Posted by Trey Popp on December 6th, 2012
Having your restaurant named in a top-ten list by a national magazine isn’t typically a cause for regret. But sometimes I’ve wondered if it might be for Mike Stollenwerk.
After Bon Appetit trumpeted his cooking at Little Fish in a December 2008 roundup of “new-style” fish houses, it seemed like the chef with the Popeye forearms was on his way to becoming the Poseidon of Philly’s pescetarian scene. The BA squib begat enthusiastic reviews from the local press (usually it works in the other direction). In 2009 he opened Fish on Lombard Street, adding about 40 seats and a liquor license to his portfolio. A year and a half later he debuted Fathom, a down-home seafood bar in (where else?) Fishtown. Soon there was chatter about two more places in the works in Brewerytown—and then the announcement that Fish was moving to a marquee address on 13th street, where it would double its capacity.
Flash forward to May of 2012. Stollenwerk had sold Little Fish, unloaded the underachieving Fathom to his partner, and there was nothing happening in Brewerytown. Then Fish itself went dark on 13th Street amidst a wave of rumors and conflicting reports.
“It wasn’t as much fun as I thought it would be,” Stollenwerk told me when I called to ask him about the dwindling of his restaurant empire. “It was more like babysitting. An ice machine’s broken here. The fridge is out there … I spent all day just driving around.”
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Related: Reviews, fish, Midtown-Village, Mike Stollenwerk, Reviewed, Revisit, Seafood, Trey Popp
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Posted by Trey Popp on November 1st, 2012
My mother used to tell me that the best way to judge a cookbook is the least judgmental. In her opinion, all it took was a single recipe worth cooking to prove its value.
Her point didn’t actually have anything to do with food. She was mainly trying to convince a haughty teenage brat that just because someone might not have much to say about political philosophy or the Fibonacci series or the gnostic Christians, that didn’t mean they weren’t worth talking to at all. (Yep, I was that guy and this actually needed to be spelled out for me. Now, of course, I am a delight.)
But still, there’s one Philadelphia restaurant that I’ve always looked at in this same way. The first time I went to Banana Leaf, it was for roti canai, and from that day forward it became the only thing I went for. Why mess with a good thing—especially one I’d been jonesing for for so long—by veering off into the rest of the menu?
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Related: Reviews, Asian, Banana-Leaf, Chinatown, Malaysian, Penang, Revisit, Trey Popp
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Posted by Trey Popp on September 5th, 2012
Remember all that nonsense a few years back about water sommeliers? How there were thousands of brands of bottled water out there, and pretty soon the world’s Michelin-steered gourmets would be perusing water menus to slake their thirst?
I know what you’re thinking: turns out the Great Recession had an upside, after all.
Anyway, I thought I’d forgotten about those H2O evangelists (and their unlikely apologists) for good—until a clear sip from a cold glass at the new Han Dynasty brought the memory gushing forth.
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Related: Reviews, Chinese, Han Chiang, Han Dynasty, Reviewed, Revisit, Sichuan, Trey Popp, University-City, West-Philadelphia
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Posted by Trey Popp on June 1st, 2012
When thirty minutes pass between a hostess depositing you at a table and a waiter turning up to take your order, the mind plays host to any number of feelings. Patience, amusement, thirst, bewilderment, irritation and disbelief were the order they came to me on a recent weeknight at Le Virtu.
On one hand, there was something perversely appropriate about the inexplicable delay. I’d been pining to return to this South Philly slice of Abruzzo ever since my first encounter with its ethereal pastas—almost five years ago. I’d recommended it to half my friends, promised myself to invite the other half, and somehow ended up being my own worst enemy, letting my review schedule lead me constantly toward newer, untried temptations. So what was another half an hour?
On the other hand, the consolations of philosophy are powerless to insert a drink into the first hand.
And yet…
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Related: Food, Food Nerd News, Reviews, Joe Cicala, Le-Virtu, Revisit, Trey Popp
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