It's a Woman's World: Caitlin McGowan of The Art Space Café

Painting by Lorena Sferlazza @lorenasferlazza

If you’ve walked through the doors at The Norwalk Art Space, chances are you’ve had a bite or a caffeinated pick-me-up at the Art Space Cafe.

Under the direction of chef/restaurateur Bill Taibe, the food at the cafe is nothing short of spectacular. The sandwiches aren’t only stacked and satisfying, they’re photogenic, too. And the fresh baked biscuits and other random weekly specials are made with love and care. To boot, there’s plenty more in terms of eggy options, salads, soups, and stunning coffee creations.

But executing all of the goodness you’ve had (or will have) at The Art Space Cafe is head chef Caitlin McGowan. For McGowan, food holds a special place in her heart as it’s deeply rooted in old school traditions and closely related to the bond she has with her family.

I don’t want to give away too much, as I’d prefer you read the answers to a few of the subjects we talked about, including her upbringing, culture, her culinary journey up to this point, and homemade jam.

Truthfully, it was something worthy of a podcast (which we at CTbites need to resume with), and one of the most meaningful conversations I’ve ever had with a chef.

Before you begin getting to know Caitlin, give her a follow on Instagram @so.fresh.so.caitlin

You’re one of those chefs that cooks all the time. It’s not just when you’re working. You cook, bake, and you’re creating when you’re off. I never see you posting a bowl of Cheerios on Instagram after a shift. How did that all begin for you? Is it a family thing?

Growing up, my dad is Irish, and my mom is Italian. My mom was one of seven kids, so there was a much larger family on that side. I was very fortunate to be close with both sides of my family, but, I mean, Sunday dinners at my grandparents’ house was very much a thing. I was really picky, but I loved cooking.

At five years old, you would find me outside making mud soup. That was my thing. I would take my mom's Tupperware and I would grab spices out of the cabinet and mix it with grass. And you remember those little poison berries that you couldn't eat but were really fun because they paint things. I spent so much time outside as a kid making mud soup, and that transitioned to being in the house, too. And I'm sure as an Italian, you can relate to this in the sense that the kitchen is the living room. The kitchen is where so much happens. And we have a big island in our kitchen. Growing up, I would come home from school, and I'd sit at the island to do my homework, and my mom would get started cooking dinner. If I finished my homework on time, I would get to help her. It motivated me to be better at school, too, because I was like, okay, if I can do this and I can do it right, then I can help cook dinner.

My first memories with my mom’s parents are both of them are kneeling on this little stool that my grandmother had and her teaching me how to make peanut butter cookies and how to properly dip the fork in the flour to make the marks. My grandfather, who unfortunately got Alzheimer's when I was about five or six, shortly before that, I remember him teaching me how to make Sicilian pizza. I spent so much time in my family's kitchens. I always knew that it was what I wanted to do, but my love of food came a little bit later. I was about 13 or 14, and my mom always made hot pepper jelly, a sweet pepper jelly. I was never going to try it because I didn't like peppers. One day I tried it, and I joked that I haven't stopped trying things since. It opened my eyes, like, I thought this was going to be disgusting, and it's amazing, so imagine what I'm missing.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Caitlin McGowan (@so.fresh.so.caitlin)

Tell us more about your culture and what food means to you.

I think culture is such a big part of it. Coming from immigrants on both sides of my family, and my grandfather came here from Italy in the 20s when he was 17. I was taught by my parents that you work, and you work hard. I think it was so cultural for them.

At the end of the day, the most important thing that I will ever say about my own food experience is that food is passion. For me it is the way that you show someone you love them, it's the way you say sorry, it's the way you show up for someone when they need you, t's the way you take care if someone. Every major life achievement, every communion, baptism, wedding, the birth of a new baby, all of these things were central around the food in my family. Even Sunday dinners and making Sunday dinner is its own special occasion. Being immigrants, you didn't always have the greater luxuries in life, except being about to put together a beautiful meal and share that with the people you love. It’s incredibly powerful.

I read a book called From Scratch. It's this beautiful story of an African American actress who grew up in the United States, who in college, went to Italy to study abroad and fell in love with the Sicilian chef and it’s their story of love and loss. There so many passages in that book where they talk for two paragraphs about fava beans, and I can picture my grandfather and I, so that’s where my love of food stemmed from, growing up around it.

I had a great backdrop to learning about food. My tagline on Instagram was “In my mother’s kitchen is where I learned how to cook.” My mom had a really extensive background in the food industry. She worked in a kitchen for a while for a very large catering company. She worked in the kitchen, she worked front of house for a really long time, and she was a mean cook herself. She taught me a lot and she showed me her love of food. I was able to get that from her.

So, that obviously all translated into going to culinary school?

Yeah, I went to Johnson & Wales in Providence. It's funny because the culinary school topic comes off up so often, whether or not you need to go. I think it depends on the person. I loved school growing up. I was the nerd who looked forward to school shopping for that first day. I really wanted to have a college education and the fact that I could tie a culinary degree into a food service management degree was really appealing to me. But it was really interesting because I had a lot of friends in culinary school whose families were unsupportive of them getting into the industry. It was the opposite experience for me. I have an incredibly crazy, insane, loud, supportive family that all come into the cafe, cousins and everyone, who have become regulars when I’m working. It's a blessing that I never take for granted.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Norwalk Art Space Cafe (@norwalk_art_space_cafe)

What was your culinary background before you landed the gig as executive chef of The Norwalk Art Space Cafe?

