Froufrou-free fish and chips

If Jonathan McDonald got a little too big for his britches at a place called Snackbar with those escargot skewers, and crispy mackerel with fennel and apple gelee and some sort of powder derived from the dehydration of olive oil, he would like to make amends. Kick things down a notch.

He is installed in the kitchen now at a gastropub four blocks south of that once-effete boite, and at this gig - called Pub & Kitchen ("P&K" to the locals) - it's an entirely different story.

He is 30 now, with a baby on board, and he's got his feet more humbly planted: "It's the antithesis" of his last stop, he says - and, frankly, of his other finer-dining stops - Lacroix, West Philadelphia's Marigold Kitchen, and Salt, the brief forerunner of Snackbar, each of which honed his cutting-edge skills and won him no small number of groupies: "Johnny Mac," they call him.

But here at noisy P&K, in the space once occupied by Chaucer's at 20th and Lombard, he says, the food is not about him, not about "the celebrity chef thing." It's about honoring standards. The menu: oysters (actually, my favorite Cape May Salts), chicken wings, mussels and sausage, bangers with Gruyere and caramelized onions, lobster-salad BLT, burger (excellent when it is not, as mine was once, overcooked), sauteed chicken breast with Irish biscuits and spinach, and "black pepper" New York strip steak, all of which is as real-deal as things are likely to get on a menu of cooked food that you eat with beer.

It is, generally, very good stuff. There's one other item, however, that has given me unbridled pleasure, and underlined his attention to detail - the fish and chips ($16) with a bright Dijon-mayo-lemon aioli and side of mushy peas (boiled peas mashed with butter, a touch of mint and salt, a dish that defines the word

comfort

in the phrase "British comfort food").

Fish and chips ought to be simple enough. But you hardly ever get them right. I've had terrific ones at a joint called A Salt and Battery in Manhattan, and decent renditions hereabouts at the London Grill and St. Stephen's Green. But mostly they are way too greasy, or the fish, or the coating, is too wet and soggy.

Johnny Mac tells me a story: When he was a kid growing up behind the historic Pineville Tavern in Bucks County, a Scottish gent had a shop called Sandy's near the post office where he sold shortbread and Lyle's Golden Syrup, and where each week they played the bagpipes and did a fish fry in the parking lot and served the fish still sizzling in a cone of newspaper over french fries, the whole mess slathered with a creamy blanket of tartar sauce.

So I like to think that as he grew and learned the arts of Spanish foams, and apple gelee, he had a predisposition to one day re-create that scene, which had me a little moist-eyed just in the retelling. And as speculative as that theory may be, the reality is that, regardless, Johnny Mac is now turning out perhaps the city's finest, crispiest, tastiest fish and chips, applying the care that only true affection can confer.

He uses fresh, hand-selected pollack (the flaky white, environmentally correct substitute for stressed-out cod). He cools it on parchment, covered with more paper or towels and ice packs (not ice!), the better to keep its surface dry to create traction for the batter. He uses amber lager for the batter, simply adding flour and seasoning, but taking care not to overmix it, which cuts down on its desire to adhere to the fish. He lets the batter ferment, at 125 degrees, over the hot line above the stoves. He dusts the pollack with flour. Batters it. Drops it in hot, clean vegetable oil, cranked to 375 degrees to drive out any greasiness. He blots the fish, twice, for 30 seconds on paper towels. And hits it with a grind of black pepper and a flick of kosher salt.

It's a tour de force! It is why God invented the gastropub. Welcome back to earth, Johnny!

1946 Lombard St.

215-545-0350

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