Gretchen started Barzina in Palm Beach 18 years ago. When she first opened her store, she went to market in Dallas thinking that since most of the stores here shop in Atlanta or New York, she’d be able to find a different selection of merchandise. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case as it turned out that a lot of the lines would show in different markets. “It wasn’t unique enough” Gretchen told me. Many people would have let that problem defeat them, but Gretchen thought outside of the box and decided to combine her love of travel along with our seasonal commercial market to her advantage. About 13 years ago, she took her first trip to Italy for two weeks. The next year she added France and England. Then Greece and Turkey. After that she thought of Asia. Another shop owner from the Avenue had gone to Asia “She told me how much she detested it. So I thought I’ll go one time just so I can say “been there - done that” [but] I fell so madly in love with Asia.”
This year, leaving June 1st, Gretchen starts her trip out in Beijing. It’s funny, there are things that don’t occur to me as I’ve never been to a country that uses a different alphabet. Gretchen showed me a piece of paper with her favorite restaurant in Beijing written on it. In English it says “My Humble House” and then there are the Chinese characters. Gretchen explained to me “You never get in a cab in China without having written, Chinese directions. Taxi drivers don’t speak English and they don’t read English. The first time I went to China, we jumped into a taxi and said “Take us to The Bund” and I had a guidebook in English and I showed him the guidebook. [Finally] he got out of the taxi and yelled “Does anybody speak English?” So a guy came over and translated and then we were able to go.”
Another time when Gretchen was in China, this time traveling with a friend who is a chef, the friend was determined to eat snake. So off to a snake restaurant they went. “It had cages of all the animals outside. There were ducks, cats, dogs, all kinds of birds, fish, eels, and snakes. I ate rice for days.” After they sat down, they were asked to pick out their snake. One snake was too big, one too small, and like Goldilocks, finally one was just right. It’s head was then snipped off with scissors, weighed and taken into the back to be cooked. According to her friend, it was delicious and tasted just like chicken. As a funny aside to the story, Gretchen had tried to get some asparagus at the restaurant to eat. “We had been to the market earlier in the day and I saw the most beautiful asparagus. I was dying for some so I thought I’d draw a picture. So I drew a picture for the waitress. I handed it to her and she looks at it and says “Ha Bur Day” and she gave me an extra bowl of rice.”
Having traveled now to China for so many years, Gretchen has had the opportunity to find some wonderful pieces for her shop as well as make unique connections that the ordinary traveler may miss. I think it’s like being a detective. One thing, asking a question or making a comment may lead to a unique product or restaurant then that leads her onto something else and then it can go on from there. How she found the Red Capital Ranch is just such an example.
One of Gretchen’s resources is Conde Nast Traveler. Her favorite issue is the Hot List. She goes through all of the restaurants, cuts out the ones that interest her and makes plans to visit them. One year, there was a restaurant mentioned called Red Capital Club in Beijing. She went there for a number of years until one year, the hostess asked her if she would like to meet the owner. Thinking she was about to meet David Tang, she readily agreed. Instead of a Hong Kong billionaire she was pleasantly surprised to meet an American lawyer whose mother lives in West Palm Beach (small world). He was just opening a boutique hotel called the Red Capital Residence and asked her if she’d like to see it. “He put us in a bicycle rickshaw. We went whipping through the slums of Beijing to the Residence...I’m like okay, this is it from now on, I’m staying here.” A couple of years later the owner built the Ranch. It’s along an unreconstructed part of the Great Wall of China. Gretchen is going back there again this year, this time taking her oldest son with her.
After Beijing, Gretchen is traveling to Ulaanbaatar, Shanghai, and then Hanoi. On her first trip to Hanoi, she was walking out of her hotel with her daughter to go shopping when a cyclo (a bicycle with a seat for a passenger in front) driver tried to convince them to hire him for a ride. “There were all of these drivers parked outside and we were not going to do it. So, as we were shopping, walking along, there was a guy following us, pedaling, shouting “Come on ladies, come on madam, I take two. I take two.” So we decided to get in the cyclo without realizing that they’re designed for one person not two. So my daughter sits down and then I sit on the armrest. All the locals are just roaring with laughter.” To add to the chaos, they had just looked at some t-shirts that said “Good Morning Vietnam” but the girl selling them couldn’t find their size. So, off they go in the cyclo, when suddenly the girl finds their size and starts chasing them (in jeans and high heels) yelling that she found it. Then, “There’s this one place in Hanoi where all the streets come together. It’s like a spider web. These cyclos don’t stop. They just keep on going. The girl’s running after us, the cyclo driver has plunged into all of this traffic, motorcycles, cars and trucks, they’re all coming at us. The two of us are sitting in the cyclo and we’re saying “Stop! Stop!” It was one of those things that if you saw it in a movie, you’d say, they made this up.”
Another time when Gretchen was in Hanoi, she had decided with her two traveling companions to see Ha Long Bay.” She told me that the movie Indochine has wonderful scenes from Ha Long Bay. “We had a Volkswagen bus with a guide. Once we got there they put us on a junk and we sailed around. There are these weird limestone outcroppings that come out of the water. It’s just so beautiful. Then they served us lunch with white tablecloths, wine glasses.” For lunch they were served spring rolls. “My friend and I were eating these spring rolls and they were really good so they brought us more. [The other person who was with them] kept saying “No thanks, no thanks” After lunch we asked her “Why didn’t you eat the spring rolls?” She said “Oh, because they were made from dog” She didn’t tell us until after we ate them.”
After Hanoi, Gretchen is off to Bangkok, then Singapore. This will be her first trip there. When she goes to a new place, she asks people she knows who have been there for tips, she reads design books and looks for products unique to the area (she wouldn’t buy Chinese furniture in Singapore, she’d buy it in China), and she reads loads of guidebooks and magazines. This is something that I know everyone could adapt to their own travel experience. A trip may not be to find an unusual item for a Palm Beach store, but it may be to find the best beach or a wonderful pizzeria in Rome. Asking questions of the locals, not taking things at face value, and not letting language be a barrier, are all lessons that we can learn from Gretchen.
From Singapore, Gretchen is going on to Helsinki, Stockholm, Budapest, Paris, and then London.
One year, based on a tiny piece in Tattler, she learned that the Countess of Leicester was taking her collection of Roman and Greek statuary from Holkham Hall and having molds made out of her favorite pieces and selling them. Gretchen has just one of these left in her shop. When she called her, the Countess gave her a private tour of Holkham Hall. She was able to see many private rooms (not to mention getting to meet the Countess). Another time when she was in England watching her son play polo, she got to meet Prince Charles. When I went to England I bought an umbrella. Very similar stories.
After London, Gretchen will travel to Milan and Venice and then return to Palm Beach via Paris. Looking back over past trips, Gretchen said “I’ve just had these magical trips.” Every place she’s gone to sounds like it’s been a unique adventure, filled with treasures that were there for just her to find. Hearing about some of her more harrowing exploits (I can’t look at dogs for a while) it made me wonder if there was anything Gretchen wouldn’t do, any lengths she wouldn’t go to find just that right piece for her shop. She set me straight really quick, “My rule for travel is, if they don’t have sit down toilets, I won’t go. So, you’ll never see me in the Gobi desert or out in Mongolia looking for dinosaur bones. I don’t do any of that kind of stuff. I can hook you up with the best guide in Mongolia if you want to shoot big horn sheep. But I don’t do any of that myself.”
Spring, 2008
Gretchen passed away September, 2015