Andrea is the Baum behind BernBaum’s, the beloved bagel shop and restaurant that graced downtown Fargo from 2016 to 2024. (Husband Brett Bernath provides the Bern.) Baumgardner’s food roots can be traced to her high school job at Leeby’s where she worked with gruff, knowledgeable butchers and serious farm-style bakers who turned out perfect cake donuts, pies, and lefse. During college, she spent a year in Spain and France, greatly expanding her palate and her pants size. A graduate of Macalester College and San Francisco’s California Culinary Academy, Baumgardner externed at Chez Panisse before cooking on the line at Vivande and Eos in the Bay Area and at Boxer in Los Angeles. She was the opening chef at Cobras & Matadors (LA), before returning to Fargo in 2003 as the opening executive chef of the Hotel Donaldson and then partner and chef of Green Market Kitchen. She was a Humphrey Fellow in Public Policy at the University of Minnesota and a James Beard semifinalist for Best Chef: Midwest (2020 and 2024).