Oklahoma Smashburgers Meet Japanese Milk Buns at Huda Burger

Huda Burger / Photograph by Mike Prince

Howdy, buckaroos! And welcome back to the weekly Foobooz food news round-up. I know the big news this week will all be about which local restaurants do (or don’t) score Philly’s first-ever Michelin stars during tonight’s gala ceremony at the Kimmel Center. We’ll be keeping track of that as it happens — so stay tuned. But in the meantime, there are just a few other things to get through this week, including (but not limited to) the debut of Huda Burger, Friendsgiving at River Twice, and Christmas overload at Craftsman Row. So let’s get right into it, shall we? We’ll start things off this week with …

Oklahoma-Style Smashburgers and Japanese Milk Buns

That’s what chef Yehuda Sichel will be serving starting tomorrow, November 19th, at his new Fishtown burger joint, Huda Burger.

Sichel spent a good portion of his career in Michael Solomonov’s orbit, working his way up through the kitchen at Zahav and Citron & Rose, then standing as exec chef (and partner) at Abe Fisher during its early years. He went his own way in 2020 (which was less-than-ideal timing, honestly) to open Huda — an indie sandwich shop that survived the pandemic, served huge lines, and based everything around Sichel’s house-made sourdough and milk breads.

But he’s been dreaming about Huda Burger pretty much since the day his sandwich joint opened. Five years of planning, plotting, and scheming about how to make the best possible burgers and get them into the hands of the maximum number of people.

Inside Huda Burger / Photograph courtesy of Huda Burger

He’ll be using his milk bread skills again — mounting all his burgers on seeded, Japanese-style milk buns made in-house. The menu is fairly straightforward: a half-dozen burgers (including a veggie burger), a pastrami fried onion burger, cheeseburger salad, curly fries, house-made pickles, a fried chicken sandwich, and diner-style milkshakes.

The space (at 1603 Frankford Avenue in Fishtown) is not large. Just 1,300 square feet with some counter seating and a few tables outside, along with a lot of takeout. Right now, the hours are basically open at 11 a.m. every day, and see what happens, but Sichel is planning on staying open late once he gets past the opening rush and sees how things shake out.

But considering Huda Burger is basically a block away from Amá and Kalaya and maybe a hundred paces from Suraya — smack in the middle of one of the hottest triangles in one of the hottest food neighborhoods in the city right now — I have a feeling things won’t be calming down there any time soon.

Dinner at the Winery

The roasted chicken at Grace Winery / Photograph by Eleni Sterious

Spend enough time watching the restaurant scene, and, after a while, things can sometimes start looking a little bit flat. Restaurants with similar concepts and similar names doing similar menus stuffed with similarly trendy ingredients. It makes sense. In an industry as historically unstable as this one, chasing success will always feel like a safe business strategy (right up until tastes change).

But if you’re looking for something a little bit … different, how about dinner in a barn on a 50-acre private estate in Glenn Mills?

Grace Winery has been doing boutique, French-inspired Pennsylvania wines for years. They’ve been a venue for private events and weddings. But now, they’re launching a weekends-only dinner service, and they’ve brought on a heavy-hitting local chef to oversee it.

Dan Netter is their guy. He worked at South Philadelphia Tap Room, was sous-chef at Parc, was exec at Harper’s Garden, and worked corporate catering at the Comcast Center, so he has all the requisite experience for this kind of setup. Plus, he’s an adherent of the whole field-to-fork ethos in seasonal cooking, so he will now have access to ingredients he can source right from the fields and gardens on the Grace Winery property.

Unsurprisingly, his debut menu is fall-focused. We’re talking roasted red and golden beets with fresh ricotta and apple cider vinaigrette, mushroom barley risotto with leek soubise, local oysters with Grace Winery rosé mignonette, duck confit, and a braised short rib with sweet potato and cranberry compote. It’s classic, seasonal, farmhouse-y, and French in that way that almost demands twinkle lights and roll-neck sweaters. It’s basically a catalog ad waiting to happen.

Plus, Grace is launching a new local cocktail program to accompany Netter’s menu. So that means mulled wine, walnut Old-Fashioneds, and apple margaritas with a cinnamon-sugar rim to go along with your French onion tarts and salmon with golden beet hollandaise.

For now, dinner service is weekends only: Fridays and Saturdays from 4 to 9 p.m. and Sundays from 4 to 7 p.m. And they’ll be served either in the Vineyard Tasting Barn (which seats 50) or the Winery Tasting Barn (which can hold 100).

