Philly’s Emily Riddell of Machine Shop is one of Food & Wine’s best new chefs

Best new chef?

Emily Riddell of Machine Shop, on the ground floor of the Bok Building in South Philadelphia, has been working in kitchens for 16 of her 36 years. She may have been named to Food & Wine’s class of 10 best new chefs for 2022 because her retail bakery — with its mix of croissants, kouign-amann, canelés, and the like — opened only on Jan. 13, 2022.

Before that, Machine Shop operated for nearly five years as a wholesale bakery in the former school building’s old machine shop on the fourth floor. Her wares were available via pop-ups or at coffee-shop clients such as Elixr, ReAnimator, and Rival Bros, and after the pandemic, she and former co-owner Katie Lynch began delivery and pickups.

In other words, Riddell had been under the radar. One day several months ago, F&W restaurant editor Khushbu Shah walked in and tried a croissant.

“There are few perfect croissants in the world, yet I found one in Philadelphia at Machine Shop,” Shah led off the accompanying article, appearing in the October issue. Shah called Riddell “a lamination savant.”

The croissant’s “cross section revealed dramatically spacious air pockets, with enough lift between the tender layers that one could almost mistake each bubble for a cozy studio apartment,” wrote Shah.

Then came the phone call, along with cautions to keep the honor a secret. “I guess I just tried to forget about it, and continued to focus on work,” Riddell said.

Riddell joins a slate of other Philadelphia-based F&W best new chefs over the years, including Susanna Foo (1989), Francesco Martorella and Bruce Lim (1990), Jack McDavid (1991), Tony Clark (1997), Guillermo Pernot (1998), Marc Vetri (1999), Dominique Filoni (2004), Jim Burke (2008), Karen Nicolas (2012), Eli Kulp (2014), and Camille Cogswell (2020). Sam Kincaid, then at Fork, was named one of F&W’s best new pastry chefs in 2014.

Riddell grew up in Olney and then Chestnut Hill and went to Central High School (“I’m Philly, through and through”), the daughter of a librarian (Richard Riddell) and a biochemist-turned-biology teacher (Kate Gallagher); her younger brother, David, works in information technology at the University of Pennsylvania.

Riddell started in the business as a server for a Main Line catering company, and after high school got her associate’s degree from the Restaurant School at Walnut Hill College. From there, she packed off to Le Cordon Bleu in Paris, where her high school French improved in a hurry. Back home, she worked at the old Brasserie Perrier and Le Bec-Fin, picking pastry “because I love the precision of it.”

She was working at Barberet Bistro & Bakery in Lancaster when she began plotting out Machine Shop and joining the artisans in the mixed-use building. She has a staff of three.

After adding ice cream over the summer, Riddell’s next goal is getting into chocolate, “now that we’re out of the summer and out of the heat into the fall and the holidays.” Her “very aspirational goal,” as she put it, would be roasted and manufacturing chocolate, “but I think that’s a far off at this time.”

She also would like to add wholesale to the mix again. “The biggest thing holding me back is that I’ve been waiting over a year for a proof retarder,” she said. “It was supposed to be a 10-week lead time and there have been so many hiccups along the way. The last piece of it is sitting in a port in New York, in a container.”

Two Philadelphia restaurants and a bagel shop were named to Bon Appetit’s list of best new restaurants in America:

Her Place: ”Amanda Shulman, a veteran of Marc Vetri’s empire, serves up whimsical, complex yet comforting set menus that feel as deeply personal as they are expertly executed, with strong Italian, French, and Jewish influences. Snagging a reservation may be a struggle, but a meal here is pure, unbridled joy.”

Irwin’s: “Chef Michael Vincent Ferrari made his name cooking nonna-perfect pasta at Res Ipsa Cafe in Center City Philadelphia. Now, at Irwin’s, the gorgeous modern Sicilian restaurant he opened on the 8th floor of the Bok Building, he has a perch befitting his lofty ambitions.”

Korshak’s Bagels: “Poet and baker Phil Korshak’s humble South Philly bagel shop draws long lines, and for good reason. Even the most basic elements of the menu are crafted with extravagant care. His bagels, fermented for 48 hours before being boiled and baked to crisp-chewy perfection, are simple and superlative.”