'Le Cordon Casual' comes to Rocky Neck

Jun. 11—Doug Papows and Shawn McQueeney live down the street from each other on Rocky Neck. To get to The Studio — the local landmark restaurant the partners reopened on June 2 — is, quite literally, a walk in the park for the two of them.

The same cannot be said of what awaits them once they arrive. Getting a new restaurant up and running is a challenging business, but on a dazzling blue sky day, Papows and McQueeney took time out from their labors to sit down and talk to the Times.

Papows, 44, a Cordon Bleu trained chef, actually grew up on Rocky Neck, and as a teenager, spent summers washing dishes in the kitchen over which he now reigns as executive chef.

McQueeney, the general manager, met Papows when the two were working together. It was a match made at Cala's, the Manchester restaurant that's part of the North Shore's Serenitee Group, and which McQueeney, a restaurant management veteran, says was for him the kind of training ground The Studio was for Papows.

A seasonal favorite, The Studio was purchased this spring by Steve Whalen and Fred Starikov, Managing Partners of the Brookline based City Realty Group, who recruited Neal Maver (Tonno veteran chef) to oversee the new team's approach to reimagining The Studio. That challenge has not only been all consuming, say McQueeney and Pawpows, but has also been a delicate balancing act.

There were so many things to love about the place, just as it was, say the partners. For 70 years, and through several incarnations, The Studio, built out on pilings into Smith Cove, has been dockside magnet for locals, tourists and boaters who pull right into the private slips at the restaurant's big deck.

The food was fine and it gave you your money's worth, but what the crowds really came for was Smith Cove itself. To spend an afternoon or evening on the Studio's big waterside deck, with Smith Cove and its sails bobbing all around you was summer at its most sublime.

That, and the kind of kicked back ambience that goes along with it, just cannot be beat, say the partners. So apart from undergoing a floor to ceiling "deep-dive" cleaning of the 300+ occupancy space, regulars will still feel at home with a waitstaff that's been serving summer after summer. But the food they're serving? Well, as the French say, "Vive a la difference." Which is where Doug Papows' Le Cordon Bleu mastery comes in.

As a kid growing up down the street, The Studio was not only Papows' employer, but his teacher. It taught him, he says, what he wanted to do with his life. Not just to cook, but to be a world class chef.

So after graduating from St. John's Prep in Danvers, and Wheaton College, Papows — like Julia Child before him — took his dreams to France's famed Le Cordon Bleu School of Culinary Arts. Only not in Paris, but in the school's Chicago campus where the city's new American cuisine culture had come to embrace 21st century global fusion in all its flavors, colors and shades.

After graduating from Le Cordon Bleu, Papows went on to work his way up through several positions at Chicago's premier Asian restaurant, Japanoise, which, he says, not only took his culinary a whole new level but to a whole new world of eastern influences.

Back home on the North Shore, the native son covered the waterfront, bringing his educated brand of global culinary inventiveness to the area's best restaurants, including, most recently, Rockport's highly touted Feather & Wedge.

You will find on his menu all the New England coastal classics — oysters, clams, lobsters, shrimp, haddock — but what Papows does with them may come as a revelation. His Lobster Rangoon is one delicious example of what he calls "elevated casual." It also exemplifies his passion for local sourcing. Working closely with Cape Ann-area fishermen and farmers, he draws on global to do luscious things to local.

In the kitchen where he once washed dishes, Papows has cleared a space for himself in the rear, a little "chef cave" where he can get down to what he does best. It's a well and newly equipped kitchen, but it is tiny. But, recalls Papows, so was Julia Child's kitchen in Paris.

From the kitchen, you see straight across to the new raw bar and sushi station, manned by celebrated Boston sushi chef Desmond Chow (PABU) and stocked with local seafood,

At the big, centerpiece bar, a rotating selection of eight draught beers are on tap, along with a selection of 20 more by the can. New this year, frozen libations and all manner of cocktails to go, a trend made popular thanks to the pandemic, and one which McQueeney perfected while manning the bar at Tonno's.

Asked how they feel about their new neighbor, Barbara Lynch, the legendary Boston chef due to open her own new restaurant shortly, just two doors down, at what had for decades the Rudder restaurant, the two partners say they are keeping their eyes on their own lane, running their own race.

McQueeney, who like Papows, has worked his way up, managing some of the North Shore's best restaurants, is more focused on what he and Pawpows make of The Studio. If the devil is is the details, then their job is to keep on top of them. Or as Papows puts it, "to elevate casual."