A 21-year-old chef is behind one of the city’s most distinct restaurants

Those are not burnt potatoes. What you’re looking at, cradling a tender beef cheek, is the childhood memory of some incinerated potatoes. They are delicious — and not charred at all.

These croquettes of fluffy mashed potatoes are sealed inside a delicate tempura crust turned jet black with cuttlefish ink, a trompe l’oeil recreation of the snack Ginger chef Temir Satybaldiev used to eat with his pals back in Kyrgyzstan after a summer dip in the Talas River. They would dig up potatoes from a garden, put them on a stick, and roast them directly over the coals of a bonfire until they’d crackle and smoke, “because foil was for rich people,” Satybaldiev says.

Paired with the pillow-size hunk of a tender bull’s cheek, whose luxurious softness is revealed at the touch of a fork, those potatoes and the comfort of a slow braise make a compelling tribute to home and the grandmother who inspired Satybaldiev’s journey to become a chef, beginning in professional kitchens at age 13. His subsequent years as a teen included time in several Michelin-starred restaurants in Moscow, where he acquired his affinity for avant-garde techniques, a creative sense of culinary storytelling, and a well-honed Euro polish that’s evident in much of Ginger’s food.

This dish, at once rustic and thoroughly modern, is among the many surprises that have made Satybaldiev one of the city’s most intriguing young chefs — at just 21 — and Ginger unlike any other restaurant in Northeast Philly since it opened in May 2023.

Satybaldiev’s time working in several of Moscow’s top cutting-edge kitchens, including a year as sous-chef at the two Michelin-starred Artest and stints at Savva and Twins Garden, are what ultimately gave him the ambition to come to the United States. After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine prompted the French-based Michelin guide to announce it would suspend restaurant recommendations in Russia, he decided to leave the continent in November of 2022 to pursue his dream of someday earning a Michelin star.

Philadelphia, of course, may not be an obvious destination, since it is among the most notable American food cities still not yet covered by Michelin’s red guide. But Satybaldiev has family here, including brothers Bakberdi Orozaliev and Janbolot Baktybek, who were eager to partner with him on Ginger and nearby Vanilla Cafe, a more casual space with padded white leather walls, an impressive pastry case, and a lively breakfast-lunch crowd.

The first surprise comes when you step inside Ginger’s strip mall space at the intersection of Red Lion and Verree Roads to find that a longtime former Chinese buffet has been transformed into a den of sleek green leather chairs, dark wood tables, colorful lights that glow from the walls, a cluster of sculptural chandeliers, and dramatic curtains of beads that dangle from the ceiling around a private corner table. Even the bathrooms — whose rough-hewn granite sinks are operated by copper pedals beside cubbies of neatly rolled linens — has an uncommon sense of style.

The entirely halal menu is a curious hodgepodge of well-executed international genres, collecting traditional Slavic dishes (from meaty solyanka soup to beef Stroganoff), disparate Asian classics (tom yum soup, teriyaki salmon, tuna tartare), creamy Italian pastas, and flavorful kebabs — and sometimes a fusion of all of the above.

I found highlights in each category, but it’s the fusion zone where the precocious Satybaldiev has poured his energy. He makes a special tableside appearance in his crisp dark apron to present his “dancing salad,” using tweezers to scatter bonito flakes over a bowl of crisply fried marinated eggplant chunks, then watching the smoked-fish shavings flutter skyward in the radiating heat. It is the base of the salad, though — a rough chop of smoky grilled tomatoes tossed in gingered honey soy — that makes the dish irresistibly complex, a sort of eggplant-lover’s riff on Japanese agedashi tofu.

Another salad, called chuka, pairs Central Asia and Europe’s love for offcut meats with sushi-bar delicacy. Excess trim from the massive slab of beef tongue that he cooks as one of his entree steaks is sliced into matchstick slivers of the velvety soft meat, then blended with crunchy green threads of seaweed, fragrant cilantro, and fried cashews in a lemony sesame-soy dressing. It’s a colorful contrast of textures and flavors that might be your gateway dish to tongue appreciation. Satybaldiev already had me hooked at a visit last summer with a cold soup that combined an artful pile of crunchy radishes, cucumbers, and sea grapes with morsels of tender meat submerged in a tableside pour of chilled white broth tanged with sour cream and beaded with caviar.

