Meet eight locals behind the food on your shelves

The entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well in Montgomery County, especially where food and drink products are concerned. Here are eight locals who took ideas and breathed life into them, some as full-time endeavors, some as side gigs, and all with passion. 

Lan Jin, Jinlan Wenhua Dumplings

For Potomac resident Lan Jin, 50, teaching Chinese to children for the past 11 years at Bethesda’s Norwood School has been one way to introduce people to her native culture. Making and selling dumplings has become another. 

“All Chinese people know how to make dumplings. It’s very social for us,” she explains. “I’d make and freeze them for friends and colleagues so they could make them at home, and teach my students how to make them for Chinese New Year.” They were such a hit that Jin started selling them as Jinlan Wenhua Dumplings (wenhua means “culture” in Mandarin) at the now-closed Central Farm Market in Falls Church in October 2020, and then at Bethesda Central Farm Market three months later. Now she’s at eight farmers markets, including Bethesda on Sundays and the Freshfarm market in Silver Spring on Saturdays. She produces the dumplings in a commercial kitchen in Gaithersburg, but will be moving the operation to White Flint Station in North Bethesda this summer, when she anticipates opening a 30-seat restaurant there called Jin Lan Dumplings. She plans to open another location in Georgetown in October.

On the market menu are varieties of frozen beef, pork, lamb, chicken, shrimp and vegetarian dumplings, such as pork and chive; pork and bok choy; chicken and cabbage; egg, shrimp and chives; and lamb and carrots. The dumplings are raw and come with directions for pan-frying and microwaving. All are $13 for eight dumplings, except for lamb dumplings, which are $15. Other items include Sichuan wontons ($15) and Shanghai scallion pancakes ($15).

Jin, who now only teaches part time, sources many ingredients from other farmers market vendors. She has 14 part-time workers, two drivers and four dumpling makers. “I like to give jobs to immigrants, especially mothers and grandmothers. A lot of Chinese grandmothers came here to help with their grandchildren; once the kids are grown, they have nothing to do at home,” she says. “Now they have something to do with their hands and a way to socialize.”

jinlancooks.com

Chris Pedraza, The Kernel’s Pop

“I never thought I’d be doing popcorn as my business,” says Chris Pedraza, a Clarksburg resident who works in sales for GE HealthCare and dedicates his nights and weekends to The Kernel’s Pop, which he started in 2021 when the pandemic was in full swing. He was born and raised in Potomac, his family often touring battlefields and historical homes in the Maryland area, something the history maven continued into adulthood. During a visit to Gettysburg, he looked at the local businesses—restaurants and ice cream parlors—and wondered what was missing. Popcorn, he decided, and he coined the name The Kernel’s Pop, creating a backstory to go with it: a colonel who returned to his farm and realized he could shoot popcorn out of his retired cannons and create a delicious treat for the community.  

In his research, Pedraza, 32, came across an old-fashioned way of making popcorn: popping the corn with no seasoning in a Dutch oven, then coating it with salted caramel and baking it for four hours. “Low and slow, like good barbecue,” he says. He used to make the popcorn at home, but recently moved the operation to a commercial kitchen in Frederick.

The popcorn is available online and at Unwined Candles in Sykesville, Maryland, and Locally Crafted in Gaithersburg. Flavors include buttery caramel, caramel and cheddar, better cheddar, sweet and crabby (with Maryland crab seasoning) and scout mix (caramel, chocolate and toasted coconut). A 1-quart bag is $10.

Pedraza recently purchased a kettle corn maker, a truck and a trailer, and he sells kettle corn in addition to his other offerings at events such as the Locally Crafted Makers Market at Gaithersburg’s Rio on certain weekends.

thekernelspop.com

Voula Tripolitsiotis, Blue Lace Cakes 

What do a bold black and red Nissan 350Z race car, a sky blue Birkin bag resting on a signature orange Hermès gift box, and a giant pumpkin with delicate green tendrils all have in common? They’re spectacular cakes created by Voula Tripolitsiotis, a custom cake artist who operates out of her Gaithersburg home.  

Tripolitsiotis, 42, earned a bachelor of fine arts degree in sculpture from the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore in 2002. Among the jobs she’s held was a five-year stint as a wedding photographer, which led her to discover cakes. “I never went to pastry school, but I baked my whole life. Like most artists, you jump from job to job until you find your path,” Tripolitsiotis says. In 2013, she took a job as a sugar artist at now-shuttered Amphora Restaurant in Vienna, Virginia, even though she had never so much as touched fondant. She built a portfolio there for a year and half, then worked with cake bakers such as Creative Cakes in Silver Spring and Fancy Cakes by Leslie, a since-closed bakery in Bethesda. 

