Elmi Nick - Laurel: Modern American Flavors in Philadelphia

We opened Laurel, a modern American restaurant steeped in French tradition, in a tiny space on East Passyunk Avenue in South Philly in 2013. I had just finished filming Top Chef, but it was before the finale aired. I knew I had won, but I couldnt tell anyone besides my wife, Kristen. There were confidentiality agreements; everything was top secret.

I had quit my last chef job, at Rittenhouse Tavern in Center City, to do the show. Before that I worked for Georges Perrier for thirteen years on and off, first at Brasserie Perrier, then at Le Bec-Fin, where I was the head chef for three and a half years. I knew it was time to open my own place. We had been looking and looking for a space all around the city. Lee Styer had been my sous chef at Le Bec for six months and left in 2008 to open Fond on Passyunk. He had moved the restaurant to a larger location across from the Singing Fountain, which is like the town square of our neighborhood, with a fountain in the center that plays music. When its warm out, little kids splash around in the water. Theres a small farmers market on Wednesdays. At Christmas, the neighborhood association puts up a big tree and has a lighting ceremony with hot cider and carols.

I have a special attachment to East Passyunk. When I first moved to Philly in 2000 to work at Brasserie Perrier, I crashed on my brothers couch for a month, then moved to an apartment with my sous chef at the time and his wife on 13th and Morris Streets, a couple of blocks off the Avenue, as locals call it. There was no fountain then, no farmers market, none of the restaurants that would eventually come to define Passyunk as one of the citys best dining strips. But I liked it here. It was clean and safe and felt like a real neighborhood. This is the first place I lived, in what was to me a new city. I grew up in West Newbury, Massachusetts, on the Merrimack River. I came to Philly to cook and never left.

By the time I was ready to open Laurel and looking for a space, the Avenue was gaining traction. There were great restaurants like Paradiso and Will and cool small shops. Food & Wine named East Passyunk one of the top food destinations in America. There was a real energy down here that I wanted to be a part of. What I loved about the area so much, and still love about it, is that all the successful restaurants have chefs that are in their restaurants. People who open restaurants here are people who want to be in the kitchen, who want to have their hands in the food. That creates a realness to the cuisine and the restaurants.

So Lees original space was sitting empty. He was thinking of doing a brunch place or a gallery, but while we were playing poker at his house one night, we drank tequila and I persuaded him to sublease it to me. I gave him $5,000 cash, and he said I could have the lease. Four months later, Laurel was open.

I was twenty-seven when I started working at Le Bec-Fin, and after three and half years there, I was a mess. I dont know how my wife stayed with me. During my first year there we went through thirty-two cooks. Thirty-two.

For a cook in Philly at that time, Le Bec was the peak of the professional mountain. It had been considered the best restaurant in the city for forty years, a temple of French fine dining that had put Philly on the culinary map in 1970. (Chef Perrier has a street named after him, to give you an idea of his notoriety.) The environment was very intense. Chef thrives in chaos. He needed to yell, he needed to scream, something had to be wrong all the time. We would make the porcini sauce for our ravioli, for example. Id take a quart upstairs for service, and he would say, Its perfect! The next day, I would bring him a quart of the very same batch of sauce to taste, and he would say, Its shit! It messes with your head, to the point where I was almost broken by the time I left.

But he was also very paternal. When Im with himand we have a great relationship nowI treat him as if hes my father. When my old chefs ask about him, they say, Hows Father? When things were bad at Le Bec, we wouldnt talk about quitting. We talked about running away.

I never got the chance. In 2012, Chef sold Le Bec. The new owner called the entire staff into the dining room, along with the new chef, and said that everyone had the opportunity to keep their job. I spoke up, Except for me, right? To go through almost four years at Le Bec and have it capped by that. I left with a chip on my shoulder.

When I opened Laurel, I didnt know exactly what I wanted it to be, but I knew I didnt want it to be Le Bec. During the entire time I had been the chef at Le Bec, not one of my friends came in to eat. But I understood. Nobody wants to sit down in a stuffy dining room. Nobody wants to be uncomfortable in a restaurant, physically or emotionally.

A quick story: my wife and I went with two other couples to a very famous restaurant two years ago, and the service well, they werent very nice to us. It was like they looked down on us because we only ordered three bottles of wine instead of six or ten. We were shoulder to shoulder at a four topsix people at a table meant for fourand we spent $1,400 per couple. I dont like that feeling. And I didnt like what we did at Le Bec either. We had regulars that came in every week and spent thousands of dollars on wine. It was like we knew whom we were going to make money off of, and if we didnt think we were going to make money off of you, we were going to get you in and get you out quickly. It was cold and detached.