Break Time

At a window seat facing the rain coming down on Broad Street, Amanda spoons broccoli cheddar soup and stabs at a superfood salad. It’s a favorite lunchtime combo for her.
 

Amanda is the receiving manager at Sprouts—the supermarket that opened on south Broad St. late last year. She meets delivery trucks in the back by 6:30 each morning. “Everything that comes in, I go through,” she said.

She’s wearing a black zip-up hoodie, her dark, blue-streaked hair pulled back into a bun. For the last few hours, she has been calling in credits for products that were “out of temp.” “Any refrigerated or frozen items, we have to temp check,” Amanda explains. “If they’re off, we have to refuse.” Sometimes temps impact an entire truck—if it’s just one degree above regulation, the entire shipment gets sent back.

Amanda’s days are hectic—without a receiving team, she’s often working solo. Plus, Sprouts operates on a bigger scale than the small co-ops where she previously worked. “I’m used to stores that do $15,000 in sales per day,” she says. “This store does that just in the dairy department.”

She takes a sip of an energy drink and scrunches her nose. “I won’t do that again,” she says, referring to the drink. She often tries out new products during lunch, many branded as “healthy,” which is a huge part of Sprouts’ mission and marketing.

Amanda’s perspective on these claims? Sprout’s standards aren’t as strict as some of the natural food stores where she’s worked before, she says. “But for people who are transitioning from mainstream grocery stores to more natural foods, I think it does that well—it’s approachable.”

A timer sounds on her iPhone. She sweeps spilled quinoa into a Sprouts bag with a napkin and rushes back to work. 

Author's note: This article and original illustration was published in Edible Philly's Spring '19 issue. 

Health & Underground History

A few things you might not know about Essene Market & Cafe in Queen Village:

It’s old --  macrobiotic teacher Denny Waxman and his brother co-founded the store in the 70s; a section of hard-to-find Japanese products includes koji cultures, agar flakes, and umeboshi plums; the hot bar in the back is a primo spot for a lunch loaded with vegetables and Korean dishes like japchae (stir fried glass noodles) and ajitsuke inari (seasoned fried tofu skins stuffed with rice).

On a recent afternoon, Sonia filled her plate of garlicky white beans and kale, brown rice, sautéed broccoli and kimbap, Korean Sushi. “I like the way they cook vegetables here,” she told me, stabbing a broccoli stem. “They still have a nice crunch to them.”

Sonia was raised vegetarian in West Philly; her mom is a nutritionist and acupuncturist. “A lot of my understanding of health comes from her,” Sonia says. She cooks for herself, often with the help of Budget Bytes, a website that calculates cost per recipe. “I want to eat healthy, but I don’t want to go broke.” 

For breakfast, she makes oatmeal with toppings like blueberries, coconut milk and chia seeds. She usually packs a lunch. “My staple is some kind of vegetable with brown rice and chickpea or lentil soup,” she said. 

But when she doesn't have time to pack, she heads to Essene for a healthy lunch – it’s just a couple blocks from her office. Sonia is a reference assistant at the Presbyterian Historical Society. The stately brick building houses the national archives for the Presbyterian Church. They’re kept in a two-floor underground vault, “like what you’d imagine in a bank,” Sonia said. The historical records span a full city block, under Lombard Street between 4th and 5th Streets. 

Occasionally, Sonia gives public tours of the vault, but she spends most days helping visitors track down family records. “Mostly people are looking for baptism, marriage, and death certificates,” she says, “We have records dating back to 1774.”

That morning she had been in a Skype meeting with leaders of the church, "to talk about a unifying vision," Sonia said. The conversation was led by Reverend Dr. J. Herbert Nelson, the first African American Stated Clerk of the denomination. "We move away from dying talk, we move away from 'can't do' talk, we move away from not being enough," Nelson said to the 2020 vision team recently. "Let's see what the Lord can do."

Sonia isn’t Presbyterian – she’s Buddhist, a tradition she started studying in her 20s. “When I was growing up, my parents believed you shouldn’t be in a church just because your parents are in a certain church,” she told me. “Your faith develops as you develop.”

Buddhist beliefs and spiritual practices made sense to Sonia. “I like what it says about our journey here,” she said. “There’s never a point at which you’re cast out -- you’re always evolving and always getting better.”

Amuse Bourse

Jesse and Jere sat across from each other at a long communal table at the newly re-opened Bourse food hall. Their plastic forks fought for the last grains of garlicky rice shimmering on a banana leaf. It was all that was left of their lunch from Lalo, a spot known for lutong bahay – Filipino comfort food.

They had shared Lalo’s lumpia Shanghai, Filipino spring rolls made with pork and lemongrass served with sweet chili sauce, and inihaw, skewers of grilled pork with atchara (pickles) over garlic rice.

“It’s phenomenal,” Jesse said. “Dangerous, actually.” Dangerous because it’s the kind of place that might derail the couple’s serious budgeting goals – they both work less than a block from the Bourse. Jesse works in HR for a telecommunication company and Jere’s the director of executive strategy at the Philadelphia Youth Network.

