When a towheaded 3-year-old crossed the threshold of Federal Donuts, she beamed as if someone had hit a switch. “Does she ever turn that off?” the cashier asked of the girl’s smile. The answer turned out to be “Not while she’s here.”
Chef Michael Solomonov opened the Philadelphia hot spot in mid-October. The budding restaurateur also opened a sandwich joint, Percy Street Barbecue, in early November, a satellite of the South Street original he opened two years ago. (For good measure, he had his first kid, David, in August.) Solomonov, 33, also owns Zahav, a three-year-old, high-end Israeli street food restaurant. Every venue, whether takeout or sit-down, is tops in its class.
The “Donuts/Chicken/Coffee” sign outside Federal Donuts is an exact descriptor of the spare menu, but it’s a whopping undersell. Behind the donut racks, a Donut Robot, a fully automated 1950s-era machine, makes hot, un-yeasted “cake donuts” to order, gently dropping rings of batter into the frying oil as if they were magical eggs. Cooked, the hot donuts are dusted with Indian cinnamon, vanilla and lavender powder, or a sweet/savory Appolonia spice. These doughnuts are the real breakfast draw — warm, puffy clouds that could be sprinkled with just about anything and still taste good.
But then: the chicken. Federal Donuts goes through some 500 birds a week that, like the best French fries, are double-fried, then either sprinkled with dry flavorings like za’atar, buttermilk ranch or harissa, or glazed with either a honey ginger or chili-garlic sauce and served in a box with a honey donut and peculiar little Japanese white-soy-tinged pickles.
The dry birds have a boomingly crisp skin, with flavors that start with the Mediterranean and end with the buttermilk, leaving you reminiscing about sour-cream-and-onion potato chips. The chili-garlic-glazed chicken is hot, moist in the middle and still a bit crunchy on the outside, quickly numbing your lips and tongue without being too spicy — earning instant placement on the short list of Philly’s best foods.
Originally, Solomonov and crew thought they’d stay open until they ran out of chicken at 8 or 9 p.m. Now they give out numbered cards starting at 11:45 a.m., start calling out numbers at noon and usually run out of stock and close the doors before 2.
When I met with Solomonov at the new sandwich place in the Comcast Center skyscraper, I noticed the vast difference between each of his places: Federal Donuts is a takeout joint with just a few stools at the counter; the original Percy Street is serious barbecue; and this Comcast Center spot shares food court space with Panda Express Chinese food.
Though Solomonov throws a lot of culinary curveballs, it doesn’t seem like such a monster leap to the Israeli-born Philadelphian that he wound up running a pair of barbecue joints.
“I grew up eating brisket — Texas barbecue is a direct relative. As a chef, you’re always trying to achieve a minimalist ideal, and barbecue is meat, smoke and salt. Maybe pepper. That’s it. There’s something pure to it,” he said.
Here in the Comcast Center, the pulled pork sandwich — tangy, spicy, juicy, sweet, smoky — is the star of his short menu. There might be cheese on it, but this is a serious sandwich that just happens to be served in a food court.
“If you find something that works, it makes sense to reproduce it, but that’s not what I do,” he said. “Here at the sandwich shop, you can meltcheddar over sliced brisket and not get lynched like you would in Texas.”
The magic happens Texas-style at the original Percy Street Barbecue, where animal is king, from ribs to turkey tails. The kitchen is dominated by a pair of 1-ton Little Red Smokehouse smokers, made in Mesquite, Texas, and fired with red oak.
Their brisket — they go through about 30 a week — sits in 230-degree smoke for eight hours and is served moist, lean or both. Fans of burnt ends may wish to bat their eyelashes at their server.
Everything — brisket, ribs, even chicken — comes out of the smoker with a thick, dark, smoky outer layer and interiors so moist that they don’t require much in the way of teeth. The dripping brisket and pork belly are all anyone needs to taste to understand that fat is flavor.
Solomonov, blinky-eyed tired and sporting a few days of stubble, runs around making it all happen, having been to five morning meetings in five different places around town. He spends a few early afternoon hours with his infant son, eats a “ridiculously early dinner,” then heads to Zahav to run the show.
“I really have no idea how I do it,” he mused. “I spend more time with my dishwashers than I do with my wife.”
That last stop on his daily tour de cuisine is his main gig, where Israeli street food is given its serious due, and the menu, alternately referred to as Israeli or Mediterranean, is not as limiting as it might sound. He introduces new versions of food, particularly vegetables, to the American palate, and the dishes, often steeped in their own juices, are rich in flavor and color, to the point where it’s surprising to remember that this is street food.
These are the dishes that inspired Solomonov to bring his staff to Israel on a weeklong eating binge just before opening Zahav. Some of those cooking methods have been around for eons, but on this side of the Atlantic, they’re a revelation.
“I couldn’t explain to my staff what hummus tasted like in Jerusalem. Unless you’re from there, it’s going to be hard to comprehend,” he said of both the trip and the cuisine. “Israel’s got all of these influences — North African, Iraqi, Lebanese. Our restaurant just happens to be in Philadelphia.”
