Mikaelas Garden

Mikaela's Garden is owned by Beverly Landers and is located in the Garden District of the druidic downtown area.

It's a second generation restaurant that started life as part home, part affordable family restaurant.

At present, it's a two story druidic dining oasis rating one star (out of three) almost entirely for it's atmosphere: gigantic white oak trees take up the four corners of the main dining area with their root systems forming all of the booths along the walls, and the upper branches forming canopies of leaves overhead. The food, while always high quality and druid grown, has slowly been improving in complexity and will one day be a match for the quality of the atmosphere.

Menu
The restaurant grows a great many of its own herbs and spices, as well as all of its salad mixes, and a large number of its own fruit and vegetables. Mikaela's Garden also has a fish pond in the forest.

Apps Main Dishes Desserts Drinks
 * Mushrooms stuffed with various mixes: seafood; cream cheese and herbs; breads crumbs, cheese and mint
 * Lobster flatbread
 * Three cheese breaded fries (fancy cheesesticks)
 * Grilled cheese (blend of four cheeses on a thick, heavy bread made of nooks and crannies for cheese and butter to melt into, sprinkled with fresh herbs and thin, thin slices of tomato)
 * Pumpkin Sweet Bowl (a sweet pumpkin spice bread that's half bread, half cake, with a crunchy and sugary crust.  It's been hollowed out and filled with a scoop of freshly made creamy vanilla ice cream and covered in a semi-sweet drizzle - only offered during pumpkin season)
 * Strawberry Shortcake (faintly shortbread like scone with a very hard outer crust that's very dry.  It's topped with French vanilla strawberry swirl ice cream and freshly made cinnamon whipped cream with a drizzle of fresh strawberry juices.  The scone itself requires the juices and ice cream to melt into it and soften it, and then its faint almond flavor really comes out - only offered during strawberry season)
 * Triple Cocoa (with vanilla shortbread cookies)
 * Pomengranate Volcano
 * Apple Caramel Seven Spice Surprise
 * Triple Cocoa
 * Golden Rose Sunrise (black tea blend made with six flowers and a small dash of spices, fixed with a drizzle  of honey and a dash of milk)

Staff

 * Bingo: chef
 * Barry: kitchen staff
 * Tinko (male): kitchen staff

Exterior
Mikaela's Garden is a tall-ceilinged, two story building. Originally brick and clear glass, the brick exterior of the building has been weathered and cracked, and the simple glass has been replaced with rippled glass that allows light to fill the interior of the building, but also affords a great deal of privacy. Much of the exterior of the building has been covered in flowering vines and thin twining branches.

At present there's a parking lot to the right side of the building and some limited parking in front of the building. The parking lot is shared with Firefly Fabrics, an all natural druid clothing boutique.

Mikaela's Garden is located almost directly at the heart of druid downtown, an area known as the Garden District, which in turn is located near the edge of Lynn's historic downtown. By the early 2000's, the rare several businesses located in the Garden District that weren't druid owned and druid driven would soon be taken over by druids and this is reflected in the sheer amount of greenery all year round in the form of evergreens, planters, enchanted greenhouse-mimicking trellises and window displays often overflowing with plants.

The city block that Mikaela's Garden is on is notable for being the only one in the historic and downtown district where all of the businesses are connected. The individual buildings are only sometimes connected to other buildings on the same block, but the back ends of the buildings are all connected to a large, three story building that was erected to preserve the still half wild forest located behind the buildings. Far from behing an eyesore, the building adds to the druid downtown atmosphere. The outer walls, where they show above one and two story buildings and between businesses, have been covered in flowering vines, vertical gardens, and bird nests. In some places, differently colored plants have been planted to create living mosaics.

Interior
Upon entering the restaurant, there are two large aquariums to either side of the double doors creating 'walls' that enclose the 'foyer/waiting area'. Benches have been placed in front of the aquariums for seating. The aquariums, standing around eight feet tall, are nature aquariums, filled with intense greenery,  and thus enclose the foyer space and block out a great deal of the restaurant. The tree branches along the ceiling and the large tree trunks in the corners of the room are hard to miss, however.

