Fitler Square’s Sally Fields Fame

Cary Borish opened Sally because, as a Fitler Square resident, an approachable and easy restaurant was what he thought the neighborhood deserved. The wood-burning oven in the old Mama Palma’s “would have been sacrilegious to take out,” he says, so he preserved the pizza DNA but CRISPR-ed it for a 2020’s audience with sourdough leavening, small plates, and low-intervention wines. He named it for his grandmother, whom someone once described, he says, “as a pistol-packin’ mama.”

Sally was not, as you might now assume, from a Colorado mining town. “She lived in Center City essentially her entire life. She was just someone that really loved Philadelphia,” not to mention the matriarch of Philly restaurant royalty. Her son is the late Neil Stein, the restaurateur behind spots like the Fish Market, Marabella’s, and Rock Lobster. Her daughter, Sheryl, Cary’s mother, is the founder of Marathon Grill.

Borish, who’s been part of many restaurants over the years, likes to lay low. “I try to get out of the way, hire compelling, talented people and allow them to express themselves.”

Chef Dave Kupperberg (formerly of Pizzeria Vetri) and Janelli (formerly of High Street Hospitality) joined Sally the same week last July, a sea change that would likely rock most restaurants — but most restaurants don’t have existing machinery that’s been so carefully maintained by longtime staff. “I’ve worked in toxic environments, and you can feel it,” Kupperberg says. Here, “people care about each other and the place, and that bleeds into the dining room, too.”

Don’t take my word — or the word of folks on Sally’s payroll — for it. “Everyone’s really friendly and seems like they’re having a good time,” says Shana Iles, a monthly regular who lives in Fitler Square with her husband and three-year-old. “It’s part of the energy of the restaurant.”

“I go about three times a month, because it’s consistent and delicious and not fussy, but it still has a vibe,” Kristina Burke, development director for a cancer nonprofit, tells me. You’ll find her with the greens salad, which is “always seasoned and dressed perfectly with miso vinaigrette,” and whatever seasonal pie Kupperberg is slinging. His approach to the menu has been maintaining what works while also “having something different for the people who come in literally every week.” The night I visit, it’s a play on carbonara, with speck, Taleggio, scamorza, and an egg-yolk drizzle.

“Are you sure you don’t want the special?” Kupperberg asks while we hang out at the pizza station. It’s a two-man operation: Jorge Gomez shuttles pies in and out of the wood-burning hearth. Ricardo Sylvester, wearing a black baseball cap embroidered with a bull striped in the colors of the Mexican flag, finishes them with olive oil and grated Grano Padano. I’ve already ordered two pizzas, but above the oven hangs a baby-blue ceramic plaque of Mary J. Blige who reminds me: “Believe in yourself when nobody else does.” OK, I’ll have the special, too.

My plan is to take most of it home, because I’m also getting the crispy chicken Milanese, which presents itself as a schnitzel with tangy braised cabbage and apples, and I need to save room for dessert from Sally’s brand-new pastry chef, Russell Johnson. He’s serving a half moon-shaped persimmon hand pie over tarragon crème anglaise polka-dotted with cranberry coulis.

Most pizzerias do not have full-time pastry chefs, but “Dave and Nick sat me down one day and said they wanted to bring in a baker,” Borish says. “The best decisions in my life aren’t based on reason but gut and intuition, and I could feel their passion. I just wanna support Sally continuing to develop and grow and mature as a restaurant.”

Word about Johnson’s Saturday-morning yeasted doughnuts, in flavors like mango lassi, ricotta-filled and rose-and-sumac-iced, and cherry cola, is already rippling through Fitler Square. For a restaurant that has never really coveted a viral moment, one is materializing in real time, both organic and tantalizing. “I think it’s probably just the start of more to come,” says Fink, who, in a couple weeks, is filming a video about the doughnuts for his 81,400 followers.

Limiting the retail doughnuts to Saturday mornings should help insulate Sally from any side effects to the casual, reliable identity that’s made it so beloved. “We’ve really enjoyed getting to go there at different phases as our family has grown,” regular Iles says. Date-night cocktails as newlyweds, for example, evolved to housemade, non-alcoholic shrubs when she was pregnant. Successful neighborhood haunts aren’t necessarily static, but they do possess a gravitational permanence that lets the locals, as they move through life, adapt how they use them. Now that Iles has a toddler, she appreciates Sally’s easygoing brunch and how the staff is “fantastic with kids. You see the post-school and daycare crew rolling through as soon as they open at 4:30.”

And as if on cue, from my corner of the dining room, the first shift starts drifting in: a family with a stroller, a couple heading to the bar for happy hour, a gang of early twentysomethings. An older single man sits down at the table next to me. “What’s that one?” he asks, pointing to the mozzarella-and-Honeycrisp pie finished with a spiral of kale-and-walnut pesto. I tell him and he nods, “That’s right,” in an oh-how-silly-of-me-for-forgetting way.

“You get that one a lot?” I ask.

“Oh, no,” he says, “I’ve never been here before.” He must have just moved to the neighborhood.

Sally is open daily for dinner starting at 4:30 p.m. and for weekend brunch starting at 11 a.m.

Adam Erace is an award-winning food and travel writer who contributes to Travel + Leisure, Fortune, Bon Appetit and many other publications. He is the author of several cookbooks and cocktail books, including his latest, In Session: Low-Proof Cocktails for High-Quality Occasions. He lives in South Philly with his wife, Charlotte. Follow him on Instagram. Follow Resy, too.