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Chef Nick Elmi’s sitting at Table 17 when I walk in to Laurel, 1617 E. Passyunk Ave., the small room dimly, morning-lit, with stacks of invoices and bills surrounding him. There’s very little pomp to him — he calls me “boss” and offers me coffee. The winner of Bravo’s runaway reality competition show, Top Chef, he’s poised to become one of the biggest names in Philadelphia’s already impressive culinary cadre. And he’s doing it right here in South Philly.
His restaurant’s recently won a coveted Open Table award (Diner’s Choice 2013), as well as praise from Philadelphia Magazine, and perhaps even more important to him than the Top Chef title, three bells from Craig LaBan. Needless to say, Laurel is booked solid.
“After this weekend, we are at 11 weeks, almost three months out,” Elmi confirmed. “We didn’t see that coming.”
His BYO focuses on French and American food. The four-course menu is small, but clearly not short on flavor and presentation.
“I always have a tendency to lean towards seafood,” he admitted. “I think it’s more delicate. I have a delicate hand when it comes to food.”
And claims throughout the show’s 11th season that he was inconsistent and under-seasoned don’t really bother him because it’s a game and he won.
“I think I had a pretty polarizing season, and it’s funny to see people’s reaction to what is essentially a television show,” he said with a laugh. “And if you were the ones judging me on Twitter,” he says of the criticisms from audiences, “I’d probably be in trouble.”
And with a $125,000 cash prize and a feature in Food & Wine Magazine, yes, the stakes were high and he wasn’t going down easy without a fight. That is probably one of the reasons he caught flack for his temper in the season finale.
When his team of servers was assigned for his last chance to impress the judges, servers Elmi’s never met and who don’t know his food or him as a human, fumbled simple commands, he had no intentions of winking at the camera and staying cool.
“Anyone who watches that and is in or around the restaurant industry can understand my frustration,” he explained. “But I’ve gone through this whole process, and you tell someone to do something and they don’t do it?”
He joked, “Like I’m supposed to say ‘Don’t worry, it’s only $125,000 and smile and give a thumbs up to the camera?’”
He beat Miami’s Nina Compton, a talented chef who gave Elmi a run for his money, winning a handful of quickfire and elimination challenges, but failing to execute a better meal than the Top Chef during the finale. The two of them appeared on Bravo’s “Watch What Happens Live” after the show, with he, Compton and host Andy Cohen entertaining phone calls from judge Tom Colicchio. Elmi’s not a television personality, but he managed to drop those three important words on national TV – East Passyunk Avenue.
“Yeah, I was sure to get that in there,” he said with a smile.
The native of West Newbury, a sleepy river town in the far northeast pocket of Massachusetts, has been in Philadelphia for almost 13 years now. Elmi lives with his wife, Kristen, in Collingswood, N.J., along with their two kids, Wes (2) and Grace (4). But his first gig in Philly was at George Perrier’s Brasserie Perrier, fresh out of Culinary School at the Culinary Institute of America.
He left Philadelphia for formative experiences in New York City (working with Rocco DiSpirito and Chris Lee) and Paris, but found himself at Rittenhouse Tavern when Lee Styer, the head chef at Fond, 1537 S. 11th St., said that his former space was ripe and ready.
“Lee has been a friend of mine for years,” Elmi said. “It was vacant, he wasn’t doing anything with it and I needed something to do.”
The decision to move from Rittenhouse to East Passyunk Avenue was one that many critics have questioned. Is he regressing? Is this the right move for a rising chef? To most people who fantasize about being their own boss, this one was a no-brainer.
“People say that [it’s a mistake] but the way I look at it is that it’s a dream to do exactly what he did,” Elmi’s sous chef, Edmund Konrad, a resident of the 700 block of Medina Street, explained. “He’s got a small restaurant so that he can focus on a small team and a small menu. You open up a huge restaurant, and you have so many loose ends. You take your time here and make sure you’re doing everything as perfect as possible.”
“We didn’t open a 22-seat BYOB in South Philly to make money and get rich,” Elmi put it plainly. “We want to cater to our clients and customers. For me, especially, this is for me to say ‘This is who I am as a chef.’”
“We’re here to do one thing, and that’s to make people happy,” he added.
And they have. Alice Tran, his general manager and a resident of the 1600 block of Tasker Street, first met Elmi as the catering coordinator at the Rittenhouse Tavern. She knew, going into Laurel, that things would be far different from then on.
“That was the goal from the beginning. We didn’t want to be like everyone else by cramming in as many people and seats to turn a profit,” Tran explained. “We wanted to focus on a great dining experience.”
Elmi joins Kevin Spraga in an elite Top Chef brotherhood of Philadelphians. And while Spraga’s opened his namesake restaurant at 440 S. Broad St., Elmi is content to perfect his craft 44 covers a night.
“We want to be able to consistently serve people. I’m gaining more and more control not only of who I am but with what I’m doing,” he said.
The product, it seems, is speaking for itself, something Konrad says is due to the ability to deliver to a limited number of guests.
“It just seems like there’s a lot more heart and love that goes out to the dining room than from a huge restaurant,” the Dickinson Square West resident said.
“Right now my focus is Laurel,” Elmi said. “People’s expectations of me were that I would be doing something big and extravagant in Center City or Rittenhouse, but that’s not what I want to be doing right now.”
Contact Staff Writer Bill Chenevert at bchenevert@southphillyreview.com or ext. 117.
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