The restaurant is most famous for the large white oak trees growing through the restaurant at the four corners of the main room. The trees are fully contained within the building and have been molded to grow straight up along the (specially rounded) corner of the room with their branches and roots stretching out along the walls.

In each corner of the room, where the roots are strongest and thickest coming off of the tree, they have been guided and molded to form large circular booths. The benches are made entirely of uplifted and woven roots, with the backrest and seats grown flat and worn smooth for very comfortable seating. The tables are separate pieces from the tree, grown from the same type of tree. They are held sturdily in place by a cradle formed by the roots below the table as well as some low guided-branches that wrap around the corners of the table. The actual branches of the tree do not start until well above the booth, but when they do they're full and thick, stretching out across the room and linking with other branches from the other trees. A considerable area of the ceiling in the center of the main dining room is open to the second floor, but the stretching and interwoven branches cross this gap to create a loose canopy overhead with the lights coming through from the second floor in gaps and pools like sunlight.

The branches also have grown up through the opening and been trained around the railing on the second floor. At this point the branches are so interwoven with the railing, and the leaves have grown in so thickly, that it looks less like a railing and more like a pure wall of leaves.

The lighting downstairs is interwoven with the branches along the ceiling, continuing the effect of sunlight coming through gaps in a forest canopy.

The tables (and chairs) in the downstairs dining area are all druid grown. As a result, all of the furniture is very much of 'a type', but it doesn't match in the traditional sense.

The bar, a U shape, is located directly behind the host/hostess stand. The bar is made of dark wood and has been well-worn so that it's smooth and silky to the touch, with a Celtic pattern carved into the front edge all the way around. Hanging overhead from some tree branches crossing the top of the bar are lights that look like old fashioned gas lamps.

Behind the bar is the entrance to the kitchen and the elevator to the second floor.

On the second floor of the restaurant, the public seating is minimal and consists of booths arranged around the outer edge of the room. The party/banquet rooms are located on the second floor.

The ceilings are raised so high for both floors that the two story building looks from the outside like a three story (or more) building. One effect of this is that it gives the restaurant a very open and airy feel, despite being filled with tree branches overhead.

In addition to the trees, many of the nooks and crannies and wall shelf spaces in the restaurant have been filled with living plants, greenery and vines that cover a great deal of the walls. There are a small number of bird flares living in nesting homes and some areas that are heavily flowered are home to swarms of butterflies.

Aside from the sheer greenery, the restaurant is decorated in rich earth colors and dark woods, with streaks of rich golden colors that work well with the mellow lights. Other decorative touches include decorations like empty glass bottles and abstract glass sculptures that catch the light and reflect it in rainbows.

History
Mikaela's Garden, and the surrounding druid businesses, are nestled on a very large city block - a leftover from an earlier period when that particular part of downtown was zoned as mixed druid use and every plot of land included a large space for a yard or garden.

By 1980, Adrienne had bought out her friend’s half of the restaurant and shortly thereafter the restaurant closed for two years to undergo major renovations to create the effect it still sports in the present. In 1987 Adrienne started the process of creating the Forest Room, asking the druid businesses closest to her building to connect the space behind their restaurants. In 1997 Bev took over running the restaurant and she began the process of creating a world class druid eating experience. By 1999, all of the businesses on the block were druidic and the Forest Room expanded vastly.

During the early years of the restaurant's life, many of the druid businsess on the block banded together to fight the encroachment of parking, storage, and trash dumping behind their businesses, wanting to preserve the gardens and still half wild forest that remained. To that end, they put up fences, but finding them unsightly took the fences down and connected the properties that were working together with large greenhouses. Eventually the businesses enclosed the entire space in a building all of its own in a modified greenhouse.