🍣 Philly’s only 1-hour omakase | Let’s Eat

Sushi fans! Philly now has a fast, inexpensive omakase option. Also this week, Craig LaBan shares a true find in Northeast Philadelphia, and we find not only tasty crabs in Camden but some outta-sight corn dishes (it’s August, right?).

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The intimate, artful omakase experience typically takes a couple of hours and sometimes a couple hundred dollars. How about one that gets you in and out in an hour for less than a hundred bucks? It’s all the rage in New York, and now, Philly has one — and more are on the way.

Georgian cuisine is on critic Craig LaBan’s mind, especially since khachapuri, the boat-shaped cheese breads, have been sailing into Philly with more frequency recently. At the bustling Gamarjoba in the Northeast, he says he found “some of the best versions of this traditional cuisine I’ve tasted.”

Joey and Vinny Termini had to replace the century-old floor at their family’s landmark bakery. Their customers’ reaction was sweet and sentimental. Mike Newall writes that more than anything, people wanted to know if they could have a piece of the old tile. The Terminis were floored.

The ingredient of the summer is corn, and local chefs are going all in. Earl Hopkins stalked local menus and came up with a variety of dishes, including Fiore Rosso’s corn and crab corzetti (above) and Jansen’s corn panna cotta — in all its creamy, salty, sweet, and corny glory.

How did bank teller-turned-restaurateur Brittany Tolliferreo get Randy Moss to invest in her restaurant, Chick-A-Boom? First, she reached out on Instagram.

Want to buy the South Street Diner, perhaps to bring it back to life? The building, as well as six 2-bedroom apartments, three 1-bedroom apartments, and two garages, is being offered for $3.9 mill. Check the listing here.

Ashlie Brown grew up in Winslow among many cooks, picking up recipes throughout the family. When she found a dish she particularly loved, “I would ask, ‘How did you make that?’” As a teen, she cooked for her friends.

Three years ago, she had an office job with Independence Blue Cross and an infant when the pandemic hit. She couldn’t very well handle customer calls from home with him in the background, so she posted up photos of a crab platter and set herself up in a seafood-delivery business.

“The picture looked horrible,” she said. “There was no presentation at all, but the flavors were there and I just was so happy about doing it.” Brown was driving all over South Jersey for $3 delivery charges before she had customers lining up outside her townhouse. “It was horrendous in the beginning. I was getting all types of backlash from my family, but I needed them to understand if I put the product out there, it would sell. I told them, ‘I’m taking a loss right now, but a year from now, it’ll be, ‘Hey, that’s the girl who makes those crabs.’”

Fast-forward to spring 2023, and that’s pretty much what happened. Brown, 32, had socked away her earnings and found a fully equipped restaurant that never opened in downtown Camden. She named it Boogie’s Seafood & Wings — the nickname friends gave her (a character in her favorite movie, 2002′s Paid in Full).

Working with childhood friend Christy Williams, she specializes in platters — snow-crab clusters, clams, shrimp, crabs, corn — napped with a buttery, assertively seasoned sauce that only she has the recipe and the technique for.

The menu varies by day. Don’t miss the egusi and fufu she learned to make from Nigerian women she worked with.

Boogie’s Seafood & Wings, 116 N. Third St., Camden. Hours: 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Wednesday, 2-10 p.m. Thursday, 2 p.m.-midnight Friday and Saturday, noon-7 p.m. Sunday, and 2-10 p.m. Monday.

That’s Brown at left with Williams in the photo below.

Two pizzas: Heirloom tomatoes and balsamic say “summer” on this caprese pie from Vince’s Pizzeria of Fishtown, below left. Pickled goatherd peppers add punch to the Rigged Roni at Bar1010 in Northern Liberties, where pizzaiolo Kurt Saracini recently replaced Mike Fitzick, who decamped last month for Express Pizza in Ocean City.

Center City District Restaurant Week will mark its 20th anniversary from Sunday, Sept. 10 to Saturday, Sept. 23, amassing more than 90 restaurants to offer three-course, prix-fixe dinner menus, starting at $45 per person. For the first time, diners can order a $60 premium option at some. (It’s one or the other; not both.) Also, two-course lunch menus will be available for $20. The full list of restaurants is at ccdrestaurantweek.com.

Doughnuts and the Jersey Shore go together, and Hira Qureshi runs down nine of the best shops.

Lima beans as a sexy vegetable? Jenn Ladd writes that these farms and a USDA official wouldn’t mind if you thought of them that way.

DoorDash is being accused of skirting Philadelphia’s 15% cap on delivery commissions. Some restaurateurs say they may raise menu prices to offset higher fees.

Someone is ratting out illegal sidewalk cafes to 311 in a big way, writes Ximena Conde. Not everyone is happy about this.

Chef Diana Widjojo, formerly of Hardena, is doing a takeover of the East Passyunk BYOB Dankbaar this month with her Rice & Sambal Indonesian concept. It will include Friday and Saturday night rijsttafel service, the Sunday night pandemic-famous “Not Pizza,” and two vegan/vegetarian nights. Menus/details are here.

Levi and María-José Hernández of Ardmore’s Autana Authentic Venezuelan Food will pop up at Fishtown’s Manatawny Still Works (1321 N. Lee St.) from 5:30-9:30 p.m. Aug. 9. It’ll be walk-in and a la carte, and cocktails will be available (Autana is BYOB).

Stephen Starr recently launched a novel restaurant menu. Where is it served?

A) On American Airlines

B) On the Circle Line in Manhattan

C) On the Spirit of Philadelphia

D) On Amtrak

Find out if you know the answer.

I see that Konstantinos Pitsillides is cooking at People’s Kitchen. What’s that about? — hidvelia

The Cypriot-born chef, who founded and ran Kanella (and Kanella South) before stepping away a couple of years ago, is leading a series of Mediterranean cooking classes at the South Philadelphia nonprofit. (Ben Miller, one of its organizers, worked for Pitsillides for five years.) Each hands-on class ($125 a person) is a fundraiser. Participants eat the food they’ve learned to prepare. Seats remain for the Sept. 1 and Sept. 18 classes.

(Some Kanella news: After Pitsillides left Kanella, at 10th and Spruce, Tayfun Abuska took over as chef. Abuska has since handed over the duties to his partner Omer Yazici, who’s been there since Day One. Yazici happens to be the brother of another partner, Okan Yazici, general manager of Zahav.)

What’s with the orange sign at the former Erica’s Sports Bar at Hagert and Coral Streets in Kensington? — Anonymous

That’s going to become a bar-restaurant called Little Walter’s from a chef inspired by their grandfather, a Polish immigrant. Timeline is unavailable, and the chef wants to keep a low profile for now.

What’s happening at the old Bertucci’s on Trooper Road in Audubon Square Shopping Center? — Donald Logan

Pat’s Select Grill, a rapidly growing pizzeria chain out of South Jersey, is behind that one. No timeline yet.

📮 Have a question about food in the Philly area? E-mail me at mklein@inquirer.com.

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