Backgrounder

A Few People Behind Philadelphia’s Thriving BYOB Restaurant Scene

Chef: Alison Barshak
Hometown: Lafayette Hill, Pennsylvania
Restaurant: Alison at Blue Bell
In the early 90s, when Philadelphia started garnering national recognition for its new crop of restaurants, Alison Barshak was here. The red-haired chef earned a national reputation as the debut chef at Striped Bass the year it was awarded Esquire’s coveted title “the best new restaurant in the country.” Since then she has cooked at the James Beard House, was featured in PBS’ “Rising Star Chef” series and has been covered in national publications, including The New York Times, Bon Appétit and Gourmet. After striking out on her own with the ill-fated Venus and the Cowboy, the self-taught Barshak left Philadelphia to work in New York. But not for long. In 2003, she opened Alison at Blue Bell, a suburban BYOB with a menu of contemporary American cuisine with Mediterranean, Southwestern and Asian influences. Barshak interacts with customers, from the open kitchen and by walking around the cozy 65-seat restaurant and 20-seat patio, making it a personal experience for the chef and her diners.

Gilmore's 

Photo by R. Kennedy for GPTMC

Chef: Francis Trzeciak
Hometown: Aix-en-Provence, France
Restaurant: The Birchrunville Store Café
Francis Trzeciak, chef-owner of The Birchrunville Store Café in Chester County, loves nothing more than sticking his hands in the dirt and planting fresh herbs. A native of France, Trzeciak grew up breathing air heavy with the scent of lavender and rosemary. When his family moved to Umbria (his mother is Italian), the earthy smell of sage was added to the mix. Trzeciak, who came to the U.S. in 1987, worked at the Monte Carlo Living Room and Taquet before opening Quissett in Haverford and later Tartufo in Bala Cynwyd. He learned along the way, with age and experience, what kind of restaurant he really wanted to have: a small place in the country, open only for dinner, four days a week. And that’s exactly the promise fulfilled by The Birchrunville Store Café, which he opened in 1999. Known for its seasonally driven cuisine, Birchrunville’s menu changes every day. And between late spring and early fall, the herbs in a dish like roasted rack of lamb with rosemary sauce and fresh herbs risotto have been tended by his own hands.

Chef: John Mims
Hometown: New Orleans, Louisiana
Restaurant: Carmine’s Creole Café
John Mims gained his passion for New Orleans-style food from his grandmother. She owned Rita’s, a Creole restaurant in the Garden District, and Mims was helping her make gumbo by the time he was five. The Louisiana-born Mims grew up in the business, working as a dishwasher, busboy, waiter and manager. He ran three New Orleans restaurants before moving to Philadelphia in 1992. Mims worked locally at Restaurant Taquet in Wayne and Kansas City Prime in  Manayunk before opening up his own little neighborhood spot, Carmine’s Creole Café, in 1997. Recently relocated to Narberth on the Main Line, Carmine’s delivers traditional and updated N’awlins specialties like crawfish spring rolls, duck gumbo, Cajun seafood pasta and blackened and maple glazed duck. For dessert, try the sticky bun bread pudding, a specialty now as at home on the Main Line as it is in the Big Easy.

Chef: David Ansill
Hometown: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Restaurant: Pif
David Ansill knew he was onto something at Pif when the “wine people” started showing up. Attracted by the authentic French fare at this postage stamp-sized bistro housed in a former noodle shop in South Philly, lovers of the grape, from amateur collectors to members of respected gastronomic organizations show up with an average of a dozen bottles for parties of six. Although not a wine guy himself, Ansill loves that his customers have learned to trust his food, and know that no matter what wine they bring, he’ll have something on his menu with which it will pair beautifully. Ansill, a graduate of The Restaurant School, cooked around town for close to two decades before opening Pif in July 2001, and a second restaurant, in 2006, Ansill, which has a liquor license. Always a foodie—he cooked Thanksgiving dinner for 50 people when he was in high school—Ansill is committed to preparing good, simple food, within the borders of France at Pif, and at Ansill, adding small plates of Portuguese-, Spanish- and Italian-influenced cuisine into the mix.

