TV Chef Caprial Pence

Once upon a time she wanted to be a great doctor. But instead, Caprial Pence became a great cook. And what the medical community may have lost, Portland diners certainly gained when she opened her 26-seat restaurant, Caprial’s Bistro, in 1992 in the Westmoreland neighborhood.

Now, 10 years later, Caprial and husband John have expanded the restaurant at 7015 Milwaukie Ave., Portland, and opened a cooking school around the corner. Caprial has authored seven cookbooks and gained “celebrity status” starring in a television show throughout the U.S. on PBS stations over the past six years. Recently John joined her in front of the camera. Now the two can be seen adding quick-witted banter to their popular show, “Cooking with Caprial and John.”

Sellwood chefs mix batter with banter

“A recipe should just be a guide. What we try to encourage people to do is take that guide and tweak it how you want it.”

– Caprial Pence, OPB host and cooking instructor

Beginning next January, the Pences will begin co-producing the show with OPB (the show had been produced by a California company, and shot in rented studio space at KOIN-TV). “We decided we wanted to be in charge of our future and where we were going,” Caprial said. “OPB said they would like to help us get there. It’s a nice kind of marriage. It’s such a tight knit group. It’s really nice to have part of us be part of that.”

The new show, “Caprial and John’s Kitchen,” will air in more than 120 markets including KOPB-Channel 10 in Portland.

The Pences’ journey began when they met, as students, at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y. They became fast friends, and eventually the class couple, John said. Could be destiny, or it could be “because there were five women to every 30 men,” Caprial said. She smiles now, comfortable when surrounded by the morning start-up of the cooking store and school.

They went to movies and danced the night away at clubs such as Brandies and college dances for Vassar or Marist colleges. “And then [we did] things other people don’t do on dates,” Caprial said, “like going to demonstrations on vegetable carving.”

After graduating from the culinary institute, the Pences moved to Seattle where Caprial began working at Fullers Restaurant.

Recognizing her talent, management promoted her quickly to Chef de Cuisine, a position she held for six years. While Caprial was making a name for herself in the hospitality industry, John also was working at various restaurants in the Seattle area.

But, when their son, Alexander, was born in 1988, John put his own career on hold to stay home with their child so Caprial could concentrate on building hers. It wasn’t unusual for her to come home at night to find a wonderful meal, champagne and a hot bath waiting for her. “He was a great house dad,” Caprial said.

John’s decision soon paid off. In 1991 the James Beard Foundation named Caprial Pence “Best Chef in the Pacific Northwest.” She has the honor of being the first award winner ever in that category.

Eventually though, with the stress of maintaining her very demanding job at Fullers and another baby on the way, the Pences were forced to rethink their game plan. In 1992 the couple moved to Portland to be closer to family and scale back their lives a bit. “We wanted something lower key,” Caprial said. “It had gotten so it wasn’t fun anymore.”

After the birth of their daughter, Savannah, the two purchased a tiny café in the Westmoreland neighborhood and opened Caprial’s Bistro. After getting their second-wind six years later, the couple expanded and remodeled the small eatery into the larger and very successful restaurant it is now.

Caprial and John Pence didn’t stop there. Instead they threw in a heaping helping of cookbooks authored by Caprial, sprinkled their time with a smattering of television shows here and there, and topped it all off with a new cooking school and retail outlet, Caprial and John’s Kitchen, 1608 S.E. Bybee Blvd., Portland. The pair who moved to Portland to slow down their lives now find themselves busier than ever.

Yet, somewhere in that mix of activity, the Pences still prioritize time to parent their two children and make time for one another. “We just kind of do what needs to be done,” Caprial said. But they admit, they don’t do it alone. “We couldn’t do it at all without the help of our staff,” John said.

Restaurant staff does so well that the Pences themselves are rarely seen on the preparation line anymore. Chef Mark Dowers, who has been with the restaurant for nine years, does an “excellent job of running the show.” The Pences, who used to have just eight people working for them, now employ more than 60.

The responsibility of being an employer isn’t something either Caprial or John takes unconscientiously. Caprial is likely to get misty-eyed when talking about her employees. “I don’t think of these people as just people that come work for me,” she said. “I think of them as more of a family than anything. Of course it’s a business, but John lends people his truck, we lend people money – it’s not as cut and dry as a lot of business relationships are.”

In early May the Pences found it necessary to fire an employee who, while bussing tables, had asked customers and wait staff to pose naked for his side-business Web site. Unfavorable news coverage of the incident upset Caprial especially. She still has trouble talking about it. “I would never fire anybody lightly,” she said. “Nobody understood.”

