A region revitalized.
A region re-imagined, striving, thriving, innovating, collaborating, elevating and accelerating the greater Lehigh Valley is home to businesses that are booming and pain changes that are forging the future.
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When it comes to dining out, you'll find an abundance of restaurants and eateries to satisfy every palate throughout the Lehigh Valley.
The local restaurant industry has navigated tumultuous economic times in the past three years, but a few big name chefs have used that current to rise above the ordinary with extraordinary food and service.
On this Lehigh Valley Rising, we'll be profiling three rock stars among the region's most successful restaurateurs.
And I'll be taking you behind the scenes with chef Chris Heath over a chop cut.
But first, let's stop in at a beloved local restaurant that does wonderful things with oysters, mushrooms, and I assume oyster mushrooms.
Bullet is the brainchild of husband and wife, leaches Ma and Erin Shay, who also run Mr. Lee's noodles and who believe in the importance of both farm to table and farm to ladle.
The building that is bushmeat is something that from my childhood, being from Salisbury, I had driven past the end of the Falcon.
It's always been a part of my life there on that corner and found the hill.
And so my dad always been calling and saying, Hey, you know, things are changing in the Lehigh Valley, and I think it's time for you to open a restaurant.
Talk to Shirley now, the previous owners, and started this long courtship process.
And so they were instrumental in passing the torch to us.
Without them, we probably wouldn't wouldn't have been in that spot or even been able to get our foot in the door of restaurant ownership.
So we own Bullit restaurant, something a little bit more upscale, farm to table dining.
The farm to table is always been a fad, I think, for a lot of people.
But for us, it's really all about supporting our community, doing what's healthy, fresh in season.
It's just the ethos of this restaurant.
We love to cook in-season.
You know, as coach, we want the best products.
How to get best products.
Something that was grown and picked for somebody, you know, five miles down the road.
You want the ingredients to shine.
You know, you don't want to mess them up.
And then you have the stewardship or integrity to bring what the farmers, what the land, what the environment has brought to you.
And now you're the steward to get it to your customers in a way that does justice to that those ingredients.
So I think that's, you know, that's the beginning foundation to it.
And then I think it becomes community.
What does it mean to actually create a sense of community with a restaurant as opposed to just serving people?
But that level of connection with your customers, with your staff, with the people who are providing who have become some of our very best restaurants.
Bullet is actually Latin for mushroom.
Mushrooms, at least somehow touch the majority of the dishes here.
Roasted.
Pureed.
Pickled.
Smoked fried.
It's there.
Everywhere.
This is the it's Latin for mushroom cocktail.
This is one of our standard cocktails that has been on the menu since we opened back in 2007.
And then our kitchen makes a brine with mushrooms and onion.
You know, we had these pickle mushrooms.
Martini is one of my favorite kind of cocktails.
It's very simple.
And then it just made sense one night.
Hey, what if we did a martini with the mushroom and the mushroom pickling liquid and it was boring.
Cheers.
It's kind of a little bit brighter than a traditional martini with that really nice undertone of mushroom.
And then we have Mr. Leaves in two locations, one in the Easton public market, one in Bethlehem that just has been open for a little over a year.
The organic fried chicken ramen, the Mr. Lee's noodles with the chat support and also the hot and spicy is for people who want to take it up a notch.
And that's our farm to table menu concept.
And then we have silver.
So to focus my heart, it's a clam shack inspired by New England, and that's also in the Eastern public market, and that has been open for almost four years.
Mr. Li is an Eastern was the first expansion business, so it was the second place we had opened.
And so this opportunity to be in a fast casual model like the Mr. Lee's in Easton, you order at a counter and you get this really beautiful bowl of ramen that you take somewhere else and eat.
We do try to weave elements of bully into all of our experiences, and now the Mr. Lee's in Bethlehem is kind of a merging of those two ideas.
It's a sit down experience.
There's a liquor license in a bar.
It's a big, beautiful space, but it is still much more casual than believe with the same level of care in the service.
I think the thing that made it work is him and Aron meeting each other.
It was like an unattainable dream that they both attained.
Neither Lee or I were like, We can't wait to open a restaurant and become millionaires.
This is not the way to get rich.
People are thinking.
And that was never the point.
Food has done so much for us in our family.
You know, we want to share those with as many people as possible.
And so I think for us, especially with the Lehigh Valley and to continue the culinary scene, it really is an incredible spot.
If you're in the mood for a, quote, casual dining, modern cuisine, no B.S., end quote.