Chef: Ian Moroney
Hometown: Syracuse, New York
Restaurant: Pumpkin
Ian Moroney quotes New York chef Dan Barber when asked about how to satisfy his customers. “I want to under promise and over deliver,” says the 33-year-old Syracuse native. It’s a philosophy that serves him well at Pumpkin, the inviting 28-seat BYOB he owns with his partner Hillary Bor. A decade ago, Moroney was living in Syracuse and working as a graphic designer. But when opportunity knocked for him to work at the family-owned Little Fish restaurant in Bella Vista, Moroney decided he’d give cooking a shot. The 33-year-old, self-taught chef did every imaginable job at Little Fish before opening Pumpkin in 2004. His produce-driven menu changes frequently, celebrating the best of the season, from fava beans to tomatoes to wild mushrooms, all locally grown. A tasting menu on Wednesday nights offers five courses for $30, highlighting dishes like seared scallops over lentils with a beet vinaigrette and braised branzino with fennel, preserved lemons and olive tapenade.

Chef: Sean Weinberg
Hometown: Huntingdon Valley, Pennsylvania
Restaurant: Restaurant Alba
As a kid growing up in his family’s restaurant business, the Rose Tattoo in Philadelphia’s Fairmount neighborhood, 33-year-old Sean Weinberg always dreamed of having his own place. The Rose was Weinberg’s jumping off point, the place he learned the business, from bussing tables to working on the line. After graduating from the Culinary Institute of America, Weinberg spent two years traveling through Italy, cooking along the way. He discovered the slow food movement, deepened his respect for regional ingredients, learned Italian and fell in love with the Piemonte region of Italy, where the town of Alba is located. Weinberg and his wife, Kelly, channeled their love of rustic Italian cuisine into the opening of the stylish Restaurant Alba in the Western Main Line town of Malvern. Weinberg’s menu emphasizes seasonal produce, sourced predominantly from Chester and Berks County farms. Dishes like the daily antipasto, mesquite-grilled pork chops with peach barbecue sauce and duck two ways with Kennett Square mushrooms attest to Weinberg’s culinary vision.

Chef: Daovy Phanthavong
Hometown: Laos
Restaurant: Vientiane Café
Although she wasn’t in the restaurant business in her native country of Laos, chef Daovy Phanthavong always loved to cook. At the urging of her family, Phanthavong opened Vientiane Café in 2002, a sweet little storefront in the eclectic University City neighborhood. A popular spot for students, vegetarians, lovers of exotic cuisine and anybody on a budget, Vientiane Café offers home-cooked fare, with an emphasis on ingredients like chilies, green papaya, sticky rice, cucumbers, fish sauce, lime juice, garlic, seafood and chicken. Phanthavong’s talent for cooking coconut-based curries, spring rolls and lemon grass chicken must run in the family. Daughter Manni is finishing up a culinary program at The Restaurant School and can usually be seen helping her mother in the kitchen.

Chef: Sal DiPalma
Hometown: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Restaurant: Trattoria Lucca
Sal DiPalma has been in the restaurant business close to 20 years, and he’s only 35. The Johnson and Wales graduate worked with Gary Danko at the Ritz Carlton San Francisco and did stints at Rittenhouse Row’s Brasserie Perrier and Roscoe’s Kodiak Café in Manayunk before opening his first restaurant, DiPalma, in Old City, Philadelphia. After deciding the space was better suited to a nightclub, which he ran for seven years, DiPalma opened Trattoria Lucca in 2003. The son of Italian immigrants who came to South Philly from Tuscany, DiPalma pays homage to his roots at Trattoria Lucca, named for the town where his grandmother came from, by using locally sourced and regional ingredients to craft a menu of rustic Italian specialties. Dishes like homemade fettuccini topped with shrimp, arugula, cherry tomatoes and radicchio in a garlic and olive oil sauce and pistachio-crusted pork tenderloin with a warm mushroom tart and taleggio cheese reduction taste like the Old Country, only better.

The Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corporation (GPTMC) makes Philadelphia and The Countryside™ a premier destination through marketing and image building that increases business and promotes the region’s vitality. For more information about travel to Philadelphia, visit http://www.gophila.com/ or call the Independence Visitor Center, located in Independence National Historical Park, at (800) 537-7676.

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CONTACT:

Caroline Bean, GPTMC
(215) 599-7433, caroline@gptmc.com

Carrie Nork, Cashman & Associates
(215) 627-1060, carrie@cashmanandassociates.com

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