The late Karen Barker was a James Beard Award-winning pastry chef, cookbook author, and co-owner—with her husband, Ben Barker—of the seminal Durham restaurant Magnolia Grill. She was also the mother of Gabe Barker, chef-owner of Carrboro’s Pizzeria Mercato, where she was also the founding pastry chef.
Although Barker died more than eight months ago, just sixty-one, of cancer, the loss is still fresh. Two interviewees for this article had to pause to collect themselves through tears; another requested an email exchange because it was less emotional.
Among them was Caitlin McCormick, a Barker protégé who is now the pastry chef at FIG, Charleston’s much-decorated bastion of gastronomy. She’ll be in town for TerraVita Food & Drink Festival’s Karen Barker Tribute dinner next Friday night, October 18, where she’ll serve her version of Barker’s signature Blackout Cake. It was a favorite of Barker’s during her childhood in Brooklyn that, as Ben Barker remembers, “Karen worked really hard to recreate.”
Oddly, when she first put the chocoholic’s dream dessert on the menu, around 2005, it “wasn’t selling at her expectation level,” he says. Instead of changing it or taking it off the menu, as many might have done, they renamed it “Chocolate Chocolate Chocolate Blackout Cake.”
It never undersold again.
The birth of the Blackout Cake was a perfect example of the Barkers’ working methods: roots, passion, and precision in the kitchen; business savvy, simplicity, confidence, and whimsy in the dining room.
The voices assembled here—family, disciples, trusted employees, and carriers of her legacy (all of whom will be at Barker’s tribute dinner)—tell her story.
CAITLIN MCCORMICK: The scope of her repertoire was so vast. And she always knew the desserts’ historical background and cultural significance.
BEN BARKER: She had insatiable curiosity, an extremely analytical mind, and she devoted an extraordinary amount of time and effort to research. She was a relentless seeker of knowledge. And you can’t dismiss intuitive mastery. She developed an ability to taste a dish in your mind that all great chefs possess.
PHOEBE LAWLESS (Pastry assistant and pastry chef, 1999–2005; chef-owner of Scratch Bakery): She changed the way people thought about a cookie. My experience before Karen was: purple scoop, six-pan of oatmeal-raisin, pop it in the freezer till later, and that was baking. At Magnolia we had thirty different cookies, and each had different flavors, processes, textures, purposes on the plate. She didn’t wing anything.
CM: She was the only person I knew who made caramel without putting water in the pan. You [would] stand there for thirty minutes with a wooden spoon and love on it. It takes a lot of patience, a lot of discipline. You really get to know sugar.
TAMMY CARWANE (Office manager and server, 1995-2012; now general manager of The Cookery): Whatever she was doing, she poured all of herself into it. You could tell from the restaurant’s floral arrangements, which she made sure communicated exactly what she wanted. She chose the art on the walls, too. And she was an amazing businesswoman. She did not let any detail go by, and she had the full arc of everything going on. If I become remotely close to the businesswoman she was, I’ll count myself a success.
BB: Karen was fundamentally the reason we succeeded as a business: her unrelenting drive, her push to make us strive to be better. She constantly pushed me to be a better example to our co-workers and our children. We called her “The Noodge.”
GABE BARKER: Mom was the all-seeing eye both at Mercato and undoubtedly the Grill.
GLENN LOZUKE (Sous chef and chef de cuisine, 1995-2008; now executive chef at Weaver Street Market): When Gabe was young, they had a crib set up in the restaurant. They made it work and for it to work, it’s got to mean everything to you. I was gonna be a restaurateur, and I realized I could not give on the same level that they did.
KELLI COTTER (Server 2000-2007; now co-owner of Dashi and Toast with husband and chef Billy Cotter): She had a great way of balancing her work and her life. She was able to have a kid. I don’t know how people do that. And she had to be under a lot of pressure, but she was always so nice to us, to everybody.
GB: She was so loving and her smile was incredibly welcoming, but that never stopped her from telling someone the right way to do something. It would be posed in a nice way: “Shouldn’t you wipe the top of that honey bottle before you put it back?” We all knew that meant: “Wipe the fucking honey bottle before you put it back.”
TC: She didn’t take any flak. You wanted to do your best.
PL: My favorite of her desserts was her lemon pudding cake. [n.b. Two interviewees named this their favorite; a third had it as runner-up.] Tricky as shit to get it to work. You had to have all your ingredients at the same temp, so you took them out of the refrigerator in the morning, and depending on the time of the year you put your dairy in a certain place in the kitchen. You had to incorporate the ingredients in a very specific order. One of the last steps was usually the culprit for trashing the whole batch, and that was folding in the egg whites. If we had a new baker, I’d find Karen downstairs: “Hey, we’re almost at the egg whites fold; would you come up and show? And she could do it perfectly every time. You understood through watching her. Show not tell.
GL: Karen wasn’t there at night, so she had to be a great teacher to communicate her vision to a person working desserts out of one oven in the back. She engaged with her staff, and it showed. Look at the kind of fruit she bore.
PL: She was my first, eager investor in Scratch. It was a huge boost to my confidence, and without it I’m not sure I would have pursued it in the same way. She changed the course of my life.
CM: She was so generous. It can be hard to let go of your recipes, but Karen wanted to share her knowledge.
GB: At Mercato I watched her work tirelessly to train a guy who spoke no English. At times I would find her frustrated, but always removed from the kitchen where no one could see how she felt. She understood how important attitude and morale was.
BB: She could also party pretty hard. She was famous in our family for her fortieth birthday party quote, “I love to drink!” Loved white Burgundy. Smoked pot all her life. An amazing Scrabble player, too, undefeated for thirty-five years until our granddaughter and I beat her for the first time. That was the initial indicator of her hidden brain tumors.
GB: What surprised me was her drive to be creative, even after a couple years of being happily retired: new menu ideas, testing cakes or other desserts our pastry guy could execute correctly. She would make ricotta gnocchi with me, explaining the subtle nuances of not using too much flour or they would get “heavy.” She picked strawberries for Mercato even though she was going through cancer treatments, showing an incredible amount of strength and resilience through what must’ve been an incredibly scary time.
BB: She held on for Gabe’s marriage. We knew she was struggling but didn’t realize how close to the end she was. She died a month to the day after he got married.
PL: Magnolia Grill will be remembered, but her personality transcended that. She’s gonna enter the canon.
CM: Her work won’t be lost. We’ll keep baking her stuff, forever.
food@indyweek.com
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