By Jason Wilson
Special to The Washington Post
Wednesday, March 7, 2007; F01
PHILADELPHIA It was the guy with the shiny metal case. He's the one who drove home how much the bring-your-own-bottle aesthetic has profoundly changed this city's dining scene.
We were at Pumpkin, a 28-seat restaurant owned by a young couple in a neighborhood that, depending on your outlook, could be called emerging, marginal or flat-out dicey. The candlelit former deli has a single storefront window and an open kitchen. Gauzy orange curtains hang from exposed fixtures, and the secondhand tables, pushed tight together, are covered in butcher paper. The short, frequently changing menu is printed on a single sheet of paper. The food, such as braised veal cheeks, pan-seared sea scallops or a pork chop served over spaetzle, is admirable and at times approaches outstanding.
In other words, Pumpkin follows the pattern of cool BYOBs all over Philadelphia, where crowds of people with brown paper bags of wine and beer in tow wait patiently for tables. My companion and I had removed a 2004 Turley zinfandel from our bag, while the table behind us had unsheathed a 2000 Castello Banfi Brunello di Montalcino. The table of young people to my left pulled a cheap magnum of Yellow Tail chardonnay and a six-pack of Amstel Light from a plastic shopping bag.
Then the gray-haired gentleman and his date took their seats next to us. He flipped open the metal case and, with a flourish, unpacked a rare cult cabernet sauvignon that would retail for more than $200. But this guy hadn't just brought his own bottle. He also unwrapped two gleaming Reidel crystal glasses. The restaurant stemware apparently wasn't good enough.
It's hard to think of another city where a diner might feel similarly empowered. At a traditional restaurant with an established wine list and the service to go along with it, such an act would be considered heresy. But as David Snyder, who writes the popular blog PhilaFoodie.com, put it, "There's a little bit of rebellion here. You and the restaurant are sort of on the same level."
Over the past decade, Philadelphia has experienced an astounding boom in BYOB dining. When Audrey Claire opened in 1996, it was one of only two fine-dining BYOBs in the city, along with longtime favorite Dmitri's. Now, in the metropolitan region, there are more than 240.
According to a recent survey by the online reservation service OpenTable.com, 63 percent of Philadelphia diners said they had taken their own wine to a fine-dining restaurant within their last 10 meals. That's compared to a national average of 27 percent and more than double the percentages in New York and wine-crazy San Francisco. In the OpenTable.com survey, Washington's diners were the least likely to bring their own wine to a restaurant; brown-bagging to unlicensed restaurants in the District is illegal, and corkage policies at licensed restaurants are all over the map.
The Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corp. promotes the BYOB concept to out-of-towners under the slogan "Brown-bagging is chic." The Zagat guide to Philadelphia is the only one that has its own separate category for BYOB restaurants.
Philadelphia Inquirer restaurant critic Craig LaBan says the prevalence of these no-liquor-license restaurants, which charge no corkage fee, has shifted the balance of power. "One of the biggest flashpoints for diner angst is dealing with a wine," he says. At a BYOB, diners don't have to depend on the advice of a sommelier to help them navigate a wine list or worry about an "incorrect" choice.
A major reason for the rise of the BYOB has been the state-controlled monopoly on wine distribution. Restaurants and consumers must buy their wine through the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board, which also operates all the retail wine stores. In general, wines are more expensive than through private distributors. That means small profit margins for restaurateurs -- unless they triple or quadruple the price. But since everyone is buying from the same source, diners are extremely price conscious.
Budget-mindedness is a big part of the BYOB appeal. Snyder says he recently found a bottle at a state liquor store for $14 that he'd ordered in a restaurant for $50. For diners with more expensive taste in wine, the same $30 or $40 that wouldn't get them too far in a restaurant can open up whole new categories of quality in a wine shop.
At a state liquor store, for instance, I recently bought a $25 bottle of Nebbiolo that I've seen on several restaurant wine lists for well over $60. With it stowed in a brown bag, I braved an hour-long wait at Melograno, one of the best of the city's many Italian BYOBs. The wine was an especially nice complement to roasted quail stuffed with figs and walnuts.
