Thieves break into restaurant and steal chef’s entire collection of knives
Chef Frankie Ramirez reports the theft of his knife roll from his forthcoming Mexican restaurant, Amá. “Everybody's safe, and I still have my hands, so I'm sure I can work with something," he says.
Six weeks from opening the posh Mexican restaurant Amá in Kensington, chef Frankie Ramirez arrived Monday to a horrifying scene in his office.
His leather knife roll, containing 11 knives he has collected over the last two decades in Philadelphia restaurant kitchens, was gone.
Over the weekend, thieves gained access to the restaurant-under-construction at Front and Oxford Streets through a side door, he said. Some boxes of equipment were also missing.
“I don’t think he knows what it is,” Ramirez said. “I mean, that’s the saddest part. I know he’s going to be selling it for like $5.” He has filed a police report.
Ramirez’s name is engraved on the knives, which, besides the obvious intrinsic value, carry sentiment. He received the knives from his mentors, his father, his wife, and from line cooks as going-away gifts from previous stops such as Bliss, Parc, and LMNO. “Some I bought with my Christmas bonuses, and all the money that I saved through the years,” he said.
Since he left LMNO, “I normally always carry them in the car,” Ramirez said. He had only recently moved them into his office. The collection is a varied lot, including a 10½-inch kiritsuke (a straight-edged traditional Japanese knife), a 6-inch paring knife, a 7.6-inch yo-deba (a Western-style Japanese knife), an 11-inch slicer, a fish scaler, and hard-to-find tweezers from Japan. (Ramirez is a regular at Korin, the chef’s emporium in New York City. Vincent Kazuhito Lau, Korin’s resident knife sharpener, had visited Japan and brought back the tweezers for him.)
Ramirez is offering a reward for their return; he can be reached at [email protected].
Ramirez moved to Philadelphia from Mexico City at 16, initially working as a dishwasher at Stephen Starr’s Washington Square (now Talula’s Garden) at its 2004 opening. After his next stop, Bliss — where he met his wife, a pastry chef — Ramirez returned to Starr to work at restaurants such as Morimoto and Butcher & Singer. He was part of the opening team at Parc in 2008, rising to sous chef. His first executive chef’s job was in 2016, overseeing the two Tredici Enoteca locations, before heading the kitchen at Refectory Grill in Villanova in 2019. In 2020, he opened LMNO; he left last year.
Amá is Ramirez’s debut as a restaurateur. His partners include his wife and husband-and-wife restaurateurs Roberto Medina and Crisalida Mata, who also co-own the Media location of Spasso, as well as La Catrina in Media, and Agave in Chadds Ford.
“Everybody’s safe, and I still have my hands, so I’m sure I can work with something,” Ramirez said.