I didn't have any line cook experience before culinary school, but I grew up around food, so I had a general idea. Sophomore year required us to do a culinary three-month internship and I was fortunate to get one at Bedford Post Inn. I worked there on and off for years, picking up a shift on weekends or on breaks. I could not have landed anywhere better. We were doing nine course tasting menus. There was one point where up at their main restaurant, The Barn, more like a lunch/brunch type place. We did freshly made pastas, so I worked pasta for a short stint, then the fish station, which I loved. There was a point where we had three outside grill stations for meat, fish and pizza, plus three stations inside. Two different kitchens, a phone system, and all our plates had to drop on the table at the same time. We cooked in every kind of weather, phoning to the inside kitchen, saying, “OK! We’re five minutes out!” It was kind of like that tweezer style restaurant. But I had amazing mentors. Samantha Bailey was my first experience with a female chef, and I looked up to her so much, as well as Jeremy McMillan, the executive chef at the time. It was such a great experience to learn how to cook in a high end establishment, because not only do you learn the absolute attention to detail for food, you learn the discipline that comes with it. You’re not even talking in the middle of service unless you’re talking about the ticket that’s going up.

I decided one day to learn about food in a non-restaurant setting, so I got a part time job, while still at Bedford, at Darien Cheese & Fine Foods that turned into full time. Ken and Tori are amazing. There’s no better cheese monger to learn from. I got to learn about food retail, but it challenged me with food I wasn’t familiar with. I’d get an amazing ingredient and I’d say, “What I am going home and cooking with this?” I had access to all these high quality food products. I learned so much about charcuterie, cheese, pasta, oils, and vinegars.

I left there and had a short stint at a cafe in a home boutique store in Darien, doing sweets and coffee, and around that time I heard Bill Taibe was opening a restaurant with Dan Sabia, who I knew from Bedford Post. I met up with both of them and I was on the opening team at Jesup Hall. Not only did I get to experience opening a restaurant, we all meshed really well, and I liked the things we did in the kitchen there. Bill and I see food a lot in the same way. We’re both also very organized.

I was there a little over two years before I felt a little bit of industry burnout, and because I’m such a family person, the restaurant lifestyle can be hard. I can be a workaholic. I spent the majority of my 20s working 70 plus hours a week. I wanted to have my nights and some free time.

After that, I went to Terrain as a sous chef, which was also interesting because there were lots of women in that kitchen. I was grateful for my time there, but I was ready to move on to figure out what I wanted to do next, then I was furloughed because of the pandemic. I started to cook out of my home for friends and family, cooking for 45-50 different families. It started as me cooking a chicken pot pie, then it became 40 chicken pot pies, quiches, and pulled pork.

I tried to figure out what to do next, whether that was opening my own business or what. I ended up getting a voicemail from Bill who said he was opening something new. I loved working with him, and he always said he would find a way to get me back. He told me about this cool concept, in a historic building in Norwalk. When he showed it to me and explained it was a community art space, I knew the second I got back in my car, even when I walked into the building, that it was going to be something special.

The Art Space Cafe allowed me the chance to work with Bill again, plus, I get to have a little creative control and the opportunity to start here from the beginning. I joked for years that I never wanted to be an executive chef. I'm a family person. I want to get married and have a family. That’s always been my bigger dream. I have this great passion for food that led to this career, and I never wanted to be an executive chef, I never thought I would be, and this place became the thing that I never knew I wanted, but the thing I’d been looking for.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Norwalk Art Space Cafe (@norwalk_art_space_cafe)

You and your mom are launching a homemade jam business soon. What can you tell us about that?

Making jam is my other love and if I have a day or evening off and I'm not cooking and it’s between the months of April/May until about November I am in the kitchen with my mother making jam. Being the daughter of immigrants and being the youngest of seven children, my grandparents didn't have a lot of money. They preserved everything. That was the way they were taught. My grandmother always made you know homemade jam made out of whatever fruit they had in the yard. She taught my mom about preserving and jam making which transitioned to me as a kid spending my summers with my mom picking our own fruit at farms in Connecticut, then going home and her showing me how to make jam. I never had store bought jam as a child. For years, people told my mom to sell her jam. We kept doing it as I got older, and we’d try this flavor and try to make different one.

Last season produced about 1,500 jars, and we've made over 30 different flavors. Around 80% of the fruit is hand-picked by us locally in Connecticut at pick your own farms, there are a few fruits that we work with that don't really grow in abundance like figs (that we get from California) or apricots (from Red Jacket Orchard in New York).

We’re in the process of getting the business up and running under the name Vintage Kitchen Preserves. Our tagline is “Handpicked for three generations.” It’s something I’ll hope to pass onto my daughter someday. Hopefully it’ll be in retail stores or small wholesaling. We even use it on a few things here at the cafe. I want people to know it’s not just for toast or English muffins. You can use it for braising short ribs, with charcuterie, bone marrow, in roasted Brussels sprouts, and in cocktails. 

How are you a pioneer in this industry?

I am very old school and grew up old school. I’m an old soul by every means. I was probably born a few decades later than I should have been! I love the idea of family. And home. And connection. And the history of food. There’s so much innovation with food, take molecular gastronomy just as an example, but I think people forget to credit the backbones of food. To go back to the history of it. To go back to how the food industry began from people who learned how to cook in their parent’s kitchen. You look at this industry that is fairly male dominated and I feel like we’ve made a lot of steps in women cooking more, and people have this idea when they think of the food world that they think of it as being a male driven industry. The reality is that 90% of the people cooking, not as much now, but in past days, were women cooking for their family. The way that I’m a pioneer is by trying to innovate, trying to be new and creative, but more so by honoring history and tradition, and doing that any way that I can.