Honestly, the whole thing sounds kind of adorable. And twee. And delicious. Reservations are available here.

Meanwhile, Over on 8th Street …

Holiday-themed cocktails at Craftman Row Saloon / Photograph by Cody Aldrich

In a sure sign that the holidays really are upon us, Craftsman Row Saloon has just debuted this year’s version of their Christmas pop-up bar, and it is … a lot.

Every year, this place tries to make the biggest, gaudiest, Christmas-y-est splash it possibly can. And then the next year, it outdoes itself. Then it outdoes itself again.

This time around, they’re calling the pop-up-slash-art-installation “Miracle on 8th Street,” and brother-and-sister team George and Vasiliki Tsiouris claim that they’ve doubled the decor since last year. That means 6,000 feet of garland, 20,000 lights, and more than 60,000 ornaments dripping from the ceiling. I mean, just look at the pictures. It really is kind of remarkable that there’s even room for any people inside.

Inside Craftman Row Saloon / Photograph by Cody Aldrich

In addition to the decor, there are new food and cocktail menus to explore — everything from holiday shots to a buffalo chicken stromboli wreath, a Christmas dinner burger with stuffing, cranberry sauce and sweet potato fries, and a pizza-calzone mashup, half stuffed with mac and cheese and covered in grated parmesan snow. There are also four over-the-top milkshakes this year, decorated with cookies, candy canes, pretzels, edible leaves, and who even knows what else.

It’s bonkers. It’s always bonkers. But I love a place that goes all-in on something they love, and Craftsman Row loves nothing the way it loves Christmas.

The Miracle on 8th Street pop-up started last week and will run seven days a week through January. Check ’em out here for more details.

Now who has room for some leftovers?

The Leftovers

Savory pies from Red Owl Tavern / Photograph courtesy of Red Owl Tavern

Speaking of the holidays, here’s something for those of you looking to double up on your Thanksgiving festivities.

Over at River Twice, chef Randy Rucker and his crew are doing a one-night-only, single-seating “Friendsgiving” dinner on Tuesday, November 25th. The multi-course, family-style menu features Parker House rolls with sorghum butter, roasted oysters, chicory salad, roasted capon (instead of turkey) with “vintage cranberry sauce and mommom’s giblet gravy,” brioche stuffing with country ham and foie gras, truffled mac and cheese, fried Brussels sprouts, and bananas Foster bread pudding with golden Osetra caviar for dessert. Nice, right?

There’ll be a single, communal table seating at 7 p.m., and tickets for the dinner will run you $120 a head if you’re down. You can make your reservations here.

Also in keeping with the holiday spirit, Red Owl Tavern is rolling out its “Owlidays Bake Shop” again this year. It actually opened for the season yesterday at Red Owl, offering “a limited-time pop-up filled with festive, hand-crafted treats and plenty of holiday cheer.”

Chef Charles Vogt and his team are offering house-made butter, chocolate and almond croissants, either freshly baked (to eat immediately) or frozen, plus two kinds of quiche and both sweet and savory pies. You can order online right here, then pick up two days later. The Owlidays Bake Shop will run until Christmas Eve, and a portion of the proceeds from all Bake Shop sales will go to support Philabundance.

Finally this week, y’all remember a few weeks back when we told you about the sudden closure of all Iron Hill Brewery locations and the massive bankruptcy filing that followed? Yeah, well, one of the big questions that came in the wake of that news was what would happen to all those really large, well-placed, and fully outfitted spaces that were left behind when Iron Hill turned out the lights.

Well, now we know what will be happening to at least some of them. As reported by the Philadelphia Business Journal, it looks like Jeff Crivello, the former CEO of Famous Dave’s and current owner of Ciao Hospitality, based in Illinois, will be picking up 10 of the 16 shuttered locations, turning three of them into Three Notch’d Brewing locations (a brewery chain based out of Virginia), and seven more either reopening as Iron Hill locations or being converted into new concepts.

Negotiations for the spaces, leases, equipment, and liquor licenses are still ongoing, so no one is entirely sure how this will all finally settle out. But with 16 total brewery-bar-restaurant spaces closed down by this bankruptcy (and more than 1,000 restaurant industry employees out of work), this is a big story that’s just starting to work itself out.

As always, you’ll know more when we know more.