An Interview with Cagla Onal-Urel Head Chef & Founder of Green Almond Pantry & My Little Chamomile
Cagla Onal-Urel, Founder and Head Chef of My Little Chamomile and Green Almond Pantry
I met Cagla Onal-Urel early on a Monday morning at her restaurant, My Little Chamomile. My Little Chamomile is tucked away at the end of a charming cobblestone alley off Grace Street in South Georgetown. The 42-seat space is warm and full of light populated with worn wooden tables and brightly colored decorations from Cagla’s travels as well as gifts from family and friends. The restaurant is Cagla’s way of inviting you into her home and the care and attention that she brings to her cooking makes you feel like family. The space shares a kitchen with her other restaurant Green Almond Pantry, a daytime concept that serves made to order food with a seasonally driven rotating menu. Think of everything from a 7-minute jammy egg sandwich to a lentil salad with locally farmed smoky eggplant.
Cagla has worked her way through some of the best restaurants in DC starting her culinary career at Peter Pastan’s Obelisk before moving on to lead one of his other restaurants, Etto, as Head Chef. She launched Green Almond Pantry as a farmers market stand as a way to stay in the culinary world without sacrificing time with her daughter. After a few iterations and many positive reviews from food critics around the DMV she has landed in Georgetown where she runs Green Almond Pantry by day and her full service restaurant, My Little Chamomile, at night and for brunch on the weekends.
Cagla is simply fun to talk to. She laughs with her whole self and smiles with her eyes. She exudes passion and loves to talk about food, how it’s made, where it’s from, and though she struggles to remember names has an almost eidetic memory for the dishes her regulars enjoy.
It was such a pleasure to ask Cagla about her journey, covering everything from her move to the US from Turkey, how Peter has supported and enabled her career, the early days of running a farmers market stand while working full time at Etto, and her favorite dish at My Little Chamomile. This interview has been lightly edited for conciseness and clarity.
Cagla, thank you for making the time! I want to start at the beginning with how you became a chef.
I’m from Turkey, had studied economics in school, and came to the US initially for my MBA. I had actually signed up to get my MBA in London but came to the states to visit my boyfriend and ended up wanting to come to here instead. I always had this dream of getting my MBA, working for twenty years, and when I retired I would open a restaurant. I just love feeding people.
When I came here for school I had the realization that I didn’t need to work for twenty years and then retire to be able to open a restaurant, I could just do it. So I decided to go to culinary school instead of pursue an MBA. I vividly remember my grandmother telling me that nobody was going to want to marry me since my hands were always going to smell like onion. I think I told her I would find someone who loves the smell of onions!
So you made this pivot from pursuing an MBA to culinary school, how did you know that it was the right call? Did it feel scary at the time?
Oh no not at all! I was young and wasn’t scared of anything. At the time I remember feeling like it was the best decision I ever made. I still love it now.
My mom always says that I picked the hardest job. Right now we are short staffed and I’m working a ton in the kitchen. I still have some residual pain from my surgery but I love feeding people. It makes me so happy to bring other people joy through cooking and that has been true since day one.
You might have to help me with the timeline here but my understanding is that you graduated culinary school and had worked at Obelisk, a Peter Pastan restaurant. Peter is a legend in the DC restaurant scene and has brought so many amazing restaurants to life in the DMV like 2Amy’s, Etto, Obelisk, and more recently Bar Del Monte. I’d love to hear about your experience!
I had worked for Peter a Obelisk and he had sponsored my green card. I returned to Turkey while it was processing and ended up having my daughter. When she was one month old my green card was approved and I came back to work with Peter as the Head Chef at Etto. Peter is amazing and I wouldn’t have wanted to work for anyone else. I love him dearly, he is like a brother to me.
When I returned to Etto it wasn’t just a job. I have a culinary degree but nothing from school can compare to what I learned from him. You see so many people in the DC restaurant industry who have deeply rooted values and success and a lot of them have this throughline of having worked with Peter.
“When I came here for school I had the realization that I didn’t need to work for twenty years and then retire to be able to open a restaurant, I could just do it. ”
You made the jump from Etto to running Green Almond Pantry at farmer’s markets, what was that like?
I started Green Almond Pantry right before I left Etto. My first market was the Rose Park Wednesday market. At the time, the Rose Park Manager was Gloria, a wonderful woman that supported me so much. She also managed the Palisades market and brought me in. The farmers market is amazing and the community helps each other so much. I love meeting with people and the one-to-one interactions you can have.
In the early days I was cooking, cleaning, packing, driving, setting up, and pretty much doing everything. I was always late to the market because the morning of the market I would be packing the fresh salads. When we first started nobody knew us and I was so worried we wouldn’t do well. People didn’t know my background and thought I was a mother who had just decided to try to cook. My friends and I would laugh so much about it because I was a professional chef for my “day job.”
If I could bring back farmers markets for Green Almond Pantry I 100% would. All my old regulars from the market still come to visit us. They are so loyal and have been part of our journey since we started.