In 2017, Tripolitsiotis struck out on her own, focusing on special-occasion cakes. “Everything is made by my hands specifically for you,” she says. Cakes start at $325 for a single-tiered cake and $375 for multitiered. Wedding orders start at $650.

bluelacecakes.com

Manisha Eigner, Clear Skies Meadery

In December 2018, Manisha Eigner, 55, burned out from a career in the pharmaceutical regulatory field, chose to go into business for herself. The Bethesdan teamed with Yancy Bodenstein, a longtime friend who had married Eigner’s best friend from graduate school, to open a store featuring mead. Bodenstein had been making the honey-based fermented libation, which historians generally consider to be the world’s oldest alcoholic beverage, at his Gaithersburg home since 2003. “Years ago, some of them tasted like Manischewitz [kosher wine], but over the years they greatly improved,” says Eigner, who decided the time was right to capitalize on a resurgence in meaderies. 

With Eigner as the majority partner (Bodenstein is a National Institutes of Health chemist), they opened in the Kentlands in Gaithersburg in March 2020, just as the pandemic began. It was rough going, but thanks to a supportive community their 12-tap meadery caught on. “We were able to stay afloat by a thread,” Eigner says. In December 2022, they decamped to an 8,000-square-foot, 40-seat, 23-tap facility in Rockville. It’s the only meadery in Montgomery County.

Clear Skies’ mead is fermented in a two-step process before being aged for three to six months. ABV (alcohol by volume) is 7% or 13%. Flavored meads, most sold in 12-ounce cans ($5.56 or $3.50), include Meadarita (lime, salt, agave), Twisted Cherry, Violet’s Outburst (with notes of lilac and lavender) and Jolly Watermelon. Several Montgomery County retailers carry Clear Skies products, such as Dawson’s Market (Rockville), Downtown Crown Wine and Beer (Gaithersburg) and Old Town Market (Kensington). 

clearskiesmeadery.com

Glenn Milano, Chevy Chase Pizza Co.

For Glenn Milano, a senior adviser in the U.S. Agency for International Development’s global health office, necessity was the mother of pizza. The 50-year-old Chevy Chase resident, a pizza fanatic since living in Rome during college, was unimpressed by the quality of pizzas available to his family during COVID-19—something he hadn’t noticed until spending so much time at home—so he set out to make his own. He immersed himself in pizza-making, acquiring a computer program to help develop and track every batch, and giving away pizzas to family and friends. That led, in late 2021, to the owner of Chevy Chase Farmers Market asking him to sell pizzas there after seeing an Instagram post about them. “Demand was through the roof,” Milano says. “I brought the ingredients and a Gozney pizza oven and sold out the first day.”

To become more efficient and consistent, Milano turned to making fully baked frozen 11-inch pies ($13.99) instead of fresh, relying only on high quality ingredients—such as 00 flour, San Marzano tomatoes and Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese from Italy—to make four varieties: Margherita, pepperoni, mushroom and cacio e pepe. 

When Milano introduced the frozen pies at the farmers market later in 2021 he quickly sold out of 100 of them. Now the pizzas are made at a commissary kitchen in Rockville. (For pizza aficionados: The dough is 65% hydration with a 72-hour ferment and baked at 900 degrees Fahrenheit in a brick oven.) Dawson’s Market in Rockville started carrying the frozen pizzas in January 2023; now they’re available in several stores, including Brookville Market (Chevy Chase) and Corner Market (Silver Spring).  

chevychasepizza.com

Robin Snider, Rustic Route Coffee Co.

Robin Snider, 38, has been drawn to coffee culture since she was in Poolesville High School. “A friend of mine worked at Starbucks and I’d watch her being a barista, making the coffees and talking to customers at the same time, and it made an impression on me,” she says. Snider earned a degree in hospitality and tourism from Virginia Tech in 2007, then worked various food- and beverage-related jobs (catering sales, event planning and restaurants) before settling on a career in marketing and fundraising for the Barnesville School of Arts & Sciences, a private school in upper Montgomery County.  

