All Jeremy Asch and Abby Armstrong wanted was a good breakfast sandwich close to their Point Breeze home.
“At some point, you say, ‘Screw it, I’ll do it myself,’” Asch said. “If we want it, I’m sure somebody else wants it, too.”
The result is Schmaltz, a new breakfast-and-lunch café at 18th and Wharton Streets serving a deliberately tight menu of latkes, blintzes, and egg sandwiches on house-baked English muffins. Since opening earlier this month, it has drawn lines during its Friday-through-Monday service.
The sandwich that Asch and chef Sam Chertock devised satisfies that craving with an oniony potato pancake perched atop a slow-baked egg, whose firm texture helps the sandwich hold together. Tallarico’s hoagie spread, blended with seasoned mayo, supplies a Philadelphia accent.
“Are we breaking culinary boundaries? No,” Asch said. “It’s a latke on an egg-and-cheese sandwich.” Customers can also add gribenes — chicken-skin cracklings — and have the English muffin slathered with schmaltz, or rendered chicken fat.
Schmaltz joins newer neighborhood arrivals including Little Susie’s Coffee & Pie and Hannah K Cafe. American Sardine Bar, which opened in 2011, is about two blocks north.
The couple bought the building at 1300 S. 18th St. in 2023, creating a wide-open room with an espresso station and order counter, six stools facing the kitchen, six more along the window, table seating, and a small merchandise counter. The couple built a ramp leading toward the rear of the dining room, which toddlers have happily treated as a runway while their parents wait for food.
The building previously housed the Pharmacy, a DIY music venue, art gallery, and coffee shop. Before that, it was the medical practice of Walter Lomax Jr., a pioneering Black physician.
That neighborhood accessibility is central to Schmaltz’s approach.
It’s a casual counter, not a full-scale Jewish restaurant or deli, Asch said. The opening menu is deliberately small. Besides the signature sandwich, cheese blintzes, and latkes, there’s a roasted beet salad and a shawarma-spiced chicken salad sandwich on rye, plus coffee, cold brew, espresso drinks, teas, and soda.
But no bagels.
“I will die on this hill,” Asch said. “There’s a lot more to Jewish restaurants than the bagel.”
Selling bagels, he said, can quickly define a restaurant, requiring staff and equipment to produce large quantities while pushing the rest of the menu into supporting roles. Schmaltz may eventually serve a locally made bagel as part of a specific dish, but Asch does not want it to become a bagel shop.
Instead, the cooking draws broadly from the Ashkenazi and Eastern European food Asch and Chertock grew up eating. The blintzes, made from Asch’s recipe, are filled with lightly sweetened farmer’s cheese and served with Chertock’s jam.
Asch, who grew up in Bryn Mawr and attended Episcopal Academy, did not initially plan a restaurant career. After graduating from Brandeis University, he returned to Philadelphia in 2015 and spent several years working in clinical research at Penn Medicine.
Around the start of the pandemic, he left research and began cooking professionally, first at Grace Tavern. He later worked at Baology with Judy Ni and Andy Tessier before joining a.kitchen.
Ni and Tessier became mentors as Asch and Armstrong navigated zoning, vendors, construction, and the operational details that cannot be learned on the line.
“They took a huge weight off my shoulders of that knowledge burden,” Asch said. “They’re the reason we were able to do this.”
Armstrong, who grew up in Portland, Maine, studied theater at Brandeis before moving into investment and wealth management. She later earned an MBA at the Wharton School. Her work included chief-of-staff and operations roles, experience she likens to staging a complicated production.
“How do we make this whole orchestra, this whole production, work?” she said.
Chertock brings the deepest restaurant résumé of the trio. Trained as an architect at Syracuse University, he worked at a Lambertville firm while cooking nights at Charcoal BYOB in Yardley, his home town. He later joined the opening team at K’Far Cafe, worked his way up to sous chef, and went on to Zahav and Vernick Food & Drink.
He found Schmaltz almost by accident. Chertock, who once lived nearby, was biking through South Philadelphia when he noticed the restaurant name on the freshly painted building.
“‘Schmaltz’ immediately caught my attention,” he said.
Despite the term’s cultural focus, Asch said Schmaltz is neither kosher nor intended as a political statement. Asch said his parents worried that openly identifying the restaurant as Jewish might invite problems, but he said the response has been overwhelmingly supportive.
“We make food,” Asch said. “Maybe calling it Schmaltz is in itself a statement, but we can’t live in fear about what might happen.”
For now, the more immediate challenge is keeping up with the crowd outside. Asch expects most regulars to come from within a few blocks rather than from Center City.
That suits the couple, who bought the building with the idea of investing in the neighborhood where they live.
“We want to nourish it,” Armstrong said. “We want to be a part of it.”
Schmaltz, 1300 S. 18th St., schmaltzphilly.com. Opening hours: 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. Friday to Monday.
A previous version of this article incorrectly described the ramp in the restaurant. The owners added it to comply with ADA requirements.
