I cooked dinner for South Philly Tap Room's chef, Scott Schroeder

Editor's Note: In this new series, Turning the Tables, food editor Caroline Russock writes about what unfolds around the table when she invites some of the city's best chefs to a meal in her South Philly home.

HOT TOMATO: For Scott Schroeder, it all started with a sandwich.
Neal Santos

Editor’s Note: In this new series, Turning the Tables, food editor Caroline Russock writes about what unfolds around the table when she invites some of the city’s best chefs to a meal in her South Philly home.

The first meal I ate at the South Philadelphia Tap Room was a tomato sandwich, served at one of the bar’s outside tables on Mifflin Street on a very warm July night about three and a half years ago. Not long after that, I decided to move to Philly and buy a house in Newbold. Back then I didn’t know South Philly Tap Room/American Sardine Bar chef Scott Schroeder, and I certainly knew nothing about his grandmother, Joanne, whom Schroeder used to visit in Kentucky in the summers when he was growing up.

“My grandma, Joanne, is, like, a really mean woman,” Scott said. But she’s also the backwoods, Southern woman who introduced him to the tomato sandwich and, in turn, his career in the kitchen. 

“My favorite thing is my grandma’s tomato mayonnaise sandwich because it was a turning point in how I thought about food, simple as it was,” he said. 

Scott shared the story of this life-changing tomato sandwich over dinner at my place (which is, incidentally, within stumbling distance of the Tap Room). And knowing him, I kept the menu simple: some chicken-liver pâté to start, lasagna Bolognese, a fennel-grapefruit salad and plenty of good wine.

Scott recalls: “This happened over and over when I went down South. … My grandma would ask me, ‘What do you want for lunch today?’ And I’d say, ‘I want a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.’ And she’d say, ‘You’ve had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich every day since you’ve been here. Have you ever had a tomato and mayonnaise sandwich?’ And I’d say, ‘Eww! Why would I want a tomato and mayo sandwich?’ And because she was mean, that was it. You were either going to starve or eat this thing.”

“But it was just, like, this gushy thing with salt and pepper on it and I bit into it and it was my favorite thing ever. I wanted this thing every day for the rest of my life. And it changed me,” he said.

Growing up in Detroit, Scott was raised on Midwestern fare of the German, Polish and Hungarian sort. And of course, hot dogs were serious business.

Schroeder’s grandfather grew up in Tennessee, but his great-grandfather emigrated from Milan. And it was this very American lineage that made Joanne, the mean grandma, well-versed in both biscuits and gravy and Sunday gravy. 

“Any time I went down South, there would always be these new things to try. My Uncle Jack would bring down tons of sliced mortadella. I grew up in an American Midwestern home. We had kielbasa. Everything opened up a little bit more with each visit.”

Whether it was his grandmother’s dead-simple chicken and dumplings (secret ingredients: salt and pepper) or homegrown, windowsill-ripened tomatoes sliced and piled on Wonder Bread, with a little too much Miracle Whip (“There was a time in the ’80s when Miracle Whip pretty much replaces mayonnaise”), everything that comes out of Schroeder’s kitchens today comes from memory. 

“It could be something my grandma made me when I was 8,” he said. “It could be something that I had for lunch today in Chinatown. There’s something that I want in the taste that feels like my grandma made it, and I think that’s what comfort food is.”

Scott has been sharing his singular take on comfort food with Newbold for the past five-and-a-half years at the Tap Room and more recently with the sandwich-centric American Sardine Bar in Point Breeze. Both menus live in a similar place — familiar dishes are elevated both by ingredients and the time Schroeder has spent cooking in Philadelphia since 1996, with stints at Brasserie Perrier, Matyson, Royal Tavern and Jones. 

Macaroni and cheese is fancied up with fontal cheese sauce, truffled pecorino and mushroom-mustard jam. Meatloaf made from Berks County pork is served with ricotta mashed potatoes at SPTR. At ASB, there are spaghetti sandwiches and sides of oyster-sauced roasted brussels sprouts sprinkled with pickled chiles. 

But with his two restaurants so close together, they’re creating something of a competition with each other. And Schroeder will be the first to say that Philadelphia doesn’t really need another mac and cheese and burger joint. Or another beer bar, for that matter. 

Next up on Schroeder’s agenda, with SPTR/ASB owner John Longacre, is a South Philly pizzeria with a focus on nontraditional pies. 

But even without any pizzaiolo experience on his resume, Scott isn’t concerned. “To me, being a good cook means being able to make the food taste like you imagine it. It’s kind of like with music; a good guitarist is someone who can hear something in his head and replicate it on his guitar. I think that’s the same thing as cooking.” 

It should probably be known that Schroeder dabbles in a bit of punk and country guitar, but when asked, he’ll tell you that he’s not that good.