I’m curious since I love going to farmer’s markets, how hard is it to get everything ready especially since you really focused on fresh prepared food?
When I started Peter let me use the 2Amy’s kitchen to prepare for the market. The timing was crazy because the pastry team at 2Amy’s would come in the morning and needed to use the kitchen so I had to cook everything the morning of the market, prepare it, box it, then clean the kitchen and leave all before the pasty team had arrived. Peter let me do this completely free and was so supportive of me. All of our food was seasonal so I would get deliveries once a week of new food items that would then be made into whatever I was thinking of that week.
Market days were crazy. For example on days when delivery was late I would end up with a big bag of produce and have to do something with it. So in the morning I would be peeling hundreds of carrots and then try to think of what I wanted to do with them. Once I decided on that I would then have to go back to making the other dips and spreads for the day. We had to be delivered, prepped, packed and the kitchen had to be cleaned all before market and then I would go pick up my daughter!
Green Almond Pantry started out at the market as vegan, why was that?
Honestly it started as a vegan concept at the market mostly for food safety reasons. I’m not vegetarian or vegan but vegetables are a key part of Turkish food and I didn’t feel comfortable selling a meat item since everything was fresh and we weren’t bringing refrigerator units to the market. Obviously we aren’t vegan at Green Almond Pantry today but we loved starting there.
Let’s flip over to the transition into your new space in Georgetown. You had Green Almond Pantry in Dupont Circle and then a fire closed you down before you reopened in your current space. How did you pick this location?
I spent 5 months looking for a new space. By the end of the process I would tour places look around and do the mental math of how much the Pepco bill would be, how many seats would fit, how much labor and food costs would be, and how many turns we could do and sort of intuitively know if the space would work for us. If we cut corners on food costs and didn’t try and buy great food I think there are a lot more spaces that might have worked.
It took me so long to find the right spot. Peter gave me this great piece of advice that I should always make sure that any location I pick should be close to home. I was still always late to pick up my daughter from school but at least I was close. I was always late but never the level of “the school hates you late.”
The team at Sundevich had moved to this location and the founder showed me this place. When I saw it I initially didn’t want it but the landlord was incredibly supportive and my broker was fantastic. We looked at big places and this space we’re now in was small but at least I had my own kitchen. We ended up coming back here with the blessing of the Sundevich team. Anywhere we share space it’s important to me that we respect other businesses in the same area. It’s so hard to run a small food business so we need to stay together as a community and not make it harder for each other.
“I would be peeling hundreds of carrots and then try to think of what I wanted to do with them. Once I decided on that I would then have to go back to making the other dips and spreads for the day. We had to be delivered, prepped, packed and the kitchen had to be cleaned all before market.”
So how did My Little Chamomile come to be? You ran Green Almond Pantry for a long time before opening this new beautiful restaurant.
It’s funny, since My Little Chamomile is a restaurant people know we cook food to order but for Green Almond Pantry it’s the exact same kitchen and we’re also cooking to order. When someone orders from Green Almond Pantry or My Little Chamomile we are going to the same kitchen and cooking. We don’t have a freezer. Everything is fresh.
We got to a point with Green Almond Pantry where we knew that there was an opportunity to use the kitchen for more than just a daytime café. My landlord, who I really like, kept coming back to tell me that our food should be served on a plate. The original reason for Green Almond Pantry being a daytime operation was so I could spend time with my daughter. Green Almond Pantry created this opportunity for me to drop her off at school, go to work, and then be available to pick her up at the end of the day. Part of the reason we launched dinner to-go at Green Almond Pantry is because I was rushing home to pick her up, would get home, and not spend any time with her because I was cooking. I wanted to make sure that when I was with her I was really spending time with her so we developed the “dinner to go” as something that I originally made for me.
My daughter is now 14 so it felt like the right time to launch My Little Chamomile. We are closed Monday and Tuesday nights and that’s 100% because I want to spend Monday and Tuesday nights with my daughter. So even though she’s a bit older I still prioritize time with her.
Both restaurants support each other. Green Almond is open for lunch and My Little Chamomile is open for dinner. One restaurant wasn’t enough for the kitchen that we were running and the balance between our rent and the kitchen space and now this space is better. Our team is very tight knit and has been working together for a long time which, knock on wood, makes everything much smoother.
We have fantastic regulars. It’s really the community that has helped us to stay.
Okay I have to ask a hard question about running a restaurant. I understand the parts you are describing about loving food and wanting to bring that happiness to people but you also studied economics and I guess what I’m trying to understand is how you balance between providing this experience and running a profitable or even economically viable restaurant.
It's incredibly hard. For a restaurant to be able to survive you need to do 2 and ½ turns a night. Before COVID, restaurants were able to manage a final ½ turn from late dining but following COVID we just aren’t seeing that last turn. Running a restaurant right now, if you’re not looking for short cuts, is just incredibly hard. You have to be a little bit insane to try and do it.