The team over at Edge in downtown Bethlehem are here for you.
Tim and Karen Wyrick, another husband and wife team, are the proprietors of two restaurants where you'll find gourmet cuisine and friendly down to earth service.
When Edge first opened 20 years ago, it was strictly fine dining, and I worked here as a server.
We wore white linen apron and.
There was linens on the tables.
You had to have a suit jacket on, if not tie.
It had somewhat of a stuffy atmosphere.
People would look in and see the white linen tablecloths and we say, Oh, that's just for like special occasions.
So it was kind of intimidating for people.
It just felt boring.
It was kind of going down in a sense.
They wanted to sell it.
And then my husband mentioned, you know, I think I might want to buy an edge.
April 2016 came, had a meeting, brought out one of the partners.
Matt.
Karen.
Matt.
Tim.
I never thought I'd own a restaurant or be part of an owner of a restaurant, let alone two now.
And more on the way.
When I got the edge, the first thing I noticed was a lot of the staff had been here for a very long time.
This is not typical in this industry.
The chef had been here forever.
Tim has been a part of this restaurant from the gate.
And still had a very, very creative passion for food and.
We're just new Americans, so we do whatever we want.
You know, we've got a little pioneer of Japanese, a little Korean.
People love working here.
People cared about their job, which there's something about the culture here that really kind of just pulls you in.
And we needed to lighten up the vibe and create more of a fun environment.
We don't want to scare our customer base away either.
So we slowly implemented some changes.
From the core changes and some painting and food, same service, lighter atmosphere.
And we noticed that it just felt kind of boring in here on the weekends.
So we.
Started bringing in some entertainment and just kind of lightened up the vibe and people started to come and we did a lot of marketing and advertising and it was time to grow.
Serve as a dual concept restaurant and you're going to walk into a wood burning pizza oven with a graffiti wall as you progress into the restaurant.
You have more of a casual setting.
We put like mirrors that kind of mimic windows and these really cool little planters that me and Karen made ourselves.
And then you walk into more of a fine dining setting.
I was inspired by these, like, half round booths that kind of like, slope up stone.
Labrada Right walls in their funky carpet, and there's a huge outside dining space.
We also have a private room up there as well.
We wanted to do something that would hit every price point it serve.
It could be a margarita pizza all the way to a eight ounce filet, 14 ounce bone in prime pork chop.
Our number one seller is our chicken and waffles, but it's just a different spin on it.
The waffles made out of mac and cheese.
So it's very fun.
It's a very creative and fun menu up there.
Beginning in February, we are venturing in the breakfast and lunch.
The name is Sunny Side Up, and it's located in Forks Township.
Just some different, different concepts like no spin here that's been there.
Not too crazy, but enough to get people like, Oh.
Who've been here over 20 years at this point.
So, you know, we owe everything to the community.
We have committed ourselves to giving back to the community.
During the pandemic, we did a lot of donations for the Bethany School District.
Because there was a lot of households that rely on the school lunches that now we're not being provided.
I would come down every Tuesday and we would make 100 meals for a family of four.
And then once we were able to get back up and going, we decided to do a curbside charity event.
So we do a family of four.
It could be anything from a two to a three course meal.
It is $60 and we donate $30 of each one of those meals to the charity over a three day course.
And we do different charities every month.
So we try to help out who we can.
The Lehigh Valley.
There's a lot of people who like to go out and eat, and at the same time, because of that, there's a lot of saturation in terms of restaurants and a lot of competition.
That competition drives innovation and really kind of keeps you on your toes coming in.
And however you are t T-shirt shoot whatever, or get a burger or get a flag if it has some good food.
No exploration of the Lehigh Valley restaurant scene would be complete without George Paxos.
At the age of two, he left Greece and landed in Bethlehem.
By the age of 18, he was buying his first restaurant, and the Paxos Restaurant Group has been growing ever since.
From the Candlelight Inn in 1980, all the way to the Tour de Tequila Tower of the 20 tens for Paxos and his team, it's all about the experi tions.
And a successful restaurant is really a million little details that have to come together.
And harmony is one.
The moment you're greeted, the way you're greeted, the way you're not only just spoken to about the menu, but you're guided through that menu.
You're being painted a picture.
That's that's the experience.
I've got is pretty much what you expect out of a hardcore, very, very high end steakhouse melt over the 26 to the town Russia and go get a great glass of wine and a pizza.
Or you can have a fantastic pasta dish.
