Fond’s suburban revival delivers French comfort favorites to old fans and new audiences

I was so preoccupied with my plate of snails at Fond, admiring the subtle crunch of toasted hazelnuts in the garlicky Chartreuse butter glaze, that I didn’t quite register the man who’d risen from his table across the room and was wandering my way.

It turned out to be Sanjay Nath, a delightful acquaintance I’d run into at a dinner party a few months earlier near Rittenhouse Square. He was so out of context here, though, beside my table in this little BYOB in Wallingford, that it took a moment for me to focus. But he was beaming over his meal.

“I’m always looking for something that feels like Center City,” said Nath, 57, a psychologist and longtime resident of nearby Swarthmore, who’s been unexcited by the fine-dining options still standing in this corner of Delaware County. “This is a place with the caliber of quality that feels like that.”

Other upscale projects have struggled of late, as evidenced by the retooling of Rosemary in Ridley Park, which dialed back its special-occasion ambitions into a lower-priced concept last fall, and the recent closure of Swarthmore’s Village Vine. Luna’s Mexican Grill, inspired by the food of El Paso, Texas, and Northern Mexico, opened there in early April.

Nath, who was first impressed by a boeuf bourguignon during a winter meal, had returned for a spring dinner. He was still savoring his pan-roasted monkfish with lentils in beurre rouge. It’s a French bistro-style winner — the firm flesh sparked by the tang of a red wine butter sauce that also infused sweet cipollini onions on the side — that I’d devoured myself at Fond for the second time in as many visits.

The dish was so familiar to me, though, that if anything was out of context in this leafy suburban strip mall near the SEPTA commuter station on West Possom Hollow Road, it was Fond itself, which opened at this new location in October, some four years after shuttering.

The ambitious BYOB helped launch East Passyunk Avenue’s revival in 2009 before moving to a roomier location with a bar beside the Singing Fountain in 2012. (The old space was taken over by Laurel, from then-newly minted Top Chef Nicholas Elmi).

Lee Styer, 40, and his wife, partner, and pastry chef Jessie Prawlucki Styer, 39, transformed Fond 2.0 during the pandemic into the brunch-centric comfort hub the Dutch, which they still co-own with chef Kevin Watters. But Styer, who trained under Jean-Marie Lacroix at the Rittenhouse and Pierre Calmels at Le Bec-Fin, missed cooking French food.

The couple, who had moved to Media to raise their three young children, decided to decamp to a kitchen much closer to home for Fond 3.0. Prawlucki Styer could still make her irresistible desserts but also tend to the rhubarb, peas, and flowers from their substantial garden, along with their egg-laying chickens, and more easily sync to the rhythms of their lives as parents.

“Lee and I were 24 and 23 years old when we first opened Fond, and we had nothing to our names. We were pretty much married to the restaurant, and then my bakery [the now-closed Belle Cakery],” said Jessie, who met Lee at the Culinary Institute of America.

“All we did was work, and that was fine,” she said. “Our priorities have since changed. But this is still both of our passions. So the focus now is more about finding a better balance between enjoying our family life and running the business.”

Inheriting and rehiring all the employees from the address’ previous operator, a French-Moroccan spot called La Cannelle Café, was a lucky head start. Not only does the mostly North African kitchen staff make a tasty hummus with puffy fresh pitas for dipping, a popular starter, but lead server Pierce Craft also came with the space, running the 40-seat room with a folksy hospitality for both the brunch and dinner hours. (“I was born here,” he joked when I asked if there was a cot for him to rest in back.)

The wedge-shaped room has a casual elegance to it, with dark tables and bustled-up beige curtains for a clear view onto the newly opened 20-seat patio, where Prawlucki Styer was busy planting flowers during a lunch visit to separate it with colorful blooms from the parking lot. The inside space is pleasant without being stuffy, helped by soundproofing on the ceiling — a bonus for a crowd here that’s considerably more senior than the under-40 set that kept the couple’s previous kitchens humming on East Passyunk.

This bedroom community’s mature demographic also tends to love the classic French pleasures that Styer is so good at. The snails have practically been flying out of the kitchen, with at least 7,200 escargots gracing the plates here over the past six months. French onion soup made to the Le Bec-Fin recipe, with its bubbly hot Gruyère lid, lands on pretty much every table. And Styer can’t make enough of the silky chicken liver mousse boosted with bacon, a dish he picked up at Tangerine in the early 2000s.

