Times change. The legendary Deux Cheminees in Center City is closing on June 9th. Fritz Blank, the Cheminees’ founder, owner and Executive Chef, has operated the restaurant since 1979 and after 27 years in the business, is retiring to Thailand.
Blank spoke with the Inquirer’s Rich Nichols about his passion, one that has informed many menus at the restaurant, food history:
We have spent hours together over the years - the chef instructing me on the reach of Creole cookery (he posits that Philadelphia’s pepperpot soup shares early history with New Orleans’ gumbo), on Pennsylvania Dutch pickling techniques (he hails from distinctly German stock, though his dining menu is resolutely haute French), and on the entwined culinary destinies of the coastal muskrat and terrapin (which he has explored for the Oxford Symposium on Food, and which I was lured into exploring with him at a pan-fried muskrat feed at some firehouse or gun club or other in the bayside marshlands of southern Jersey).
Times change. The legendary Deux Cheminees in Center City is closing on June 9th. Fritz Blank, the Cheminees’ founder, owner and Executive Chef, has operated the restaurant since 1979 and after 27 years in the business, is retiring to Thailand.
Blank spoke with the Inquirer’s Rich Nichols about his passion, one that has informed many menus at the restaurant, food history:
[Photo via Charles Fox, Philadelphia Inquirer]
