Speakers & Guests
Johanna Ware
Johanna Ware, Executive Chef/Owner
Smallwares, Portland, OR
Johanna Ware grew up in Barrington, IL learning how to roast the perfect chicken at her mother’s side. Being raised in a family with a mix of talented artists, great cooks and rowdy storytellers attributed to her pull towards the restaurant industry.
Ware studied the University of Oregon and received her degree in English but spent a ton of her time in college reading, studying food and experimenting in the kitchen. Her first job in the industry was making cheesecakes at Portland Style Cheesecake and working retail for Portland restaurant luminaries Caprial and John Pence. Here she discovered she was fast, organized, and had the chops for restaurant life. When her boyfriend was accepted to law school in New York, she went along, promising herself that they would return to Portland and open a restaurant one day.
Living in New York and eager to get back into the kitchen, Johanna got a job at Public before the restaurant had even opened. Here, Brad Farmerie advised her to skip culinary school and said he would teach her everything she needed to know. She moved from Public to the legendary Momofuku where she continued to learn from renowned chefs such as Peter Serpico, David Chang, Quino Baca, and Tien Ho. Through her time at Momofuku, she learned how to work with a wide variety of eclectic ingredients and fine-tuned her ability to effectively run a kitchen.
Despite her love for the fast-paced kitchens of New York, Ware continued to follow Portland’s food scene from afar. When she returned to Portland with her husband she was hired as sous chef at Nostrana, Cathy Whims’ Italian restaurant in Southeast Portland. After a year and a half run at Nostrana, Ware, moved on and opened her very own restaurant, Smallwares in the former Doc George’s Jazz Kitchen at 4605 N.E. Fremont Street.
With nearly 3,000-square-feet of space, Smallwares–and its casual counterpart, Barwares–offer the atmosphere for sophisticated, yet fun, food and a bar to match. Ware describes her food as “inauthentic Asian” feeling it is broad enough to where she is not confined to a category of any sort. “I really hate defining it,” she says. “Public and Momofuku both have really undefined cuisines. That’s how I feel about mine. Part of my education and skills come from eclectic influences. I don’t really have boundaries, but I don’t want to confine myself as, say, an Asian restaurant.”
Ware has been honored with Food & Wine People’s Best New Chef nominations in 2013 and 2014. When she’s not working, Ware spends her free moments watching crappy reality TV. However, her primary focus is making Smallwares the biggest success of her life! What she loves most about her line of work is that, “you get to learn something new everyday. And if you don’t, you’re an idiot.”