Sam is an award-losing author, having featured as a runner-up for the West Virginia Fiction Award, World Magazine’s Children’s Book of the Year, and Audible’s Kids Audiobook of the Year.
Sam is a West Virginia native, a sometime sojourner in southern Africa and the Caribbean, and current resident of his house. Smith is the best husband Gina Smith has so far had and father to four Smithereens who are still young enough to appreciate what passes for his wit and wisdom. The ember-baked apple galette, on the other hand, was a spring orchard dream of coal-charred Winesaps and Northern Spies from Green Meadow Farms wrapped in biscuit dough with smoked mascarpone mousse.S.D. And while their opening date was continuously delayed, they took purveyor field trips to the Asian citrus greenhouses of Bhumi Growers in Florence, N.J., and the terraced fish ponds of Green-Walk Trout Hatchery in the Lehigh Valley.īut the subtler impacts of their work and these prime ingredients did not always translate especially well early on to the limitations of a takeout box, like one I opened in early March to find a random pile of sliced pork Kan Kan, whose crispy edges were softening in the steam and simply didn’t convey the wow-value of a $75 splurge. They fermented their own koji and miso stashed vegetable ash from incinerated tuber trimmings. This trio spent the first several months of 2020 doing major renovations to freshen-up the bi-level space (which included demolishing Brigantessa’s live-fire hearth to replace it with their own). So when the opportunity arose in early 2020 to take over the former Brigantessa on East Passyunk Avenue, a wood-fueled hearth was a natural choice to anchor their modern homage to the rustic art of offcut cooking, where no organ is left behind.īut the risk in launching such a daring restaurant in the midst of a pandemic can’t be overstated. The two have since honed their skills in some of the most significant live-fire kitchens in Philly - at Vernick Food & Drink for Feola at Osteria and Lo Spiedo for Calhoun. The wild snails she once harvested on vacation in California - then brought in a shoebox home to New York for dinner, to be stewed in red sauce with tripe - stuck with him as he worked his way through culinary stops in Manhattan at Mesa Grill and then Jean-Georges, where he’d meet his future business partner and co-chef, Scott Calhoun, 36. The late “Stina” has been an inspiration over the years to Feola, 39, as he plotted his someday project of an offal-themed restaurant. But it’s also key to the frozen dessert cups of dark chocolate gelato, thickened with blood instead of eggs, that are tinged with orange zest and Calabrian chile spice just like co-chef Dave Feola’s grandmother, Faustina Feola, used to do when she whipped up her Southern Italian pudding of sanguinaccio dolce. It’s destined for the ebony links of pork blood sausage that arc through the coconut richness of a Thai shrimp curry across from crunchy croutons made of jasmine rice.
A gallon of pig’s blood courses though this kitchen each week. Any time you get to wield a jackhammer to demolish a kitchen to rebuild your own dream restaurant, there’s going to be blood, sweat, and tears.Īnd there was sweat, for sure, as the chefs learned to master the heat of smoldering oak and ash logs that fuel the $30,000 new hearth at Ember & Ash, where virtually every menu item, from the octopus to the smoky egg white froth that drifts over the whiskey sour like a campfire cloud, is touched by flame.īut now that Ember & Ash is in its seventh month, the blood is flowing, too.
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