On my last visit to Matyson, one of Philadelphia's finest restaurants -- with or without a liquor license -- my wife and I ate a delicious five-course Year of the Pig tasting menu: split pea soup with smoked ham and seared scallop; twice-cooked pork belly; barbecued pork shoulder on a sweet potato waffle; tender roasted pork loin with Brussels sprouts; and a warm pecan tart for dessert. We brought along a modest $16 Cotes du Ventoux that would've cost three times that much at a licensed restaurant. Instead, the whole meal -- including our wine -- cost less than $120.
Another reason the BYOBs have taken off is the prohibitive cost of liquor licenses for many young independent chefs: up to $60,000 in the city and more than $300,000 in the suburbs. Since the city isn't issuing any new licenses because of a cap, restaurateurs have to buy one from an existing owner.
Pumpkin's owners, Ian Moroney and his partner, Hillary Bor, are a classic example of who opens a Philadelphia BYOB. Moroney's first kitchen job was at his father's 23-seat BYOB restaurant, Little Fish. After he met Bor, the two hatched a plan for their own restaurant and ended up doing it for less than $50,000. "We don't have financial backing," Moroney said. "We don't have rich parents. If times get tight, I can cook, Hillary could run the front, we could hire a dishwasher, and we'd be okay."
LaBan and others credit the BYOB movement with energizing the city's dining scene. "The restaurant is only making money on the food, so it had better be damn good," says Dave Sulock, an environmental consultant who publishes the online directory http://byobguide.com/.
Others see it as limiting. Philadelphia magazine's April White sardonically described the stereotypical BYOB owners in the January issue: "He's in the miniature kitchen; she's in the dining room with the decor straight out of the Pottery Barn catalog." White declared, controversially, that BYOBs were so ubiquitous that they were contributing to a rut.
"I love BYOBs," White says. "Because of the business model, I wonder if you can only reach so far with a BYO."
Chef David Ansill, though, is living proof that the BYOB offers an opportunity for up-and-coming chefs to gain a following. Ansill opened Pif in 2001 for under $50,000: "It was not a huge investment in order to see if I was as good as I thought I was."
Five years later, he has taken that exposure and opened an adventurous, eponymous restaurant that has garnered a lot of buzz and critical acclaim. "I love Pif. It's my baby," he says. "But I'm hoping to make some money at my other place."
Even at Ansill, which has a liquor license, he felt pressured to offer a BYOB night -- every Tuesday, the night that Pif is closed -- with a lower-than-usual corkage fee of $15 on other nights.
Owners of liquor-license establishments throughout the city have felt a similar pressure. When Joseph Scarpone opened Sovalo two years ago with his wife, Karey, they aimed to be what Scarpone calls "BYOB-friendly," even though Sovalo has a liquor license. "I'm originally from Philly, so I knew BYOs were big," he says. "But I never knew how big until we opened and started having BYO on Monday night." Scarpone has regulars who dine at Sovalo every Monday, when there's no corkage fee, but never on any other night.
While the freedom is empowering to diners, observers occasionally grouse about the downside. Caricatures of the BYOB enthusiast have emerged. This is the guy who busts out a 1982 Bordeaux and loudly announces it to the restaurant; LaBan calls him "Mr. See-My-Cellar." "It's the culinary equivalent of driving to the mall in your Hummer," he says. "It's become like a Kabuki dance for some people."
While BYOBs allow the wine-savvy diner to spend less money on a potentially better bottle they bring to their own table, LaBan laments, "restaurants have traditionally been places where we've learned about wine. We're missing that a bit in Philadelphia."
As an example, LaBan tells a story that may sound like an urban legend, but he swears he witnessed the scene. Two couples arrived at a BYOB carrying wine in a wicker basket, then sat down and unwrapped crystal glasses that had been swaddled in Hermes silk scarves. After tasting their wine, the men declared that it had turned to vinegar and called the waiter over, asking him to take the bottle to the kitchen and dispose of it. A few moments later, a cook sheepishly appeared at their table. The wine tasted exactly like it was supposed to, the cook told them, but that's because it wasn't wine at all. The diners had brought in a bottle of sherry vinegar by mistake.
Jason Wilson is a food and travel writer who lives in the Philadelphia area.