I am also not willing to do a lot of the things that someone might do to improve margin. I’m not interested in serving anything I wouldn’t serve to my kid so I source food that I would source for my home. Instead of using a single massive food company that can give us cheaper food that isn’t farm to table or organic or just healthy we are sourcing from farmers and going to markets to buy our food and that means that we absorb those increased costs.
People who aren’t in the industry don’t necessarily think about the impact of no shows either. We have 42 seats and if we’re doing two turns a night every seat that goes unfilled means we’re giving up that opportunity. There are other things we think about a lot. Publicity is important, tourists can be important, and even Yelp reviews are important. One bad review can affect small businesses a lot.
From a business perspective, having both Green Almond Pantry and My Little Chamomile is really helpful. If we have no shows at My Little Chamomile we can offset that with a good day at Green Almond Pantry. At the end of the day it’s the same kitchen so we can try to balance those elements. It can feel a bit like trying to constantly balance between the two.
One high of the job and one low of the job?
The best part is cooking. Receiving produce and getting to feel it and smell it is just good. Seeing people eating and enjoying our food makes me happy. I may have too many things I like.
The hardest part is managing the business side of it. I make decisions that aren’t necessarily the most efficient but are the right ones, and that means balancing things as a business owner are tough. Three months ago I had to change the price on our whole branzino because the cost of the fish from our supplier went up so much. We buy from smaller produce companies and farmers where the taste is better and they aren’t storing things in a freezer for months. I hated to increase the price for our customers but there was no way we couldn’t. When you are a small business you buy in smaller volume which means you are paying more for each item. We can’t buy as much as a 300 seat restaurant which will get discounts on volume. I would hate for our customers to think we’re marking things up just to mark them up, we have to increase prices when our supplier prices go up in order to survive.
“Peter gave me this great piece of advice that I should always make sure that any location I pick should be close to home.”
What do you think about when you go out to a restaurant? Do you notice things as a chef?
When my daughter and I go out to restaurants I can always feel the chaos when waiters are running around. I can feel what’s happening in the kitchen and can tell when things are hectic. When I get the dish in front of me I’m thankful. I never like to say anything negative because I know how hard it is. If I’m sitting somewhere and enjoying a friend’s company I’m happy. Of course I go to restaurants where I particularly love the food and the people but running any restaurant is so hard that when I am out I’m just happy to be there.
How do you decide what you serve?
I only cook things I like to eat. When people ask me what kind of cuisine we serve it’s hard to define since we’re not tied to an explicit category. People sometimes think we’re a soup restaurant since I’m always serving so many soups.
The whole reason the 7 minute egg sandwich came about is because I was going to the farmers market myself and I was getting farmers eggs for my daughter. I didn’t want to ask people going to the market for me to just get 12 or 24 eggs so I ordered a whole case of eggs directly from the farmer. It was way too many eggs for me and my daughter to eat alone so I decided to use fresh eggs in the restaurant and make an egg sandwich. A lot of the egg sandwiches I had seen used chopped up eggs and mayo which I love but didn’t feel right for me. I thought about deviled eggs but it would take way too much time to make that many deviled eggs. I landed on making an egg sandwich with all of the flavors and textures I love including a bit of crunch which is why I added pickled radish. We now have to order eggs twice a week because its so popular but that’s how that dish came to be. The menu is getting bigger and bigger since there are so many things I love to cook.
“The best part is cooking. Receiving produce and getting to feel it and smell it is just good. Seeing people eating and enjoying our food makes me happy. I may have too many things I like. ”
Final question for you and fair warning it’s a tough one. What’s your favorite dish?
At My Little Chamomile I love the fish and all of the little mezzes we serve. When you walk in we give you bread to dip into the sauces and fresh olive oil and that’s all part of the experience. I don’t have one favorite, things change day to day based on what I’m craving. It’s way too hard to pick a single thing! Everything we serve I would feed to my daughter and that’s super important to me.
Cagla’s “Best Of” List
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I don’t go out anymore so this is tough but here are a few!
Grace Street Coffee – I go to Grace Street Coffee. They’re wonderful people who really care. They make our Turkish coffee and roast and grind it. I don’t sell anything I don’t like and they were so patient with me in trying to find the right Turkish coffee. We drank so much coffee when we were trying to find the right blend!
Café Unido - I love Café Unido in Union Market, their coffee is amazing.
Gemini - For a glass of wine I love going to Gemini. I go there, have a glass of wine and it’s my happy place. I also frequent Nido, Bar Del Monte and 2Amy’s depending on what neighborhood I’m in!
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This is a long list and I’m sure I’m forgetting someone but here are a few of my favorites!
I love 2Amy’s, Bar Del Monte and Martha Dear.
My daughter and I go to Baan Siam and Beau Thai a lot as well.
For fine dining you can’t beat Obelisk or Chez Billy Sud. Anju is also amazing. I love going out to eat with my daughter and these are all places we go to together.