Please note: This article is published as an archive copy from Philadelphia City Paper. My City Paper is not affiliated with Philadelphia City Paper. Philadelphia City Paper was an alternative weekly newspaper in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The last edition was published on October 8, 2015.
April 6-12, 2006
Eats : Food
The Ties That BookbindOff The Menu
The idea was to lunch at the Applebee's that recently opened in the old 15th Street Bookbinders' building with a Bookbinder. But the 43-year-old grandson of Samuel Bookbinder II, the founder of that legendary local seafood house, seemed hungrier for information than for Applebee's. In fact, Wachovia Securities broker S. Coleman "Coley" Bookbinder IV only paused at our table long enough to drop off his coat before he was off on an inspection tour down memory lane.
Like all Applebee's, the walls of this one are covered with local memorabilia—which is one thing when the new Applebee's is located in some new strip mall but quite another when, as here, the posters for Rocky and the Philadelphia Orchestra replace signed pictures of celebrities who ate in this space. Standing in the back hallway, Bookbinder recalled a photo of him faking a punch to boxer Muhammad Ali that used to be on that wall, warning, "I might get a little teary."
Back at the table, Bookbinder fielded a cell phone call from his mother, Constance. "It's all different. They've got all this crap on the walls, new floors," he reported dismissively. In fact, the brass fish and lobster on the metal grates surrounding the new outside stoop would seem to be the only surviving fish house feature.
Bookbinder doesn't blame his uncle, Richard, for selling the building to the developer who leased it to Applebee's. "It's a grinding, thankless business" that Bookbinder's own late father, Sam III, or "Buddy," bowed out of in 1992. And though Bookbinder and his two siblings all worked at the restaurant before going to Cornell restaurant school, he and his brother now work in the investment business. "Restaurants are just not as financially rewarding as lots of other things. Even for my father it was more of a hobby," Bookbinder said, noting that almost all U.S. restaurants the size of either of Philly's Bookbinders are now operated by chains. (In fact, the city's first Bookbinder family restaurant—Old Original on Second and Walnut streets—was greatly downsized as part of its 2005 re-creation.)
We worked hard to find Bookbinders-like dishes on the Applebee's menu. Bookbinder ordered pasta with shrimp that he declared "tasteless," and probably long frozen. This got him reminiscing about chopping the heads off of turtles used in Bookbinders' famous snapping turtle soup. That obviously wouldn't be in the job description of any of the pert, young 15th Street Applebee's staff. But considering all the photos of old Philadelphia that line the new drywall, "You'd think they might have one of the old Bookbinders," he mused.
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