At Sunny’s Table, Chef Reuby goes back to basics

Reuben “Chef Reuby” Asaram took a moment from addressing his diners to wield a paddle deep into the fiery mouth of the same oven that, not long ago, baked some of the city’s best Neapolitan pies.

“We don’t call this a pizza oven anymore,” says the bearded, bespectacled chef, sporting his trademark hot pink apron and cap. “This is my tandoor now.”

On cue, the paddle reemerges with a steaming hot flatbread, puffed like a balloon from the 700-degree heat. His mother, Mama Ruby, continues shaping the dough balls behind the restaurant counter, just like she does at home, so the flatbread supply remains steady while this communal table of 10 devours the lamb seekh kebabs.

They’re among the four courses being served at Sunny’s Table, the Indian tasting menu experience Asaram has been producing four nights a week as a “chef in residency” in the ground-floor dining room of Kampar in Bella Vista. (Kampar’s chef-owner, Ange Branca, serves an à la carte Malaysian menu in the Kongsi bar upstairs.)

Purists may notice that the flat-bottomed oven works differently from a vertical tandoor, where breads cook against the walls and remain flat, supple, and pliantly chewy. This naan was more like a pita. But Asaram, 32, has never been much of a traditionalist, from the moment he left his premed studies to enroll at the Culinary Institute of America.

Asaram says his naan’s puff is all the better for diners to use as a pocket to fill with meat and oozy scoops of molten Chihuahua cheese laced with cumin and roasted long hots served on the side. This Indian-Italian South Philly riff on queso fundido is a nod to a fusion style that has become Reuby’s signature in a series of pop-ups that meld South Asian flavors with Mexican influences, always splashed in fluorescent sauces vividly steeped from natural sources — save for the electric blue dust of Takis chips striping Sunny’s samosa chaat. (A butter chicken “Reubychanga” anyone?)

That multicultural flair, inspired by his friendships with Mexican colleagues in kitchen stints from New York’s Jean-Georges, Spice Market, and Morimoto, and Philadelphia’s Buddakan, led to Asaram’s selection as one of three chefs nationwide by Taco Bell to reimagine the Crunchwrap Supreme.

Asaram’s menu at Sunny’s Table is more of a tribute to the home-cooked flavors of his family’s roots in New Delhi, where his parents fell in love and married before moving to Jackson Heights, Queens. There’s an endearing pride in the air as Asaram and his mom (a computer engineer by trade) work side-by-side with broad smiles and hugs behind the counter of this open kitchen, telling family stories about his late grandfather Sunny Asaram.

Sunny was the one who made the iron skewers for these particular kebabs. He also inspired his grandson to cook, showing him the distinctive fast-moving technique — alternating between wet hands and quick bursts of exposure to searing heat — to load the soft mince of lamb seasoned with rosewater, chilies, and fenugreek onto the rods so they don’t fall off. The final texture of the cooked meat remains remarkably fluffy in the style of a Galouti kebab.

Hovering off to the side as a cohost and moderator, Ange Branca and Sam Pritchard, Kampar’s general manager and beverage director, keep the evening rolling with cheerful banter, cultural backstories, and outstanding beverage pairings, which are different from those served at the Kongsi upstairs.

Featuring largely female producers from regions that zig from the Riesling clichés typically poured with South Asian food, these wines, from a South African pinotage pét-nat to a juicy Portuguese baga, touch on Branca’s fondness for showcasing less commonly seen flavors. A Muhibba dry cider collaboration between her and Ben Wenk of Ploughman Cider in Adams County, infused with Malaysian spices (lime leaves, star anise, cumin, and coriander), is both a refreshing match and a symbolic brew of Branca’s commitment to diversity.

The communal table and wood-fired oven of the downstairs space in Kampar’s bi-level building is reserved as an intimate platform for cooks from what Branca considers “underrepresented cuisines” and a chance for her to offer mentorship.

The length of the residency — two years — sounds more like a short-term lease than a typical resident chef pop-up. Branca, previously an international business consultant for Deloitte and IBM, counters that two years is what’s needed to give a rising chef enough of a track record to earn credibility with investors to fund the next move.

“She’s like a second mother helping to set me up for success,” says Asaram, who has found Branca’s business insights invaluable. “It’s literally like going to school, but more hands-on.”

It’s hard not to root for him to get it right, especially since this chapter is part of a long comeback from health issues. In 2019, he landed in the hospital as a result of back troubles stemming from a congenital condition and a childhood of multiple surgeries. “The doctor told me: ‘You’re not going to be a chef again,’” said Asaram, whose hospitalization detoured his initial plan to run a food truck.

Sunny’s Table has been an exercise in creating a menu whose execution is engineered to his body’s specifications, with efficient movement, less lifting, and close quarters to limit rushing back and forth. That includes the wood-fired oven, whose elevation has reduced the kneeling often required by ovens. The boldness of flavors has not suffered.

One might ask how a meal of samosas and chicken tandoori could be considered “underrepresented cuisine,” given the seeming ubiquity of those dishes in Philadelphia and that Indian residents now comprise the largest Asian population in the region. There is currently no other chef attempting to showcase Indian flavors locally in a tasting menu format, traditional or otherwise, so it does offer a unique platform for the cuisine. And Branca insists that there’s a difference between the home-style renditions of these dishes that Asaram is producing, especially when served in such intimate environment bolstered with the context of conversation, and the restaurant versions people know.

There’s no doubt the wood-fired oven lends these boneless chicken thighs a distinctive smoky singe and extra juiciness, heightening the aromatics of garam masala radiating from the vivid blush of a Kashmiri red chilli and yogurt marinade. We loved it next to the fluffy mounds of turmeric-tinted lemon rice. It was an excellent tandoori chicken. But it did not quite set a new standard in terms of its depth of flavor. A bone-in version would be even better.

I enjoyed our meal enough; I have no regrets doing it once, especially bolstered by those drinks (an additional $50 for four pours) and the tres leches dessert spiced with chai tea, a collaboration between Asaram and Kampar’s resident Chilean pastry chef, Cote Tapia-Marmugi. There are plans to change the menu seasonally.

The “back to basics” approach for his debut was partly inspired by Branca, who encouraged Asaram to “pull up my roots from the ground up, because I was never Indian forward — I always ran away from it.” But if Asaram hopes to make this project sustainable with repeat guests willing to pay $90 for four courses (more than Zahav’s prix fixe menu and just shy of Her Place Supper Club), he’ll need to push beyond the comfort zone of this debut to showcase dishes that are much less common in Philly.

A nihari meat curry, typical of New Delhi, like the one he has slow-stewed in a past pop-up with brisket and marrow bones for “Marrow Me Tacos,” and a vada pao inspired by Mumbai, are two intriguing dishes he’s considering for a future menu.

It’s all part of the process of self-discovery and honing a voice for a talented chef clearly still seeking his lane between his training in fine dining, pride in family recipes, and a fondness of pop culture mash-ups (like the samosa lumpia with mole rosa chutney).

Now comes the hardest part for a chef who has already proven adept at marketing himself as a brand: creating a restaurant experience that’s enduring.

611 S. Seventh St, Philadelphia, Pa., 19147, 215-989-2202; kamparphilly.com

Sunny’s Table tasting menu downstairs: Wednesday through Saturday, one seating at 7 p.m.

Prepaid tickets for four-course tasting, $90. Wine pairings, $50.