Goodbye, Neighborhood Ramen. Hello, Scampi

Liz Grothe in front of what will soon be her new restaurant, Scampi. / Photograph by Mike Prince

Howdy, buckaroos! And welcome back to the Foobooz food news round-up. Just a few quick things to get to this week, including news from Jim’s Steaks, Mom-Mom’s, Milkboy, where to buy blue milk for May the 4th, and how to get tipsy at the Zoo. But let’s kick things off with an update from Philly’s favorite itinerant chef, Liz Grothe, and what she’s got planned for the surprise reveal of her new brick-and-mortar restaurant.

Gettin’ Shrimpy With Liz Grothe at Scampi

Okay, so this is a little complicated, but stick with me.

We all know that the excellent 3rd Street ramen shop, Neighborhood Ramen, is shutting down soon. The plan is to close the doors in June, allowing owners Lindsay Steigerwald and Jesse Pryor to focus on their ramen production site (and occasional pop-up location), ESO Ramen Workshop, at 526 South 4th Street. ESO will become their new base of operations, and they’re planning on opening it as a regular thing come September with two distinct concepts mashed into a single space. Up front, they’ll be doing short, walk-in-only lunch and dinner services three or four days a week, focusing on chintan ramen. In back, they’ll be offering gyokai tsukemen — dipping-style ramen — for just a handful of reservation-only seats on the nights when they’re not already doing chintan.

We wrote about the move a couple months back, and there are some more details on the new spot that you can read about right here, but the point is, after five years in business, Steigerwald and Pryor are turning out the lights on Neighborhood Ramen. Which means the space at 617 South 3rd Street is going to be available.

Enter Liz Grothe.

The Couch Cafe supper-club chef has been all over the news lately, doing a series of goofy, highly personal, and very successful pop-ups and residencies all across the city. And now we’ve gotten word that she plans to take over the Neighborhood Ramen space, making it her first official brick-and-mortar restaurant. And the Oklahoma-born Filipino-American chef who specializes in Italian cuisine is calling her new place Scampi — for a number of different reasons.

“Before I consider myself a chef, I consider myself a storyteller,” she explains. “And Couch Cafe gave me an outlet to tell stories while cooking. Scampi is a name that holds a collection of stories of who I am — from a person who is obsessed with crustaceans of all sorts, to the woman who enjoys tracing the steps of food history through immigration and its effects on food culture today, to a little girl who would drive freshly-caught prawns from Galveston, Texas, back to north Oklahoma and then clean them so that her mom could have fresh seafood like she used to when she lived in the Philippines.”

So that’s nothing but good news. We’re getting a new, experimental ramen shop from the Neighborhood Ramen team and a new brick-and-mortar restaurant for Grothe. And the new lease was signed at the beginning of April, so everything is nice and legal.

But here’s where things get a little more complicated.

Neighborhood Ramen closes in June. It’s going to take Grothe some time to get the new Scampi space set up and outfitted to her liking (including counter seating in the front window and a grill and smoker on the back patio), so she’s looking at an August opening at the earliest. But there’s a lot of time to fill between now and the end of summer, so she’s going to be previewing the new Scampi concept during a three-month residency at Wim Cafe on South Street, beginning on Friday, May 3rd. It’ll run every Friday and Saturday from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. through the end of July and will operate with a communal table for guests, a ticketed prix-fixe menu, and two turns per night. There’ll also be an à la carte menu for walk-ins, and a bar, which is nice. She’ll be using this time to work out dishes for the new restaurant, which will be largely (though not exclusively) Italian.

According to Grothe, “Couch Cafe started as a rebellious act that flourished into something bigger than I ever imagined,” and Scampi, when it finally does get up and running, will mirror that experience with 24 seats and two seatings a night. “People always talk about how they can’t believe what I was doing with Couch Cafe while just using my home kitchen, and I’m so excited to show y’all what I can do with a commercial kitchen and my own space.” The first menu she puts up will be a kind of send-off to Couch Cafe, featuring dishes that got her to where she is today — Caesar toast, crab-and-corn capelletti, clams casino and her BLT tart. After that, monthly menus will highlight different culinary regions (mostly in Italy) and how they influence American cuisine. Well, that and some dishes from her own personal repertoire, ones that mean something to her or which illuminate something for her, plus whatever inspires her coming out of the gardens.

