Chefs offer little plates and a world of choices

PORTLAND, Maine -- The hype and tourists of late summer can make this little brick city on the bay feel more like Epcot than a place where people actually live and work. While the Old Port gets fuller and fuller, Bar Lola, high up on the hill, is cool and breezy, patiently floating above it all.

This three-month-old tapas-style dinner spot, with its carefully crafted wine list and small plates of lovingly prepared food, has been embraced by Portlanders. And somehow it remains untainted -- perhaps because it's new and not air-conditioned and not right in the middle of everything.

Bar Lola is on a sunny corner at the top of Munjoy Hill. From the front door and sidewalk tables you can smell the sea and feel the salty breezes. The dining room is all bright colors and light wood. Big windows catch the glare of the bay, ceiling fans spin, and single sunflowers adorn the tables. When you enter, Stella Hernandez, the fresh-faced, blond co-owner, who seems driven to engage and accommodate, greets you and whisks you to your table.

Once there, you might sip prosecco and feast on pappardelle with fava beans and pecorino, or maybe order Greek meatballs, Filipino chicken and rice, or tuna Nicoise. All of this food comes from an unusual kitchen staff, with diverse interests and varied ethnic backgrounds.

Hernandez, 39, is married to Guy, one of the chefs and another co-owner. She grew up in Queens, the daughter of Greek immigrants who never stopped cooking their favorite foods. These days, her mother spends half the year in Portland. Stella says that when she rolls into town, there's instantly a spark of Greece on the menu. ``The first thing Mom does when she comes to Maine is to cook for all of us," she says.

A step down from the dining room is the tiny kitchen, where three cooks, all co-owners, churn out plate after tiny plate, making one another laugh as they work and snack on homemade caramel popcorn. This crew is another unusual element of Bar Lola -- it is a kitchen of chefs. ``The kitchen is tiny, but we have rhythm together," says Guy Hernandez. ``We can dance."

Christian Kryger, 32, clean-cut and sunburned, is the former chef de cuisine at the celebrated Fore Street restaurant. On his days off he golfs and gardens. He and his girlfriend rent land and a house on a farm a few miles north of town. This year they're taking time off from serious growing, but most summers they raise vegetables and sell to other restaurants in town. Josh Potocki, 32, looks like he could be the bad boy drummer in a punk rock band. He's a surfer, tall and wiry with tattoos all over his arms and a short Mohawk under a baseball cap on backwards. And Guy Hernandez is a 40-year-old competitive cyclist and triathlete.

Guy and Stella met at Princeton, where they both studied architecture. Afterwards Guy spent seven years teaching at Washington University in St. Louis, while Stella practiced architecture, then got an MBA and spent a few years consulting for telecom companies. Five years ago, the couple moved to Portland to try something different. Stella took a job as director of the nonprofit Literacy Volunteers of Maine, and Guy went to work as a baker and line cook at One Fifty Ate, a popular South Portland cafe owned by Potocki and his business partner Allison Reid. A year and a half ago, One Fifty Ate began offering weekend dinner. Guy says that the restaurant was too far from Portland to attract night customers. Finally, they stopped dinner and opened Bar Lola. ``We definitely had a chance to work out the kinks," says Kryger, who, like the other Lola cooks, also worked in the One Fifty Ate kitchen.

Many of Lola's dishes are faithful renderings of family classics. Guy contributed Tony's chicken and rice, a dish of chicken braised in soy sauce and vinegar, which is named for his Filipino dad. Potocki makes his sister's signature pork loin and serves it with chipotle and sour cherry jam, Cuban-style black beans, and pickled mango. His grandmother's lemon pound cake is also on the menu, the one that she made every week for her entire life. ``I know that she could smell exactly when it was done," he says.

The whole crew agrees that Stella's mom, Aspacia Poulis, is the ``sickest cook ever" (as in good). She makes Greek meatballs with cucumbers, and also prepares her own yogurt and homemade phyllo for spanakopita. In the early summer she spent time in the kitchen showing the cooks her revani, a Greek cake with orange and honey syrup. Even Thomas Jaeger , the French dishwasher, has contributed a few recipes to the menu. Right now his grandmother's potato pancake, smothered in melted muenster cheese, is being featured.

Everyone in the kitchen seems to be friendly with the farmers who grow their food. Potocki says that he wouldn't have it any other way. ``I love being surprised by what comes in," he says. That includes fresh arugula, ``figs the size of pears," as he describes them, and black trumpet mushrooms from a local forager.

Stella says that when she wonders how she landed up as a restaurateur, she sees a thread in her career path. ``In architecture we talked all the time about a sense of community," she says. ``I had it as a kid. We used to sit outside under my father's grape arbor right in the middle of New York city and share food and wine with good friends. This is a neighborhood place. We live in the neighborhood. The people that I see at dinner are the same people that I see the next morning when I'm walking my dog around the block. It's a community of separate lives brought together by food."

Bar Lola, 100 Congress St., Portland, Maine, 207-775-5652.