The golden age of brunch has arrived in Philadelphia, borne on the menus of chefs who are reinventing the genre.
All over the city, from Manong in Fairmount to dancerobot and Little Water in Rittenhouse and Rice & Sambal in South Philly, chefs who had long focused on dinner are turning their attention to brunch-specific menus, some available just one day a week. The results are dazzling.
To many in the restaurant industry, the very word brunch conjures up feelings of dread. “Brunch menus are an open invitation to the cost-conscious chef, a dumping ground for the odd bits left over from Friday and Saturday nights or for the scraps generated in the normal course of business,” Anthony Bourdain wrote in his seminal memoir, Kitchen Confidential. And the stigma against the not-quite-breakfast, not-quite-lunch meal, often accompanied by endless mimosas, has endured. Until now.
For Chance Anies of Manong, brunch is an opportunity.
“I love that we’re making Spam,” said Anies. “It’s ironically the first food I got made fun of for eating at school because my dad would make me Spam and rice for lunch as a kid. I had kids calling me ‘Spam.’”
Anies is also making his own version of the processed meat, a highly labor-intensive activity compared to popping open a can. “We grind pork shoulder and smoked ham, and some other ingredients, then set the farce in a terrine mold to steam. After pressing overnight, we slice them into little Spam squares,” he said.
Manong’s house-made Spam is served on pandesal, a soft, buttery Filipino bread, in the breakfast sandwich at brunch, served seven days a week from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. “Pandesal was the thing that got me into cooking, so having an outlet for the recipe I’ve been developing for over 10 years has been a cool full-circle moment,” said Anies.
Diana Widjojo’s Rice & Sambal on East Passyunk in South Philly has been open for two years, but only recently started serving Sunday brunch. Widjojo had toyed with starting brunch service last year, “but I didn’t market it very well.” She officially restarted brunch two weeks ago because “I thought it would be fun.”
Rice & Sambal’s brunch-specific snacks, savory items, and sweet dishes are extensive and only served on Sunday from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. (a la carte, no reservations taken). They range from crispy tofu to lumpia (vegetable and bamboo-stuffed spring rolls) to a Sumatran rendang that is cooked far longer than her typical Javanese rendang, so that it’s “spicier and more fragrant — I cook the curry until the coconut milk turns into oil.”
And then there are dishes like her Indonesian omelet ($17) and Wingko ($12). The omelet is stuffed with fragrant shallots and served with spicy sambal ketchup. The Wingko pancakes are made of cassava and shredded coconut and colored a deep purple with ube. No maple syrup here, but rather a little pitcher of coconut milk and a squeeze bottle of sweet palm sugar syrup are provided for you to decorate your pancakes.
There are also fun drinks like Happy Soda, served in a wine glass and consisting of coconut-pandan syrup, seltzer, and condensed milk, Indonesian coffee, and numerous tea drinks, including a deeply nourishing Beras Kencur ($7), made of ginger, turmeric, and rice. There’s excitement, creativity, and joy embedded in all these beverages — it’s a menu that dovetails with a rise in Indonesian cafes in Philadelphia.
In Rittenhouse, other previously dinner-focused fine-dining chefs are celebrating brunch. Little Water’s Sunday brunch (11 a.m. to 4 p.m.) is spectacular. On the menu, there’s a dish of fried oysters on beef tartare, blanketed in golden hollandaise and tucked in with pickled surprises, sometimes a gherkin, sometimes another pickled vegetable, that you discover through little bites. You can also add caviar to fancy seafood, like Sweet Amalia oysters slicked with Alabama white sauce.
La Jefa’s brunch is equally marvelous, served Wednesday through Sunday (10 a.m. to 2:45 p.m.). It features Guadalajaran twists on American brunch standards, like chilaquiles tucked into omelets or lengua given the pastrami treatment and layered into a sandwich. You get to wash it down with a beverage menu spiked with corn, tepache, and other fascinating ferments.
Also in Rittenhouse, dancerobot’s weekend brunch (Saturdays and Sundays 10:30 a.m. to 3 p.m.), has quietly become an incubator for incredible creativity, led by chef Justin Bacharach and sous chef Christina Betz, but featuring dishes from many other chefs and cooks on staff.
Bucks County native Bacharach grew up with classic diner omelets, pancakes, French toast, and bacon, egg, and cheese breakfast sandwiches, but these brunch stalwarts are completely scrambled up at dancerobot, where bacon, egg, and cheese are fashioned into crispy, crusted onigiri, and omelets are omurice, splayed open table-side into a blanket of egg curds and pancakes are meant to be shared with the whole table.
“It’s an homage to fluffy Japanese pancakes,” Bacharach said. But his have more depth and oomph. They also have delightfully crispy edges. His sourdough pancakes, by the way, are made with the starter Amanda Shulman, the Michelin-star earning chef who also recently opened a restaurant serving brunch, gave him five years ago.
Pastry chef Sophie Wieber contributed cinnamon buns served with amazake-cream cheese frosting. Sous chef Drew Kornrumpff conceived a brilliant interpretation of “girl dinner” by stuffing pockets of aburaage, or fried tofu skin, with Caesar salad and topping them with ikura. Everything is original, delicious, and a little wacky.
“Brunch is a breath of fresh air,” Bacharach said. “The people are happier, the sun is out.”
Dancerobot is also leaning into the creativity brunch can offer by teaming up with chef friends in Philly and beyond, hosting brunch club events with Chicago’s Kasama and soon, Middle Child Clubhouse.
This new era of brunch is whimsical and riveting, a far cry from the dreaded services Bourdain once complained about.
But all these chefs reinventing brunch have one more thing in common: they don’t have time to go out for brunch themselves. “Usually I am too tired to go to brunch,” Widjojo said. “I can’t remember the last time I did, but if I could, I would.”