And when Scampi opens in August, guests see Grothe left a piece of the Neighborhood Ramen mural up on the wall. She wants to do it so that the original space — that thing that it was before it became hers — can be remembered, and “as a tribute to their mark on Philly food’s pop culture scene.”

Because never letting people forget what came before? That’s just what a good storyteller does.

Okay, so what’s next?

You Can Take The Boy Out of Tatooine, But You Can’t Take Tatooine Out Of The Boy

So here’s a weird one. For all you Star Wars fans out there getting ready to celebrate May the 4th, there are now actual half-gallons of blue milk being sold in Philadelphia grocery stores.

TruMoo, in collaboration with Lucasfilm, has released branded half-gallons of vanilla-flavored Blue Milk just in time for the most important holiday of the year. Previously available only at Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge in Disney parks, it is now on the shelves at local Giant stores and at Lehigh Valley Dairy Farm.

It’s got everything a young Jedi, a creepy Imperial cop (hello, Andor), or an old nerd like me needs to get through the day. Plus, it’s just cool. And also a little gross. But mostly cool.

It’ll be available until July, or as long as supplies last.

And Speaking of Milk …

Dollar Dog Night at Milkboy / Photograph courtesy of Milkboy

Milkboy has a couple things on their May calendar worth mentioning.

First, celebrating the return of their neighbor, Jim’s South Street (see this week’s Leftovers for details), the South Street Milkboy location will be serving celebratory drinks like the $9 Jim’s Wit’ (a Miller Lite tallboy with a shot of Jim Beam Black) and the Jim and Juice (Jim Beam peach bourbon, pineapple and orange juice) for $10. Also, if you show up on May 1st with a receipt from Jim’s, you can get an order of fries for $4 — because the new Jim’s (like the old Jim’s) will have no fryers.

Also, what with the Phillies ending dollar dog night, both Milkboy locations are stepping up with a Dollar Dog Night series of their own. Starting with the home game on May 7th, both the South Street and the Chestnut Street Milkboys will be offering $1 hot dogs to fans. The program will continue during Phillies home games on June 3rd, July 9th, August 13th, and September 9th. Plus, they’re doing $6 Fat Tire drafts for all home games of the 2024 season.

New Life for the Old Lunar Inn

At the end of last year, Philly lost one of its new breeds of neighborhood bars with the closing of the Lunar Inn in Port Richmond. The place survived four tumultuous years before throwing in the towel, and I gave it a bittersweet epitaph right here in this column. But now, six months later, it looks like the space at 3124 Richmond Street is seeing some new life. And not just from one new business, but two.

Mom-Mom’s — the Polish food truck turned brick-and-mortar pierogi specialist — is throwing in with the team from Carbon Copy Brewing to do craft beer and Polish food out of the former Lunar Inn. Because beer and pierogies? If that doesn’t get the neighbors through the door, nothing will.

This is a second location for both operations. Mom-Mom’s started as a food cart, opened a location in Bridesburg, closed their Bridesburg location in January of 2021 thanks to the pandemic, then opened a spot on South Street (right next to Bob & Barbara’s), which is still operating today. Carbon Copy is the spot that took over the old Dock Street West location in 2022, and they’ve been slinging beers there ever since. And now, sometime in the next couple months, the two teams will come together like some kind of very small and yeasty Voltron to bring the joys of craft beer and Polish specialties to the Port Richmond neighbors.

Carbon Copy will have 16 taps and a dozen seats at the bar. Mom-Mom’s will have 30-some tables on the floor, plus some outdoor seating, a courtyard, and an old bottle shop at the back of the property where they’ll be able to continue offering their Pierogi School classes.

There’s no hard opening date yet, but, as always, when I know more, you’ll know more.

Now, how about some leftovers?

The Leftovers

Bagels & Co.’s Dorito bagel / Photograph by Cody Aldrich

As mentioned above, Jim’s South Street announced that it was going to be reopening on South Street on May 1st.

It’s surprising, I know. After an electrical fire that basically destroyed the original building, a two-year closure, an almost-opening, followed by delays, we now have an actual re-opening officially announced. And none of that is really the surprising part.

No, what’s surprising is that the new Jim’s is going to be twice the size of the original, because they’ve expanded into the former Eyes Gallery building next door — which used to be run by Julia Zagar, wife of Isaiah Zagar, whose murals cover many walls in South Philly and the entire Magic Gardens space. Julia and the Gallery moved down the street in 2023, but the new Jim’s has restored and preserved some of the earliest mural work done by Zagar, and much of it now decorates the new upstairs dining room.

