Come to Scampi for the chef’s jokes. Stay for the obscure pastas, Filipino-themed tiramisu and luscious burger

Liz Grothe paced the dining room at Scampi between courses in her green apron, talking fast to an audience of hungry guests as she narrated the evening’s Amalfi-themed menu. The backstory for each course was also garnished with an inevitable side of self-deprecating humor, making her sound like the nervous protagonist on a mash-up of Top Chef and Hacks.

The joke about sprinkling parsley over the gnocchi baked in red sauce so she could “feel more like a chef”? That got big laughs from the two dozen diners who’d signed up for this multicourse menu.

“You’re a great crowd, but we’re here for the food, not the funniness,” said Grothe, 31, also known to her Instagram fans as “Ol’ Liz,” “She/Rimp,” and “Boss Hog.”

On this particular January evening over a year ago, however, just about a month after opening Scampi in Queen Village, the jokes landed more solidly than the food, which was not ideal for a meal that cost $105 before tip and tax. The citrus and fennel salad was too basic. The fritto misto was skimpy on seafood (with just squid and, ironically, no scampi), leaning too hard on potato croquettes for filler. One intriguing pasta would have been excellent if the few thick ribbons of scialatielli weren’t buried beneath a pile of clams and mussels. The minimalist spaghetti al Limone was a total disaster, the house-extruded pasta threads broken into a pile of mashed-up bits.

An intimate restaurant that genuinely reflects the full and complicated history of a dynamic personality like Grothe is the kind of singular DIY dining experience Philly’s BYOB scene nurtures and embraces."

“My greatest shame,” Grothe conceded recently, talking about technical issues that made her pause the practice of extruding her own noodles for shapes commonly found dried. (She still rolls many of the other pastas in-house.) She also acknowledged the many other challenges in those early months of transitioning from the buzzy pop-up success of her hit Couch Cafe, a supper club served in her apartment, to an official brick-and-mortar space with 26 seats and a business partner in Joe Ling, a friend who owns a CrossFit gym.

I left that first dinner unconvinced Scampi would survive. But one year later, Ol’ Liz has turned it around and made me a believer. She’s transformed the narrow, votive-lit BYOB, formerly Neighborhood Ramen, into a homey pink and green shrine to obscure pastas, family photos, potted plants, and shrimp-themed art. The friendly service staff is locked-in to the details of menus that cycle through different regions of Italy each month. Most importantly, Grothe, who’s as witty as ever in her role as kitchen MC (“Enough bad things have happened to me that it makes me really funny”), has also begun to level up as a chef and restaurateur.

She’s only been cooking professionally for five years after leaving her previous career as a food-safety specialist for Tyson Foods, starting as a dishwasher at River Twice before becoming a line cook at Oloroso, followed by an immersion into pasta at Fiorella that inspired her to travel to Italy before going solo.

Since my first meal at Scampi, she’s lowered the menu price by $20, something more reasonable for its more focused five courses. (With tip and tax the total is $105.) She’s also begun to hone her vision for what she wants Scampi to be, which, in the free-spirited vein of her pop-up roots, is many things at once.

At its core, Scampi is an “Italian history restaurant” with tasting menus three nights a week exploring some of the lesser known corners of Italian regional pastas. From folded sorpresini pasta buttons glazed in robiola fondue and aged balsamic for her nod to Emilia-Romagna to the ancient Etruscan crêpes known as testaroli for her ode to Liguria, Grothe gravitates toward specialties rarely showcased elsewhere in the Philadelphia region. But then there have been some intriguing fusion splashes, like a recent pop-up collaboration that melded Italian cuisine with Filipino flavors — rigatoni with lamb neck kaldareta stew, or grilled head-on prawns in butter spiked with patis, a fish sauce from the Philippines — that was a thrillingly tasty tribute to her heritage as the daughter of Filipino immigrants.

If you happen by on Wednesdays, meanwhile, when dishes are sold a la carte, you can also dive into the most irresistible new burger in town, an Oklahoma-style double stack of juicy smash patties laced with a fistful of onions and oozy cheese that conjures her youth as a “beef-fed girl” from Enid, Okla.

Any one of these could be a concept on its own. But an intimate restaurant that genuinely reflects the full and complicated history of a dynamic personality like Grothe is the kind of singular DIY dining experience Philly’s BYOB scene nurtures and embraces.

