The New York-Philly restaurant connection forges ahead, carrying Israeli food and dumplings

Last year, chefs Mike Solomonov and Steve Cook opened branches of their Israeli-theme restaurants Laser Wolf and K’Far in the chic Hoxton Hotel in Brooklyn’s Williamsburg neighborhood.

Laser Wolf, the skewer house, took a rooftop space in the spring, most of its hundred seats offering a dazzling view of Manhattan across the East River. K’Far, a fancier, 150-seat all-day version of their Israeli bakery-cafe, opened on the Hoxton’s lower level two months ago. Tables at both restaurants, operated by the James Beard Award-winning Boka Restaurant Group, are booked fairly solid.

Philadelphia restaurateurs have long been succeeding in New York. You can trace the pipeline back more than a century, when Joseph Horn and Frank Hardart brought their popular Horn & Hardart chain from Center City Philadelphia to Manhattan in 1912.

Horn & Hardart’s, which had hundreds of restaurants in New York, Philadelphia, and later Baltimore for decades, was famous for its Automats, a form of fast-food vending. Customers saw the dishes through a series of glass windows and dropped a coin in a slot to open them. Once removed, the dishes would be replenished from the kitchen behind it.

In a twist of time and technology, the Automat will come back to Philadelphia as the New York-Philadelphia restaurant connection resumes in 2023. The Manhattan-based Brooklyn Dumpling Shop will open a franchise location at 3400 Lancaster Ave. on the Drexel University campus in the spring. A second Philadelphia location, at 308 South St., will follow, and a third, near Rittenhouse Square, is being considered.

Stratis Morfogen of Brooklyn Chop House founded Brooklyn Dumpling Shop as a pandemic pivot to minimize face-to-face contact between customers and workers. Prep cooks work behind a glass wall. Customers use a scanner or app to place orders, and get a QR code. When the order is ready, they scan the QR code and a specific window opens to serve the dumplings. The windows are heated or chilled, depending on the dish. QR codes and lockers prevent delivery drivers from grabbing the wrong order.

This brings to mind a few other New York-to-Philly expansions:

The Cauldron (1305 Locust St. Philadelphia): This fantasy-theme bar-restaurant, which a South Jersey native launched in London in 2018 and opened the first U.S. location in New York City in 2019, allows patrons to create their own drinks by using magic wands.

Jean-Georges (Four Seasons Hotel, 19th and Arch Streets, Philadelphia): New York-based chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten brought his high-end dining experiences to the top floors of the Four Seasons Hotel at the Comcast Technology Center in 2019.

Nan Xiang Xiao Long Bao (901 Haddonfield Rd., Cherry Hill): The Michelin-recommended soup-dumpling house, which expanded from Queens to Manhattan in summer 2022, took on a partner and expanded to the Towne Center at Garden State Park in December.

Nom Wah (218 N. 13th St., Philadelphia): The venerable dim sum house, which opened in NYC’s Chinatown in 1920, opened a branch in Philadelphia’s Chinatown in 2015.

Other Half Brewing (1002 Canal St., Philadelphia): The Brooklyn brewery set up shop last year near the Punchline and other entertainment venues near Delaware Avenue in Fishtown.

P.J. Clarke’s (601 Walnut St., Philadelphia): The classic New York City tavern opened at the Curtis Center across from Independence Hall in 2018.

Paulie Gee’s Soul City Slice Shop (412 S. 13th St., Philadelphia): The Brooklyn pizzeria brought a high-energy slice shop to Washington Square West in mid-2022.

Other Philadelphia restaurateurs who have opened in New York include Stephen Starr, who exported Buddakan in 1998 in the old Meatpacking District, following up with Morimoto next door (which has since closed), and El Vez. Starr has since opened a half-dozen other restaurants in New York, one of his biggest markets.

Han Chiang, meanwhile, opened four locations of Han Dynasty in Manhattan and Brooklyn, and signed a lease last month in Long Island City and is planning a location in Jersey City, N.J. Ellen Yin and Eli Kulp spun off High Street on Market into a location called High Street on Hudson in the West Village, which closed last month after seven years. Jose Garces planted Amada in Battery Park City from 2016 to 2018. HipCityVeg had a short-lived spot in Union Square.

Cook and Solomonov had far-flung aspirations. They tried unsuccessfully to export their Federal Donuts and Dizengoff brands to Florida five years ago. Solomonov said they likely would not have opened in New York were it not for the chance to work with Boka, a national company with a deep management structure that takes most of the operations off of their plates. “We have maybe 400 employees,” Solomonov said. “Boka has like 3,000. I would say that the organization, the structure, and the support has been tremendous.”