At South Philly Barbacoa, Guest Chefs Are Taking Over the Kitchen in a Series of Summer Pop-Ups

Five nights a week, the kitchen sits empty at South Philly Barbacoa. Cristina Martinez and Ben Miller’s famed taqueria in the Italian Market serves only Saturday and Sunday, from 5 a.m. until the barbacoa and tortillas sell out. But why have an empty kitchen when Martinez and Miller know so many chefs who want to cook?

Throughout the summer, they plan to lend the space to their chef friends, many of whom they know through their activist work centered around immigration reform, for three- and four-night pop-ups.

“The space is available, and it’s an opportunity to help people out,” says Miller, who has already been providing the restaurant for periodic one-night pop-ups throughout the pandemic, hosting chefs like Omar Tate. But it’s a lot of work to do for a single dinner service. “You have to go shopping, get the ingredients, prep the sauces, set up — and some chefs are driving down from New York,” Miller says. “It made more sense to do at least three days.”

Since late March, guest chefs have also been at the restaurant during the day to cook 200 daily meals for Philadelphians in need through People’s Kitchen, a collaboration between 215 People’s Alliance and South Philly Barbacoa that’s funded by the international nonprofit World Central Kitchen. But come evening, when a chef is using the space for a pop-up, Miller says he just opens the door and points to the burners. “These are seasoned chefs who know what they’re doing. It’s a chance for them to have full creative license to cook whatever they want, in a small batch so they can really be creative and make stuff that’s fun for them,” Miller says.

“It’s a way to try new things,” Malik Ali said at South Philly Barbacoa last week, as he placed fried shrimp atop sweet potato grits in a to-go container shortly before customers began to stop in — one at a time, masks on — to pick up their orders during his kitchen takeover.

Ali, who got his culinary start at Joncarl Lachman’s Noord, is now working as a private chef. He’s also part of Everybody Eats, a series of food drives that kicked off in early June to support communities impacted by the property damage that occurred after the killing of George Floyd, sparking protests across the country. Other Everybody Eats organizers, like Aziza Young, Kurt Evans, and Elijah Milligan, are part of the People’s Kitchen project — “It’s all a big network, a big community,” Miller says.

Ali is heading to rooftop restaurant Irwin’s at the Bok building with Lachman July 3 through 5 for a dinner series raising money for Everybody Eats. The week of July 20, he’ll be back at South Philly Barbacoa for a multi-night residency, cooking more of the soul food he grew up with. “I’m trying to stay busy,” he said, stirring a pot next to his sister, Florence Ali, who was at South Philly Barbacoa to lend a hand.

For Seyi Wey, his tie to South Philly Barbacoa comes by way of his brother, Tunde Wey, a chef, writer, and activist who uses cooking to address racism and social injustice and has collaborated with the South Philly Barbacoa crew on different projects. Seyi Wey describes his older brother (they’re a year apart) as a “food anthropologist” and a “social engineer of African experiences for the masses.”

The siblings are from Nigeria and now live in New Orleans. This will be the younger Wey’s first visit to Philly, though he’s heard a lot about the city. “Philly has been a regular part of his journey,” Wey says of Tunde. “Philly has a huge place in his heart.”

Wey got into cooking himself “to enjoy a bit of home, since I’ve been away from Nigeria for so long,” he says, and wants to be part of bringing African cuisine to the forefront in the U.S. He plans to highlight West African staples in his pop-up. Okra soup served with pounded yam — the tuber pounded “for like an hour” until its soft fibers mash together into a thick white ball — will likely be on the menu.

“It’s hearty food. It sustains you, and you feel very connected to what you’re eating because you’re eating with your hands,” Wey says. “I want people to come hungry, leave satisfied. That’s the slogan right now. I want to bring Philly together over African food.”

Pop-ups are a way to recreate memories for Chris Paul, too. The Philadelphia-based chef spent his childhood in Haiti, where his family goes back seven or eight generations, he estimates. He landed in Philly as a teen, cooking on the Main Line and then in restaurants from Stephen Starr and Jose Garces in the city. But when he does a pop-up, he returns his focus to the Caribbean.

“The concept is ‘lakay,’ which in Haitian Creole means ‘home,’” Paul says. “Growing up in Haiti, we would eat a lot of the same things all the time, so when I was about 11 I started cooking my own things to get out of the routine. I’ve been cooking ever since.”

