October 25, 2007 Issue                                       

©2007 The Chestnut Hill Local

Local Life

Nearby Center a real life- saver for injured animals
by  MICHAEL McQUOWN

These cute masked bandits are becoming more common in city backyards as their natural habitat is destroyed more and more to make way for housing developments and shopping centers.

Behind the antenna array in upper Roxborough, just across Ridge Avenue from the Andorra Shopping Center, deep in the woods, is a place where heroes strive and miracles are performed daily.

No capes, no masks — unless you count the surgical kind — more like blue jeans, khakis and cargo pants. This is the Schuylkill Wildlife Rehabilitation Center where Rich Schubert, a handful of professionals and 50 volunteers save over 3000 wild animals a year. It services Philadelphia, Delaware, Chester and Montgomery counties.

Schubert calls himself a ‘wildlife rehabilitation expert,’ a title for which no school issues a degree. He started with a degree as a wildlife biologist, and acquired the other skills as he went – a little veterinary medicine, a little wildlife management, habitat control and sundry other skills necessary to do the job.

After 18 years, Mt. Airy ‘pour house’ has new owner
by JENNIFER DIONISIO

Paul Egonopoulos (left), a self-professed “Guinness kind of guy,” has purchased Brewer’s Outlet in Mt. Airy from Nate Eckstut (center), who owned it for 18 years. Also seen congratulating Paul is Frank Altadonna, a sales representative for Yuengling in the Philadelphia area. (Photo by Addie Weyrich)

“When Brewer’s Outlet grows up, I’d like it to have some semblance of this,” Paul Egonopoulos says, flashing an image of another beer distributor on his cell phone. In the picture, sunlight pours over carefully stacked pyramids of brightly hued cases, aligned in long, tidy rows. “Look at that,” he marvels.

Talking about Brewer’s Outlet, he promises, “I’m going to bring this beer distributor into at least the 20th century, if not the 21st.” A smile widens on the 37-year-old’s boyish face, and he chuckles. The self-professed “Guinness kind of guy” knows his business has some catching up to do, but he started operating it two months ago with a plan to hit the ground running.

‘Characters’ confusing but compelling, brilliantly acted
by CLARK GROOME

The actors and the stage managers gradually wander into the theater to rehearse their upcoming production. Just as they are about to begin, there is a pounding on the door. After some rather heated words, the stage manager lets six people into the theater. They claim that they are not really people, at least not as we would think of them. They are, rather, characters from a play that the playwright has yet to finish.

Ansill: hats off to classy ‘small plates’ restaurant
by LEN LEAR

David Ansill, chef-owner of Ansill, which replaced the long-running Judy’s Café at 3rd and Bainbridge Streets, has been getting raves from the critics, including “three bells” from Craig LaBan of the Inquirer. (Photo by Len Lear)

The first time I met (or tried to meet) David Ansill, now the chef-owner of Ansill, 3rd and Bainbridge Streets, was about eight years ago, when he was the chef at Lucy’s Hat Shop at 3rd and Market Streets. (It’s called that because many years ago the building did house an actual hat business called Lucy’s Hat Shop.) This will sound phony, but I swear that for the only time in my 25 years of writing restaurant articles, I was not able to interview a chef because I was not able to fit into the kitchen. (And I’m not exactly a contestant on The Biggest Loser. I only weigh 150 pounds.)

I had heard about Ansill’s talent, and after my wife and I had dinner at Lucy’s Hat Shop, I wanted to ask Ansill a few questions. I was told he was too busy preparing food to leave the kitchen, but I was allowed to go into the kitchen to talk to him. Unfortunately, it was the smallest kitchen I have ever seen; Ansill was unable to move because of a cook standing to his right, and I was standing on the cook’s right, but that was right next to the door to the kitchen. I was not allowed to stay there because that would have prevented anyone from entering or exiting the kitchen, so my only option was to leave. The overall experience was not particularly pleasant (not just because of the closet that masqueraded as a kitchen), so I never did follow up with phone calls, but we had occasion to savor Ansill’s cooking a couple of years later when he opened his own restaurant, a tiny BYOB in the Italian Market area called Pif.

Then, early last year Ansill opened his eponymous restaurant at 3rd and Bainbridge Streets, which had housed Judy’s Cafe for many years. (He continued to operate Pif as well for several months, but it eventually proved to be too much, so he closed Pif.) David has proven that you can go home again, despite what novelist Thomas Wolfe said, because by a coincidence, Judy’s Cafe was also the site of Ansill’s first cooking job in 1986, about the time he graduated from the Restaurant School of Philadelphia.