Philly Kitchen Share, the shared use commercial kitchen that’s been serving as an incubator for up and coming local food businesses, is expanding in several ways. This week it launched American Meats & Provisions, a lunchtime corporate catering and retail sales arm, and in the months to come will spread out into the space next door to open a full service restaurant, according to culinary director Tim McGinnis. The first outlet for American Meats & Provisions is South Philly’s Green Aisle Grocery. Partnerships with several other boutique grocery stores and coffeehouses are in the works, which McGinnis said he is not at liberty to discuss right now. “We’re slowly phasing out Kitchen Share at this location,” McGinnis told Grub Street. “Since we already have the kitchen space up and running, we’re starting a sandwich line and catering operation while the restaurant is being built.”
The 40-seat restaurant - tentatively named American Meats & Provisions or some variation of that - will focus on what McGinnis calls “lost American” foods - smoked, cured, pickled and preserved items. “These are skills that everyone had at the turn of the century, because people needed them to survive,” he explained. “Those skills got lost over time, because now we can go to the supermarket and buy prosciutto for $14 a pound.” The restaurant will feature a newly built temperature and humidity controlled room, where McGinnis and his team will hang house-smoked and house-cured sausages, hams and charcuterie. The space, currently under construction will feature reclaimed and salvaged materials, including wooden folding chairs rescued from an 80-year-old school auditorium in South Philly and blackboards retrieved from an old Amish schoolhouse. “The scheme sort of reflects the overall philosophy,” McGinnis added. “Instead of throwing away all this Americana, we’re buying it and utilizing it.”
Earlier: McGinnis In at Philly Kitchen Share