For his South Philly Barbacoa residency in August, Paul wants to make a dish with locally grown lalo, also known as jute leaves. Haitians typically stew the leaves and serve them with blue crab — “like collard greens, but different,” Paul says. He has a friend who cultivates the leaves in Pennsylvania; he’s waiting to see if the harvest happens in time before finalizing the menu.

“A lot of my peers are Haitian first-generation [American], but they don’t know how to cook these things or they don’t know where to get them. As a chef — someone who understands food and sourcing — it’s almost like I have a duty to cook the food they remember, which maybe they haven’t had in 10 years, or 20 years,” Paul says. “One of my goals is to inspire them to try it themselves, to retain their culture and pass it down.”

Photo documentarian Sheldon Omar-Abba, who helps out with People’s Kitchen deliveries, is using his connection to South Philly Barbacoa as a way to showcase Carl “Putty” Thomas. The artist-activist and the chef met in Fairmount Park, where Omar-Abba often went to take photos near Belmont Plateau and Thomas would be frying up fish, Jamaican-style, in the Parkside area.

The pandemic put a stop to Thomas’s cookouts, but the Jamaican-born chef contacted Omar-Abba to say he was now making fried fish platters at home. Omar-Abba went by to get one, and soon wound up taking orders for a few of his friends too, helping Thomas organize orders and delivering the food.

It’s become a weekly thing — one of the friends who asked for a platter was Miller. On Tuesday, Thomas will be cooking fried whole snapper, boneless battered fillets, and “festivals” (fried dough) at South Philly Barbacoa.

“Ben is always looking out for other chefs, and let us know if we wanted to use his kitchen one day, he’d be happy to let us,” Omar-Abba says. “I feel like as much as South Philly Barbacoa is a restaurant, it’s also one of Philadelphia’s best community organizations. Ben and Cristina offer community support in every way, whether it’s about their advocacy for immigrant rights or now tied to Black Lives Matter. They’re just constantly paying their good fortune forward.”

Harold Villarosa is one of the people driving down from New York for a South Philly Barbacoa pop-up. The Filipino chef, who grew up and lives in the South Bronx, met Miller in Copenhagen in 2015. They were both at the food-focused MAD Symposium, where Villarosa was speaking about how he uses the culinary arts to give opportunities to underprivileged youth and formerly incarcerated people through a few different enterprises, including his Insurgo Project and a coffee shop he’s planning to open in Philly later this year.

Villarosa started his own culinary career in high school, working at McDonald’s and White Castle. By the time he decided to step away from the stove to focus on social impact projects, his résumé listed some of the top restaurants in the world, including Per Se in New York and Copenhagen’s Noma.

“My motto is never forget where you came from, and always be giving back. Working with Ben and Cristina, I always tie it back to their mission of immigration reform,” Villarosa says. “I’m popping up in their space, as an immigrant who owns my own business, and showcasing Filipino food, showcasing myself as a chef, and showing people if you do the right thing for people, good karma will come back to you.”

All of the chefs popping up at South Philly Barbacoa get the word out through their own social media accounts and handle the ordering and payment themselves, though Miller says he’s happy to give a boost through his restaurant’s social media if needed. Some of the chefs have lower profiles, for now, he says, while others, like Chakriya Un and Cybille St. Aude, both coming down from Brooklyn, are more established.

“I think for the chefs it’s fun to connect with fans and followers. For people coming in, it helps them stay grounded and have a sense of normalcy, to be able to come to a restaurant and get this comfort food during this crazy time,” Miller says. “And we get the energy back, from the customers. It replenishes us too.”

The lineup, below, starts with a one-day event before moving into the multi-night pop-ups. The best way to see exact dates and menus and to order is by following the participating chefs on Instagram.

June 30: Carl Thomas, organized by Sheldon Omar-Abba

The week of July 6: Seyi Wey (for Wey, follow South Philly Barbacoa for pop-up details)

The week of July 13: Harold Villarosa

The week of July 20: Malik Ali

The week of July 27: Chakriya Un

The week of August 3: Maria Mercedes Grubb

The week of August 10: Chris Paul

The week of August 17: Cybille St. Aude

Foursquare

South Philly Barbacoa

1140 South 9th Street, , PA 19147 (215) 694-3797 Visit Website