Will Gilson discusses his new Cambridge oyster bar and favorite below-the-radar restaurant
Will Gilson’s passion for cooking took root early: His parents ran a potted herb farm in Groton. But Gilson didn’t like getting dirty, he admits. He longed to sweat behind a stove. While manning his family’s farm stand at Government Center, chef Charles Draghi (now at Alcove) recruited him to work at Marcuccio’s in the North End. Never mind that he was just 15. He was hooked. Later, he became well-known as the creative mastermind behind Harvard Square’s bygone Garden at the Cellar, where he served unusual pub food in moody surroundings, doubtlessly helping many first dates get off the ground (or, at least, be less awkward).
This week, the 40-year-old Acton chef opens Puritan Oyster Bar in Inman Square, a 30seat addition to his Puritan & Co. next door. He also runs several restaurants in the shiny new Cambridge Crossing development: Café Beatrice (sandwiches and coffee), The Lexington (an all-purpose menu, cocktails, and a roof deck), and Geppetto (Italian food).
Why an oyster bar? What’s the backstory?
We had this extra storefront in front of Puritan, just to the left of the entrance, for all 10 years that we’ve been there. We’ve used it for a multitude of different things — some popups, everyday storage. We spent a year designing a bakery for Brian Mercury. Once we got to the point of having to do construction, it was cost-prohibitive to try to put 10 pounds in a five-pound bag. It wasn’t going to work, and we’d already pulled the building permit.
I realized: I think there’s only two raw bars in Cambridge, and there definitely wasn’t one in the area where we are, in Inman Square. So we started pulling all the parts together
and thought this would be a really cool place to be able to build something that could be complementary to Puritan but also operate on its own.
Where do you get your seafood?
Wulf ’s has been providing us with all the seafood for the raw bar. And they’ve been really great to work with, especially helping to source all the unique things that we have on our menu.
What should I order?
I would say that, after this weekend’s friends and family [meal], the dishes that people gravitated toward the most were the caviar cone, which is a little sesame cone filled with Japanese egg salad, and topped off with caviar and crème fraiche, so it’s a little one-bite thing to start the meal. And then our buttered lobster toast, which is essentially a mousse of lobster steamed inside of bread, and then pan-fried in butter.
What does it take to keep a neighborhood restaurant successful these days?
I think what we keep doing as a group is trying to reinvent ourselves a little bit. Eventually, you know, you either plateau, or even worse, you kind of decline. Whether it’s changing something about how we operate or improving on some of the best things that we already did, and never thinking that you can just rest on your laurels, is what it takes to make something new. I think the addition of Puritan Oyster Bar allows us to kind of reinvent a bit of what we did at Puritan.
What do customers want? You’ve been in this business for a long time. What’s different now?
I think they just want trust. They want to be able to show up and trust that the meal and the hospitality are going to be great. They’re not shy about paying what food costs these days or venturing out. You know, on the belowzero day that we just had, I assumed that we were going to lose a bunch of reservations. Instead, the dining room was packed. Every time I think I’ve got it figured out, I really don’t.
But I think the only thing that’s the most consistent is just being able to have people trust that when they walk in the door, everything is going to be to their liking.
What does it take to retain trust in staff? What are people demanding from kitchen culture now?
It’s almost the same as what I was just talking about with guests. They need to trust that, as an employer, you have their best interests in mind. For us, the way that we’ve been able to at least retain or attract new people is that they know that their employers are good people, and that we’ve got their best interests in mind — and that, as we keep creating more opportunities in our restaurant group, we create more opportunities for them.
There are plenty of jobs out there. You can look at any jobs report and see that there’s still a very tight labor market. People have options. You have to be the best option that people can find. If we want to keep them and retain them, we’ve got to find a way to make sure that folks feel safe when they come to work, equity in the level of employment that they have, and that, no matter what, if they’re looking for something else, we can offer it to them.
We have daily conversations with staff, checking to see how we’re doing, and holding ourselves accountable. And that’s taken a lot of work. I think we’ve spent more time and energy invested in HR this past year as a restaurant group than we have in anything else that we do. It’s important to get that right.
What’s so appealing about Cambridge Crossing?
Being kind of the anchor point to a new development is always kind of hard, especially when that development is going to take two years to actualize. And doing it during a once-in-a-lifetime global pandemic is definitely not ideal. It’s kind of the same thing we were talking about before: to get people to trust us. We developed these relationships with the residents of that area, and with some of the businesses in that area, during a time when everybody was looking for something that they could gravitate toward.
Before we even opened our doors, we set up Zooms with some of the residential buildings there and let them ask us questions. We sent out surveys to the guests who had been supporting us during some of the hardest times of the pandemic and asked them: What could we do better?