So yeah, it’ll be kinda like eating cheesesteaks inside the Magic Gardens. Only louder. And indoors. But still, the acquisition of the space next door added nearly 2,000 square feet to Jim’s South Street footprint, which translates to roughly 60 seats. That, plus the brand-new open kitchen with its 12-foot Jade flattop and 3 a.m. closing time on the weekends, means that this new spot will be able to pump out a lot of cheesesteaks. And that’s nothing but good news for South Street.

Elsewhere, Glu Hospitality debuted their new Bagels & Co. location at Temple over the weekend. The new shop is at 1431 Cecil B. Moore Avenue and is the first university-adjacent location for the bagel mini-chain. As such, they’ve made some additions to the menu — things like Fruity Pebbles bagels, spicy avocado cream cheese, Doritos bagels, blueberry chai lattes, and hot honey fried chicken sandwiches.

Because are you even really going to college if you’re not eating Doritos bagels and drinking blueberry chai?

Cafe le Jardin’s duck press / Photograph by Mike Prince

If you’re looking for some (slightly) classier eats, Café Le Jardin in South Jersey is putting its famous duck press to good use by creating duck frites.

No, for real. I’ll let them explain it:

“Beginning on Monday, May 6th, Café le Jardin will be introducing “Press Frites” at the restaurant, located at 34 West Merchant Street in Audubon, NJ. This initiative will see Chef Cusack not only use June BYOB’s two duck presses to press either duck, steak, or poisson for guests, but the dishes will be served with frites, providing diners with ‘steak frites,’ ‘duck frites,’ or ‘poisson frites’ — all adorned with the juices extracted from the tableside service by the chef himself … Café le Jardin’s Press Frites will be a three-course experience for $85 per person plus tax and gratuity. The menu begins with an appetizer of wild mushroom soup with black truffle and Madeira, followed by the main course. Guest can choose between Steak Frites – an eight-ounce filet mignon with tableside pressed sauce bordelaise made with filet trimmings, cognac, red wine, and veal demi-glace; Duck Frites – an eight-ounce Rohan duck breast with tableside duck a la presse sauce; or Poisson Frites – a one-pound black bass wrapped in puff pastry pressed tableside with sauce beurre rouge with fish trimmings. For dessert, guests will enjoy tableside scooped chocolate mousse with berries, vanilla crème anglaise, and toasted croissant slices.”

So yeah. Fries with squished duck (or fish) juice. Available on Mondays only throughout the month of May, and by reservation only, with 48-hours’ notice (because this whole thing is apparently a labor- and time-intensive process). Plus, with May being National Cancer Research Month, proceeds from the Press Frites will be donated to Penn Medicine’s Abramson Cancer Research Center. So if you’re down, make those Monday reservations at Café Le Jardin right now.

It looks like NoLibs is getting a new restaurant and speakeasy. The Newsroom debuted in Long Island last year and will be opening a second location in Northern Liberties … soon? I don’t know a lot about the project yet, except that the whole “speakeasy” thing is kinda done to death, and no one under the age of, like, 30 has any idea what a newsroom is unless they’ve seen one in an old movie. I know that the Long Island location really leans into it — operating only on Fridays and Saturdays and hiding the location behind a fake Snapple machine in a fake newsstand inside a fake subway station/lounge. With the new location being in NoLibs, I guess they could put the entrance behind an old Schmidt’s beer cooler inside a fake art gallery next to a fake vape shop?

Whatever they decide to do, I’ll be keeping an eye out for it.

And finally, this week, if you’ve always wanted to drink at the Zoo, here’s your chance. The Summer Ale Festival at the Philadelphia Zoo just released their discounted early-bird tickets.

This year’s festival is going to be huge. They’ve got about 60 breweries scheduled to be pouring, more than a dozen food trucks pulling up, live music, DJs, and the whole thing happens inside the Zoo, so you’ll get to see all the animals, too.

Honestly, it really is a very cool party, and it all exists as a big fundraiser for the Philadelphia Zoo, so you get to feel good about yourself while drinking around lions — which is not something you should probably do under any other circumstances. Plus, everyone knows how much otters love DJs.

The big event happens in July, but all the details (and those discounted early-bird tickets) are available here. With any luck, we’ll see you all there.