After a decade of sous chef roles, 29-year-old Brianna Wellmon has moved up.
Wellmon, who graduated from Dobbins Excessive with a scholarship to the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y., is now government chef of Frame, a nightspot that opened final week at 222 Market St. in Previous Metropolis.
Body is positioned within the spot of the previous steakhouse Marmont, which designer Jeff Low swanked up with jewel-toned sales space seating, sultry lighting, velvet-accented brick partitions, and an intensive wraparound cocktail bar. The restaurant is meant to revive Previous Metropolis as a scene, in keeping with homeowners together with Wayne Schulick, who ran the previous Rittenhouse velvet-rope vacation spot Denim via many of the 2000s.
The world’s new nightlife choices through the pandemic have been restricted to Mei Mei, whereas The Continental and Recess closed.
Wellmon’s dinner menu consists of berbere-spiced filet mignon served in a jus of sherry and caramelized onion, and a vegan spin on beef with broccoli. She calls it “numerous and chic but additionally relatable.”
It’s the late-night menu, which kicks in at 10 p.m. Thursday to Saturday because the DJs begin spinning, that she appears proudest of.
“That is nostalgia,” Wellmon mentioned.
She paid consideration to vegan and gluten-free diets — atypical of most late-night menus. There’s spaghetti squash and meatballs (vegan and gluten-free), hen tenders (common and gluten-free), and a triple-stacked grilled cheese sandwich served with a bowl of tomato soup (vegetarian), in addition to pepperoni pizza pretzel bites and a gooey fried peanut butter and jelly sandwich on Hawaiian bread that’s dusted with powdered sugar.
The informal dishes, designed for a youthful crowd, are removed from the extra conventional meals she was making ready earlier than the pandemic, when she labored along with her longtime mentor, chef Sylva Senat, on the Pyramid Membership in Heart Metropolis.
Wellmon went pro in high school, the place she was a part of the Careers Via Culinary Arts Program and helped out Senat, himself a C-CAP alum, on the long-ago Tashan restaurant on South Broad Road.
After she left the CIA, she received an internship that sent her to Madrid for 3 months, the place she labored with chef Antonio Hernando on the restaurant Alabaster. (Therefore her use of worldwide flavors like berbere spice on Body’s filet mignon, and the inexperienced bean escabeche salad served as an appetizer.)
Again within the States, she labored principally at caterers and personal kitchens together with Garces Occasions on the Kimmel Heart. She mentioned that background, in addition to her travels, gave her a superb basis in what dinner patrons and clubgoers need, and find out how to handle a kitchen workers.
“Main a kitchen is getting up and making ready your self to a calling that extends outdoors of you,” Wellmon mentioned. “It’s difficult however gratifying. I hope to share that feeling with others.”
Wellmon mentioned she has one thing to show. “I really feel actually comfy right here, and I need to present that Philadelphia is greater than a pit cease between Washington D.C. and New York,” she mentioned. “There’s a variety of creativity right here.”
