Before assuming the crown of Queen Bee of the Phoenicia Honey Co. six years ago, Rebecca Shim was racking up quite the reputation as a professional chef. A self-described “rebellious teenager” in Brooklyn, she says she eventually heeded her father’s advice to settle down and learn a trade. In the 1980s she attended the French Culinary Institute – nowadays a component of New York’s International Culinary Center – and soon “got lots of experience in the City as a chef,” she says.
One of Shim’s first professional mentors was Edna Lewis, a highly influential popularizer of farm-to-table Southern cuisine and author of The Taste of Country Cooking, whom she describes as “the black James Beard.” When Shim first laid eyes on the book, she said to herself, “I want to work with that lady.” She managed to do so for more than a year in the kitchens at the legendary Gage & Tollner, the oldest continuously run restaurant in New York City.
Lewis’ dedication to creating outstanding food for a clientele who transcended color, generational and class lines soon influenced Shim to open her own eatery in Fort Greene in the 1990s. It was called the New City Café. “I wanted to provide a fine-dining atmosphere where everyone was welcome and the prices were a little cheaper, so young people could afford to eat there,” she recalls.
Though the place proced a success, a combination of work burnout and hearing tales of the beauties of the Catskills from Brooklynite friends led Shim to make frequent forays upstate. “I wanted to see where food came from,” she says. Leaving urban life behind, she spent a year on a farm learning how to garden organically. “I fell in love with the Catskills and never wanted to leave.”
Before long, she was bringing her culinary expertise to local restaurants, including Oliver Kita’s Heaven Café in Woodstock. By 2002 she had become head chef at the Menla Mountain Retreat, staying on until 2013. Her “last kitchen job” was at The Pines in Mount Tremper.
Her experiments in gardening had inspired in Shim a deep affection for bees, and in 2014 she bought the Phoenicia Honey Co. from its founder, Elissa Jane Mastel. She keeps two hives of her own at her 17-acre Mount Tremper homestead, called Amira’s Farm, where she also recently began raising flowers for cutting. She sources most of her honey from a colleague who comes from a long line of beekeepers. He has bee-yards in the Catskills, in western New York, and the Finger Lakes.
The raw honey arrives in 60-pound buckets to Shim’s processing and packing room, tucked away behind her pop-up retail counter in the Phoenicia Arts & Antiques mini-mall. The building now housing the market used to be the Phoenicia Pharmacy, and the old-fashioned laboratory atmosphere of the honey prep space seems right at home in that environment. Shim melts down the crystallized honey in double boilers set over low heat on induction cookers, steeping her signature herb combinations overnight in the thick golden liquid. Then she strains the infused honeys through a giant chinois sieve, packages and labels them for sale.
The subtle, sometimes surprising flavor blends that Shim has perfected include her “signature” lavender honey, Earl Grey, ginger & orange, chai spice, cinnamon & star anise, even chocolate & bergamot. Recipe suggestions for their use can be found on the Phoenicia Honey Co. website.
New to the list is a “limited edition” First Aid honey, infused with ginger, cinnamon, lemon balm, elderberry, echinacea, mullein leaf, burdock root, garlic, lemon peel and turmeric. “It’s our best-seller right now, on account of Covid. People are looking for immune support,” she says.
The honeys can be purchased singly in nine-ounce jars or in gift sets. Phoenicia Honey also markets a line of body-care products, including salves (the Lavender & Calendula Salve was recently spotlighted in Condé Nast Traveler), bath soaks, body butter, body wash, lip balm, sugar scrubs and aromatherapy candles. “Bee wraps,” sustainable beeswax-soaked cloths meant to be used (and reused) instead of plastic wrap for food storage, are another offering. Cut flowers were sold for the first time this year, at local farmers’ markets, including the Migliorelli farmstands. Shim hopes to expand that part of the business next year.
Another glimmer in her eye is a plan to affiliate with other craftswomen in the region to market their products together, as “gift bundles.” She notes that many women-owned businesses are heavily dependent on crafts markets, especially during the winter holidays, and have been hard-hit by the pandemic. “Now there’s not going to be markets, so how do we support each other?”
Shim says that her sales normally break down into about 20 percent online orders, 40 percent wholesale, and 40 percent retail. Besides her counter at Phoenicia Arts & Antiques, you can find Phoenicia Honey Co. products regionally at Altamont Winery in Altamont, Brooklyn Cider House in Highland, Bread Alone Bakery in Boiceville and Kingston, the Catskill Country Store in Tannersville and Windham, Cheese Louise in Kingston, Faddegon’s Nursery in Latham, Love Apple Farm in Ghent, McEnroe Farm in Millerton, Emerson Resort in Mount Tremper, Graham & Co. in Phoenicia, Menla Mountain Retreat in Phoenicia, and Postmark Books in Cottekill.
To place a mail order, or learn more about the products, visit www.phoeniciahoney.co.
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