HOLIDAY
A Magical Gingerbread Village
ASHEVILLE, NORTH CAROLINA
Many of us who have tried constructing a gingerbread house have imagined a candy manor and ended up with more of a sugar shack, gloopy icing seeping out of cockeyed cookie walls. But competitors at the Omni Grove Park Inn’s Thirtieth Annual National Gingerbread House Competition in Asheville elevate their designs to soaring architectural heights. “It is not fair to call them gingerbread houses,” says the North Carolina chef and James Beard Award nominee Ashleigh Shanti, a judge at this year’s competition. “They are phenomenal. You are essentially walking into this fantasy wonderland where people’s dreams and imaginations have come to life.” Bakers from around the world gather at the grand hotel, lining sweet rooftops with cherries and piping icing along candy-cane doorframes, hoping to strike the perfect balance of creativity and craftsmanship to transform ingredients into artworks. Last year, the Merry Mischief Bakers, a group from Arizona and California, took home the grand prize with their entry, Christmas ’Round the World, an elaborate cookie-and-candy carousel encircled with cheerful fondant elves atop animals representing the seven continents, such as pandas, toucans, and turtles. Shanti and her fellow judges award the winners on November 21, but the entries will remain on view until January 2 for anyone who wants a glimpse—though not a bite—of the sweet inspirations.
OPENING
Alabama
TEXTBOOK HOSPITALITY
Auburn University can certainly brag on its alumni—Bo Jackson and Apple CEO Tim Cook are just a couple you may have heard of. And at this very moment, future big-time hoteliers and marquee chefs just might be honing their chops at the newly opened—and booking up fast—Tony & Libba Rane Culinary Science Center, the learning lab for the School of Hospitality Management. “It’s extraordinary to see the students in their white chef coats and in their jackets in service, coming in and out of the teaching kitchen,” says Hans van der Reijden, the CEO of Ithaka Hospitality Partners, which runs the commercial side of the 142,000-square-foot space that includes the fine-dining restaurant 1856 (a nod to the year of