The diverse “family” found working at the restaurant is partly responsible for the ethnically inspired food at Caprial’s Bistro. The menu has “a lot of Asian, a lot of Mediterranean, and then we’ll go on these kicks where we’re really interested in East Indian,” Caprial said. “Mark [Dowers] went to Bali so we’re doing a lot of Indonesian. Kurt [Spak], who is our day chef, spent almost a year training in Italy, so our lunch tends to be a little more Italian.”

To simplify prep and to keep food quality top notch, guests are offered only four entrees, plus two or three specials, on the dinner menu at any one time. “I think it’s easier to concentrate on the quality of six items as opposed to 15,” Caprial said. “Whenever I see a big menu, I get a little suspect, because I just really think it’s harder to control the quality. And we change our menu once a month, so the more entrees we have, the harder it would be for us to change it so much.”

Caprial said having a limited menu doesn’t seem to impact the business negatively at all. “Our best compliment is when people come in and they say, ‘Everything looks so good, I don’t know which one to choose,’” she said. “Plus we have a ton of appetizers. People could put together a three course meal with three different types of appetizers.”

Confident that their restaurant is in good hands, Caprial and John concentrate their energies on teaching at the cooking school and sharing the limelight on their popular television show. Working together as a couple has advantages, said Caprial. Chief among them is getting to work every day with someone loved and trusted completely. “When you have a crazy schedule at least you get to see each other,” Caprial said.

The two find that running off for lunch together to someplace other than their own bistro, when possible, allows them to regroup and check out the competition at the same time. “We try to fit that kind of stuff in where we can fit it in,” Caprial said.

Though “connected at the hip,” as John said, Caprial confessed that it isn’t always easy working side by side … such as when they aren’t happy with one another for some reason and have to pretend for an audience that they are. “That can be a little trying,” she said, “when you’re not exactly the best of friends that day, something made you mad, and you still have to teach a class, still have to have this public persona.”

But those rare moments are eclipsed by genuine warmth between the couple that comes across in their friendly and down-to-earth interaction with one another, both in the classroom and in front of the camera. “We’ve taught together for 13 years, so it’s very natural for us to work together on camera,” Caprial said. “I think there’s more of a dynamic there with the two of us than just me. I was getting really bored with that, with just me.”

Caprial, who has more than 200 solo shows to her credit, is glad to be sharing the spotlight now with John. He has taped 26 “Cooking with Caprial and John” shows with his wife is “holding his own,” Caprial said, and has brought a new energy to the mix.

The good-natured repartee that goes on between the two on-camera appeals to a wide range of people. Although aimed at an audience from 25 to 54, the live studio audience has been made up of everyone from 7-year-old children to 80-year-old men.

“People want to have a creative outlet,” Caprial said of the show’s wide-ranging audience. “It’s good for people to have a creative outlet.”

And if Caprial has her way, that creative outlet will only get bigger and better. She has visions of doing a radio show and a magazine. “I think it (a magazine) would be a nice extension of what we do because people want to know about recipes aside from what we do in the books. I just think it would be an interesting off-shoot of the books.”

For now, the cookbooks, published by Berkeley, Calif.-based Ten Speed Press (which also published the classic "What Color Is Your Parachute?"), will continue to entertain and educate fans. The past one, “Caprial’s Desserts,” was co-authored by their pastry chef, Melissa Carey. “The reason I picked Melissa for this book,” Caprial said, “is that I’m not a pastry chef and she is … but I do love to teach people how to make desserts that are easy and they can do.” Published first in October 2001, the book is now in its second printing.

The next book, which will be co-authored by Caprial and John, is expected to hit bookstores this October. Caprial’s cookbooks can be purchased at Borders, Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, Caprial’s Bistro, Caprial and John’s Kitchen, and their Web site caprial.com.

Sharing her favorite recipes on television and in the classroom is something Caprial loves to do. But she encourages her students and those watching to make her recipes their own. “A recipe should just be a guide,” Caprial said. Certain factors will change the recipe from cook to cook: a different palate, culinary experience, amount of ingredients. “What we try to encourage people to do is take that guide and tweak it how you want it.”

So how long does Caprial see herself doing what she does best and loves the most? “As long as people can stand me, and John. I can just see us as little old people up there teasing each other. I think it would be hilarious. I think as long as people are interested in what we have to teach them I would do it for as long as I had my health and could do it.”

Mary Elliott, a freelance writer from Vancouver, Wash., contributed to this article. See more of Elliott’s articles in The Columbian’s “Inspirations for Your Home and Garden” at www.columbian.com.