The valley needed a mexican cuisine and Mexican restaurant that was high end.
That's really what inspired us to create Toro.
We took that space, we completely gutted it.
And he ripped the entire roof off just to put a 36 foot tequila tower in there.
That's what our companies and that's always I've always known Jorge to go big or go.
Home and we have five point grill, which is an American grill down in Newtown Square Blue offers You know we have fantastic steaks but we offer more selection.
That's that's George's baby, if you will.
He started that restaurant with a lot of blood, sweat and tears under start that our.
I was born in Greece.
My father passed when I was two years old.
So my mom brought me over.
My grandfather was working as a steel.
It was lived in a two bedroom home and from a very young age and after spending time in the restaurant starting as a busboy, by the time I was 16, I was able to run the kitchen and frankly fell in love with it.
I would never be in the restaurant business if I didn't know every part of it.
I was actually in high school.
I went to Liberty, I was on co-op, so I would leave in the afternoon to go run a restaurant and I came to a place really around 18 years old that I wanted to work for myself.
And, you know, at the time I was probably earning $200 a week and I'm like, if I'm going to work for $200 a week, I'm going to I'm going to do it for myself.
In 1980, we purchased three acres of land, a small restaurant, a liquor license for $140,000.
Ken Lay was sort of in the middle of nowhere.
We were a destination for its time.
It did quite well.
It was a fantastic experience.
I loved it.
There was carpeting everywhere, but that was the look back then.
We used to have gold, textured painted walls.
After time I we reached a point that it was time to do something different back in oh one, it was a four and a half million dollar renovation to convert candlelight to blue.
Everyone thought we had a fire.
We literally tore down and rebuilt it.
Blue was a calculated risk.
I'll never forget it.
When we first opened, a lot of the customers that were at the candle light because it was more of a family kind of restaurant walked in, looked at the menu, closed the menu and walked out.
And I'm like, Oh my God, what did I do?
And what we specialize at Blue Grill House is that we're a steak house.
We order all of our steaks from a private butcher in Chicago.
We get those daily.
We can accommodate a wedding for 425 people with space for a dance floor as well.
Business dinners, all types of social parties ranging from 30 people for a birthday party, up to 300 people for business, retirement, dinner.
It's no longer the candle light.
It's now called the event Center at Blue, and it's gorgeous.
Welcome to Primo produced.
Probably 1998.
It was not a good source of new value for fresh produce.
I remember when I was young, my dad would wake up at 1:00, 2:00 in the morning every night to go down to Philly to go bring back the fresh fruits and vegetables.
There was a restaurant here that one day said, Hey, while you're down there in the back, a bag of onions and a case of lettuce.
That's how Primo.
Started.
When it started with one case.
We sourced from the best growers.
Food safety is very important to everything we do here.
Everything is fully.
Traceable.
It's great having that connection there, you know, call up, make a phone call, and we have what we need in a matter of an hour or two.
It's very different when someone that perhaps has the money to open up a restaurant but has never done so, and then they hire people to run it.
It's a very different situation.
For instance, my corporate chef, he and I work very well together.
It's been an adventure, but I've been with Jorge Paxos and Paxos restaurants for 17 years.
I've been in the business for a long time.
I've got to cook all over the world and, you know, some major cities.
And finally found my home here.
I spent 15 years in the kitchen.
So we understand each other.
Promoting within is is kind of the culture of Paxos restaurants.
It comes from the top down.
I started with a company in 2006 and I started out as a server and a bartender at Mel and worked my way all the way up to director Operations marketing.
I had first in a 40 year.
And we promote within people, understand what it takes in order to make it in our restaurants that that alone is what we look for.
We are actually launching new company next week.
It's called Paxos Foods.
There's supermarkets today that have a hard time with their prepared foods.
They can make their meatloaf or their chicken or whatever, whatever it is, and deliver.
This is one of those operations that can turn huge for us to the point where we we may even outgrow what we've already built, you know, in time.
I'm very excited about it.
Kind of don't know what I don't know.
So but I do feel optimistic.
That it's going to do very well.
George's executive chef Chris Heath invited me over to his kitchen at top God to help him out a little and get a taste for managing a top notch kitchen.
And no way I was going to pass up that opportunity.
I'm a top cub with corporate executive chef Christopher in his natural habitat.
The kitchen Chef Christopher, I noticed you have some top cuts right here today.
I was going to prepare our colossal crab cake, a king salmon alla nage and our veal chop.
