Whole Foods Transformed by Will

Chris sat at the window bar in jeans and a navy t-shirt eating baked chicken, meatloaf, and macaroni salad from a compostable container. He looked out at South Street through his faux-wood-framed glasses, taking a sip of OJ. Chris eats lunch at his neighborhood Whole Foods often on Mondays or Tuesdays, his days off.

“Hey Chris!” A jovial, graying man nodded as he pulled out a stool and set down his salad a few seats away. He and Chris are business neighbors; his 35-year-old clothing shop is down the street from the restaurant Chris opened four years ago, Will BYOB.

“I live upstairs,” Chris said, “I come down at 9:00 to check on everything, start cooking around 11:00.” He’ll work on prep through the afternoon, generally forgoing a sit-down lunch. “We don’t really have ‘breaks’ in the industry,” he said. He’ll taste, snack, maybe have a protein shake while he cooks, but he finds he often doesn’t eat enough – “About 1000 calories a day.” He keeps track using MyFitnessPal. “You can put your food in, or scan the barcode,” he said, holding his phone to his bottle of Uncle Matt’s orange juice to show me. To ensure he eats more full meals, he tries to cook for the whole week on Monday or Tuesday. “Chicken or fish, vegetables, quinoa, sweet potatoes,” he said, “Kind of boring, but it works.”

The food on the menu at his restaurant is anything but boring. ‘Chef,’ as he’s known at Will, plays with contrasting textures, colors, and flavors – no less than six components making up each dish. Sweet Potato and Apple Soup, for example, is garnished with pumpernickel granola (toasted breadcrumbs, puffed wild and pearled rice), verjus (sour grape juice) jelly, black pepper jam, apple cider foam, and chamomile micro-greens.

Chris invited me to spend a shift in the kitchen, so I saw the execution first hand. Around 7:45 on Friday night, the tickets line up on the board, covering quotes like, “There are no mistakes, only carelessness” and “Shitbag chefs breed more shitty chefs.” There are three chefs – Chris, Sydney, and Mike – in the kitchen smaller than an average hotel room.

“Two soups! One Monk! Two pastas! One chicken!” I hear it three times as each chef repeats the order. Then a flurry as Mike counts out his 26 noodles of fresh pasta, Sydney warms the napa cabbage-wrapped Monkfish, and Chris paints the plates with bright stripes of beet purée (and I fumble with the immersion blender to conjure up fresh apple cider foam for the soup). Each plate is assembled with stunningly seamless collaboration. The chefs anticipate each others’ next move – one pulling plates out of the oven just as another is poised with a dab of parsnip sauce; one plating the branzino as another plucks pumpkin rounds from pickling brine with kitchen tweezers. Six hands play a part in each dish that leaves the kitchen.

“Chef?” Jennifer, the hostess, appears in the doorway, “Can we send out a bouche to table 31?” Chef nods and pulls out the container of curry-seasoned, dehydrated beef tendon, which he will fry, creating a highly glorified pork rind. An amuse-bouche, Sydney tells me, is French for ‘mouth amuser,’ or ‘present for the mouth.’ It’s a treat sent out to family and friends of the chef or especially good patrons. Adorned with dabs of coconut purée and viola blossoms, the crispy beef tendon is whisked away.

If I would have had the enchanting experience of being in the Will kitchen before chatting with Chris at Whole Foods, I might have been less surprised about the menu items Chris highlighted: The Rohan duck (a cross between a Heritage Mallard and a Pekin) and the short rib they cook for two days. I also might have understood why he tastes constantly, but rarely pauses for a full meal, why he occasionally binges on something unhealthy at midnight; he’s in the kitchen most hours of the day, most days of the week.

If he does happen to make it out for lunch, he’ll go to Terakawa Ramen for miso ramen – “At 3:00 or 4:oo, not 12:00 because it’s too busy,” – or Circles on 2nd for Thai. Or he’ll stick with Whole Foods, the old standby, where he’ll pursue the hot bar for a simple meal cooked by someone else.

North American Security

It’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and Kisha’s doing a double. She says it doesn’t bother her anymore, working on the holiday, though today she was jealous of her husband who got to stay home. “It’s like, let me stay in the warm bed,” she said. Lately, she’s been getting her lunch delivered, “Because it’s too cold to go outside.” She had an Italian sub from Primo's waiting on her desk and had just finished a bowl of chicken noodle soup made by her mother-in-law. Neither are her favorites. She likes JJ’s (Jimmy John's) better than Primo’s; “The rolls are way better, fresher.” And she’d prefer her mother-in-law’s pea soup to the chicken noodle.

A man with flushed cheeks and a briefcase strode to Kisha’s desk to sign in. “16^th floor, I already know,” Kisha said, waving him along. Kisha works security at the North American Building on Broad and Sansom. She sees everyone who walks in from 7am to 3pm, Monday-Friday. “I got nothin’ but time,” she said when I asked if she had a few minutes to chat. “Me sittin’ here? Last week I went through four books,” she said. She plays WDAS (105.3) R&B and Old School from her smartphone. “That’s on at all times,” Kisha laughed. If she works late, she’ll get out her DVD player and watch movies.

Every once in a while, she does have to deal with trouble. “Yeah, last Thursday I had an incident,” she said, nodding her head of tight, honey-colored curls. A woman frequents the building “wander the halls”; Kisha has had a hard time getting her to leave. “She came in with paint on her face to try to disguise herself, but I knew who she was.” It’s a tricky job – telling someone to leave the building without upsetting or provoking them. “Sometimes you gotta make something up quick,” Kisha said. “I told her the office was closed for the holidays – she bought it.”

Sometimes it’s more serious. She called the police on a man last month. “This guy,” she opened the cabinet under her desk, “I got a picture right here.” The man had snuck on the elevator after Kisha made it clear she wasn’t going to argue with him, and told him to leave. She warned the offices upstairs and called the police. He made a threat as he was escorted out. “He’s like ‘Imma come back and Imma shoot it up!’” Kisha rolled her eyes. “I’m like, ‘Have a good one.’”

I left Kisha to grab my camera and when I came back, the Primo sub had been replaced by a tuna sandwich from Wawa. Her friend, Daren (“aka Big Daddy”), stood at the side of her desk eating the other tuna sandwich he had brought. Kisha’s was plain – mayo-smothered chuncks of tuna and half-moon celery pieces on wheat bread. Daren’s was doctored up with jalapeño potato chips, cheese, and ranch dressing. “There’s a whole lotta party going on in your mouth right now,” Kisha said, making circles with her pointer finger, nose scrunched in disgust.

When I ask for lunch recommendations, I get heated banter. Daren likes Joey Joe’s Deli, Kisha says Gooey Looie’s is better. Daren is a fan of Primo’s, Kisha says, “Primo’s is horrible. Period.” Daren raves about a spot in West Philly, Kisha “Can’t eat outta dirty West.”

They agreed on one place: Famous Dave’s. Daren couldn’t contain an “Ooooo!” and a high five when Kisha mentioned she gets the Trash Lid. It’s a sampler of ribs, brisket, cornbread, coleslaw, chili, fries… “And it actually comes on a trash can lid.”

The two laugh hysterically, barely nodding as suits and heels rush past Kisha’s desk.