Eating your vegetables has never been so delicious.
Wyatt Piazza’s take on vegetable-forward fare has fueled his own, just-opened restaurant, Kiddo, at 12th and Pine in Center City. And the 29-year-old chef is bringing his extensive experience — cooking professionally at established restaurant totems such as Parc and Oloroso, as well as Chef Dustin Valette’s eponymously-named Healdsburg, California space — and proving just what vegetables can truly be.
“That garden was my most formative culinary experience until I opened my own space,” said Piazza enthusiastically of bringing Northern Californian flair to Philly. “That California garden was a real lightbulb moment for me. I even met the kid behind ‘Kiddo,’ there. I was working behind Valette’s before my shift when a grandmother and her grandson asked for a tour of the garden. I did, and at the end of the tour, that same child ran up into the tomato vines, grabbed the largest, reddest tomato, and sunk his face into it without hesitation. That feeling, that excitement, that curiosity I saw around vegetables — that’s the emotion I wanted to capture in my own space.”
Not to be confused with vegetarian or vegan fare, a vegetable-forward menu is one where a leek, a carrot, an onion and a squash doesn’t play second fiddle to a protein. Rather, it is equal (if not more so) in prominence and flavor to its meat or fish compliment.
“Vegetable-forward fare doesn’t mean excluding meat from your diet,” said Piazza. “It simply means, maybe eating less meat, but definitely allowing vegetables take the forefront, and showcasing the agricultural bounty of your region. Including more vegetables in our diet leads to a more sustainable future. I love cooking vegetables.”
Giving the example of his fermented pepper sauce that goes with his recent pop-up menu’s Wild Striped Sea Bass and rapini (along with other dishes), Piazza says that his goal at Kiddo is to capture the “whole flavor” of each vegetable.
“With that, I took the pepper, smoke them, roast them, ferment them for 12 days, until they get pretty sour, and then mix them with a sauce from the same peppers that we cut fresh and cook lightly and puree. The new sauce is very balanced as you get the fermented notes and the aged notes of the pepper, but also its fresh notes as if it is right off the bush. One of the things we do at Kiddo is capture and concentrate those natural flavors. We’re big on preservation too – that’s a very American ideal. At Kiddo, it’s product first. We care about where and how we get what we have, and then we consider technique and how we apply it all.”
Piazza is as proud talking about sourcing from farms and local purveyors in New Jersey and Pennsylvania such as Lancaster Farm Fresh, Pottstown’s Kneehigh Farm, Hillcreek Farm — who works with the SeedSavers to cultivate new strains of vegetation — and Stoney Lane Organic in New Hope as he is discussing what’s for dinner and weekend brunch and items like Fermented pumpkin ravioli with brown butter, pepitas and beet gastrique or Cauliflower steak with potato rouille, mushroom fondue, onion straws and herbed red wine butter.
Piazza all-but-swears that no protein will overshadow any vegetable on his menu.
“We overcome that by really concentrating the flavors of freshness – say, pork chops with Asian pickled pears from Lancaster County that are very briny and very sweet,” said the chef-owner of Kiddo. “We’re heightening the flavor profile of the pear. Yes, there is a pork chop that is nicely grilled, but that pear is such a great, richly flavored component. What Kiddo does straight forward and straight up, super clean and simple.”
For more information, visit kiddorestaurant.com
