In the Kitchen: Johanne Killeen of Al Forno

I try my best to walk into every story without a lot of background noise on my subjects. Of course, in little Rhode Island where everyone knows everyone, it’s a difficult task, especially when profiling a location as storied as Al Forno. But somehow, I managed in my nearly 30 years here to shamefully never actually dine at the restaurant or meet its owner, Johanne Killeen. Until this assignment.

Now, that doesn’t mean I hadn’t heard of Al Forno. One time when deplaning at T.F. Green, the folks ahead of me were scrambling to pull their suitcases from the overhead, saying they had to run because they had a reservation at Al Forno, and if they didn’t get there on time, they’d miss the celebrated grilled pizza with local corn and tomato as the seasonal sensation was about to be pulled from the menu as the harvest dwindled with the season. Then there was that Christmas dinner party at my dear friend’s historic home in Newport’s Point neighborhood. Just as the snow started to fall, she pulled the five-cheese baked pasta she’d prepared from Killeen’s cookbook. Always the early bird, I got a sneaky bit of the crispy bits, which I now know are Killeen’s favorite part.

Pulling up to the very modern style brick building on South Water Street, you instantly feel Al Forno’s architectural connection to the Creative Capital. It happened to be the week when everything bloomed, and the pink dogwoods perfectly aligned between the huge black windowpanes, giving the landscape an almost Japanese-style, minimalist feel. Walking inside, the vibrant green paint, the dining room ceiling painted with yellow stripes – mimicking the dried corn cobs hanging above, the mix of stone, glass, and brick all welcome you to a true artist’s space. Killeen greets me with her long silver hair pulled perfectly back in a ponytail, her long white tunic pressed without a single crease. Looking polished and professional, she prepares a fennel salad, expertly shaving the greens. Next, she’ll be making the legendary five-cheese baked pasta. I watch in awe as she pours tomato and cream, and notice the details of the crocks made to fit perfectly inside wooden bases, each lovingly engraved with the Al Forno logo; the steam rises, and my stomach gurgles with excitement.

As I photograph these quintessential plates, a little shaky under the eyes of not only a James Beard Award-winning chef, but also a professional photographer, Killeen and I begin our conversation, starting with the one question on my list that she had originally skipped, and therefore instantly the most interesting: “Why Providence?” She answers simply, “George.”  Killeen’s husband, co-owner, and collaborator, George Germon, sadly passed away in 2016. Both RISD-trained artists, they ventured separately to Italy and both found themselves as freelancers looking for a side-hustle at Dewey Dufrene’s Joe’s Upstairs, and fell in love.

“When I started working with George, I realized he was all I ever wanted,” says Killeen. When Joe’s Upstairs closed in 1977, she was working as a professional photographer, and Germon was in architecture and design, “but we cooked together and cooked well, it was pure magic, we fit like gloves,” says Killeen. So they put their love of food and Italy into a project they could do together and opened Al Forno in 1980. Germon insisted they open the restaurant in Providence, though she longed for New York. “Providence gave us the grace of becoming what we did instead of hitting the ground running and perhaps burning out,” she says, adding that she adores Providence. “We didn’t approach this profession as trained cooks, we approached it as artists,” she explains. “A dish is a painting with color and texture, it’s not just three-dimensional, but five-dimensional.”

Now you can read the thousands of press pieces about Al Forno and Killeen’s awards and cookbooks through a simple Google search, so we won’t rewrite history, but as it turns out, history is repeating itself; Killeen laughs about farm-to-table being such a trendy topic. At the restaurant’s inception, Killeen and Germon had contracted farmer Coll Walker from Little Compton to grow produce for the restaurant. “After 45 years, things seem new again,” Killeen smiles, “We’ve been making cookies baked to order since 1980.”

During difficult moments, Killeen shares that she’ll ask herself “What would George do?”, working to bring Germon’s sense of authenticity and creativity with her into everything she does. “I carry it on,” she remarks. Through all this change and things coming in and out of vogue, I ask what her guiding North Star has been. “Each other,” Killeen smiles. “We could finish each other’s dishes, maybe not sentences, but we always knew what was missing.”

Al Forno

577 South Water Street

273-9760

AlForno.com