🔥🐔 We found where the hot chicken is hottest | Let’s Eat

Hot chicken sandwiches are all the rage nowadays, and this week, I’ve tracked down some of the local shops that manage to pullet off.

Also in this edition:

— Mike Klein

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The fried chicken sandwich wars are heating up again, and this time it’s about Nashville-style hot chicken. I’ll explain how this is more than simple eggonomics at work.

Faragalli’s Bakery in South Philly, closed since portions of its century-old oven collapsed, has reopened after repairs, and Phil Faragalli told Mike Newall that it’s friends and neighbors who made it possible.

Two Philly chefs known almost exclusively by their first names — Chutatip “Nok” Suntaranon and Shola Olunloyo — will partner for a Friendsgiving dinner Nov. 27 at Kalaya in Fishtown. The dinner will double (triple?) as a cookbook-release party and Chef’s Table launch event: Nok’s first cookbook, Kalaya’s Southern Thai Kitchen, debuted this week and her debut on the Netflix series will be that night. The Nigerian-born Shola, a longtime development chef in Philly, was the inaugural chef for Dan Barber during the Blue Hill at Stone Barns Chef in Residence series in 2021. The one-night menu ($125pp, plus tax and tip, prepaid on Resy) will feature Thai flavors with tropical West African influences from Nigeria. Seatings are available for parties of four or more.

The long search for a home for Emmett — chef Evan Snyder and Julian van der Tak’s Levantine-Mediterranean restaurant — is over, after nearly a year of pop-ups. They’ve just signed at 161 W. Girard Ave. on the Kensington-Northern Liberties line, the former home of Cadence BYOB and, more recently, Primary Plant Based. Eli Silins, owner of Camuna Cellars, is onboard as a partner; as such, Emmett will have a liquor license and a 10-seat bar among its 36 seats. Target is mid-January.

Snyder, who worked at Bresca and Blue Duck Tavern, will focus on wood-fire cooking, with his menu highlighting French, Italian, North African, and Middle Eastern flavors. There will be an optional $85 tasting menu in addition to the à la carte menu. Van der Tak, who worked in the Vernick Fish-Jean Georges orbit, will manage. Snyder, van der Tak, and van der Tak’s wife, Victoria (the event coordinator and media strategist), met while working at Redcrest Kitchen in its early days. Emmett happens to be Snyder’s son, who is 1½. In the photo above, from left are Silins, Snyder, and the van der Taks.

Every so often, a gentle “gong” breaks through the quiet dining room of Beijing Duck Seafood Restaurant, the white-tablecloth Chinese restaurant that opened last month in Chinatown.

It’s chef Wang Zheng, signaling his arrival while pushing a cart bearing a roasted duck, accoutrements, cutting board, and large knife. Zheng, whose bio says he learned the art of preparing Peking duck at Quanjude in Beijing (whose Vancouver location has a Michelin star), oversees a three-day prep that involves cycles of deep chilling, and not what owner Stevie Lam calls “the easy way” of blowing air under the skin to crisp the birds.

It’s best to call beforehand to reserve your duck, which will take about a half-hour to roast in an open oven. At the table, Zheng will slice the skin into strips, which you dip into sugar for a decadent sweet-salty-fat flavor bomb. He carves the duck, sets out hoisin sauce, strips of cucumber and scallion, and a steamer basket of pancakes.

Stretch out a chun bing, smear on the sauce, lay out cukes and scallions, add a few slices of duck, and roll it all up.

The basic dinner for a friend or two is $105, and it’s $20 more for the complete experience: quart containers of duck soup, made from the carcass with tofu and greens, to take home.

There’s a full northern Chinese menu, including hot pot, and you can select fish and shellfish from a tank in the back. A liquor license is on the way.

Beijing Duck Seafood Restaurant, 911-13 Race St. Hours: 10 a.m.-10 p.m. Sunday-Thursday, and 10 a.m.-11 p.m. Friday and Saturday.

Devon Seafood Grill will end its 25-year run on 18th Street across from Rittenhouse Square over New Year’s, per a state Labor Department “WARN” notice indicating that 76 employees will be laid off. Devon opened in August 1999 across the alley from Rouge, which had opened in April 1998 to light up the Rittenhouse dining scene. Devon’s parent company, Landry’s, recently announced the Nov. 30 closing of the Chart House location on Penn’s Landing.

Martha’s finale will be Wednesday night starting at 5, with all profits from sales going to support the 21 departing staffers. The Kensington restaurant had a 10-year run.

Cockatoo’s three-year run on the southwest corner of 13th and Chancellor Streets — in a corner building with a dramatic retractable skylight — ended Sunday. Owner Ram Krishnan is steering customers to his nearby cocktail bar, Writer’s Block Rehab. Jackie Balin of AMC Delancey is leasing the building, which is only seven years old.

Want to learn latte art? Among the six fine suburban coffee shops that Hira Qureshi found is Soltane Cafe, a social enterprise that leads monthly classes.

Need a Thanksgiving pie? Hira offers seven options, including a caramelized banana cream pie in a vanilla wafer crust. Yowsa.

Matines Cafe, the chic French patisserie in Chestnut Hill, opens its Main Line offshoot (757 Lancaster Ave., Wayne) on Nov. 12.

Essen Bakery’s Kensington location has opened. Finally. The two-year construction was only part of the struggle for owner Tova du Plessis.

Mac Mart, the mac-and-cheese specialty shop, grand-opens a franchise location Saturday at 38-40 Rittenhouse Place in Ardmore, previously Mr. Korea. This location, owned by Kevin and Jackie Falcone, will have 20 seats and a more extensive menu, including chicken fingers, tater tots, fries, and mac-and-cheese-stuffed eggrolls. Hours: 11 a.m.-8 p.m. Tuesday-Sunday.

Camac Street between Locust and Spruce will be the site of a block party Sunday from noon-7 p.m. to mark the addition of 254 — the bar formerly known as Tabu, around the corner at 254 S. 12th St. — to the Tavern Group (UBar, Tavern on Camac, Otto’s Taproom). Music, food, and fundraising for the Dante M. Austin Memorial Scholarship Fund, named for Philadelphia’s first openly gay sheriff.

Cockatoo’s closing calls to mind other restaurants that have stood on that site, formally 208 S. 13th St. The original building, which housed Letto Deli till 2009, was torn down, and the current building opened in 2017 as the short-lived Maison 208. Can you remember the landmark establishment that preceded Letto?

A) Le Bec-Fin

B) Fiddler

C) Commissary

D) Dewey’s

Find out if you know the answer.

I see signs of a new restaurant opening at 1111 Walnut St., where Destination Dogs was. Know anything? — Billie P.

Within a month, it will become Chubby Chicks Cafe, a bruncherie that closed its location in Blackwood last weekend. “Usually brunch is quiet and timid,” owner Shakeira “Keira” Turner told me. “This is not that brunch. It’s very whimsical and fun. Our syrup is pink. We do karaoke. Ours is one of those places where you’re having brunch, but you’re letting loose a little bit.” Check out this breakfast dish called Rich Chick: “deep-fried lobster tail with fluffy waffles topped with powdered sugar, berries, and cream.” Here’s the menu.

Speaking of Center City brunch: The Brunchaholics location near Rittenhouse Square, at 40 S. 19th St., has closed after less than two months, as has the six-month-old location in Chester. Owner Aaron Anderson said he decided that these spots “weren’t the ideal fit for the brand’s growth.” The older Port Richmond and Cherry Hill locations are not affected.

📮 Have a question about food in the Philly area? E-mail your questions to me at mklein@inquirer.com for a chance to be featured in my newsletter.

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