Chef Christopher Kearse is banged up in a motorcycle accident
His motorcycle was clipped by a car on Kelly Drive. He suffered a broken foot and hand cuts.
Chef Christopher Kearse, marking the first days of his Old City bistro Forsythia, has returned to work Wednesday, Aug. 28 after suffering a broken foot and what was described as significant hand cuts in a motorcycle crash on Kelly Drive on Monday.
Kearse was headed home from a motorcycle dealer when his Triumph — a cafe racer in forsythia yellow, of course — was clipped by a car near Hunting Park Avenue, sending Kearse into a guide rail, his friend Lauren Hooks said. “He didn’t drop the bike at all,” she said. “He was able to ride it off to the side of the road.”
Runners stayed with Kearse until an ambulance arrived, said Hooks, whom Kearse called to fetch the bike. Kearse, who is right-handed, injured his right hand and right foot.
Kearse, 34, has a certain unbreakability. In 2000 while a teenager, he was a passenger in a friend’s car that was hit by a drunken driver. Kearse suffered massive damage to his face, requiring doctors to perform a jaw reconstruction as well as dozens of other surgeries.
Kearse, considered a chef’s chef and a Levittown native, worked at some of the best restaurants in America, such as Charlie Trotter’s, Tru, Alinea, and French Laundry, after his 2005 graduation from the Restaurant School. He returned to the Philadelphia area as a sous chef at Lacroix and moved on to Blackfish in Conshohocken, followed by 2½ years as chef de cuisine at Pumpkin. In 2012, he opened Will, a BYOB on East Passyunk Avenue; it closed earlier this summer as Kearse planned Forsythia, a French-influenced bistro at 233 Chestnut St.
“He handled it all like a champ,” Hooks said.