Meet the Seriously Unserious Chef Behind Couch Cafe

Liz Grothe of Couch Cafe | Photograph by Mike Prince

Behind the Line is Foobooz’s interview series with the people who make up Philly’s dynamic bar and restaurant scene. For the complete archives, go here.

Couch Cafe is proof that quality food doesn’t have to be stuffy or pretentious. In fact, according to Liz Grothe, the mind behind Philly’s favorite dinner party, the best meals are the ones that are fun, and sometimes even silly.

There is no easy way to describe Grothe’s style of cuisine, but that’s what’s so compelling about it. Because instead of being categorized as New American, Italian, or Filipino, she’s creating her own category, which is essentially any pop culture reference or inside joke she finds amusing. She’s drawing inspiration from things like lines from Flo Rida’s song “Low” (apple butter jus, boots with the fur), restaurant chains like Red Lobster and Western Sizzlin’, the microwaved comfort foods from her childhood as a Filipino-American growing up in Oklahoma, and her travels through Italy.

Recently, under the stage name Ol’ Liz, Grothe has been taking her special brand of humor to collaborative dinners in restaurants across the city, all of which are channeling the same let-loose-and-have-fun energy as Couch Cafe. And people are pumped for it. Guests at her recent Boodle Night at Oloroso (where she used to work) had a blast racing one another to get the best bites on a platter of Max’s Style Fried Chicken and chicharon. Her upcoming Western Sizzlin’ night at High Street, inspired by the Oklahoman chain restaurant, booked up within a few hours. And there are more pop-ups in the pipeline including one at Citrine on February 12th and another at Lacroix (or LizCroix as she calls it on her Instagram) on February 25th.

Here, Grothe talks about learning to cook from YouTube, how she transitioned from a career in industrial safety at a cheesesteak plant to becoming a rising chef on Philly’s scene, and how the most important meal of her life went down at a Macaroni Grill in Texas.

I started cooking … with my mom when I was a teenager. My mom would do the cooking for us, but it was just stuff that she had figured out trying to feed the family. She’d have little clippings from the newspaper or little cookbooks. And she’d also make the recipes on the back of packages like Mama Sita. That’s how she learned how to cook Filipino food. We weren’t cooking for opulence.

My favorite meal growing up … was this jarred tomato sauce Bolognese. My mom would brown some meat, sauté some vegetables and use a canned or jarred tomato sauce to make a Bolognese, and then she’d boil a bunch of spaghetti. And there’d be like a gallon-sized bag of cooked spaghetti noodles in the refrigerator from which we would just pull some noodles out and then put some sauce on it and microwave cheese on it.

Before getting into restaurants … I worked in industrial safety in the cheesesteak making industry.

Oxtail cappelleti | Photograph by Mike Prince

Once I started cooking … I fell in love with it. It became an obsession of mine. At my job, I’d have two monitors, and one of them was always Bon Appetit, Food & Wine, Epicurious, New York Times Cooking, or like YouTube videos, unless my boss came, in which case I would minimize that screen and drag over a spreadsheet.

The people who have inspired me the most food-wise are … Matty Matheson, Mason Hereford, Alison Roman – those are the people who taught me how to cook before I was in a professional kitchen. What they did just kind of set how I approached food. I guess I got a lot of my foundation of how I approach food from YouTube.

I made the transition to working in kitchens … After I met some chefs. I hired them for a catering event. And they were like, “You should definitely just do it. If you ever need a job call us.” I called them, and they didn’t have a job for me at that time. But one day, Randy Rucker posted that he needed a dishwasher. And so I took that and said I started dishwashing on the weekends for River Twice. And that was that was the beginning of the end. I let cooking absorb my everything. I’d work 40 hours at my one job and then wash dishes like three to four nights a week. And then I was taking prep shifts at Oloroso here and there, too. That was around December of 2020 and through the New Year of 2021.

My culinary style is … seriously unserious. I take what I do seriously. As far being a professional and cooking, showing up to work on time, cleaning my station, making sure that my knives are sharp — those things I take very seriously, right. But I don’t take my food that seriously. Not all my pride is put into how thoughtful a dish I can make. I don’t need to show everyone that I can dehydrate scraps, make it into a powder, and then dust it all over my food. Like that’s cool. But to me, as a diner, I don’t think that’s ever elevated my experience. I just think it’s really fun to have fun eating. Those gastronomic things – they’re fun to do. But am I going to have fun eating it? I have fun when I pull apart a supplì and the cheese string is really long.

Liz Grothe showing off the cheese pull of a suppli al telefono. | Photograph by Mike Prince

Every major event in my life is … punctuated by chain restaurants. Birthdays, you go to Western Sizzlin’. If I got straight As – Chili’s. If you and your friends convinced one of your parents to drive you to Oklahoma City you’re going to Joe’s Crab Shack or Olive Garden. You just had a big interview in Jefferson City that you and your friend drove six hours for, you’re going Longhorn Steakhouse. Texas Roadhouse, the rolls and the whipped cinnamon butter, that’s when you and your friends got paid.

One of the most important meals in my life … was when I turned 17, and my dad took me and three of my friends to Six Flags Over Texas. So we went to Arlington, Texas on August 6th. My friends and I saved our money and got the Platinum Flash Passes, so we basically got to ride every ride immediately. Five times in a row if we wanted. Like, we rode the Texas Giant five times and didn’t wait in line – not once. After that, we went to a modest Macaroni Grill and had, up until that point, the best Italian food in my life.

Restaurants are … a cultural meeting point. They’re either special events in themselves or punctuations of special events. Couch Cafe is a celebration, but you know, people also come to Couch Cafe for like an anniversary or a birthday. Or, like, all the friends got together because they’ve been excited to go do something together. Restaurants are social hubs, and reinforcers of a good time. They’re places to go to have a good meal… a really fun meal after a really fun day with your friend. It’s like the perfect punctuation.

My signature move is … being fearlessly silly.

What does it mean to be fearlessly silly? Here’s what Grothe had to say when we stopped by Couch Cafe! Follow Foobooz on Instagram for more!