Size not holding North back

LOOKING UP: Kelly Dull, pastry chef of North Bakery, which was opened in a small industrial space at the corner of Carpenter and Battey streets in Providence last year. / COURTESY NORTH BAKERY
LOOKING UP: Kelly Dull, pastry chef of North Bakery, which was opened in a small industrial space at the corner of Carpenter and Battey streets in Providence last year. / COURTESY NORTH BAKERY

“Providence is lined up to be a great culinary destination,” said chef and restaurateur James Mark, who owns North and North Bakery in Providence’s West End neighborhood.

He is in an enviable position with his popular eatery that routinely serves 150 patrons on an average Saturday night, quite remarkable for a restaurant that only has 28 seats. Mark is part of a close-knit group of owner-chefs who are on the leading edge of Providence dining – Derek Wagner of Nick’s on Broadway, Beau Vestal of New Rivers and Ben Sukle of birch. “These guys are great to call up and ask anything – who to buy pork from, to how to go about getting a zoning change,” said Mark while seated at the counter of his bakery, located one-tenth of a mile away from his restaurant.

He says they are more colleagues than competitors. They routinely eat at each other’s restaurants. Mark says the congeniality adds to Providence’s sense of place that bigger cities lack. It figures into his philosophy of shaping a conversation about what Rhode Island restaurants should be.

He takes pride in the fact that his staff at North and North Bakery are all Providence residents.

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When asked why he wanted to open a restaurant in the city, he enthused about Providence being “a dynamic city, affordable. Here, we can do projects that would take a million dollars in other cities.” He opened North in 2012 with a minimal investment, saved after several years of cooking in Providence at places like Nick’s on Broadway and Thee Red Fez and elsewhere, including a stint at the Michelin-starred restaurant Momofuku Ko in New York City.

Yet he declared, “I can get better-quality seafood in Rhode Island!” Indeed he is loyal to a single fisherman out of Block Island from whom he gets the main ingredient for North’s signature Fluke with Chinese-American flavor with lobster natang (coconut sauce with lime, garlic, cilantro), “green chow mein vers2.0” (fine noodles fried and tossed with almonds, coconut and mint), “dan” (rice cakes with goat and squid), spicy cucumber and house-made sausage.

The chef’s grounded approach to business and life makes sense on every level. Even the separate locations of his restaurant and bakery are based in logic. The North restaurant and kitchen space is so small that there is virtually no space available when deliveries are made during the day.

It became necessary to find a separate spot with facilities for baking and prep cooking. Mark and his partners found the small industrial space just blocks away at the corner of Carpenter and Battey streets. They put in some sweat equity to complete the build-out which resulted in North Bakery.

Pastry chef Kelly Dull, who has been a baker for 10 years, creates what she describes as variations on American pastries. She specializes in sweets and the popular bakery does a brisk business serving pastry, coffee and sandwiches all day, complementing its sibling restaurant’s operating hours.

North’s hours were established with a specific purpose in mind – to serve the city’s service industry.

“There are so many restaurants [in town] with a lot of people working and they all need a place to eat a real meal,” he said. •

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