Cagla Onal-Urel: On pursuing your dream and allowing it to evolve
Advice from a chef
Meet our next creator, Cagla Onal-Urel:
Cagla Onal-Urel
Age: 47
Kid: Su, 12
Vocation: Chef and restaurant owner
Location: Washington, DC
Links: Green Almond Pantry, Instagram
I didn’t have many ideas of what kind of mother I wanted to be; I had never envisioned myself as a mother in the first place. But once I found myself with kids, I realized that the most important thing to me—food—was what I wanted to share with my children. We crave to create childhoods that will fill a lifetime with nostalgia and warm memories, times that will help us keep trucking when things are bleak. And little else is better at forming good, strong memories than delicious meals with loved ones.
Showing our love through food is a gesture as old as they come. When there are no words for the expanse of our love, there is lobster. When we’re incapable of changing something that’s happened, there’s Sunday sauce. When a hug and a tickle no longer fix everything, there’s banana bread.
Early on I decided that I wanted my kids to associate their childhoods with the smell of bread baking. Then, for the rest of their lives, whenever they’d catch a whiff of warm yeastiness, they would be transported to a home filled with love and joy (assuming all the icky memories have just faded away by then…). I expressed this desire aloud and then did jack shit about it. So my thoughtful husband went and talked to a local baker for advice and bought everything I needed to become an expert baker.
Well, pounds and pounds of flour and many, many jars of foul-smelling, molding concoctions later, I still couldn’t make a proper starter. So I quietly stopped trying. This was pre-pandemic. You can imagine the shame I felt when, in 2020, the entire internet turned into a photo album of everyone’s perfect, homemade sourdough.
While I still haven’t figured out the bread, my husband and I do prepare a home-cooked meal nearly every night. And it’s a lot of work. Each weekend we plan who will cook which night, navigating around soccer practices and baseball games and Spanish and piano classes, and figure out the menu so we can shop for everything in advance. It can be a bit much at times, but to us, it’s a priority. So I wanted to talk to a woman who not only has that similar desire to feed people but who does it both for a living and as a mother. I searched for mom chefs on the internet but quickly became disgusted. Every search I performed gave me results for things like the moms behind great (men) chefs or what (men) chefs learned from their moms. We know why there are so many men chefs. The industry has been notoriously aggro and sexist and unwelcoming to women. But, also, the schedule of a chef is an unnatural one. (Just read Anthony Bourdain’s old classic, Kitchen Confidential, for details.) And it’s definitely not one that is conducive to family life.
This is why my interviewee this week, Cagla Onal-Urel, is so impressive. Not only did she make it in the (man) chef’s world, but she broke out on her own to create Green Almond Pantry, a Mediterranean lunch counter and to-go market, so she could design a life that worked better for her and her daughter. Cagla began her journey far from where she is now. She first studied economics in Turkey and then left her country as a young woman with the intent of earning an MBA in London. Instead, after a series of events, of course involving love, she ended up at a cooking school in the United States. And we are all the more fortunate to have her talent and fighting spirit among us. Now if she could only help me bake a loaf of bread.
Now, Chagla, in her own words…
On ignoring your family’s expectations:
My dream was to open a restaurant, and I was thinking when I retired, I’m going to open a restaurant. And then I said, why am I going to wait for retirement? I want to go to culinary school. So I went to multiple culinary schools to their open houses, and I was eating what the students cook. But I didn’t like any of the food that I was eating. And I said, if I go to school, maybe I’m going to lose my cooking skills. But I came to Virginia and I ate a chocolate cake at Stratford University. It was so delicious. I said, “Oh my god, I can go to school just for this cake.” Also, as an international student, they were the only one that took monthly payments. My family wasn’t willing for me to go to culinary school. My grandma said that nobody will marry you if you smell like onion. So I told her, “I will find somebody who likes garlic and onion.”
On the demands of a kitchen schedule:
After my practical training and staging, I moved back to Turkey because my green card hadn’t gone through yet. I became the executive chef at a hotel restaurant. Then I got married and got pregnant. Because of the government in Turkey and the religious stuff, we wanted to raise our kid in the U.S. So when the green card went through, [restaurateur] Peter Pastan offered for me to be a chef at a new restaurant he was opening, Etto. When my daughter was 18 months, we moved here.
In Turkey, I was the opening chef. I missed a lot of Su’s growing times. Her father would take care of her while I was working. I’m a workaholic. When I moved here for Etto, I was working seven days a week, open to close. I missed her childhood, when she was young, young. Nobody gave me a blue ribbon. That’s what I always say to young people now: Live your life first. Because I always put my job and the place that I worked before myself. I never even had a weekend with Su.
On deciding enough is enough:
Missing Su’s early childhood affected me. When she was around seven, I said, I don’t want to do this anymore. I want to work for myself with no nighttime hours. I started in farmers markets. I had to do the production, cooking, packing, and cleaning myself because I couldn’t hire anybody. I wasn’t making money yet. I was insane. I don’t know how I started doing it. Then I was at three markets, Wednesday, Saturday, and Sunday.
The idea for Green Almond Pantry was that I wanted something like a market, but everything is made from scratch. My idea for dinner-to-go dishes came because I would cook something for Green Almond Pantry and then take it home so Su could have a fresh meal. I started by cooking what she likes to eat, and I’m lucky because she eats things like fish and stuffed cabbage. People love it. It’s like home cooking. I wanted to call it What’s for Su, because basically it came from that, but I didn’t want to use her name.
On treating women as human beings:
I have moms work in the Green Almond Pantry so I can give them options around their kids. Because I wish I had that when Su was a baby. I told myself, when I open a place, I’m gonna make sure that I will give moms a chance to pick their hours.
I have amazing women who are working for me. One was a dishwasher. She was never given a chance to grow because chefs didn’t want to teach her stuff. It’s kind of a guy thing. And she was scared to take a risk. But she’s so talented, and we taught her. Now she makes the bread. That’s the kind of thing that keeps me alive. I really like what I’m doing.
On a roller coaster of events:
We found a brick and mortar on 9th Street. There was a nine-seat counter where people could come and sit. But we still didn’t have any money. I put in an AC with duct tape, and it was dripping water into a bucket. My friend made my plates. Friends helped paint.
Then we received big recognition. I don’t know why. Maybe they felt sorry for me. It was cozy, the beautiful old building with everything from scratch. They nominated me for the James Beard [Mid-Atlantic] Best Chef. [Editor’s note: Cagla was a semi-finalist.] And then Esquire picks us as one of the best new restaurants in America. We received those without any PR.
Then we made the Washingtonian hundred. I was like, oh my God, maybe finally I will survive. Then COVID hit, and we were shut down.
I went back to working by myself. I was receiving, doing production, packing, and washing the dishes. And then I burned the place down. There wasn’t any heat, so I bought a space heater. I would wash the terry towels myself, and a pile was by the heater. The towels caught fire. And then I was closed for five months.
[Editor’s note: Green Almond Pantry has since moved to a space in Georgetown. And Cagla is hoping to introduce dinner service soon.]
On keeping control of her life:
I think Su’s more mature than I am. She gives me emotional support. She told me once that sometimes she feels bad that I quit the restaurant job because of her. And then I always say that’s the best decision I ever made. That’s why I’m really happy. I never think twice about what I did.
I didn’t want any investors because they will control my life with Su. I know I will be a good model for her in the future. But she doesn’t remember the time that she missed with me. I think it hurts me more. Now I am very fully there, and we are spending more time together. So she’s happy with it.
Thank you, Cagla, for sharing your story!
*Interview has been edited for length and clarity.