One of Satybaldiev’s most fascinating dishes, kinoko kayu, is a collage of at least three different cultures: a risotto-like Slavic buckwheat porridge (kasha) with white mushrooms cooked with brown butter and mushroom broth, topped with a Japanese starburst of glazed barbecue eel and a garnish of sunflower and pumpkin seeds —a Russian touch that brings the hearty bowl together with a nutty, earthy crunch.

In some ways, the fusion instincts should come naturally to someone from Kyrgyzstan, a mountainous Central Asian country along the Silk Road that at various points has been ruled by the Turkic nomads, Mongols, Russia, and the Soviet Union before becoming independent in 1991. Satybaldiev split much of his youth living between Talas and Moscow; he nods to his home country’s traditional Kyrgyz cuisine with a very good rendition of pleated manti dumplings stuffed with beef.

There are flavorful grilled kebabs seasoned with Satybaldiev’s family’s special bell pepper marinade, though my favorite was the more simply seasoned “rulet” of grass-fed filet mignon, which gets pounded and rolled with extra beef fat into pinwheels that roast over coals into a crackly savor. The pepper marinade is also used to flavor Ginger’s wider array of grilled meats, including succulent lamb chops and a perfectly cooked skirt steak, served on a board with buttery mashed potatoes and a honeyed tomato sauce on the side.

Satybaldiev makes time-consuming hand-stretched lagman noodles that he learned from his grandmother, Tayne Kulchaiym, along with her vividly spiced beef and bell pepper gravy. He serves them two ways, either in soup or fried; I prefer the latter, because it best shows off the springy snap and irregular, handmade contours of the noodles.

After tasting the creamy flow of Satybaldiev’s Basque-style “San Sebastien” cheesecake at Ginger, I’m not surprised the sweets at Vanilla are also top-notch. I recently stopped by this bright cafe on Bustleton Avenue to brunch on elegant salmon-lined avocado toast; some crisp syrniki pancakes made with farmer’s cheese (a Russian breakfast favorite); a proper, candle-warmed pot of tea infused with tart sea buckthorn berries; and some exquisitely made sweets. A mango-shaped chocolate shell stuffed with white chocolate mousse and sweet-tart mango gelée was another trompe l’oeil delight.

At Vanilla, I also devoured the best rendition of beef Stroganoff I’ve ever had, the tender threads of filet mignon glazed in a creamy mushroom sauce that was irresistibly rich without being overwhelming, the meat nestled against a cushion of silky potato mousseline. It’s almost an exact copy of the same dish I ate at Ginger a couple months earlier.

In fact, there is some obvious menu crossover that blurs the line of casual and upscale styles between the two establishments, though the much larger 80-seat Ginger clearly exudes more of a special-occasion tone. That occasion might even include a memorable double burger to which Satybaldiev has given his own flair: some very Russian-style house pickles and a capery special sauce tanged with sour cream and mustard on a tall stack of two charcoal-grilled halal patties. It’s so juicy that guests are offered black latex chef’s gloves in case they’d like to eat it without messy fingers.

“We have standards of service here, you know,” the server at Vanilla told me proudly.

Indeed, there is a crisp attention to all the details at both Ginger and Vanilla. And though, like the rest of Philadelphia’s dining scene, these places may not be in line for Michelin stars any time soon, the talented Temir Satybaldiev, who may well be the city’s youngest executive chef, is already making a name for himself in his new home.

744 Red Lion Rd., Philadelphia, Pa. 19115, 445-444-0028; ginger-restaurant.restaurant

Open Sunday and Tuesday through Thursday, noon to 11 p.m.; Friday and Saturday, until midnight. Closed Monday.

Entrees, $15.99-$35.99.

BYOB