By Victor Greto
REHOBOTH BEACH — “Smile,” says Palma Salerno to her boss, Jay Caputo, as he looks suspiciously into the lens of a camera for his picture to be taken.
“Come on, you can do it.”
He can. He does. It’s a small, pencil-line thin smile, but his broad face noticeably brightens below a tightly pulled-back thick mane of hair that ends in a pony-tail.
Jay Caputo, 35, chef and owner of this sandy town’s upscale Espuma Restaurant (where Salerno works) and the nearby Porcini House Bistro and Treetop Lounge, is as laconic, as laid-back, as they come.
Caputo’s solid, stocky figure betrays every bit the build of the baseball catcher he was in high school and during his first year of college.
His cautious demeanor hints at both the behind-the-scenes life of a chef, as well as the stolid maturity of a boy from Dover who took to philosophy and creative writing once he left the confines of Dover where he grew up.
Caputo headed to Lancaster, Pa., to attend Franklin and Marshall College, then moved to Newark to attend UD — graduating from neither — but later went to New York where he got a degree from the Culinary Institute of America. He continued his life as a chef in San Francisco, Boston and Philadelphia.
During his early twenties, Caputo went from being a “ship without a course,” to a budding chef determined to learn every aspect of the business.
“He was a busboy working his way through college when I met him,” says Mike O’Hare, who owned the original Cafe Bellisimo in Newark, where Caputo worked about 15 years ago while attending the University of Delaware.
Caputo set a course on becoming a chef while working at O’Hare’s restaurant.
“He was a hard worker and wanted to learn everything,” O’Hare says. “He learned every physical job out front, then asked to come in the back, in the kitchen. One or two days a week led to five days a week.”
Caputo’s “definitely a character,” says Porcini House general manager John Wallden.
“He’s always got shorts and sandals on,” he said. “Even in cold weather. He had a funeral to go to in Dover, and he walked in after it was done, dressed in shorts and sandals. I said, ‘Please don’t tell me you wore that. ‘Come on,’ he said, ‘I’ve got regular shoes, too.’”
Slip-ons, probably, like the ones he wore on his feet while posing for the camera.
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Growing up in Dover was not the most culturally exciting experience, Caputo says.
Besides school, he worked sweeping floors at Safeway, washed dishes at W.T. Smithers, and worked at a Sizzler restaurant owned by relatives.
Although he did well at Dover High School, taking advance placement science courses, he focused on soccer and baseball, and earned a full baseball scholarship to attend Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pa. This pleased his parents, both of whom were teachers.
But a year away from home changed him. He partied, dated, and was dazzled at the different types of people he met.
And he migrated from doing well in chemistry to concentrating on creative writing and philosophy.
“I loved philosophy because there are no answers but constant questions,” he says.
And he loved the potential of his favorite class, symbolic logic. “It forced you to come to logical conclusions, not emotional ones.”
Still, when you’re 19 and 20, logic has little to do with anything. Caputo stopped playing baseball after the third semester.
“I was good, but not good enough to get paid,” he says.
The money stopped, and he chose to transfer to UD, majoring at first in physical therapy, then English and philosophy. Although he never graduated, it turned out to be a great move.
He went to work at Cafe Bellisimo.
“I picked up the restaurant business very fast,” Caputo says. “If you worked hard, they liked you.”
O’Hare, the cafe’s owner, liked him.
“Once while using the slicer, he cut his hand badly, and came to work with his arm in a sling,” recalled O’Hare. “I told him to take the week off. He was there the next day. I put him in the expediter station, calling table numbers, assembling the checks in the tray. He even washed dishes. That’s a telling sign early in someone’s career.”
When he made it to the back room, “I caught the bug in the kitchen,” Caputo says, and soon learned how to make pizza doughs, soups, sauces and dishes.
“I didn’t realize till later how much I was learning.”
He dropped out of college to work for O’Hare full-time. “I got $20,000 a year,” he says. “That was big money.”
He still lived with friends on Cleveland Avenue, and found himself cooking for everyone, even for the girls who lived across the street.
A chef at Bellisimo had graduated from the Culinary Art Institute in New York, and his work and confidence inspired Caputo.
“I told my parents I was going, and they wouldn’t pay,” he says.
Nevertheless, he was determined to go, and took out loans. “I was totally into it and wanted to be the best.”
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It takes both sharp analytical skills and creativity to become a great chef, says Ed Hennessy, Culinary Arts Program Department Chair at the Terry Campus in Dover at Delaware Tech.
He compares successful chefs like Caputo to artists.
“A painter needs to know how to mix colors and what brushes and canvas to use,” he says. “Once he or she understands how to paint, they then can experiment and practice and it often results in wonderful things.”
Creativity in the culinary arts can be learned, Hennessy says. “Some of our greatest artists have had to learn their techniques first, and through experimentation and practice of the techniques, great things come out.”
