporated lots of hand embellishment were made in Peru. Soon there were seven showrooms around the country with her clothing carried in high-end children’s boutiques and department stores including Saks Fifth Avenue and Bloomingdale’s. But by 2007 China had taken over the market; with lower price points and quality not up to expectation, it was time to get out.
Marika turned her attention to cooking. Lewis encouraged her to start her own cooking company, which she christened Sweet & Savory. Once again he jumped in to handle the business aspect. Lewis set up a web site and designed the logo and labels for Sweet & Savory that incorporated Marika’s love of stripes and dots.
Her son and daughter have followed in Marika’s footsteps. Samantha is an illustrator and mother of three-year-old Henry. Aaron who just graduated from Pratt is a fine artist and an excellent cook; he is working the line of a recently opened French restaurant in Fort Greene. “My grandson Henry loves to cook with me,” Marika reports with pleasure. “We make pancakes on Sunday when he visits. He has already placed his order for his birthday next month – red velvet cupcakes.”
“I love working with kids,” Marika says. She received a grant from the Arts Council of Rockland two years ago and taught a six-week watercolor class to Clarkstown high school students with a focus on commercial application of their designs. This past summer she taught a nature-based arts program to kids ranging in age from four to fourteen at The Nature Place Day Camp.
When Lewis died in 2011, Marika started working with Mary Tiegreen to market her illustrations. Online company One King’s Lane is printing and framing a number of her garden drawings for sale. Her delightful illustrations are available for purchase or licensing and can be viewed on her portfolio site: www.marikahahn.com
On December 18, Marika is conducting a cooking class for four to six students. “Everyone will make my 9 inch frangipane pear tart and a galette, which he or she will then take home. On January 8, I will be teaching how to make black bean empanadas and salsa,” she reports. There’s a kids cooking class in the works as well.
Marika is also busy catering. As a Christmas gift to five friends, one woman has hired Marika to teach her and her friends to prepare phyllo with asparagus and gruyere and strawberry galettes, which they get to eat afterwards. “I bring in all the food and equipment,” said Marika. “I try to never say no. I will find a way to make it work,” the determined Marika comments. Menus and individual items are listed online at www.marika-sweet and savory.com. You can sign up for her newsletter on site to receive updates and notices of special orders like red whoopie pies Marika whipped up for last Valentine’s Day. She can be reached at 845-365-3368.