The Lucky Well Philly is reopening as four restaurants in one

Timing has not been in Chad Rosenthal’s favor. The pandemic permanently shuttered the Warrington location of his Ambler barbecue restaurant the Lucky Well, which had opened less than a year before. Meanwhile, a Philadelphia location — three years in the making at 990 Spring Garden St. — opened in July 2020, during the shutdown. It has struggled, he acknowledged.

Rosenthal believes that he knows a way to pivot — one that also will also help other entrepreneurs. He has converted the Spring Garden location into an incubator, bringing in three chefs with nascent concepts: Marcos Espinoza (serving Navajo fry bread as Shiprock), Rob Miskell (with pastas, as Sauce Boy), and Jacob Trinh (launching as Nuớng Vietnamese Wood Fire Grill). Chef Scott Sumsky, who has worked with Rosenthal for several years, is the incubator’s fourth chef, representing the Lucky Well.

The opening was Aug. 19. The Lucky Well’s cocktail bar will serve the restaurant, which will have a common ordering counter and seating.

The four chefs have signed on for six months. A new group, for which Rosenthal is seeking applicants by email, will start in early 2024. Rosenthal said he particularly wants to sign a female chef.

Given their varied kitchen requirements, the four should be able to work collaboratively but independently, said Espinoza, a local food blogger known as Fidel Gastro. “I’m frying my bread from a fryer, and Jacob is going to be using the wood-fired grill, and Rob’s doing the pasta from another station,” Espinoza said. “We’ve met a few times now and what’s just readily apparent is that there are no egos. Chad is so invested in this in terms of wanting us to succeed.”

Rosenthal said it will “forge a brand new community for culinary entrepreneurs to establish their businesses, build connections, and begin pursuing their entrepreneurial dreams.” He said he hoped to grow the idea to other cities, starting with San Antonio, Texas.

Rosenthal has launched a crowdfunding campaign through NuMarket, which rewards contributors with 120% back that they can later use to support the business after the campaign.

Here is the lineup:

Shiprock, named after a town in New Mexico that is part of Navajo Nation, specializes in fry bread, a staple among Native Americans in the Southwest. In 1989, Marcos Espinoza moved with his family from New Mexico to Salt Lake City, where they opened Navajo Hogan, a restaurant focused on fry bread.

“There’s nothing like this in Philadelphia,” said Espinoza, 44, who is taking this on amid his two day jobs: engineer in the construction industry and owner of Side Project Jerky, a maker of beef jerky.

The 8-inch fried dough, topped with chili beans, ground beef, cheese, lettuce, and tomatoes in the traditional version, is both a filling dinner item and a late-night snack, Espinoza said. There is a vegetarian version, a carne adovada (with pork) version, and a sweet taco for dessert. He said he would like to ask his chef friends to create what he calls “a guest fry bread.”

“They can top it with whatever,” he said. “It’s a nice little blank canvas there.”

Rob Miskell found a way to de-stress after his days teaching middle-school math and science: making Bolognese. “I was trying to figure out how to do it right,” he said. “Eventually it started to work.” Thinking he could make a career change to food, he became cook at the after-school program at the Philadelphia School (”kind of teaching, kind of cooking”).

His next steps were varied: a butcher’s job at Zahav, work at various restaurants, including Liberty Kitchen, followed by a return to Zahav.

When he got serious about going out on his own, he started Sauce Boy as a pop-up at places such as Herman’s Coffee in South Philadelphia. He later established a residency at Mural City Cellars’ location in Kensington.

His incubator menu includes grilled peach antipasto, eggplant parm, meatballs, orecchiette pesto, and rigatoni Genovese.

Miskell, 32, who hopes to find a location for Sauce Boy, is concurrently working on a second concept: a food trailer selling charcoal-grilled skewers.

The name of Jacob Trinh’s business is Vietnamese for “grilled” (say it “noong,” with a rise on the second “o”).

Trinh, who is also executive chef at Càphê Roasters, the Vietnamese coffee roastery in Kensington, is a Johnson & Wales-trained chef and former Vernick Fish line cook with an entrepreneurial eye. Three summers ago, while working at his family’s auto-tag business in Southwest Philadelphia, he started selling XO sauce under the name Trinh Eats.

Trinh, 26, who has also been doing pop-ups at night, saw the Lucky Well’s wood-fire grill and decided that he’d base his concept around it. “They’re teaching me how to man the grill and understand the cooking process of keeping that live wood fire going,” he said.

The main dishes will be cơm tấm (broken rice) platters served with jasmine rice, pickles, tomato, and cucumber. There’s a choice of four proteins: chicken, pork shoulder, bone marrow, and head-on shrimp served with a green seafood sauce.

Trinh is particularly proud of the bone marrow. “I basically take our fish sauce marinade, turn it into a glaze, glaze the sucker up, and then put it right into the wood fire,” he said. “I let it crisp up and caramelize that top. All that’s inside is cooked to perfection. I finish with a little flaky salt.” He wants people to scoop it out into their bowl of rice or just eat it straight from the bone.

He also has a green papaya salad with beef jerky, paired with rice sesame crackers.

Trinh said he will juggle Càphê along with Nuớng. “I have it set in a way where I’m there in the beginning of the day, make sure things are running smoothly, and then head to Spring Garden,” he said. He is training his crew at Càphê.

His goal is his own restaurant — but first he needs to see if Nuớng will work and can be replicated. “This is kind of the next platform to kind of get my name out there,” he said.

Scott Sumsky, the veteran here, considers the incubator to be “an awesome idea for young chefs to pretty much show what they got and just get a name for themselves.”

Sumsky, 39, who has worked in kitchens for 21 years (Derek’s, Amada, El Vez, Parx, La Calaca Feliz, and Cantina Feliz), will execute the Lucky Well’s menu — including St. Louis-style ribs, the half-chickens dunked in Alabama white sauce, sesame-ginger pork belly burnt ends, burger, chicken sandwich — plus his own cheddar jalapeño sausage.

“It’ll be a little bit of a challenge to see all these different things [coming] off of one line because we were never designed for that,” Sumsky said. “But it’ll be fun and exciting for sure.”

Hours will be 4 to 9 p.m. Wednesday, Thursday, and Sunday, 4 to 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday.