Culinary Pioneer David Ansill Passes Away at 65

Chef David Ansill, Chloe Grigri, and Ryan Kizitaff in 2016. / Photograph by HughE Dillon

Howdy, buckaroos! And welcome back to the weekly Foobooz food news round-up. There’s just a few quick things for us to talk about this week before we can all get back to enjoying the last few days of summer vacation, including a double-shot of pizza news, some restaurant drama in West Chester, pretzel-scented perfume, and the first true sign of autumn’s imminent arrival. But first we’ve got some sad news to report.

Groundbreaking Chef David Ansill Has Died

There are chefs out there who change the scene. There are chefs who change the game. And then there was David Ansill.

He was bold. He was wickedly talented. Across three decades, he cooked everywhere, doing everything from burgers to pig’s feet, pop-ups to fine dining. In a crowd, you could see him coming from a hundred yards off — tall, angular, with dreads and a sharp goatee. He loved French peasant food and Spanish tapas and tacos and weed. There was a time when he was the biggest thing in a scene still trying to figure out what it wanted to be when it grew up.

Philly wouldn’t be the food city that it is today if Ansill hadn’t elbowed his way into the industry as a bar back at Grendel’s Lair back in the late ’70s. It wouldn’t be the food city it is if he hadn’t gotten some education at The Restaurant School in the ’80s, gone to Spain, then come home again to cut his teeth at some of the city’s early fine dining institutions. (The Bank, Serrano’s, Treetops at the Rittenhouse, which later became Lacroix, Judy’s where he did comfort food for the Queen Village neighbors.) Then — after a detour in Miami — thrown in with a young Stephen Starr and become sous-chef at the Continental.

Philly wouldn’t be Philly, and Ansill wouldn’t be Ansill if that (brief) partnership hadn’t exploded (rather dramatically for the time) and blown Ansill across the street and into the kitchen of a restaurant and nightclub called Lucy’s Hat Shop. Lucy’s was wild, weird, beloved by regulars, and would later be known for a brunch service where a man in a gorilla costume poured champagne straight into people’s mouths. But in the ’90s, with Ansill on the line, it was still a serious (and monkey-free) spot where the young(ish) chef first began working up some of the dishes that would later define the menu at Pif.

Pif was Ansill’s masterpiece, the restaurant he loved more than any other. It was a BYO blue-collar French restaurant in a city that had no idea what to make of that; that still understood French cuisine only in terms of starched tablecloths, haute pretension, and waiters with tiny mustaches. In an interview with Collin Flatt at Eater, Ansill would describe the moment like this:

“It was the late ’90s, and Philly was still in cheesesteak mode, and I wanted to do French peasant bistro food in a town that hadn’t really seen it yet. Pif was my baby. It still is. We opened on July 17, 2001. That’s when she was born at 8th and Carpenter Street.”

David Ansill’s Pif pop-up at Amis / Photograph by Stephanie Smith

It can be hard for folks who weren’t around then to understand the influence that Pif and Ansill had on Philly’s nascent restaurant scene. Ansill’s stuffed trotters and sea urchin toasts are still inspiring nth-generation copycat dishes in Philly kitchens. People who ate his escargot there decades ago still talk about it today. Philly Mag’s former restaurant critic, Joy Manning, famously said that she never got on a plane without eating dinner at Pif first. In case it crashed, she wanted that to have been her last meal.

After Pif came the eponymous Ansill Food + Wine, which opened at 3rd and Bainbridge in the space that used to be Judy’s, where Ansill had cooked before anyone knew his name. It was bigger, fancier, more expensive, and had a bar — but didn’t last. Pif closed, and the space became Bibou, then Paffuto. The Ansill space is now Cry Baby Pasta.

After some time off, he resurfaced in the unlikeliest of places: Ladder 15 on Sansom Street, which was known more for its cheap beer and big crowds than anything going on in the kitchen. Still, Ansill did a couple years there, doing Tuesday night tasting menus and steak tartare with fried capers and cognac. There was another potential deal with Starr that ended with Ansill taking the developer’s non-refundable real estate deposit and fucking off to Jamaica for a bit. While there, he met someone in need of a chef and decided to try being an expatriate chef for a while, just smoking a lot of weed and cooking fresh seafood on Seven Mile Beach in Negril. He was gone by January of 2013 and swore he’d never be back.

But he did come back. He cooked at Bar Ferdinand and Good King Tavern. He became a private chef. He did Pif pop-ups that sold out over and over again. Unsurprisingly, he got big into cannabis-infused cuisine and did dinners everywhere he could find a kitchen to borrow.

But about a year ago, it was announced that Ansill was fighting Stage 4 lymphoma. There was a GoFundMe campaign (which is still active). An outpouring of support. That was in July of last year.

And now he’s gone.

David Ansill died yesterday in hospice of cancer. He was 65 years old. And while every death ultimately comes too soon, this one still feels hard to believe. That someone of such outsized influence could simply be gone is hard to wrap your head around. That 30 years of talent, training, mentorship, and brilliance can just be gone from the scene like that remains inconceivable.

But this is the way the world goes. Something is, and then it isn’t. And it’s never not a shock. So godspeed, chef. You made your mark and left huge footsteps behind. The industry is better for having had you in it, and I don’t know when (or if) this city will ever see the likes of you again.

Bad News From the ‘Burbs

The dining room of De La Terre / Photograph by Casey Robinson

It looks like Downingtown’s experiment in casual French dining has come to an end.

De La Terre — the white tablecloth spot on West Lancaster Avenue that I reviewed last year — has closed. And that sucks because I really liked the place. I mean, I kinda feel like it was a little bit doomed from the start. Downingtown is not exactly known for its booming fine-dining scene. And the place did share a parking lot with a drive-thru Mexican restaurant. But still, De La Terre’s kitchen did some really remarkable work. Escargot, bavette steak, hyper-classical French onion soup, and venison with chanterelles — where else are you going to find that in the neighborhood? And on top of all the French-ness, the place also put out an absolutely killer burger: a “Royale With Cheese,” assembled from an American Wagyu patty, cooked a perfect medium rare, topped with raclette, slivers of crisp fried onion, Bibb lettuce, and a tomato-bacon aioli, all mounted on a toasted brioche roll and paired with fistfuls of greasy frites. It was awesome. So I had hopes that chef Andrew Hufnagel (ex of Dandelion, Jean-Georges, and Zola in State College) would be able to keep his elegantly simple and beautifully confident BYOB going despite its somewhat out-of-the-way location.

Unfortunately, that’s just not the way the world works. In early July, the restaurant announced on Facebook that it was winding down service. And on the 20th, it closed the doors for good. I have no idea what’s going to become of the space. And I have no clue what Hufnagel has planned for the future. But wherever he lands next, I’ll definitely be one of the first ones in the dining room.

Especially if he brings back that burger.

And Now, Some West Chester Restaurant Drama

Back in February, West Chester’s restaurant scene got a big boost with the opening of 9Prime — an enormous and decidedly fancy-pants steakhouse housed in a former bank building on High Street. It was a 25,000-square-foot neoclassical temple to meat with chandeliers, a custom cocktail program, seating inside the old vault, and a bona fide celebrity chef’s name attached: Fabio Viviani, from Top Chef.

Unfortunately, it looks like things haven’t been going all that well since opening. The combination of social media hype and a huge space to fill left some people feeling cold, and there have been issues with service, wait times, and a sense that there’s just nothing … special about the place.

According to Hello, West Chester, the opening GM was let go earlier this summer in an attempt at righting the ship. But that didn’t really do the trick. And now, I’ve got a press release from FVHC (Fabio Viviani Hospitality) saying that he’s gone, too.

It reads, in part: “This decision stems from a shared understanding that the ownership wishes to operate the venue independently and maintain local management. This separation allows both parties to focus on their respective strengths and priorities, enabling the ownership of 9Prime to continue enhancing the quality of service, menus, and standards as they see fit for the establishment.”

Which, if you’ve read as many press releases as I have, you’d know is basically a polite, business-y way of saying, “Fuck this, I’m out.” A shared understanding that the “ownership wishes to operate the venue independently and maintain local management?” That’s Fabio looking for the closest possible exit before his brand gets damaged by low counts on the floor and whatever nonsense is going on behind the scenes.

So maybe 9Prime will be able to recover, get off its heels, and start behaving like the proper, upscale suburban-steakhouse-operating-out-of-a-19th-century-bank-with-no-apparent-sense-of-irony-at-all that it is. But I wouldn’t bet on it.

In the meantime, if the good people of West Chester want something else to look forward to, it looks like the space at 29 East Gay Street that’s currently under construction is going to be a modern French restaurant called Jolene’s from 3 West Hospitality (who already operate Slow Hand, Square Bar, Jitters, and Brickette in West Chester).

There aren’t a lot of details yet, but the space will have seating for around 130 and is aiming for a fall opening. They’re also currently hiring for all positions, for if Fabio Viviani is still looking for something to do in West Chester.

But Maybe It’ll Work in Philly?

Auntie Anne’s Knead perfume / Photograph courtesy of Auntie Anne’s

So here’s a really terrible idea. The good people at Auntie Anne’s — the place where people who aren’t lucky enough to live in Philly have to buy their soft pretzels — have just released their own signature scent. It’s called “Knead” and is “The irresistible, instantly recognizable scent of freshly baked Auntie Anne’s pretzels, bottled just for you.”

I have two things to say about this.

First, there really is something instantly recognizable about the aroma of an Auntie Anne’s pretzel shop. No matter where you are or where you come from, you smell that strange, buttery, vaguely sweet odor, and you know exactly what it is. And according to Julie Younglove-Webb, chief brand officer at Auntie Anne’s, that’s exactly what the company was banking on. “There are few scents more recognizable than the aroma of Auntie Anne’s,” she said while announcing the release of the new fragrance. And she’s right.

Second, maybe it isn’t actually a terrible idea because the eau de pretzel was being sold online in two sizes, one ounce and 3.4 ounces, at $25 and $45 respectively, starting on August 13th. As of now, the entire stock is completely sold out. So there’s obviously a market out there for people who want to smell like pretzels.

As for me, if I ever want to put on a little Walnut Street Cologne, I’ll just head down to Miller’s Twist and dab a soft pretzel behind each ear. It works 60 percent of the time.

Now who has room for some leftovers?

The Leftovers

Chef Chris Kearse of Forsythia / Photograph by Max Mester

It looks like the Santucci’s team is on an expansion spree. According to the folks over at Philly Voice (and the Santucci’s website), the venerable purveyors of square pies are opening two new locations soon in Brigantine, New Jersey, and at 3786 Powelton Avenue in University City. There are also rumors of new locations in Cherry Hill and Deptford, though those openings seem like they might be a bit further out. Still, with 10 locations already up and running across two states, Santucci’s is already spreading the red-top gospel far and wide. Four more would just be icing on the cake.

Or sauce on the pie, as it were.

And that’s good, because in Manayunk, it looks like we’re losing one pizza shop with Pizza Jawn owner David Lee consolidating his business, closing his dedicated pizza spot on Main Street sometime next year, and moving operations down the block to Bar Jawn, which he also owns. Bar Jawn isn’t really equipped to do the kind of pies that Pizza Jawn could (the kitchen is too small), but Lee is hoping that he might find some way to bring his bigger pies back in the future. The Inquirer took a deep dive into all the complications of this move if you’re interested. The good news is, you should have until next spring to get your fill of the Detroit and Grandma-style pies that made Pizza Jawn famous.

I know the news has been very French-heavy this week, but if you’re looking for even more vichyssoise, blanquette, and foie gras, Forsythia is celebrating its five-year anniversary on August 22nd with a five-course prix-fixe highlighting favorite dishes from the past five years. The dinner will run you $95, with an optional $65 wine pairing, and proceeds from the event will benefit MyFace.org, a nonprofit dedicated to helping children and adults with facial differences. You can make reservations here.

Finally this week, you know that summer is coming to a close and autumn is on its way in Philly when Craftsman Row Saloon starts hyping their annual “Nightmare Before Christmas” pop-up bar experience. Every year, the joint goes all out, decorating the space for a massive Halloween party that goes on for weeks. It recently closed up its summery “Blooming Garden” event and has been shut down for the entire month of August in preparation for the seasonal changeover.

And guess what? Like clockwork, the invites just went out for the Nightmare Before Christmas media and VIP party on Wednesday, September 11th. Which means that the public opening should follow soon after.

More details when I get them. But for now, consider the countdown to spooky season officially begun.