To save money, they typically pack lunch. Each morning, after letting out their new Dalmatian, Watson, Jere assembles peppered turkey or ham sandwiches with sharp cheddar cheese, bread and butter pickles and a small dab of mayo with a huge squirt of Dijon mixed together and spread on wheat bread.

But they’ll be back for the inihaw, Lalo’s classic that comes with a sweet story. It was the specialty dish of one of the owners’ grandfathers, who used to run a food cart right across the street from the Bourse. They used his recipe to create their version of the grilled meat with pickled vegetables. And they give a nod to him – and all their lolas and lolos (grandmothers and grandfathers) in the name.

“We remember the old Bourse,” Jere said. Smoothie King was the only draw for them back then. “This is obviously an upgrade.”

Author's note: This article and original illustration was published in Edible Philly's Winter '18 issue. 

De Lindenhof for Lunch

The best way to arrive at Restaurant De Lindenhof is by boat. After ducking under 100-year-old wooden bridges and shimmering willow trees, you’ll glide down a narrow canal flanked by purple lupine. A rose-cheeked, blonde cook may greet you, taking the ropes from the bow as you step on a small dock – the waterside entrance to an expansive garden several yards from the restaurant’s kitchen.

The quaint scene, guaranteed to impress a visiting American, wasn’t new to my hosts. Mas and Jacquline Boom own a small home nearby, where I stayed with their daughter and my good friend, Laurentine. The three had planned a surprise lunch at De Lindenhof - a Michelin two-star restaurant on the outskirts of a small canal village in Northern Holland.

“Quite the garden, yes?” Mas said, striding from the dock past a noisy chicken coop. He watched as I stood in awe of blackberry brambles and dill weed growing as tall as the Dutch. Up ahead, the aproned cook stooped in front of a bed of blooming rocket, dwarfing the delicate blossoms as he pinched them between his fingers.

The Boom family and I followed his garnish harvest through the restaurant’s back door, briefly touring the kitchen before gathering around a table in the bright dining room. Before “lunch” arrived, we tasted salmon wrapped in a wakame cone with lemon dill cream; cold soup of bouillon, cucumber, mint and wasabi; and snow peas dotted with smoked eel and hazelnut cream.

The onslaught of amuse bouches made us giddy, except for the last one, to which Laurentine scrunched her nose. “I’ve never really liked eel,” she said. But it was deeply smoky and brightened by the fresh pea an she took another bite.

“A child doesn’t like fish, doesn’t like some vegetable, you bring them to this restaurant,” Mas declared, slathering a roll with deep yellow butter. “First of all, they are spoiled; second, they like everything.”

Mas is usually eating lunch at the office canteen with the employees of Boom Publishing. He opts for a sandwich of ham, cheese, boiled egg, lettuce and tomato along with a glass of karnemelk (cultured buttermilk). He also likes the vegetable soup, “… with meatballs,” he grins. If it’s up to him, Elvis or Crosby Stills and Nash plays on the canteen Jukebox. (Author’s note: Mas recently retired from Boom Publishing.)

Jacqueline’s favorite amuse arrived at the table, served by Lindenhof co-owner Marjan de Jonge: an oven roasted cherry tomato encased in a crispy, sesame shell served atop a scoop of light ginger sorbet. It’s like eating fresh jian dui dipped in ice cream.

Jacqueline works from her office at home. For lunch? “To be honest, I usually forget.” When she gets hungry around 4pm she might head down to the kitchen and make a tosti. She likes brown bread with aged gouda (what the Dutch simply call ‘old cheese’) and sliced pickled ginger or mandarin orange. It’s her take on the more traditional Dutch Tosti Hawaii – a grilled sandwich with ham, cheese and pineapple.

“I refuse to bring a sandwich for lunch,” said Laurentine, who’s finishing her last clinical rotation in med school. Most doctors pack a bag with 4 cheese sandwiches, which they keep in their white coats, she says. “There’s no time – while they walk from one part of the hospital to another, you see them stuffing their faces.”

Laurentine’s non-sandwich strategy is this: early in the morning she scopes out a fridge in the hospital where she can stash a 450 ml container of skyr. Later in the day she’ll dash in and spoon down the thing, sometimes with a bit of granola, often unaccompanied.

But today we ate perch wrapped in blanched swiss chard in a sauce of beetroot, and shaved pumpkin dumplings filled with langoustine. The bread was scented with lavender from the garden, the butter deep yellow, the olive oil verdant in a small glass bottle on the table. Our desserts came in threes: peach, rose, and raspberry; dill, cucumber and yogurt; hazelnut, chocolate and coffee.

Nearly four hours later, as the cooks prepped for dinner, we shoved off from the dock, sleepy and enchanted. 

Thursday's Pozole Day

On Thursdays in Guerrero, a southern state on Mexico’s Pacific coast, the Pozolerias are packed. “It’s been the traditional day since I can remember,” says Ernesto, who grew up in Guerrero.  

At a Pozoleria, “You can order chicken mole or taquitos,” Ernesto says. But on Thursdays, “You’re not going to look at the menu. You’re going to sit down with your friends and order pozole.”

