www.mainehomedesign.com/September-2007/A-Feel-for-Food- -
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Last Visited: 4/2/2008
Not only does Chef Abby Harmon, the former executive chef of Portland's much-admired Street & Company, cook from this place of deep intuition, but since Harmon and her partner Lisa Vaccaro leapt to open Caiola's in Portland's West End the pair has continually trusted their instincts.
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Harmon and Vaccaro perfectly complement each other's talents.
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When Vaccaro and Harmon both left their jobs and began searching out a home for Caiola's, they trusted their instincts.
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Vaccaro and Harmon settled on the Pine Street location with the idea of creating a cozy neighborhood restaurant.
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Harmon savors the sense of community that has blossomed around Caiola's."A lot of what we do here is about accommodating our customers," she says."They will lead you in all sorts of interesting directions,you just have to be open to it."And Harmon is indeed open to it; she keeps items on the menu that regulars won't let her take off, creates new dishes with the tastes of her audience in mind, and even shares her recipes,that is, when she actually stops long enough to write them down.
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There is a sincere, quiet humility about Chef Abby Harmon.Born and raised in Cutler, a Maine fishing village south of the Canadian border, Harmon even downplays the story of how her interest in cooking was first sparked: she was working as a camp counselor during a summer break from college and thought that the camp cook, tucked away in the kitchen, had an interesting job.That's it.No great epiphany, just a quiet moment that unlocked a creative side in Harmon that was waiting to be discovered.
Harmon's first serious cooking gig came years later when, on a whim and looking to leave her retail job behind, she answered a classified ad for a line cook at the then-fledgling Street & Company.The ad read "No experience necessary," so Harmon trusted her instincts and leapt at the opportunity.
Over the next 15 years, as Street & Company garnered a national reputation, Harmon rose through the ranks of the kitchen staff to become the restaurant's executive chef.Though she's been lavished with much praise for the food Street & Company produced, Harmon insists that cooking is a team effort.Even today, after two years of not just managing a kitchen but co-owning her own restaurant, Harmon is quick to share the credit for Caiola's fine food with her talented staff, including sous chef Cory Beckwith and line chef Mike DeLoose.
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Yet even while Spanish paella and dishes that utilize grano,the Italian grain that pre-dates the introduction of pasta,regularly make their way onto the Caiola's menu, Harmon says her most inspired dishes make use of whatever ingredients are freshest that day."If the mushroom guy shows up," she says, "and the mushrooms look great, then something with mushrooms is bound to be on the menu that night."The ability to improvise great dishes is often what sets superior chefs apart."I'm constantly scrambling to change the menu," Vaccaro quips, "as Abby keeps evolving it throughout the day."
Over the past two years, Caiola's fare has been lazily labeled by some as "comfort food."Such a description does no justice to Harmon's ability to coax subtle, flavorful complexities from traditional dishes.Harmon believes comforting food doesn't have to be uninteresting food.Sure, Caiola's menu includes the classic (and some would even say "comforting") Caesar salad, but Harmon's Caesar is topped with the surprise of fried spicy oysters.And her beer-battered mushrooms (another "comforting" dish) are served atop tender, lemony frisée lettuce and drizzled with a basil gorgonzola sauce.Because Harmon is so gifted in the art of layering flavors, her menus show no sign of growing the least bit uninspired or predictable.
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