George Germon +Johanne Killeen the husband-and-wife team behind Al Forno
George Germon, Founder of Rhode Island Dining Gem, Dies at 70
George Germon and Johanne Killeen, the husband-and-wife team behind Al Forno, a restaurant in Providence, R.I.Credit...John Blanding/The Boston Globe, via Getty Images
George Germon, a chef who teamed up with his future wife to found Al Forno,
a restaurant that drew international attention as a pillar of the
ascendant dining scene in Providence, R.I., died at a Boston hospital on
Tuesday. He was 70.
His lawyer, John Harpootian, confirmed the death but declined to give the cause, saying only that it followed a short illness.
Al
Forno opened in 1980 in a city better known then for crime and cronyism
than cuisine. But offering grilled pizzas — a thin-crusted and chewy
innovation, with a hint of charcoal smoke — as well as creamy garlic
mashed potatoes and cheesy pastas cooked over wood, Mr. Germon and his
wife, Johanne Killeen, made Al Forno into an international dining
destination.
In doing so, they drew from a supply of local Rhode Island food, long before “farm to table” became an industry cliché.
“That
restaurant has been ripped off more than any restaurant in the history
of the world,” said Bob Burke, the owner of Pot au Feu, a French
restaurant in Providence.
George
Germon was born on April 1, 1945, in White Plains. Neither Mr. Germon
nor Ms. Killeen was a classically trained chef. He had been a sculptor
who attended the Rhode Island School of Design; she had studied
photography there as an undergraduate (though it was not until later
that they began dating).
They started Al Forno as a way to supplement their artists’ incomes, viewing it as something of an art project.
Mr.
Germon designed its every aspect, even shortening the table legs to
what he considered ideal dining height. He also built the charcoal
grills himself, at a time when many chefs cooked almost exclusively on
gas.
Al Forno was deeply intertwined with Providence. Ms. Killeen told The Providence Phoenix
that Vincent A. Cianci Jr., the former mayor known as Buddy, who was
disgraced by multiple felony convictions, had helped the couple get a
liquor license. The restaurant’s presence added luster to a dining scene
that has grown enormously in recent decades.
“They
could have gone anywhere, and they chose Providence,” Mr. Burke said.
“They helped Providence believe it was the real deal.”
Mr.
Germon and Ms. Killeen eschewed baroque cuisine, developing instead
hale and elegant fare with simple ingredients precisely combined. And
when they got it right, they stuck to it.
“That
was the experience of eating grilled pizza at Al Forno in the 1980s,”
said Mr. Burke, a friend of Mr. Germon and Ms. Killeen’s. “Why didn’t
anybody think of this before?”
Mr.
Germon, who had a home in Little Compton, R.I., was widely credited with
inventing grilled pizza. He and Ms. Killeen won a James Beard Award in
1993 for being the best chefs in the Northeast, and Al Forno was named the best casual restaurant in the world in 1994 by The International Herald Tribune (now The International New York Times).
The
story of Al Forno was one of an equal partnership between husband and
wife. “There’s a great deal of magic when we’re together, and our
employees know that,” Mr. Germon told The New York Times in 1988.
“Nothing
is missed,” he added. “We can really control the whole situation.
There’s a great rapport because we’re going for the same thing, always
tugging in the same direction, so that it makes it a lot stronger.
“I’m
in awe of chefs who work by themselves,” he added, but “I know when my
back’s against the wall, I have one person I can depend on to haul me
out.”
Besides his wife, his survivors include two sisters, Anita Alfano and Janet Prink.
George Germon, co-owner of Al Forno, remembered as culinary pioneer
Posted Oct 27, 2015 at 5:05 PMUpdated Oct 27, 2015 at 8:57 PM
George Germon, a giant in the ascension of Providence as a culinary destination, died Tuesday.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Thirty-five years after Johanne
Killeen and George Germon opened their Al Forno in Providence, people
still talk about it, wait hours to dine there and crave, and rave, about
their signature grilled pizza.
But Germon, who died
Tuesday at age 70, leaves a legacy as a pioneer who was a culinary rock
star before The Food Network and before everyone served farm-to-table
food.
His work with Killeen heaped fame on
Providence and nurtured a new generation of cooks, including Ken Oringer
in Boston and Suzanne Goin in Los Angeles. Together, he and his wife,
Killeen ,won a James Beard Award in the Best Chef Northeast category in
1993, the only Rhode Island team to do so.
In 1991, Germon said that he got into restaurant work because he was courting Killeen and wanted to be with her day and night.
“I
was doing sculpture and not getting paid. She was doing freelance
photography and not making much of a living. So we decided to try a
restaurant.”
Both cooked in restaurants before launching Al Forno; he famously with Dewey Dufresne at Joe’s Upstairs.
Talk
to chefs who cooked with him, journalists who wrote about him and
friends who broke bread with him, and all use the same expression:
“renaissance man.” ”
Such a renaissance man, such a
loss,” said Bruce Tillinghast, who owned New Rivers with his late wife
Pat and were longtime friends of Germon and Killeen. “Beyond pizza,
George was ever the sculptor and skilled craftsman,” he said. “He had
such a unique sense of the visual in design.
“Witness
any of his house or restaurant projects and you will find a beautiful
juxtaposition of cold, hard stone work, softened by George’s love and
use of the supple, curved details of complex wood moldings that joyfully
interplay.”
“George was a pioneer and a true
renaissance man,” said Lisa Speidel, who owns Persimmon restaurant in
Bristol with husband chef Champe Speidel, a James Beard semifinalist.
“As
Champe says, George is like the father everyone wishes they had — he
knows how to do anything, literally anything,” she said. “We were so
lucky to get to know and spend time with him and Johanne.
“I
remember going to Al Forno for the first time, back when the restaurant
was on Steeple Street. It had just opened, and everyone was talking
about it,” said Linda Beaulieu, local food writer and cookbook author.
“Of course, we had their incredible pizza.”
That
pizza is done on a grill, using local hardwood charcoal. It was a new
technique, with heat high, 800 to 1,200 degrees. It started a movement
in cooking that brought them national awards, magazine covers and fame.
When she interviewed him for the National Culinary review, Beaulieu asked him what his favorite food was.
“A really good hot dog,” was his answer.
“I
loved that George was so down to earth, with a total lack of pretense,”
Beaulieu said. “He was an incredibly talented guy, in so many different
areas, a true renaissance man.”
Chef Brian
Kingsford, of Bacaro in Providence, learned at the side of Germon,
beginning when he was 16, and spent 17 years at Al Forno. Germon was his
mentor and a father-figure.
“He was a real modern
renaissance man,” Kingsford said. He didn’t just teach him to cook but
how to design, do plumbing and see the world in a different way.
When Kingsford began cooking, Germon would taste everything as he was developing the dish.
“He said most people put five extra ingredients in,” Kingsford recalled. Germon taught him to keep dishes simple.
Germon leaves his wife, Killeen, with whom he cooked for President Obama in Providence in 2010.
“George and I have been a total team,” Killeen told The Journal
in 2013. “I don’t think it would have been as gratifying if I’d had a
singular career.”
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