A sandwich shop that makes one of our favorite burgers is opening a burger joint

Many businesses had closed for a snowstorm one day in 2021, but chef Yehuda Sichel wanted to soldier on and feed the customers at his sandwich shop, Huda, near Rittenhouse Square.

The food delivery trucks were idled, and when Sichel looked in the walk-in fridge, “all I had was some raw brisket we were going to use for something else,” he said. He ran the brisket through a grinder, took out cast-iron pans and put them on the open grill, fired them up, and made smash burgers.

“It was a huge hit,” Sichel said. “They sold out.” The burgers also made best-of lists, including The Inquirer’s round-up of best burgers.

Now, Sichel and business partner Dan Berkowitz of 100x Hospitality are doubling down on burgers with a shop called Huda Burger, opening in August at 1603 Frankford Ave. in Fishtown.

Huda Burger will join a restaurant boom in Fishtown-Kensington. It’s down the block from the forthcoming Forest & Main taproom and shouting distance from the new El Chingón Fishtown, the soon-to-open Medium Rare steakhouse, and the recently announced Adda, the Indian restaurant from Unapologetic Foods. It’s also around the corner from the luxe Mexican restaurant Amá and the vibey American restaurant Percy. New York’s 7th Street Burger has a location on the way to Fishtown this fall.

Sichel’s menu will feature a rotating lineup of five or six smash burgers served on Huda’s signature house-made Japanese-style milk buns — here, they will be seeded — including a classic cheeseburger, a create-your-own option, and a vegetarian burger. There will also be a pastrami fried onion burger, which he calls a cross between a pastrami burger and an Oklahoma-style smash burger. (Sichel said he won’t be offering Huda’s house burger, known as the Mott Burger, at the new location.)

The menu will also include crispy chicken sandwiches, curly fries, house-made pickles, and milkshakes.

The Elkins Park-raised Sichel started in the kitchen at age 15, making sandwiches at a kosher deli in Baltimore. After attending culinary school in Israel, he moved to Philadelphia at 19 to work for Georges Perrier at Brasserie Perrier and Daniel Stern at Rae, followed by a stint with Neal Fraser at Grace in Los Angeles. He joined Mike Solomonov and Steve Cook in 2010, first at Zahav, then rising through the ranks, opening Citron & Rose (2012) and Abe Fisher (2014), where he was executive chef and partner until March 2020.

Mere weeks after he gave his notice, the COVID-19 pandemic shut down the world, and he opened Huda (32 S. 18th St.) that summer amid the turmoil.

Huda Burger’s space, designed by Lance Saunders, will include a half-dozen indoor counter seats and a few outdoor tables. In addition to dine-in, pickup and third-party delivery will be available, all from 11 a.m. till late daily.