Heavy Metal Sausage Co. is Philly’s latest hybrid restaurant star

If you had just 500 square feet to realize your culinary dreams, how would you fill it? Chef Patrick Alfiero and Melissa Pellegrino have managed to fit more than a few good ideas into the cozy confines of Heavy Metal Sausage Co.

There’s the small market of specialty foods featuring stellar local ingredients — from Susquehannah Mills oils to Pasta Lab noodles and cheeses from the Farm at Doe Run — that inspire their own cooking. That includes the whole grain Redeemer wheat from Small Valley Milling that Alfiero mills there himself and bakes into sourdough breads for the distinctive sandwich menu on the blackboard that frames the door.

And then there are the dozen or so house deli meats, sausages, and charcuterie used to fill those creations, from a clever turkey roulade with both white and dark meat to rarely seen zungenblutwurst, which Alfiero also makes. This corner storefront at West Porter and South Mole Streets is a sausage company, after all. And a fine one at that.

That’s evident when your teeth snap through a smoky hunk of garlicky kielbasa, or the fresh Italian Piccante sausage flared with Calabrian chiles, or special duck links smothered in tangy cacciatore. Heavy Metal brings a welcome burst of next-gen creativity to South Philly fueled by locally sourced meats that is reviving a legacy of Italian butchery at risk of disappearing.

If you come on Thursday nights, this tiny retail space also transforms into a romantic pop-up trattoria where a dozen lucky diners are tucked into every corner, window seat, and kitchen counter for one of the most intimate dining experiences around.

“We’ve got some add-ons tonight,” Alfiero announced during his introductory pre-meal address — a ritual of Philly’s new pop-up tasting menu bistros. A four-course prix-fixe menu for $65 already promises plenty of food with family-style menus conjured spontaneously each week. But the extras are fun, too. We weren’t going to pass on cappellacci made from fresh-milled flour pasta stuffed with roasted squash. It came with smoked ham bits, pepitas, and crumbled Valley Milkhouse Blue Bell cheese.

No one should miss the add-on charcuterie board of Alfiero’s latest creations. We devoured a generous montage of smoky bresaola, piquant beef salami, crunchy piggy porchetta di testa, and supple pink rounds of mortadella fragrant with Pennsylvania juniper and Appalachian allspice. It was well worth the additional $25.

Like many in this wave of ambitious tasting menu kitchens, Alfiero and Pellegrino’s project began as a pandemic pop-up, first out of ITV, where Alfiero was the chef, and then at the food cart inside Herman’s Coffee, Philly’s premier pop-up launching pad.

Alfiero and Pellegrino, who started dating when he was at ITV and she was the wine director at Laurel, chose this space because of the friendly neighborhood vibe surrounding West Passyunk Avenue, and the third-floor apartment where they now live.

They’ve given the retail space their personal stamp. Pellegrino, who studied at Savannah College of Art and Design before becoming a front-of-the-house fixture on Philly’s hospitality scene, indulged Alfiero’s musical passion by painting a striking mural across the far wall. A blood-red field is overlaid with a Pennsylvania keystone, animal skulls, two favorite knives, and a Death Metal-style crown of spiky vines tangled with hidden letters that are “illegible, per Pat’s request,” she says.

“It does say ‘Heavy Metal Sausage Co.,’ ” he insists. “Trust us.”

It adds an edgy energy to the room, especially in the daylight hours with Lamb of God’s guitar riffs banging through the speakers while Alfiero’s sandwich service is in full throttle. These aren’t your standard roll-based Philly sandwiches, as Alfiero has no desire to compete with the hoagie shops nearby he so admires. From the whole grain focaccia used for the Italian layered with his cotechino, salami cotto, provolone, and sweet pepper relish made to his grandmother’s recipe, to the fiery long hot pepper relish that adds a sneaky heat to his deeply smoked ham with pickled asparagus and Alpine cheese, these sandwiches are high-level expressions of his own craft.

Alfiero’s most memorable sandwich is the Poppe, named in honor of his Polish grandpa. Its fresh-ground rye bread frames a deep purple stack of tongue-studded zungenblutwurst with garlic mayo and Birchrun Hills cheddar. It’s better than I ever expected from anything starring blood salami — and is a signature new standout in Philly’s sandwich scene.

As intriguing as the daytime offerings are, the dinners show even greater potential. These two veterans of fine dining are essentially hosting elaborate dinner parties their way, casually, with finesse. To watch them work side by side in these tight quarters is to observe a clinic of refined efficiency, with Pellegrino gracefully tending the tables while an endless stream of well-prepped courses flow effortlessly from Alfiero’s minimalist open kitchen.

The food is Italian in spirit and technique, tapping their shared family heritages. But it’s clearly Pennsylvania food first, as Alfiero’s primary inspirations come from seasonal ingredients grown by local stars such as Stryker Farms (pork), Linden Dale Farm (goats), Neighbours Farmstead (rabbits), Keiser’s Pheasantry (poultry), and Green Meadow Farm (produce).

We saw that seasonality in the first antipasto course, which paired luscious eggplant caponata with the giardiniera crunch of pickled end-of-summer produce, alongside a heartier fall dish of involtini cabbage stuffed with sausage perfumed with local fennel pollen.

One of the most memorable dishes had nothing to do with meat but everything to do with Alfiero’s talent for coaxing magic from special ingredients. A risotto of Martelli rice grown in New Jersey by Blue Moon Acres was simply stunning in its subtlety, the distinctly toothy grains hovering inside a luxurious cream gravy steeped from the rinds of St. Malachi, a world-renowned Gouda hybrid from the Farm at Doe Run, with ribbons of the nutty cheese shaved to order overtop.

Alfiero’s butchery skills also extend to fish. His elaborate presentation of fresh rainbow trout from Green-Walk Trout Hatchery was a worthy main event. The whole fish were stuffed with a bread crumb-trout stuffing tanged with preserved Jimmy Nardello peppers, then pan-roasted in butter and served over a rutabaga ragù. It was topped with a salsa verde for which Alfiero used salt-cured mid-Atlantic mackerel because the typical anchovies in that herbal puree are not local.

Like many savory chefs, Alfiero has limited interest in dessert. But I’m glad fresh cannoli is among them — the shells made from house-milled flour, the ricotta filling enriched with pumpkin, then drizzled in apple molasses.

Pellegrino leaves her imprint on dessert, too, showing off talent for unconventional gelati like the caramelized fennel-flavored scoop sweetened with maple (instead of refined sugar) and topped with black walnuts. She also flexes her love of spirits here, despite Heavy Metal’s current status as a BYOB, offering guests complimentary amari from their growing collection. It’s a perfect finishing touch, along with Alfiero’s meticulously poured Chemex of Herman’s Spot Saver coffee.

The trattoria nights will become more frequent soon, including four nights of Seven Fishes feasts in Christmas week. As they continue to add options to this tiny, hybrid space, these two are clearly only limited by their imaginations.

1527 W. Porter St., heavymetalsausage.com

Open for retail and sandwiches Thursday, 10 a.m.-4 p.m.; Friday and Saturday until 6 p.m. Thursday trattoria dinner seatings at 6 and 8 p.m., advanced reservations required online.

BYOB.