Thanks for Four Years of Awesome
So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish
Blogged Around Philly: Farewell Edition
Photoist
You have a relatively new restaurant in Philadelphia.
Yes. Sampan in Philadelphia. It's been awesome. It's been a really great experience, and knock on wood things are really starting to click and we've changed the menu up.
How are you enjoying the Midtown Village neighborhood? It's really up-and-coming.
It's really good. The thing I always say is, people who were by Rittenhouse Square, they never wanted to go to the other side of Broad Street. And now all of a sudden, with so many places opening up, it's no longer ... I mean, people would think about Broad Street and be like "I'm not going over there." And I'm here thinking: "It's not an expressway! There's a light, and you go through it, and it's not a big deal." And now all of a sudden—I mean, Mark [Vetri] opened his place down the street, and Barbuzzo's up the street, and El Vez, and all of a sudden people are like "yeah, sounds good, let's cross Broad Street."
It's changed fast. We spent a lot of time in that area from 2006 – 2008.
Think about '06, what it was like! People were literally in their cars, doing dirty things on the street. You couldn't walk up and down. And now it's like—it's funny, because we were across the street from Danny's, and [our customers] would ask us: "Do you know where the nearest cash machine is?" And we'd say, well you have two options, there's a bank across the street if you go down that way, or you could go to Danny's. And you'd get these forty-five year-old men from the suburbs who'd go, "Yeah, Danny's, I'll go check that out" ... and you see their expressions when they come back.
And across the street, next to where you are now, you could see people looking over both shoulders to be sure they weren't caught...
Before they went into Sansom Street Cinema. Not where you wanted to go.
And how long since you became a neighbor?
About eight months. It's been an interesting evolution. [And] Izakaya's been open almost three and a half years.
Do you enjoy having the two restaurants in such different areas? The Borgata is a very distinct kind of location.
I do, I do. They kind of feed off of each other, which is really nice. Obviously, the people living in the [Philadelphia] suburbs, who have places down the Shore in Ventnor and Margate, they love coming to Izakaya. Then we can segue and say, "Come to Sampan in the off season."
At this point we're joined by Kristin Detterline-Munro of Philadelphia Style, who asks Schulson about the Brussels sprouts at Sampan.
We can't get rid of the Brussels sprouts.
How are they done?
We actually deep-fry them so they're nice and crispy, and then we toss them with mint and chili and fish sauce. It's got some really unique flavors.
And it is Brussels sprout season.
You know what, it's been really difficult, because now you can pretty much get anything all year round, which is good and bad at the same time. Because it's like, all right, they're not the freshest, but we tried taking them off the menu, and there was an uproar. An uproar. [Our patrons] were like, "You can't take the Brussels sprouts off the menu!" And we're like, "But they're not in season!"
You couldn't play up the fresh, local, seasonal ...
They were like, "I don't care!"
They're seasonal somewhere?
Exactly.
How much of the crowd at Izakaya comes for the restaurant, versus gamblers looking for a place to eat?
I would say it's kind of the whole package. What we've been finding with the way the economy is, people are spending less money on gambling and more on restaurants. Say you've got a thousand dollars or whatever the amount is for a weekend. You come in, you spend x dollars on a room and you say: we're going to go out to dinner three nights, so we only have this much to set aside for gambling. The restaurant's been busy. I mean tonight, in the off-season, we're a 160-seat restaurant and we have 580 reservations for the evening. It's good, we're doing good.
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