The Tines That Bind

Ellen Yin dishes on the 10th anniversary of Fork.

by David Snyder

FORK AND FUNCTION: The colorful spread of ingredients at the author's cooking session with Fork owner Ellen Yin. Photo By: David Snyder (CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

Ellen Yin opens a can of coconut milk in the kitchen at Fork, her long-running Old City bistro. The cutting board in front of us is colorfully stocked with plump jalapeños, fresh ginger root, hearts of palm and red onions. A French-cut striped bass sits nearby, waiting to be dressed in grape leaves and grilled over flames.

"If I were making this at home, I'd probably make the coconut-lime sauce first," says Yin, pouring the milk into a mixing bowl. It'll serve as a dip for the hand-rolled wraps we're making, using the grilled fish, Vietnamese rice noodles, julienned vegetables and herbs such as cilantro, mint and Thai basil.

"We don't really measure in the restaurant," Yin confides, smiling slyly. She mixes the remaining ingredients into the sauce and we give it a taste. Yin looks puzzled; something's missing. She adds a dash of fish sauce and more lime, and we taste again. This time, it's perfect. "The recipe seems far more intimidating than it looks," she admits. "But it's actually really simple."

The recipe Yin and I are preparing is featured in her new book, Forklore: Recipes and Tales From an American Bistro (Temple University Press). Yin, a native of Rumson, N.J., published the tome — which seamlessly combines recipes from the three chefs who have run Fork's kitchen with Yin's detailed anecdotes and asides — to celebrate something many restaurants never experience: a 10-year anniversary. Though it contains more than 100 recipes (opening chef Anne-Marie Lasher's broiled shad; Dave Ballentine's pasta puttanesca), Forklore is more than just a cookbook. It also tells the restaurant's story through the dishes that have appeared on its ever-evolving New American menu in the last decade.

A lifelong fascination with food led an 18-year-old Yin, the daughter of Chinese immigrants, to set a goal of opening her own restaurant. A compromise with her parents led her to Wharton, where she earned an MBA in health care administration. At 31, Yin left her job at a health care consulting firm to fulfill her plans with the help of classmate Roberto Sella, who eventually became Fork's wine director.

Early on, Yin was unconvinced that readers would be interested in Fork's history. "I was just like, 'Who cares?'" she laughs. But during a brainstorming session, "stories started coming out about how we developed the menu. That's how we got Forklore."

Indeed, each recipe doubles as a snapshot. As Yin drops the rice noodles in a pot of boiling water, she explains that the dish we're making, like many of Fork's offerings, became part of the menu through a unique process of experimentation — Sunday night dinners helmed by Thien Ngo, who replaced Ballentine in 2002.

RECIPE

Grilled Red Snapper in Grape Leaves with Vietnamese Rice-Paper Wraps and
Coconut-Lime Dipping Sauce

"When Thien first took over as chef, he saw that Roberto and I were tasting wine every single Sunday night," Yin explains. "Not being someone who would be apt to miss an opportunity to drink good wine," she jokes, "Thien said, 'Hey, I'll cook for you guys on Sundays.'" The dinners soon evolved into a testing ground for ideas, including the wraps we're making — a variation on a traditional dish from Ngo's native Vietnam. "This was one that everybody loved," Yin reminisces. "We continuously asked him to make it for us because we loved it so much."

While the noodles cook, Yin and I stuff the stomach of the fish full of lemon slices, season it with salt and pepper, wrap it up in grape leaves and place it on the grill. Though the recipe technically calls for red snapper, Yin and I are using bass, because that's what her fishmonger had available. It's a telling substitution — building a menu around local farmers and purveyors has been a Fork signature since opening in 1997 with Lasher, who now runs Picnic in West Philly. "She set the tone for our use of locally grown produce," Yin says of her original chef. "She used the local produce as an accent on each dish, so it was almost like an exclamation point."

A decade ago, a local, seasonal menu was a relatively foreign concept in Philadelphia. Today, it's de rigueur. Such progressive ideas have led Fork to be credited with transforming Old City into a dining mecca. But Yin deflects these accolades as we sit in Fork's private dining room, dipping rice paper wraps into warm bowls of water. "There were a lot of other restaurants here before us," Yin notes. As she writes in Forklore, "we were just in the right place at the right time."

But there's no denying Fork's role in pioneering a format that defines so much of Philadelphia's restaurant landscape today. "I knew I wanted something that reflected the neighborhood, that was elegant yet affordable," says Yin, "[where] anyone could come on a regular basis and dine out."

Yin and I fashion our wraps and dig in. As the flavors — the bright, mildly sweet sauce, the delicate fish, the breath of star anise from the basil — wash over my palate, it becomes clear: Much like the sauce I watched her make, Fork has succeeded because it's never been bound by conventional recipes. "Our concept is not terribly unique," Yin admits. "But it is in the sense that we're constantly evolving. We're constantly trying to come up with new ideas."

(d_snyder@citypaper.net)

Fork, 306 Market St., 215-625-9425.