There are, to be sure, more technically refined pasta kitchens in Philadelphia, even if Grothe is one of just a few local chefs proficient at palm-rolling the pointy corkscrew quills known as trofie whose chewy twists are the ultimate pesto pasta. But Grothe has managed to maintain enough noodle nerd appeal in tandem with a “what’s next?” unpredictability to keep the menus surprising, which has cultivated Scampi regulars. In an exceptionally competitive Italian scene, that alone has carved out a worthy niche.

She could have just as easily called the place Gnudi. This easy-but-satisfying ricotta dumpling with no pasta skin is the most repeated item I encountered at Scampi, but also an appealing vehicle to express seasonality. One night they were glazed with brown butter and topped with a sublimely earthy mop of black trumpet mushrooms. Another visit they were vivid green with a puree of stinging nettles then dramatically set beneath a sheer translucent sheet of cured lardo fat. On another menu, those airy gnudi anchored a rustic soup topped with shreds of tender rabbit.

Grothe’s love of green egg pasta paid dividends with an excellent “Liz-agne” done in the traditional Bolognese style from Emilia-Romagna, its well-built stack layered with creamy besciamella and a nutmeg-scented meat ragù of minced mortadella, prosciutto, ground pork. and beef stock enriched with marrow. It was so good we even bought one frozen to cook at home, its scrolled edges curling up nice and crispy in the oven.

She also took the casserole route for her best version of the testaroli, layering earthy buckwheat crepes with tender braised lamb neck, peas, and besciamella, then topping the whole thing with a refreshing salad of minted dill pickles, whose fresh crunch and cold tart juices balanced the dish’s rustic richness.

There were some memorable flavors beyond the pastas, including a “Caesar toast” of fluffy house focaccia glazed in a dressing spiked with colatura di alici, an anchovy-based fish sauce from the Amalfi Coast. Her pink-on-pink riff of roasted beets and radicchio in pepita dressing made for a palate-cleansing salad that was both sweet and bitter. Grothe’s balsamic vinegar twist on the Chinese chili crisp she used to spark a duck ragù with strozzapreti was an original surprise.

Grothe is at her most personal, playful — and least Italian — when it comes to dessert. There was the deep purple ube version of a red velvet cake with sprinkles I still dream of (a festive wink to her mom’s birthday), as well as a St. Patrick’s Day tribute in the form of a coconut cheesecake kissed with cinnamon to evoke an Irish Potato. She doubled down on the pucker factor with a “too tart pie” by layering rhubarb jam over a Graham cracker-crusted key lime custard, a counterintuitive move that worked.

Her signature dessert, however, is a perfect metaphor for Scampi’s multicultural spin. It’s a play on the iconic Filipino Goldilocks Bakeshop’s mocha chiffon cake (“an unsweet dry cake that was the horror of my childhood”) reimagined as a lusciously creamy and tall tiramisu with layers of whipped mascarpone anglaise stacked between thin bands of espresso-soaked cake whimsically topped with cocoa-dusted Frosted Flakes.

Such freewheeling successes more than made up for the handful of menu misfires, like an underbaked and chewy focaccia di Recco, which also lacked enough stretchy cheese between what should have been crispy layers of flatbread. A rigatoni with miso-buttered clams was achingly oversalted. Those few errors are easily corrected with more careful execution. But Grothe should also figure out how to conquer the technical issues (properly drying noodles in a humid walk-in) that detoured her early on from using a pasta extruder, a valuable tool that can unlock more creativity and help Scampi step up to its next level.

Over a year in, more secure in her culinary identity and turning a profit, Grothe is in a healthy space to take some modest risks. Her edgy dining room speeches still make diners laugh. But they’ll remember Scampi now more for her food than her jokes.

617 S. Third St., Philadelphia, Pa. 19147; scampiphilly.com

Tasting menu for reservations only served Thursday, at 7 p.m., Friday and Saturday, at 5:30 and 8 p.m. A la carte menu and Oklahoma burger for walk-ins, Wednesday, 5:30-9 p.m.

Five-course tasting menu, $105, including tip, tax, and service fee.

Front door is not wheelchair accessible, although diners with portable ramps can enter from the side with advance notice. Bathroom is wheelchair accessible.

Not recommended for gluten-free diners.

BYOB. Bring something Italian, generally a lighter-weight wine due to focus on seafood and vegetables, although every menu is different.

Menu Highlights (changes frequently): Gnudi; sorpresini with truffle robiola; Oklahoma burger (Wed. night); cacio e pepe; lasagna Bolognese; strozzapreti with duck and balsamic chili crunch; trofie al pesto; testaroli with lamb, peas, and pickles; tiramisu; ube velvet cake; too tart pie.