Queer Women We Love, Red Hot Entrepreneurs, Wonder Women

Workin’ It 2010

November 8, 2010 Cheryle Burke, Kat Long

Some chefs spend years in pricey culinary institutes trying to master natural foods. Deborah Gavito, proprietor of the snazzy NYC vegetarian restaurant Counter, learned the art of cooking with seasonal produce and edible weeds from her grandmothers. Gavito’s early fascination with natural cooking has grown into a long-time dedication to local and sustainable foods: her first venture, an all-natural baked goods business called Body & Soul, debuted in 1993. She sold her scrumptious treats at the Union Square Greenmarket, where she developed an appreciation for family farmers, and earned enough dough (pun intended) to open Counter in 2003. As Counter’s proprietor, Gavito designs fresh vegetarian fare, biodynamic wines and cleverly named organic vodka martinis (one is called “The Angry Lesbian”). “I waited on tables years and years ago, but other than that, I’ve only worked for myself,” Gavito says. “I don’t think I could take orders from any one else.”

45 of 2010’s Red Hot Entrepreneurs

Selling night-crawlers at age 13 might not seem like an auspicious start to an entrepreneurial career, but to upstate New York native Anie Stanley, incorporating “strange things from the woods” into her businesses comes naturally. A painter and filmmaker, Stanley received a Master’s Degree in art from Hunter College in New York City and served as the art director for the queer film festival MIX for several years, eventually becoming a visual display artist at Bergdorf Goodman. In 2004 she returned to the mountains and founded Smokey Belles Catskills, a queer multimedia artists’ residency in Narrowsburg, NY that provides a supportive environment for working artists and writers amid bucolic forests and streams. Stanley is also the proprietor of Albino Moose Designs from the Rural Routes, an interior design, restoration and custom prop-styling venture with a rustic aesthetic.