CHEF CANDIDA “CARA” ANTHONY

Mimi & Frankie’s is the vision of owner Cara Anthony, who is passionate about the Italian slow food movement and the preservation of traditional cooking techniques and dishes. Cara visits Northern Italy at least once a year, caters events, and teaches cooking classes to food enthusiasts in the Coeur D’Alene area and beyond.

Born in New York City, her parents divorced when she was seven and she moved with her mother Candida “Candy” Forstmann and her siblings to a small farm outside of Hailey ID, were they could start a new life together in an old log cabin, surround by nature, away from the big city. Cara’s mother was a very accomplished cook. Trained by her Italian grandmother Candida “Gummy” in the traditional recipes and techniques of the old country, Candy attended the James Beard School as well as Michael Field’s when she lived in New York. She started sharing her experience and passion for elevated cooking with her children at an early age and that spark ignited a special curiosity and excitement in Cara that forever changed her life.

Growing up on the farm provided a wealth of local, seasonal ingredients, and Cara’s earliest childhood memories were hunting for morels, harvesting apples, plums and pears from the orchard, and picking berries and fresh wild asparagus from the banks of the irrigation ditches. The farm’s only television received one fuzzy channel (it was not the Food Network) and Cara found her entertainment and joy in the kitchen with her mother. Candy was an early subscriber to Gourmet Magazine and they would wait patiently every month for the next edition to come in the mail, pouring over the recipes and cooking everything that sounded interesting. Soon, they were competing with one another to see who could most closely reproduce the dishes featured on the cover, photographing their finished products side by side, and hosting blind taste test parties to pick the winner.

By high school, Cara was helping her mother cater parties and was working high end events in Sun Valley with her boyfriend, who would later go on to the Culinary Institute of America and become a chef himself. Cara attended UCLA and had the opportunity to experience the emerging LA food scene. She married, moved to Seattle, bought her own farm with fruit trees, and raised two talented daughters that share her interest in cooking. Over the years, Cara’s travels throughout Europe and N. America have allowed her to explore the diversity and regional offerings of some of the world’s leading chefs. In 2019, she sold her farm in Seattle and moved back to her roots - this time in Coeur D’Alene ID where she shares her take on Northern Italian cuisine using the finest locally sourced, seasonal ingredients.