The Marigold touch: Chefs and menus change, but restaurant remains a tasty West Philly fixture

EVERY restaurant has its problems, but few are as specific as Marigold Kitchen's. Take the cold call the staff fielded the other day. "Are you still serving meat loaf?" the caller inquired.

If this were a comedy sketch, GM Chris Albert would silently run down the modernist tasting menu - making deliberate note of elements like basil seltzer, black garlic and cubeb - and reply with a deadpan, "No, ma'am."

Meat loaf has not been offered at this West Philly BYOB for a decade-plus. But that's just what happens when a restaurant maintains the same address, the same phone number and (basically) the same name over the chunkier part of a century.

In a culinary climate that reserves its richest attention for the unfamiliar, Marigold, at 45th and Larchwood streets, moves forward by remaining stationary, physically speaking. Inside, its modest kitchen has hosted an impressive progression of chefs, each of whom has made this old Victorian house a home.

If it's rare for restaurants to stick around these days, it's even rarer for one to take so well to drastic change - its only constant, and its most vital strength.

Built around 1905, Marigold was originally a boarding house and has operated as a restaurant since 1934. In those days, it was known as Marigold Tea Room, a casual respite for neighbors and Penn professors in leafy Spruce Hill. In 1959, the Rastelli family, of Havertown, got hold of the property and still owns it today.

Bette Rastelli, mother of current owner John Rastelli, renamed it Marigold Dining Room. Along with her husband, Matthew, Bette set out to make the place her own, pleasing customers with hearty cooking (the deviled crab was a hit) and serious hospitality - she took to decorating the walls with the wedding portraits of couples who'd met and dined there.

"Dinner started at $1.15 and went up to $1.95," said John, who worked in the restaurant as a kid, and, wouldn't you know it, met his wife of 50 years there at the age of 19. "My mom loved the restaurant. It was her whole life."

Just last month, an old customer tracked him down to see if he could divulge Bette's recipe for chicken piccata.

In the late '90s, Bette began leasing Marigold, a largely untouched charmer, complete with original fixtures and decorative touches and a dining room where the living room should be.

It was a Vietnamese place, briefly, and then a comfort-food operation run by industry vets Chaz Covington and Richard Dematt. After they bowed out, the Rastellis went looking for a new tenant, and found upstart chef Steve Cook.

"I didn't want to be right in Center City for my first restaurant," said Cook. "I wanted it to be a little bit more low-key." Nowadays, he's a force in Philly's restaurant scene, running Zahav, Percy Street Barbecue, Federal Donuts, Abe Fisher and Dizengoff with his partner, Michael Solomonov. In 2003, however, he was a banker turned greenhorn line cook, scraping a beat-up hood with a putty knife to prepare for his first night of service.

Cook, who tweaked the name to Marigold Kitchen, built up a nice clientele with his modern American menu. But the grind began wearing on the entrepreneur, who looked to shift over to the business side of the industry.

Cook's wife, Shira, introduced him to her childhood friend Solomonov, a Vetri sous chef who, like Cook, sought his own opportunity. Solomonov took over at Marigold in 2005.

"I hadn't taken a breath in 18 months," said Cook, relieved to have an energetic new chef in place. "It was a leap of faith with Mike - for both of us, I'm sure - but it's one of those things that worked out."

Solomonov reimagined Marigold, playing with many of the Israeli elements that went on to inform Zahav's personality.

In 2008, the partners, entrenched at Zahav, handed the keys off to Erin O'Shea, then Solomonov's sous chef. She worked American Southern influences into the cooking, enlivening ingredients like country ham, grits and collard greens with an elegant contemporary touch.

"It was received really well," said O'Shea. But it wouldn't last beyond the year, as Cook and Solomonov decided to sell their stake in Marigold, installing O'Shea at Percy Street. It was a business decision, but that didn't make it easier to swallow.

"That was a tough conversation," O'Shea recalled. "It's a BYO, so it's only ever going to make X amount of dollars. I know it now. Then, it broke my heart."

Still, all three chefs succeeded in the artistic sense, in being "able to tell a story with our food," Solomonov said. "Steve was doing that, I was doing that, and Erin got to do the same thing."

Cook quickly found an eager buyer for the business: Robert Halpern, a well-traveled Philly native trained in edgy global cuisine. Halpern, who took over in 2009, ended his five-year run in the space with multiple accolades, including a number two ranking on Philadelphia magazine's "50 Best Restaurants" list, for his surprise-filled tasting-based approach.

Though Philly has a rep for being apprehensive toward this lane of gastronomy, Halpern felt that his time at Marigold contributed to restaurant growth city-wide. "We felt like we were really at the forefront of chipping away at those walls," he said.

It made perfect sense, then, for Halpern to cede control of Marigold to the people who knew it best.

Last week, Marigold relaunched under its new pilots: Halpern's sous chefs Tim Lanza, Andrew Kochan and Keith Krajewski. The trio, all in their 20s, are building on the trust that Halpern fostered, offering 14- to 16-course tastings for a flat rate of $90 - a price point that makes Rastelli, who remembers the meatloaf days better than anyone, chuckle.

The new owners are dedicated to making sure that diners get more than their money's worth. "You don't go to Marigold to have dinner and then see a show - we are the show," said Kochan. "We want to be the best."

They're reticent about releasing specifics, aiming to deliver a spoiler-free experience to diners willing to take the epicurean risk. But know that their menu, a collaboration among the kitchen team, blends familiar flavors with exotic ingredients and techniques - think a creative BLT treatment, with foie gras subbed in for bacon, or a Benedict with quail eggs and hot-sauce "bubbles."

"I expect to be surprised, and I expect them to succeed," said Halpern. "They're the opposite of afraid."

Every cook who came before them has treated Marigold the exact same way, respecting their predecessors by distinguishing themselves from the lineage. "It's a place to figure out who you are," said O'Shea. "A place for chefs to say, 'This is what I got.' "