James Beard Best Chef Award nominee, Cassie Piuma, chef and owner of Sarma.

By Isabel Sami

Cassie Piuma, chef and owner of Somerville restaurant and bar Sarma, was recently nominated for the James Beard Award for Best Chef in the Northeast for the sixth year in a row. A native of Duxbury, Massachusetts, Piuma has been cooking for over 20 years and has worked in the kitchens of Oleana, Sel de la Terre, and The Butcher Shop in Boston before opening Sarma in 2013.

Receiving the nomination for the James Beard Award again is a vote of confidence for Piuma. “It’s a crazy huge honor and vote of confidence, not only from the foundation but from our industry peers,” Piuma says, adding that it’s a sign that as a chef, she’s on the right path. Since 2015 Piuma has been nominated for the award, qualifying as a semi-finalist in 2016.

Piuma opened Sarma in 2013, serving Middle Eastern and Mediterranean inspired dishes. Influenced by her upbringing in a Greek household where food was a priority, Piuma crafts recipes that use ingredients and flavors that she grew up with, but also says she finds inspiration everywhere: cookbooks, childhood memories, travel, and walking outside her front door.

Piuma uses classic Turkish, Lebanese, and Greek staples such as lamb, pistachios, feta, sumac, and eggplant in her dishes at Sarma while also adding her own modern fusions to her cooking. Menu options include shrimp saganaki, black sea cornbread, jalapeño whipped feta, and tahini chocolate chip cookies, shaped by the traditional and modern. One Yelp review calls the menu “playful and full of intrigue.”

When choosing a location for her restaurant, Piuma picked Somerville because she wanted to open Sarma in a diverse community, describing Somerville as “a bustling, real-deal neighborhood.” In the last seven years, her restaurant has become a neighborhood favorite, scoring four-and-a-half stars on Yelp and making it into Boston Magazine’s Best of Boston 2019 list. The name “Sarma” refers to a bite of food that is wrapped or rolled, but Piuma says the broader definition is an embrace. “We want to welcome our guests with open arms,” she says, proving why Boston and Somerville residents return to Sarma again and again.

Her advice for young chefs is to find a mentor and stick to them like glue. Piuma found her own mentor in Ana Sortun of Oleana, a James Beard Award-winning chef who is also co-owner of Sarma, and they worked together in Sortun’s restaurant for 11 years before opening Sarma.

In her time as a chef, Piuma has learned “that like most things in life, you get out what you put in,” she says. “It’s a labor of love.”

Sarma is currently open for take-out Wednesday through Sunday from 4:00 to 8:00 p.m., and they begin taking orders at noon. Find their menu here or call at (617) 764-4464.