Food & Wine USA - (07)July 2020

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’FAR TRANSLATES TO “VILLAGE” IN HEBREW, and chef

Camille Cogswell’s version is a culinary utopia. Her

restaurant, K’Far, located on a busy corner of the

Rittenhouse Square neighborhood in Philadelphia,

is a place where rings of Jerusalem bagels, shaped like lithe zeros that

got stretched out at yoga class, are constantly being pulled from the

ovens. (The restaurant makes around 1,300 pieces a week.) They are

best slathered with butter and generous amounts of za’atar or piled

with fluffy yellow scrambled eggs and brushstrokes of bright green

schug, a fiery Yemenite hot sauce. It’s enough to make you forget

cream cheese ever existed.

The ovens also turn out loaves of tender kubaneh, a slow-baked

bread that takes nearly 12 hours to make and involves “finger-painting”

dough with butter. In Cogswell’s world, the loaves are sliced, toasted,

and piled high with shockingly magenta salt-roasted beets and labneh,

or swooshes of brown sugar ricotta. Though Cogswell runs the kitchen

camille

k’far, philadelphia

K

i hope there is more

push from those who

love restaurants to

SUPPORT LEGISLATION

AND SYSTEMS THAT

MAKE RESTAURANTS

SUSTAINABLE. i hope

we can make these changes

in a future system that

doesn’t make dining out out

of reach for low-income

folks.” —camille cogswell

“

at K’Far, she’s quick to highlight that the menu is a team effort. Hav-

ing spent years working as a pastry chef, she says she often puts her

ego aside to learn from her cooks.

In the evening, the village transforms to a bustling dinner spot.

Ruddy grains of housemade couscous arrive at the table suspended

over a fragrant saffron and garlic broth. A piping hot pot is turned

upside-down to reveal a perfect mound of t’bit, an Iraqi chicken-and-

rice casserole. The rice—fatty, plump, deeply savory—is flavored with

both dried and fresh amba, a fermented pickled mango condiment.

This is Cogswell’s first time helming both a savory and pastry

kitchen. K’Far is the more feminine counterpoint to her mentor

Michael Solomonov’s more masculine Zahav, where she still remains

as the executive pastry chef. (Yes, she works two jobs.) The room is

softer, painted in calming hues of pink. There is an all-female leader-

ship team, and there are lots of plants. Because she is neither Israeli

nor Jewish, she turns to her large collection of cookbooks for menu

inspiration. K’far might be a Hebrew term, but Cogswell emphasizes

that the menu is not “religiously affiliated.” Instead, she is looking

to celebrate the cuisines of the region, making her k’far a place of

acceptance and good food. It’s one village we’d happily call home.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY JASON VARNEY