At his vegan Pietramala restaurant, chef Ian Graye steers clear of ‘fake flavors’

Ian Graye’s idea is simple: “I want to essentially make a restaurant that I’d enjoy working at and one that I would want to come to if I wasn’t working.”

He’s turning out Italian-inspired, vegan dishes at the cozy Pietramala, a BYOB that opened last month on Second Street above Spring Garden in Northern Liberties.

Everything is seasonal, and he and his staff pivot to what’s available from local farms like Taproot, Green Meadow, and Robin Hill.

The lettuce salad ingredients one day recently, for example, included shaved kohlrabi, purple Bordeaux radish, green tomato, fennel, mint, dill, and basil, topped with a vinaigrette made from young ginger and ginger vinegar. The heirloom polenta tasted like the color green, if you will; built on a puree of greens and made creamy with cave-aged cultured cashew cheese from Bandit Cheese, it featured wood-oven-roasted spigarello, bok choy rabe, and Swiss chard, and then was topped with baby greens for texture.

Graye uses no fake meats or processed foods. “Every year, there’s a new vegan product, a new, better, quote unquote, vegan meat,” he said. “I don’t want to eat that. I want to eat vegetables. I want it to be real food that anyone can enjoy, not just vegans.”

Graye, 37, grew up in Queens, eating “pretty much close to a vegetarian diet.” He said he has been vegan since 2009. “I view these things as a personal choice now, and I don’t judge anyone for what their personal choices are in their diet, whether they’re vegan but sometimes they try things or they want to go to their grandma’s house and have Thanksgiving,” he said. “I feel like people shouldn’t really box themselves in so much and just really live their lives as best they can.”

He doesn’t abide what he calls “militant” voices on the carnivore side. “Come on, can’t we just look at this as a personal thing and leave each other alone?” he said. “Or try and just accept other people’s choices and maybe say ‘Tonight I’m going to try this vegan restaurant. And you know what? I liked it. I liked what they were doing.’ ”

His first restaurant job was dishes at Brooklyn’s Champs Diner, a vegan destination, working his way up to chef de cuisine. Next came Pickle Shack, the Brooklyn veggie sandwich shop; there, he was under chef Neal Harden, who brought Graye with him to his next stop, Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s splashy all-vegan abcV in Manhattan. Then he landed with chef Marco Canora for two years, breaking his vegan streak by cooking Tuscan-style food at Hearth in the East Village.

“I felt my training was becoming a bit redundant,” he said. “I wanted to experience how non-vegan chefs would approach vegetarian and vegan cooking. I really learned a lot. Hearth used a lot of vegetables and I got to see interesting ways of preparing vegetables and preparing vegetables like meat, which is not something that a lot of vegan chefs think about.”

His final New York stop was Blue Hill in Upstate New York, until the pandemic left him unemployed. He decided to move to Philadelphia, where he has family. “I wanted to slow down and settle down,” he said. “The restaurant life there is very difficult. Everything is so expensive, everything is so small.”

In Philadelphia, his friend ran Foto Club, a social club in Kensington. Graye was given the food truck in the back, rent-free, to cook food for bar patrons. Graye called it Moto Foto and people started coming in. “They were very surprised about what this one guy was making out of this little truck,” he said. One early customer was Mark Mebus, who owned Blackbird and 20th Street Pizza. Mebus was looking to sell Blackbird, in Northern Liberties. Graye worked there until the deal was final.

The space, at 614 N. Second St., has housed restaurants for about two decades: LionFish, a coffee house, followed by Aden, Copper Bistro, and Koo Zee Doo before Blackbird.

He’s backed in the kitchen by sous chef Jack Barrett and pastry chef Jeremy Hrycko. General manager Shakur Armstrong oversees the day to day.

But he’s about sharing the credit. “I worked for well-known chefs, and I see them take a lot of recognition for ideas and creativity,” he said. “I guess that’s just how it works. But I wanted to really do something for myself and create the environment for my staff that I wanted to work in as a cook — which just really encourages creativity and communication and being open and just having a healthy environment. I just want to create a place where people love working, and they would have a really hard time leaving because they loved it.”

Pietramala is open Tuesday to Saturday for dinner, and there’s a $20 fee per bottle. The building is not fully wheelchair-accessible.