Wood-fired fare wows at Petruce et al.

AL FORNO: Petruce’s lasagna is layered with béchamel and pecorino then finished in a wood-fired oven.
Neal Santos

Sweet potatoes, I like them fine — whether roasted crispy, baked with butter and cinnamon or even turned into gnocchi. But it’s not every day one renders you speechless.

The roasted sweets set in front of me rose from a charcoal plate like traffic cones on tarmac. Whorls of shallot-tinged avocado purée glued the soft, caramelized roots in place along a course that followed the dish’s outer curve. Pulpy tomatillo, seared in cast-iron, sidled up to the spuds. A salty blizzard of queso fresco blew in. Corn nuts crunched. 

A few days later, I’m able to put the thoughts into words, but at the time, the perfectly pitched contrasts of sweet, tangy, salty and fatty hit control-alt-delete on my brain. Words wouldn’t mesh, sentences couldn’t compute. I blurted out some enthralled, unintelligible compliments. 

It bears repeating: It’s not every day a sweet potato renders you speechless. Then again, it’s not every day you have a sweet potato cooked by Justin and Jonathan Petruce.

After cutting their teeth around town (MéMé, Little Fish) for nearly a decade, the brothers in business and blood gutted a women’s clothing store and created a place of their own, Petruce et al, with longtime pal and partner Tim Kweeder. The restaurant opened in March; a narrow lounge widens like a bottle as you move to the rear dining room. That’s where the showpiece of the open kitchen, a custom-built, domed oven, awaits feeding. Almost everything on the Petruces’ menu — including the magic sweet potatoes — gets a kiss from the hungry flames. 

I still can’t get over the surprising Mexican-ness of that dish; you could put all those components in a corn tortilla and have one hell of a taco. “We had tomatillos and avocados lying around, and there were also sweet potatoes,” says Jonathan Petruce with a shrug. “The dish started as a placeholder until spring produce really started coming in.” It’s become so popular, it’s received an official stay of execution.  

Which is not to say the Petruces aren’t seasonally attuned chefs. Mad about ramps? Check them out when lightly charred and draped over an ivory block of smoky halibut roasted in the oven and seated on bread sauce — a purée of the house-baked sourdough, garlic, onions and olive oil every chef in Philly should be taking notes on. Ribbons of spring asparagus cropped up as well, a complement to the crisp-skinned, impeccably moist roasted half-chicken with white grits, pancetta, schmaltz-blistered scallions and a luminous sauce that was like a hollandaise but with white soy. An Argentine-style Grill Works grill complements the oven. Glowing coals curl the tips of oil-poached octopus tentacles into tight little fists; the Petruces place them over elegant congee accessorized with a Southern portfolio of field peas and sorghum syrup — Charleston by way of China. 

Beneath grates stacked with whole sea breams and 2-pound strip loins, fava beans bury in the coals, where the intense heat steams them inside their husks. The beans stud a smart salad of young chard leaves and fried chickpeas finished with za’atar and grapefruit juice.

You’ll need that refreshing salad — and little else — if you’re going to tackle the lasagna. “Our dad works for an Italian meat company in the Poconos, and these food scientists come over from Italy to work at the plant” on long-term contracts. “One of them came for Thanksgiving one year and brought a lasagna that she made. It was the best we ever had.” Recreating her recipe, they swap out typical ricotta for a lavish nutmeg-scented béchamel. Layered between sheets of semolina pasta then blanketed in vivid tomato sauce and shaved pecorino and baked in a cast-iron pan in the oven, the cream sauce oozes out the sides.

“She actually came into the restaurant a few weeks ago and ordered it,” Jonathan says. “She didn’t even know, but was all happy when we told her that her lasagna was the inspiration. She said ours is better.” Especially paired with a glass of Lambrusco, a wine finally getting its due, thanks to producers like Venturini Baldini (fizzy and not at all sweet) and sommeliers like Kweeder, whose groundbreaking work at a.bar precedes him.

The final member of this four-man A-team, George Costa (Southwark, Pub & Kitchen) is behind the bar mixing up masterful drinks with ingredients like crème yvette, hibiscus bitters, cherry heering and clarified milk. His Pancho’s Lament cuts chile-infused tequila with Ramazzotti, sparkling water and cold-brew coffee. 

Double-down the caffeine with dessert, coffee soft-serve piped in a glass and topped with a miniature glazed donut garnished with crushed cocoa nibs.  The bowl of pineapple is really something else. Paired with coconut-chocolate ganache (vegan) and a bar of mochi cake that chews like a macaroon, the fruit is smoky, tangy, succulent. You shouldn’t be surprised to learn they roast the pineapple whole in the coals until the skin burns and the fruit cooks in its own juices. 

“It’s our version of sousvide,” laughs Justin Petruce, who was late to the interview because he was out buying mochi flour for this very dessert. 

PETRUCE ET AL | 1121 Walnut St., 267-225-8232, petrucephilly.com.  Tue.-Sat., 5-11 p.m.;  Sun., 5-10 p.m. Small, $3-$14; medium, $14-$19; large, $21-$32; et al, $33-$67; dessert, $7-$9.