A year before the pandemic, Snider decided to change careers and wound up at the Watershed Cafe in Poolesville, a farm-to-table restaurant in Montgomery County’s Ag Reserve where she got to be a barista. When the restaurant closed at the beginning of the pandemic, Snider’s entrepreneurial spirit kicked in. She bought a Behmor 1600 drum coffee roaster and started learning what goes into a great cup of coffee—where the beans come from, how climate affects them, how they’re roasted and for how long. She built out a two-story garage on her Barnesville property and Rustic Route Coffee Co. was born, specializing in small batch, fairly sourced, chemical-free coffee. It’s outfitted with an American-made Mill City roaster. “I went from a microwave-size one to one as tall as me,” she says. 

Rustic uses eight different beans from five places: Colombia, Nicaragua, Brazil, Sumatra and Ethiopia. All are single origin, except for the espresso, which is a blend of Ethiopian and Nicaraguan beans. “The things you can change in the roasting affect the flavor—the heat and time, the amount of gas pressure, the speed of the drum. Airflow makes a difference because it creates more or less oil. No two beans are roasted the same,” Snider says. The coffee is $15.99 for a 12-ounce bag, available online (free shipping to Montgomery County) or at several retail stores, including Locally Crafted (Gaithersburg), Potomac French Market, Dawson’s Market (Rockville), Butler’s Orchard (Germantown) and Locals (Poolesville). 

rusticroutecoffee.com

Ajay Malghan, Ahara

At Ahara’s 2,000-square-foot warehouse in Rockville, enormous clusters of organic lion’s mane mushrooms resembling heads of cauliflower sprout from inoculated logs on multiple stacked shelving units. On other racks, antler reishi mushrooms—long brown protrusions tipped in white, like pussy willows—flourish. Both kinds of mushrooms, once fully grown (four to five weeks for lion’s mane; three to four months for reishi), are dried, pulverized into powder and turned into capsules ($24 for 60 capsules of 250 milligrams each). Lion’s mane powder is also available as chai mix, flavored with turmeric, cardamom, cinnamon, ginger and cloves ($20 for 2.3 ounces), and cocoa mix ($16 for 4 ounces). 

Rockville resident Ajay Malghan, 44, owns Ahara, a company he founded in 2022 with his father, Subhas Malghan, to create mushroom-based products as health supplements. Ajay says that nutrients in lion’s mane promote nerve, gut and brain health, and that reishi mushrooms are potential immune system boosters. “We call ourselves a mindful mushroom company,” Ajay says. “Ahara means ‘diet’ in Sanskrit. It’s an Ayurvedic tenet that everything is food and everything you consume should be nourishment that connects all the senses.” (The FDA, per its website, “advises consumers to talk to their doctor, pharmacist, or other health care professional before deciding to purchase or use a dietary supplement. For example, some supplements might interact with medicines or other supplements.”) 

At 20, Ajay, an artist and photographer, was diagnosed with acute lymphocytic leukemia, undergoing chemotherapy and then, over the years, 16 surgeries for avascular necrosis caused, he says, by a bad reaction to prednisone. To alleviate crippling pain and debilitating mental health issues, including depression, he sought various palliative remedies. In 2018, a forager friend told him about lion’s mane mushrooms and Ajay threw himself into researching mushrooms and their potential healing properties. Now he credits mushrooms for his improved mental state. “It’s night and day compared to before,” he says. 

aharamushrooms.com

Dini McCullough Amozurrutia, Dini’s Divine Pies

Sometimes passions come later in life rather than sooner. Garrett Park resident Dini McCullough Amozurrutia, 55, figures that the key lime pie she made for her then-boyfriend’s birthday in October 2021 was only the second or third pie she’d ever made. This March, she opened Dini’s Divine Pies in Rockville, sharing space with Vignola Gourmet in Randolph Hills shopping center.

Her ex’s workmates and her friends started asking McCullough Amozurrutia to bake pies for them, and that became a nice side gig to her job as a legal aid attorney for Montgomery County. Soon she acquired a business license, rented space at a commercial kitchen and began selling pies at Rocklands Farm Winery and at various pops-ups, including one at MezeHub. Vignola Gourmet started carrying her key lime pie, which led to their collaboration.

McCullough Amozurrutia uses an all-butter crust for her extra flaky pies and empanadas. Nine-inch pies are $32 to $40; 6-inch pies are $16 to $18; empanadas are $5 to $8. Her Guinness chocolate cream pie with whipped cream spiked with Jameson’s has already become a signature. Others include mixed berry (with or without mezcal), sweet potato with curry spices, apple cardamom crumble, classic apple, cherry and Mexican chocolate. Empanada fillings include blueberry, strawberry (dipped in chocolate) and cherry with candied jalapeños. 

dinisdivinepies.com

This story appears in the May/June edition of Bethesda Magazine.