Yehuda Sichel
Image by Michael Persico
Michael Solomonov gets the (well-deserved) glory for the mini empire of CookNSolo Philadelphia eateries (Zahav, Dizengoff, etc.) that he runs with partner Steven Cook. But outside the spotlight, the Solomonov acolyte Yehuda Sichel is turning out foods of the Jewish Diaspora at Abe Fisher, which CookNSolo opened in September 2014.
Sichel, who went to culinary school in Israel, was sous-chef at Zahav and ran the kitchen at Citron & Rose, a kosher spot the group is no longer affiliated with.
It didn’t take long for Philadelphia Inquirer restaurant critic Craig LaBan to rave that executive chef Sichel “wields schmaltz here like liquid gold.”
In January, Travel + Leisure put the restaurant on its Best New Restaurants list, saying, “Yehuda Sichel spins deliciously irreverent riffs on the foods of the Jewish Diaspora.”
Philadelphia magazine called Abe Fisher “Best Restaurant to Show Off to Your NYC Friends,” writing, “Anyone who thinks America’s best Ashkenazi and Sephardic foods are locked up in some Lower East Side deli simply hasn’t tasted the matzo brei and pastrami-style short ribs at this Rittenhouse newbie.”
In June, the Baltimore-born Sichel, 29, cooked at the James Beard House, which dubbed his meal “Sexy New Jewish Cooking.” In July, Eater named Abe Fisher one of the 21 Best New Restaurants in America; in March, Sichel was named a semifinalist for the James Beard Award for Best New Restaurant.
2015 was also the year Sichel proposed to his girlfriend. He’ll be married in 2016, a year we suspect will find him lit up by his very own spotlight.
The Forward is free to read but not free to produce
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
