Philly food from the underground | Let’s Eat

This week, we’re spotlighting local entrepreneurs who are rising during the pandemic to serve all kinds of communities with nurturing meals and creative foodstuff. And we also have word of a new line of work for one of the Jersey Shore’s most honored restaurateurs.

Read to the bottom for restaurant news, including first word on a BYOB opening Aug. 12, an update on roof decks, and word on new outdoor restaurants.

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– Michael Klein

Tamales, a staple of Latin America, are the perfect quarantine food, and Philly’s scene is thriving. The variation known as hot tamales, meanwhile, are a Black food tradition in Mississippi. Which brings us to chef Nia Minard, a transplant from Yazoo City. Homesick for comfort food, she got rolling. Reporter Juliana Feliciano Reyes drops by Minard’s food truck in South Philadelphia, where she also sells fried okra and hoppin’ John empanadas.

Vendors, many of them women and people of color, have cultivated food businesses without a brick-and-mortar restaurant. Reporters Cassie Owens and Jesenia De Moya Correa visit three: a woman making Instagrammable sushi, two enterprising food truckers, and a couple specializing in seafood platters to go.

If you’re on the hunt for a jar of XO sauce — the savory-salty-spicy condiment that originated in Hong Kong in the 1980s — you might visit Chinatown, Washington Avenue, or maybe the H Mart stores in Elkins Park and Upper Darby. But for a local version, reporter Jenn Ladd sends you to an auto-tag store in Southwest Philly, where Jacob Trinh, a Johnson & Wales-trained chef and former Vernick Fish line cook, is selling his own.

A year ago, math teacher Zach Posnan was rueing the death of his sourdough starter. Then he applied a different formula — patience — and everything started to rise. Now he’s gained a local following.

James Beard Award semifinalist Cookie Till, the Cookie behind Margate’s landmark Steve & Cookie’s restaurant and Ventnor’s No. 7811 bakery, has a pet project: Reed’s Organic Farm and Animal Sanctuary in Egg Harbor Township, which critic Craig LaBan explains has become a vibrant hive of rebirth as a community center built around the power of food and agriculture.

The northeast corner of Third and Catharine Streets in Queen Village has new life, nine months after the pioneering Dmitri’s packed it in after three decades. Kevin Addis, chef-owner of Entree BYOB on South Street near 16th, opens Mari BYO on Aug. 12. Sicilian-inspired, lots of seafood, entrees in the $20s (with a $40 three-course option), open from 5 p.m. Wednesday to Sunday. Addis maintained the open kitchen and similarly cozy environs — which you’ll see when indoor dining is permitted. For now, he has a few two-tops and four-tops outside, reservable on OpenTable. After seven years with Entree, the Ardmore native said he was ready to add a second restaurant. “Everybody’s been telling me, ‘Why don’t you open a bigger place?’ ” Addis said. “But I want to go smaller. Thirty seats is perfect.”

Here’s a look ahead: Chef Yehuda Sichel worked for Mike Solomonov and Steve Cook on and off for a decade, first at Zahav and then as opening chef at Abe Fisher. On the eve of the pandemic, he decided to strike out on his own. He’s now about a month from opening Huda, a sandwich shop, nearby.

I found a couple more restaurant roof decks to supplement last week’s roundup. There’s the reservation-only roof scene at the Great American Pub in Conshohocken, and effective this week, a reopening of Stratus Lounge atop the Hotel Monaco on Independence Hall.

The Streets Department will close some city streets this weekend to allow dining tables to be set up. Part of the 1900 block of East Passyunk Avenue (Broad to Juniper Streets) will be closed for Pistola’s Del Sur from noon to 10 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. In Midtown Village, expect shutdowns of 13th Street between Walnut and Sansom Streets (home of Charlie was a sinner), and Juniper Street between Chestnut and Sansom Streets (home of Bru and Tradesman’s). I hear that 18th Street in Rittenhouse is being considered for closure next weekend.