When I sliced through a crisply seared pad of Hudson Valley foie gras, bent over toasted brioche and a plate swipe of caramelized date jam, I realized it had been a very long time since I’d eaten this once ubiquitously trendy ingredient that has, lately, fallen out of fashion. The melty, contrasting textures of Styer‘s straightforward version, sparked by the sweet port-infused jam, was a vividly rich reminder as to why it was popular to begin with. (The new spring version features fresh strawberries.)

Fond’s cooking is certainly not trendy. The plating is not fussy, either. And if you happen by for the daytime brunch menu and order the wrong thing — the limp and oily grilled Caesar, for example, or the popular-but-pedestrian omelet du jour — you might wonder what the big deal is. Fond has not found a lunch vibe yet that quite communicates what it’s capable of at dinner. This is true even if the lunch-only burger, a double-smash patty cooked over onions on the griddle and served on a butter-toasted brioche bun, is already one of Delco’s best.

In the evenings, Styer lets good ingredients and familiar but well-executed combinations speak for themselves. The juicy crunch of a bitter Belgian endive salad is balanced by the mustardy bite of a simple vinaigrette, the sweetness of pears and toasted pecans, the creamy flow of rich blue cheese dressing.

Tender nubs of grilled octopus channel a Mediterranean mood with chorizo, potatoes, and smoked paprika aioli. There’s always a raw fish starter — a tuna in lemongrass coconut broth or, more recently, a Scottish trout tartare — to keep it light and bright.

Styer uses risotto to showcase the seasonal whims, segueing from an earthy mushroom rice during the cooler months to an asparagus risotto with brown butter and almonds for spring. One entree I hope becomes a mainstay is the shrimp gateau, a bundle of angel hair spaghetti cleverly bound with egg yolk and cream, then pan-roasted into a lightly browned cake that serves as a pedestal for wine-poached crustaceans ringed by saffron beurre blanc.

Another steady favorite is the harissa lamb ragout, a hearty ground meat sauce lit with fragrant spice tossed with the corkscrew curls of cavatappi pasta laced with fennel fronds and vivid green cilantro yogurt.

I’m going to set my calendar for the second Sunday of each month, when Fond runs its prime rib special. This three-course beef fest, with au gratin potatoes and chocolate cream pie for $60, is an homage to the chef’s family legacy, the now-closed Styer’s Restaurant, which his great-grandfather once operated in Exeter, Pa.

Styer has already stamped a culinary legacy of his own with a dish that has followed him for all of Fond’s history, an incredibly tender hunk of overnight-braised pork belly whose cured skin is pan-roasted to a shattering crunch over purple Okinawan sweet potatoes and a splash of Dijon pork jus.

Wherever Fond goes, that belly will follow. But I was quickly reminded when desserts arrived that this restaurant’s secret has always been a family team effort. Prawlucki Styer’s desserts are traditional but precise, with technique grace notes that make them her own. The delicate shell of a cigarette-size cannoli tube stuffed with passionfruit curd laid atop the creme brûlée lends an unexpected tropical harmony to the caramelized coconut milk custard. The pear tart of winter was recently reworked with colorful new tones for spring, including Morello cherries set over pistachio custard ringed by crême anglaise that was tinted golden with saffron grown in the backyard garden.

It is her knockout chocolate layer cake, though, that has me spinning back to those first moments I noticed this promising young couple on East Passyunk 16 years ago. With shiny black drizzles of chocolate sauce dripping down the layered stripes of almond dacquoise stacked with chocolate mousse, a pool of raspberry coulis, and the sweet crackle of a cocoa nib-almond brittle crowning it all with a glorious crunch, I’m reassured that their talents have aged well, and thrilled for an appreciative new audience to embrace them. Like my friend, Sanjay Nath, who even took some of that brittle home to savor the next day.

“You can see,” he told me, “why we are all rooting for it to succeed.”

21 N. Providence Rd., Wallingford, Pa. 19086, 484-445-2108; fondbyob.com

Brunch served Wednesday through Friday, 11:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday, 10 a.m.-2:30 p.m. Dinner, Wednesday through Sunday, 5-9:30 p.m. Closed Monday and Tuesday.

BYOB.

Dinner entrees, $29-$35.

Wheelchair accessible.

About 90% of the menu is gluten-free or can be modified. All sauces are thickened with rice flour, and the lack of a deep fryer reduces chances of cross contamination.