July 5, 2007 Issue                                       

©2007 The Chestnut Hill Local

Gene Gosfield made ‘Moon’ rise over Chestnut Hill
by LEN LEAR

Many long-time Chestnut Hill residents have fond memories of Gene and Phyllis Gosfield, who  owned and operated Under the Blue Moon for 21 years at 8040-42 Germantown Ave. Here they are seen in 1996 holding one of their signature dishes, soft shell crabs with a Thai sauce. Gene died of cancer last week at the age of 83. (Photo by Len Lear)

I hate clichés as much as stomach cramps, but I just can’t help myself in this case. When reflecting on the life of Gene Gosfield, the former owner (with wife, Phyllis) of Under the Blue Moon, a groundbreaking restaurant at 8040-42 Germantown Ave. from 1976 to 1997, I can’t help but say Gene was a true Chestnut Hill legend and that when they made Gene, they threw away the mold. (That’s two clichés.) Eugene H. Gosfield, 83, who threw the restaurant dice and hit the jackpot, died of cancer on Monday, June 25.

Customers beehived themselves into ‘Moon’ every night because of the great food but also because of the free show, compliments of Gosfield, who was part entertainer, part restaurateur, part comedian and all original. Gene would come up to each table in the restaurant and schmooze about the food, politics or the diners’ families, many of whom he knew personally. But always there was the joke, the witty remark. One time, after I mentioned needing help with a certain problem, Gene replied, “If you want to find a helping hand in this life, look at the end of your sleeve.”

Gene told me on September 20, 1997, one day before he closed the restaurant for good, “We’ve schmoozed and conspired with customers so they could have a good time. I’m beginning to accept the fact that after 21 years, I’m a damned good host.”

While other restaurants have “specials of the day,” Gene quipped that his restaurant had “specials of the decade.” He changed his menu only slightly more often than ski resorts are built on the equator. It wasn’t that his chef, Don Prentis, did not have lots of new recipes and new ideas. “It’s that the customers just won’t let me take these dishes off the menu,” Gene insisted. “Four years ago we tried to take the tuna off the menu, and two customers literally ordered me to put it back or else. People come in again and again and keep on ordering the soft-shell crabs, Thai-style; sesame pecan chicken, or Donald’s Chinese duck, so we have to keep serving them. What can I do? It’s a curse.”

Gene was 52 and Phyllis was 47 when they opened Under the Blue Moon in May, 1976, in a thimble-sized shop formerly occupied by a toy store, “It’s a Small World.” There were just 36 seats, no liquor license and an average entrée price of $5.50. Two years later they more than doubled their space by purchasing the adjacent building and expanding the restaurant into it, producing three dining rooms and 80 seats in all. But at the beginning there was virtually no pedestrian traffic. “Our revenues for the first year were a joke,” said Gene many years later.

Gene, with his distinctive salt-and-pepper Taylor Hicks-like beard and hair, had previously been a sales rep for 26 years for a metal products plant in Northeast Philly owned by Phyllis’ family. In the early 1970s the plant was sold to a Fortune 500 company. Phyllis, who had enjoyed experimenting with gourmet dishes at home, was the driving force behind their dramatic mid-life U-turn. These parents of four leaped off a cliff without a safety net when they left the business world to enroll as full-time students in the first-ever class at the Philadelphia Restaurant School.

“We wound up being a lot more lucky than smart,” Gene said modestly after 21 years in business. “The building was very difficult to fit a restaurant into. In fact, I had measured a back wall one foot wider than it really was. If I had measured it correctly, I would have never opened the restaurant. By the time I realized the correct measurements, though, we had already signed a lease, so we had to make the restaurant fit.”

In the first year, the cooking was done by Phyllis in collaboration with Aliza Green, who went on to become one of the area’s most in-demand restaurant consultants and cookbook authors. After adding two more dining rooms, a bar, liquor license and bright peach and blue exterior, they averaged about 500 dinners a week (open five nights, dinner only). For the last 20 years the chef was Don Prentis, another Restaurant School alumnus who, according to the Gosfields, “could take some wood shavings, a little cardboard and some cabbage and create a delicious meal out of it all.”

For the first few years of Blue Moon’s existence (the name was suggested by one of their daughters; Phyllis had wanted to call it the Joel McCrea Café after the late Hollywood actor), Gene had a reputation as a guy whose acerbic tongue might lash a customer he regarded as difficult. After several years, however, he said, “I can’t do that anymore. I have mellowed. I might not have as much fun as I used to, but believe me, I still have plenty.”

Although no one would have called Under the Blue Moon a romantic restaurant — with its noisy, crowded ambience and ubiquitous, loquacious owner — nevertheless, for some reason, numerous couples reportedly became engaged at “Table 20.” (Go figure. It was probably those funky Mt. Airy couples.)

Gene and Phyllis were not only popular with customers but with their employees as well. In an industry that has become a virtual revolving door, Under the Blue Moon had a highly unusual number of long-term employees. For example, chef Prentis was there 20 years; Huong Ngo, a cook, for 17 years; servers Jeanne Shuttleworth, 16 years; the Leaming sisters (Mary Louise and Suzanne, both 17 years, and Trish, 12 years), and Trudy Walters, five years.

Gene loved almost all of his customers, but he said his favorites were Bill and Charlotte Humenuk; the family of Ben and Lorraine Alexander, including Richard and Suzy and the Gordons; the Jim Colbert gang; Maitland and Linda Russell; Sid and Connie Miller; Barney and Pauline Bernstein; Paul and Becky Roller; Charisse Little; Art and Betty Sherman; Judy and Joe Guingo; Bob and Suzy Wolfson; the Learnard clan, including the St. Georges.

On November 3, 1997, the two buildings which comprised Under the Blue Moon were officially sold by the Gosfields to Richard Snowden of Bowman Properties, who owns many other commercial properties on the Hill. At the time Gosfield told the Local that Snowden was searching for another experienced restaurateur to run Under the Blue Moon and profit from the good will built up over 21 years by the Gosfields and their staff. As we all know now, however, the property has been vacant since September 21, 1997.

Even many frequent Under the Blue Moon customers were probably unaware that Gosfield’s father had left Ukraine to avoid being drafted into the Russian army around the end of World War I.  His father’s surname was Piatagortzov, which he changed to Gosfield, the name of the street he lived on after moving to England. Later he moved to New York City, where Gene was born in 1924.

During World War II, Gene was an officer and a bombardier, taking part in dozens of bombing missions over Germany. He once told me that he had been asked not to go up on one mission so that he could train new crew members. On that mission, the plane was blown out of the sky, killing the pilot.

After the war, Gene moved back to New York, where he met Phyllis at a train station during a monster snowstorm. They were married in 1949 and then moved to Philadelphia to be near Phyllis’ family. For many years they lived in Wyndmoor and then moved to Fort Washington.

One reason the Gosfields retired in 1997, in addition to being exhausted from 21 years of 24/7 weeks in the restaurant, was to visit their four children and their grandchildren. Their oldest son, Reuben, was living in Australia. A daughter, Avery, was teaching music in Switzerland; another daughter, Annie, was a composer in New York, and a second son, Josh, was an illustrator in New York. “We raised them to be artists, not restaurateurs,” Phyllis once told me.

Services were held for Gene on Wednesday, June 27, at Goldstein’s Rosenberg’s Raphael Sacks, 6410 N. Broad St. After that he was laid to rest at Roosevelt Memorial Park in Trevose.