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03/06/2000 Archived Entry: "Book And The Cook in Philadelphia"

I’m exhausted. If I ever I had fantasies of running a restaurant (and I truly have not), one night at the Sansom Street Oyster House in Philadelphia would have cured me. I was there on Friday for Philly’s Book and the Cook Fair and we had 240 reservations for the dinner chef Cary Neff cooked from my book Naples At Table. I am still hoarse from talking to everyone, although my feet have somewhat recovered from standing and running around the room from 5 to 11 p.m. And I was not even the man in charge, David Mink, the Oyster House’s owner, nor was I the guy behind the stove, Cary, who, except for last-minute of grilling fish and cooking pasta, seemingly cooked all the food himself – I mean single handedly.

I have never seen an executive chef peel his own potatoes, but that is what Cary was doing when I arrived at 11 a.m. The night before and that morning, he had already prepared several gallons of fresh tomato puree for rigatoni with ricotta and fresh tomato sauce, steamed open many gallons of mussels and fried a huge tray of croutons for a soup of mussels and beans with cherry tomatoes. He had something like 40 individual casseroles of salt cod (baccala) and potatoes ready for the oven, braciole for 60 simmered in ragu, eight torte caprese (chocolate almond tortes) baked, and he had whipped and frozen dozens of glasses of semifreddo of Strega (the liqueur from Benevento). He had essentially prepared most of the whole menu before I arrived, although it took the rest of the day to complete everything. That he was still conscious at 11 p.m. was a miracle. All those kids who go to culinary school thinking that the life of a chef is glamorous should spend time in a working restaurant kitchen before they enroll. I certainly have no right to complain about being tired.

Cary’s Neapolitan food tasted great, too, although he had no experience with it before. Fortunately, I had the opportunity to eat some lunch while I was there, and I was also very impressed with Cary’s regular, traditional oyster-house food. His New England clam chowder is among the best I’ve ever had – full of clam flavor, tender bits of clam, not thickened but rich. His snapper soup, a Philadelphia tradition, was deeply flavored and delicious, too; loaded with big pieces of fish. The shrimp salad was superb (no exaggeration) – big pieces of fresh, sweet shrimp with diced celery and a good mayonnaise. The crab cake was almost entirely flaked crab. (For the dinner menu, Cary makes lump crab cakes.) Even the fried potatoes were special. They are hand-cut from fresh potatoes and fried cleanly and crisply. In general, the frying here is first rate. (Had I known this ahead of time, I would have encouraged Cary to do a Neapolitan mixed fry – fritto misto.) The Sansom Street Oyster House if famous for fried oysters, and the fried artichokes Cary made from the “Naples At Table” dinner, dipped and “gilded” in Parmigiano-flavored beaten egg, were every bit as good as the ones I made at home. That a restaurant dish tastes as good as my home-cooking is a huge compliment from me.

The Oyster House itself has been recently re-decorated and looks at once like an old-time oyster house and a contemporary restaurant. The original dark wood paneling is off-set by warm red and bronze walls. There’s a room with broad celery-stripped wallpaper. My favorite decorating touch is the collection of oyster plates displayed in a specially built wall-width case in one room, and hug directly hung on the walls in the other rooms. David Mink’s father collected these when he was the owner of Kelly’s, another Philadelphia institution.