2 Exciting Philly Food Projects Open Permanent Locations
Sooo Delicious Soul Food Cafe and Heavy Metal Sausage Co. are officially open for business.
Sooo Delicious Soul Food Cafe / Photo courtesy of Sooo Delicious Soul Food Cafe
We’ve got a pair of stories this week about food trucks and pop-ups growing up and putting down roots. They’re very different operations, offering very different things, but both are undeniably good news.
First off, there’s this: Angel King and Aminah McDaniel, the two women behind the food truck formerly known as Sooo Trucking Delicious (I know, great name), have officially put on the parking brake and moved into a permanent home in Center City. Their new joint, called Sooo Delicious Soul Food Café, is up and running right now at 1112 Locust Street, offering takeout and table service in their small dining room.
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King and McDaniel debuted their food truck in early 2020 — just a week before the pandemic hit and the city started shutting down. Later, once food trucks were allowed back on the streets and people started venturing outside their homes, the team began serving again, but immediately started looking for a physical location to serve their fried whiting, collard greens, candied yams and banana pudding. They’ve got chicken wings on the board that customers go nuts for, and a 7-Up pound cake that I really want to try. You can check out their menu here, see all the crowds of happy people on their Instagram, or read all about how King and McDaniel got to where they are over at the Inky.
Meanwhile, there’s another pop-up-to-brick-and-mortar success story this week. After more than a year of teasing, waiting, building and prepping, Pat Alfiero (ex of ITV and Royal Boucherie) and Melissa Pellegrino (Messina Social Club and Laurel) finally opened the doors to the new, permanent home of Heavy Metal Sausage at the end of last week.
The Heavy Metal Sausage Co. team are French charcuterie and Italian salumi enthusiasts who’ve been supplying the city with local meats, pâtés and sausages for the last couple years as a pop-up that started the second week of the pandemic.
Their new permanent location is at Porter and Mole in South Philly (1527 West Porter Street) and they have been filling the cases at the new shop with all kinds of awesome, bloody things. We’re talking hand-made pork sausage from Stryker Farm hogs, Italian beef sausage, homemade hot dogs, turkey roulade, smoked duck breast, red wine and chili-marinated roast beef, chicken liver mousse, pâtés, German beutelwurst and, new for Heavy Metal, deli sandwiches made from their own product.
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The new shop is open Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, from 10 a.m. until 6 p.m., or until they sell out. Mostly, it’ll be until they sell out. Which will probably happen pretty quickly, so plan accordingly. Keep an eye on Instagram if you want to know what Alfiero has been prepping for the week, and for some really cool stories about whole-animal butchery, French, Italian and PA Dutch culinary traditions, their excellent local suppliers and no-waste collaborations with local producers.