Let's start with some of the proteins today.
I'm.
I have a nice, beautiful fillet of of king salmon.
This salmon is from New Zealand for a binder.
I have a little bit of olive oil.
I love to use our olive oil here.
Right in this restaurant.
I've coated the fish with.
With olive oil.
I have some kosher salt and some of our house pepper blend, which is three different peppers, black pepper, white pepper, ancestral pepper.
And I'm seasoning both sides.
I have a medium to high heat burner going.
You want to make sure that that pan is nice and hot, okay.
And that's going to help you really get a nice sear on your fish skin side down.
And we're going to just let that slowly cook and crisp up that skin side, which will be our show side.
Okay, Got it.
So meanwhile, I had this crab cake cooking.
This is our colossal lump crab.
It's it's essentially a very little filler and only bound together with a cream base that we that we prepare with some chopped herbs and that's, that's it.
We then just fold that in nicely with the colossal crab.
Right.
So this looks like.
A phase three.
In a way.
Right.
So I have this charred core corn, sweet corn, for a really nice sweetness that goes wonderful with this crab.
And what goes on top of that.
Sun dried tomato vinaigrette just gives a little bit of acidity.
And then we have just a nice little julienne of fresh cucumber.
Well, a little bit of lemon and some more of that olive oil.
And we're just going to.
Just clean that not only looks delicious, it also looks healthy.
I want to go that far, but it is delicious.
Let me just check on this.
Oh, timing is everything.
So we're getting some nice color on there.
The skin is crisping it up.
I'm going to remove a little bit of that fat and I'm going to turn this over.
Okay?
And then I have some vegetables that I'm going to add to this.
I have some spiral zucchini, right?
I have some some carrots, and then we have some julienned red peppers.
I'm going to just toss that together to let that start to cook down.
So next we have a beautify for veal chop, right?
I put a little bit of olive oil in and then I'm using a different salt for this.
I'm using a Florida cell, which which a lot of people would tend to use to finish at top cut.
We seasoned all our steaks with Florida, so just jumping back to our salmon, I added our broth and we're going to just now slow, poach this fish.
I'm now going to add veal chop on the top branch of our modern new broiler.
This is our biggest workhorse here at top cut, reaching temperatures of 1800 degrees.
So I start with a nice sear on the plancha and then I'll I'll finish cooking that right in the broiler.
How do you like your steaks and your veal?
Medium.
Medium rare.
Well, what should people ask for?
You know, it really depends on the cut.
And my favorite steak is in New York Strip.
I love them.
I'm always going to ask for my New York strip.
Medium rare.
I think that that's the best temperature to break down that cut, give you full flavor mouthfeel.
Now, if I eat a filet, which I don't tend to order very often, I can eat a filet rare anywhere from rare to medium rare.
So here we have a nice sear on our on our veal chop.
And I'm now going to put this into our broiler.
Okay?
Okay.
My check, our salmon.
Our salmon is beautiful right now, so I'm just finishing our salmon here with just a little bit of butter.
This the broth.
And this is a citrus citrus broth.
This starting with a a beautiful fish stock from white fish bones, fresh orange juice, fresh lemon juice and other aromatics like lemongrass and ginger.
So I'm just going to start.
This sounds like it works beautifully with that salmon.
Oh, it's going to be delicious.
So I'm being careful not to hit the skin with the broth so it stays nice and precise.
Okay.
I put a little bit of bed of of the vegetables on the bottom, and then I'm just going to just really finish the dish with with these beautiful cuts and finish with that broth that is.
Of art.
For this dish.
I have a butternut squash hash with mushrooms and bacon.
We use a nice fatty new ski bacon, has beautiful smoke on it.
Wow.
Nice.
Medium rare.
You know what I sliced this with that lean that against.
Against our bone.
Have a little rosemary.
Okay.
Demi glass Here.
Chef.
Christopher, these dishes are begging to be sampled.
Shelly, please.
Okay.
Oh, yeah.
You.
Oh, this is the best of all worlds.
And now this salmon.
Oh.
Wonderful.
It is wonderful.
I'm finally our veal, and I do love the album.
Oh, yeah, That is an experience.
Good Chef Christopher, thank you so much for welcoming us into your kitchen.
Thank you for coming.
This is marvelous and thank you for joining us.
You can get to this episode and more online at our website, PBS 39 board or one, your PBS app for all of us at Lehigh Valley Rising, I'm Grover Silcox.
See you next time.
Where do I begin?
Oh, my.
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