creative right hand, the company director of operations, and a partner at JoJo, Lois Freedman has opened Cucina near Woodstock on her own with Gianni Scappin, former owner of Gigi Trattoria in Rhinebeck. Freedman, who has weekended in the area for 25 years, says she felt that urge to open a restaurant since she bought a home in Saugerties six years ago. “There weren’t enough places to eat.  There was no Italian restaurant.”  She and Scappin, an instructor at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, took over the big old rambling farmhouse that used to be Deanie’s on route 212 in Saugerties  (   84…  ) and opened in April.  “I have my weekday job and now I have my weekend job,” she says. Like Jean-Georges, who famously wears Prada shoes in the kitchen, (as Beth Landman noted in New York) Lois will turn up in a Christian Dior dress one night and jeans the next.  “It’s fun but exhausting,” she admits.  “We’re waiting for the liquor license.”

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