Joe Ray is a food and travel writer and photographer based in Brooklyn, N.Y.
Chef Michael Solomonov opened the Philadelphia hot spot in mid-October. The budding restaurateur also opened a sandwich joint, Percy Street Barbecue, in early November, a satellite of the South Street original he opened two years ago. (For good measure, he had his first kid, David, in August.) Solomonov, 33, also owns Zahav, a three-year-old, high-end Israeli street food restaurant. Every venue, whether takeout or sit-down, is tops in its class.
The “Donuts/Chicken/Coffee” sign outside Federal Donuts is an exact descriptor of the spare menu, but it’s a whopping undersell. Behind the donut racks, a Donut Robot, a fully automated 1950s-era machine, makes hot, un-yeasted “cake donuts” to order, gently dropping rings of batter into the frying oil as if they were magical eggs. Cooked, the hot donuts are dusted with Indian cinnamon, vanilla and lavender powder, or a sweet/savory Appolonia spice. These doughnuts are the real breakfast draw — warm, puffy clouds that could be sprinkled with just about anything and still taste good.
But then: the chicken. Federal Donuts goes through some 500 birds a week that, like the best French fries, are double-fried, then either sprinkled with dry flavorings like za’atar, buttermilk ranch or harissa, or glazed with either a honey ginger or chili-garlic sauce and served in a box with a honey donut and peculiar little Japanese white-soy-tinged pickles.
The dry birds have a boomingly crisp skin, with flavors that start with the Mediterranean and end with the buttermilk, leaving you reminiscing about sour-cream-and-onion potato chips. The chili-garlic-glazed chicken is hot, moist in the middle and still a bit crunchy on the outside, quickly numbing your lips and tongue without being too spicy — earning instant placement on the short list of Philly’s best foods.
Originally, Solomonov and crew thought they’d stay open until they ran out of chicken at 8 or 9 p.m. Now they give out numbered cards starting at 11:45 a.m., start calling out numbers at noon and usually run out of stock and close the doors before 2.
When I met with Solomonov at the new sandwich place in the Comcast Center skyscraper, I noticed the vast difference between each of his places: Federal Donuts is a takeout joint with just a few stools at the counter; the original Percy Street is serious barbecue; and this Comcast Center spot shares food court space with Panda Express Chinese food.
Though Solomonov throws a lot of culinary curveballs, it doesn’t seem like such a monster leap to the Israeli-born Philadelphian that he wound up running a pair of barbecue joints.
“I grew up eating brisket — Texas barbecue is a direct relative. As a chef, you’re always trying to achieve a minimalist ideal, and barbecue is meat, smoke and salt. Maybe pepper. That’s it. There’s something pure to it,” he said.
Here in the Comcast Center, the pulled pork sandwich — tangy, spicy, juicy, sweet, smoky — is the star of his short menu. There might be cheese on it, but this is a serious sandwich that just happens to be served in a food court.
“If you find something that works, it makes sense to reproduce it, but that’s not what I do,” he said. “Here at the sandwich shop, you can meltcheddar over sliced brisket and not get lynched like you would in Texas.”
The magic happens Texas-style at the original Percy Street Barbecue, where animal is king, from ribs to turkey tails. The kitchen is dominated by a pair of 1-ton Little Red Smokehouse smokers, made in Mesquite, Texas, and fired with red oak.
Their brisket — they go through about 30 a week — sits in 230-degree smoke for eight hours and is served moist, lean or both. Fans of burnt ends may wish to bat their eyelashes at their server.
Everything — brisket, ribs, even chicken — comes out of the smoker with a thick, dark, smoky outer layer and interiors so moist that they don’t require much in the way of teeth. The dripping brisket and pork belly are all anyone needs to taste to understand that fat is flavor.
Solomonov, blinky-eyed tired and sporting a few days of stubble, runs around making it all happen, having been to five morning meetings in five different places around town. He spends a few early afternoon hours with his infant son, eats a “ridiculously early dinner,” then heads to Zahav to run the show.
“I really have no idea how I do it,” he mused. “I spend more time with my dishwashers than I do with my wife.”
That last stop on his daily tour de cuisine is his main gig, where Israeli street food is given its serious due, and the menu, alternately referred to as Israeli or Mediterranean, is not as limiting as it might sound. He introduces new versions of food, particularly vegetables, to the American palate, and the dishes, often steeped in their own juices, are rich in flavor and color, to the point where it’s surprising to remember that this is street food.
These are the dishes that inspired Solomonov to bring his staff to Israel on a weeklong eating binge just before opening Zahav. Some of those cooking methods have been around for eons, but on this side of the Atlantic, they’re a revelation.
“I couldn’t explain to my staff what hummus tasted like in Jerusalem. Unless you’re from there, it’s going to be hard to comprehend,” he said of both the trip and the cuisine. “Israel’s got all of these influences — North African, Iraqi, Lebanese. Our restaurant just happens to be in Philadelphia.”
Joe Ray is a food and travel writer and photographer based in Brooklyn, N.Y.