Pozole is a Mexican stew of pork and hominy seasoned with chiles, oregano, epazote and topped with shredded lettuce, sliced radishes, cheese, avocado, tostadas or chicharrones. Leave as is, or swap chicken in for pork, and you have pozole blanco; add tomatillos, pumpkin seeds and cilantro for pozole verde; cook with dried ancho or guajillo chiles to make pozole rojo.

At his usual lunch spot – behind the counter at Lupita’s Grocery on the Italian Market – Ernesto dipped his spoon into a warm bowl of pozole blanco topped with sliced jalapeno, crispy chicharron, queso fresco, and chunks of avocado.

“A friend of mine cooked this and brought it yesterday,” he says. (It was Monday – since moving to the states in 1991, he enjoys pozole any day of the week.)

Ernesto doesn’t cook much. For lunch, he often orders tacos from Blue Corn down the street, or heads to the truck on the corner of 10^th St. and Washington Ave. “Sometimes I cook. Like every other week,” he says. But for the most part, the ingredients at his grocery store are for customers.

Ernesto opened Lupita’s after working in Philly restaurants for more than a decade. His brother helped him get his first job after moving to the States, washing dishes at a now-closed mall in University City. “I was washing dishes, taking in deliveries,” he said. “I didn’t speak English so what was I going to do? It was not easy.”

He then found a job at the Midtown II Diner where he met Freddy, a Puerto Rican cook who helped him learn English.

“I asked him when he wasn’t busy to write down the words I heard in the kitchen in English,” Ernesto said. “At night, when I got home, I’d take out all the little pieces of paper and look through the [Spanish-English] dictionary.”

A few years later, he was out of the kitchen and looking to start a business of his own. He bought the 9^th Street storefront from an Italian couple. “The walls were falling apart,” he remembers. He did major renovations and stocked the shelves with Mexican pantry items and home goods.

At Lupita’s you can buy dried herbs, canned hominy, fresh chicharrones (and the rest of the ingredients you’d need to make pozole at home), plus leather belts Made in Mexico, fútbol jerseys, and piñatas. 

“[Shoppers] know the good thing are the avocados here,” Ernesto told me. There’s usually a box of Purepecha avocados from Michoacán – the Mexican state known for producing the best of the crop – in the cooler in the back. These avocados are named for the indigenous people living in the highlands of central Michoacán. They have the perfect creamy texture, rarely a brown spot, and a rich, slightly sweet flavor. 

One change Ernersto has noticed over the years at Lupita's: “Now, American people buy avocados more that Mexicans!” he says, eyebrows rising above his black Oakley frames. “How about that?”

That's a Wrap

Gyros & Fries on Germantown Ave.

 

AROUND NOON ON A RECENT FRIDAY, students from Al-Aqsa Islamic Academy crowded the counter at the small market next door. Two cooks in knit hats shaved meat from a rotating spit and kept fryer oil spattering as the students ordered falafel, cheesy fries, chicken tenders and shawarma. Al-Amana Grocery Store offers a mash-up menu including kid-pleasers and traditional Middle Eastern sandwiches and platters.

Garrett, a math teacher on lunch duty who asked us not to use his last name, ate a gyro at a booth near the entrance. The thin man with gray curls and wire-rimmed glasses typically orders falafel—made in-house with chickpeas, heaps of cilantro and parsley and spices. But on Fridays, he often splurges for Al-Amana’s seasoned lamb and beef, chopped tomatoes, lettuce and pickles dressed in tzatziki and hot sauce and wrapped in pita.

“On Fridays he splurges on lamb, beef, tomatoes, lettuce, and pickles dressed in tzatziki and hot sauce in pita.”

Al-Aqsa Islamic Academy and this grocery/deli are both part of the Al-Aqsa Islamic Society, which houses a mosque and cultural center. On Fridays, members of the neigh- borhood’s Palestine and Arab Muslim community gather at the mosque for Jumu’ah, a weekly congregational prayer held just after noon. They stop at the market next door for lunch and groceries; the Syrian American owner stocks Al-Amana’s shelves with imports from countries including Lebanon, Morocco, Tunisia and Turkey.

Rushing past the case of halal meats, a student shouted hello to her teacher. Garrett replied with a nod.

“Now that’s disrespectful, you didn’t say ‘hi’ back!” She feigned a pout and marched out the door to enjoy her pile of ketchup- topped fries.

“Very bright student, but she loves to play,” Garrett laughed quietly and returned to his lunch.

MORE MIDEAST EASTS

Mama’s Vegetarian
18 S. 20th St.
215.751.0477

Bitar’s
947 Federal St.
215.755.1121
bitars.com

Kamal’s Middle Eastern Specialties
Reading Terminal Market 45 N. 12th St.
215.925.1511

Goldie
1526 Sansom St.
267.239.0777
goldiefalafel.com

Manakeesh
4420 Walnut St.
215.921.2135
manakeeshcafe.com

 

Writer's note: This story was published in the Summer 2018 issue of Edible Philly.