If we just went there and were like: “We’re awesome, and you should think that what we do is awesome,” nobody would come. It’s been about being willing to adapt to the changing market and being able to listen to feedback from guests. Ultimately, they’re the ones who pay our bills.
What’s the difference between the customer base in Inman versus this new neighborhood?
For 10 years at Puritan, it’s been really difficult to do daytime business there. It’s definitely sort of a place where people live, or maybe even people are doing their errands during the day, but it’s not really a place where people think to go get lunch. In Cambridge Crossing, we have some of the biggest names and companies: Sanofi, Philips, Bristol Myers Squibb. And where the world is now, they’re trying to get people to come into the office, thankfully.
When are people coming to work?
We’ve had to be willing to ramp up during lunchtime, when folks are there, and we’ve also been able to really grab a lot of folks who are coming for afterwork. That’s been a really great thing — these companies are taking their teams out for dinners and [we’re] able to have a large space that can accommodate that.
Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays are sometimes just as busy as what a Friday and Saturday would be, because that’s when everybody seems to be in the office. Monday still kind of seems like a ghost town. … We’re just happy that people are out again.
How do you think Cambridge has changed since your days working at Garden at the Cellar? That was such a mainstay in Cambridge.
Biotech, life sciences, and the pharma aspects of Cambridge have become a huge driving factor in the real estate market, in who works here and who comes here. If you look at Cambridge Crossing — I saw it when it was still in development. It took a very big leap of faith. It was a giant gravel pit. Now it’s its own little community. And I think that’s the stuff that Cambridge has adapted to, which Boston has as well. Boston’s got the Seaport, but that’s more like Vegas. I think ours is a bit more like, I don’t know, a college campus.
That’s a good way to put it. What was the North End like back when you worked there at 15?
Every time I go to the North End now I get lost, because I used to be able to use the Expressway as my focal point. It’s just a shame that it became such a political battle over the outdoor dining, because I really do think that there should be no cars in the North End, if they can help it. There was something really special about going down in that neighborhood and seeing all those businesses come alive in a way that the neighborhood hadn’t felt in a while. I mean, rather than having open windows into restaurants, it was like the restaurants pouring out into the streets. There are some things that have come out of the pandemic that I really hope stay because they’ve turned our dining scene here into a much cooler place, and outdoor dining is for sure one of them.
Did you always know you wanted to be a chef?
My parents had a potted herb farm, and that was how I grew up. Growing up around potted herbs, you start to learn a lot of the scents and smells of how these herbs behave. And that part always excited me, but I hated being dirty. I hated being in dirt and just the way that being in a very hot, sweaty greenhouse, covered in potting soil, made you feel. So I decided to trade that for very hot, sweaty kitchen covered in oil.
But growing up in that environment really helped me appreciate seasonality. It really taught me the value of hard work. I think that’s one of the things that has gotten us to this point as a restaurant group; we make sure that we put the work into to getting right. And that’s something you learn working in a family business.
I’m going to ask some quick questions that aren’t always easy, but hopefully fast and fun. What’s the biggest mistake you ever made on your menu? Have you ever put anything on one of your restaurant menus and realized: “Wow, that was a dumb idea”?
I mean, the entire opening menu at Puritan. We tried to do what Sean Brock was doing down in the South. We tried to do that for New England, trying to take these antiquated dishes that people don’t even know the names of and turn them into modern cuisine. Nobody got it. A year later, we were like: “OK, scratch that. Let’s just make really tasty food.”
Where do you eat when you’re not working? I know you’re in Acton, where I grew up. And when I was growing up, sadly, there was no food out there.
‘I think the only thing that’s the most consistent is just being able to have people trust that when they walk in the door, everything is going to be to their liking.’
WILL GILSON
We go to Nan’s in Stow. It’s been really great, especially with two little kids. We go there and get the fried chicken on Fridays, and they have an amazing roasted salmon dish. I think it’s just a cool business plan for out here, too. I’ve always said, if I opened up something out here, it would definitely need to have a market component to it. But, if we have a date night, you know, we almost always go to Sarma.
Are there any places that are a little below-the-radar that you love and deserve more attention?
I still think every meal that I have at Chickadee is one of the best meals in the city. I think John daSilva is doing really great things. That neighborhood, when it starts to get more actualized, will be really, really cool.
Sam Day, who used to be our chef de cuisine at Puritan, is over at Season to Taste in their new location. I’m really excited to see what he’s going to do there.
What do you watch in your spare time? Although I’m guessing you don’t have any spare time.
It’s been a little tough as of late with the kiddos and the restaurants, but I’m really enjoying “The Last of Us” right now, HBO just has a hold on making you forget about the Sunday Scaries and giving you great television.