A for-instance: One of Caputo’s dishes on his Espuma menu.
A “chrorizo-crusted alaskan halibut” with sweet pea ravioli, roasted local baby squashes and chilled tomato broth.
“He chose a sausage, or ground pork, to go with halibut,” Hennessy says. “It’s a unique combination. Sweet peas are in season now, and it’s interesting that he makes them a part of a ravioli.”
The point of great cooking, Hennessy says, is to “create a fullness of taste for the mouth. You touch on textures, taste profiles, and it results in this new flavor.”
Caputo’s two years at the culinary institute grounded him in the theory of cooking and learning “culinary French” — “I didn’t get into a kitchen for nine months,” he says — but when he did get there, he found he was way ahead of most other students.
While attending, he “externed” at the Lark Creek Inn near San Francisco, and worked under the award-winning chef, Bradley Ogden. He learned how to expertly cook “rustic American cuisine,” including pot roast, roasted chicken and strip steak.
For six weeks he lived out of his car. After drinking with colleagues after work, he says, he’d drive around the block and just park the car near the restaurant and sleep. Then he made friends with a fellow worker and slept on his couch for the rest of the time there.
He graduated from the culinary institute in 1997, and his parents attended his graduation ceremony.
“That validated what I was doing,” he says.
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Caputo returned to San Francisco after graduating.
For two years he worked seven days a week at three jobs, working the lunch grill at the Lark Creek Inn, evenings under the award-winning pastry chef Emily Lucchetti at the “coastal cuisine” Farallon restaurant on Union Square, and stocking shelves at a wine store.
At Farallon, he worked his way up to managing more than 40 people.
At 26, he moved to Boston and became sous or “under” chef at the Radius restaurant in downtown Boston, following a girlfriend who was attending law school there.
Working at Radius, a high-end French-American restaurant, taught Caputo everything he needed to know about running a restaurant, from developing menu items to scheduling, payroll, budgeting and purchasing.
And he worked under executive chef Michael Schlow, recognized as one of the leading chefs in the country.
Radius’ style, however, was very different than what he had experienced in California, and included heavier, multi-course meals. Its metier, he says, was meat.
“They had a different style, more precise and intense,” Caputo says. “The food was presented beautifully. I was motivated and we were constantly pushing the chefs.”
Although he became a sous chef at one of the most prestigious restaurants on the east coast at only 26, “I didn’t feel like I was young,” Caputo says. “It took me longer to get to the top because I wanted to get there up the chain and learn everything. I was aware of this.”
After three years, however, he was ready to leave.
O’Hare had sold Cafe Bellisimo and was opening a restaurant in Newtown Square, Pa., called Roux 3.
“The opening chef turned out to be a nightmare,” O’Hare says. “Jay said he was moving back, and I hired him (as executive chef). He straightened out the kitchen, tightened up the menu, and brought some people from Boston with him.”
A month after he started, he had “turned the restaurant around 180 degrees,” O’Hare says.
But Caputo stayed for only 14 months.
“The food became a bit too sophisticated for the suburbs,” O’Hare says. “If you use truffles, you have to charge for it. We had to scale back.”
By 2003, Caputo was ready to run his own restaurant. Although he had lined up financial backers, he accepted a job as executive chef at Tangerine, a Mediterranean restaurant in Old City on Market Street.
But that didn’t last long, either.
“It got to be too corporate,” Caputo says. He had to go through channels to make simple changes in the menu.
In order to be as creative as he wanted to be, Caputo turned his eyes toward Rehoboth Beach.
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When the Espuma restaurant at 28 Wilmington Ave. became available in 2004, Caputo jumped at it.
“I wondered if I could envision my own restaurant when I walked in to check it out,” he says. He did.
Calling it a “northern Mediterranean culinary oasis,” the restaurant boasts influences from Spain, Portugal, Italy, California and France, Caputo indulges his creativity.
One of his more complex concoctions, he says, is his bacon and egg salad, which includes bacon-potato salad, blacktruffle coulis, baby spinach and micro greens.
The taste has been praised by several food critics.
When Caputo recently decided to buy Chez La Mer, a nearby, high-end French restaurant, he transformed it into the Porcini House Bistro.
Now that he owns two restaurants a couple of blocks apart, he scoots back and forth between them either on a skateboard — “when the weather’s not too hot” — or a motor scooter.
He powers the 100-miles-per-gallon scooter to local farmers markets to get fresh produce, a hallmark of both restaurants.
Caputo has plenty of other potential restaurants dancing in his head. But one really stands out.
“I’d really like to do a great Italian restaurant,” he says.
So, what does Jay Caputo like to eat when no one’s looking?
“I’m a complex cook with simple tastes,” he says.
His mom’s spaghetti and meatballs. A thick steak. Even a cheeseburger.
Not at McDonald’s, though.