Chestnut Hill Local
July 1,2004
New Cresheim Cottage owners cooking up success
By Len Lear
Someone once said that life is what happens when you’re making plans to do something else. Whoever said it first could have been thinking of Donna Fitzgerald Robb and Lizza Robb, new owners of Cresheim Cottage Cafe, 7402 Germantown Ave., who both started out by cooking up different career plans entirely. You might say they seized the day, only to have it escape.
Donna, 40, and her life companion, Lizza, 28, are both former art students (Moore College of Art and Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, respectively) who took “temporary” restaurant jobs to help pay the bills. In both cases, however, affection for their new employment turned into full-fledged love affairs.
After art school, for example, Donna worked for an art gallery but then took a job at Judy’s Cafe, 3rd and Bainbridge Streets, only because “I could not find any other job.” The new desperation soon became yeast to Donna’s beer.
“Working at Judy’s was like not even having a job,” recalls Donna, “because it was so enjoyable. I realized this was what I should be doing. A chef called Tony, who was showing me how to cook, was literally dying, but he would still manage to get out of bed and come to work. That’s the kind of place it was.”
Shortly thereafter — in 1993 — the chef did die, and Donna’s on-the-job training took on new urgency. She became the chef de cuisine and maintained that position for seven years. One of the people she hired was Lizza, who became a prep cook and waited on tables to subsidize her art courses.
After leaving Judy’s, Donna worked in the kitchens of several fine dining restaurants such as Blue Angel, Penne, the Ritz Carlton Hotel and Pollo Rosso in Chestnut Hill. Throughout her career as a chef, Donna has received numerous rave reviews in local newspapers and magazines and has twice been invited to appear on the morning TV show, Fox Good Day Philadelphia.
Most chefs with so much experience yearn to open their own restaurant, and Donna was certainly no exception. “We were actually looking at possible locations for years,” Donna explained. “At first we thought about West Philly, but it is too dangerous for two women and too expensive. They wanted $500,000 for a beat-up place. We thought about building our own restaurant, but that was also too expensive. We thought about buying Goat Hollow, but we didn’t want to be up at 2 or 3 in the morning at a smoky bar.
“We looked at places in Center City, South Philly and Northern Liberties, but we finally settled on Mt. Airy. First of all, there were so few good restaurants for such a large area. Also, it’s such a diverse, community-oriented area, and there is so much beauty and friendliness. We were immediately embraced as gay women, and it’s nice to feel safe and welcome. There’s really no place like Mt. Airy.”
(Donna grew up in Northeast Philadelphia, and Lizza is a native of Atlanta who also has a job as Webmaster and graphic designer at the University of Pennsylvania School of Social Work.)
Last summer their restaurant search ended when they took over Cresheim Cottage Cafe, 7402 Germantown Ave. (at Gowen), from Ken Weinstein, who had opened it with his wife, Judy, in July of 1996. One of Mt. Airy’s oldest buildings, it is at least 255 years old and possibly even more than 300. (Weinstein still owns and operates the Trolley Car Diner, 7619 Germantown Ave.) The Robbs offered jobs to all of the Cottage’s former employees, and most have stayed on.
Last year the Mt. Airy Business Center gave the Robbs first prize in their Enterprising Women’s Business Plan competition. The plan started being implemented when the new owners reopened Cresheim Cottage Cafe on January 29 of this year. (After Weinstein left, the restaurant was closed for just two days, although there is an ongoing renovation.)
Their plan suffered a major setback when Lizza was sucked-punched by Crohn’s Disease, which landed her in Pennsylvania Hospital for three weeks in April in very serious condition. (Crohn’s is an inflammatory disease involving the gastrointestinal tract. There are often chronic obstructions, abscesses, kidney stones, fever and weight loss, among other symptoms.)
“I had to ask her for payroll numbers as they wheeled her into the ICU,” said Donna.
“It’s so ironic,” added Lizza, “that I have a great chef like Donna in my life, and I’m not allowed to eat most of the dishes on her menu.”
Despite her 12 years as a professional chef in other people’s restaurants, Donna concedes that owning a restaurant is “much harder than I ever thought it would be. I’ve put in 15-hour days, and I did not have one day off from the time we opened in January until last week. And all this was with a teething child as well.” (The Robbs have a 15-month-old daughter named Spencer.)
The cuisine at Cresheim Cottage Cafe is best described as eclectic American, i.e., American comfort food with global influences. “Our cuisine reflects a new definition of home cooking,” explained Donna, “which represents a magnificent melting pot of peoples and cultures since Philadelphia is one of the country’s most ethnically diverse cities.”
The Robbs feature daily specials, and their menus change seasonally. They purchase local products whenever possible to support small family farmers and raise several herbs and vegetables of their own. They offer free-range and/or organic vegetables, meat, poultry and seafood when it’s feasible to do so. No dinner entree is over $20; there is a moderately-priced selection of wines, including several by the glass, and the most popular dishes from the Weinstein era have been retained “because our customers would not let us take them off.”
One dinner appetizer we tried, a beet salad ($6), was a textural and visual sensation: slow-roasted beets mingled with caramelized pineapple slices and chewy morsels of gorgonzola cheese drizzled with vanilla oil. An awesome entree was the jumbo lump crab leaning against square, delicate pillows of shrimp cake ($20), an ideal counterpoint to a salad of red bliss potatoes, green beans, red onion and cherry tomatoes served with a horseradish dipping sauce. Other entrees just as diverse as Mt. Airy are the five-Chinese-spice sea scallops, pan-seared atop a Japanese eggplant and risotto cake served in a miso broth ($20); and the free-range organic chicken breast over sesame sugar snap peas with shiitake mushroom dumplings and a soy balsamic dipping sauce ($16). There is also a wide range of salads, sandwiches (for lunch) and desserts.
There is a fireplace room, a sunroom overlooking a garden courtyard (25 can be seated in the outdoor courtyard) and three intimate upstairs dining rooms whose walls are festooned with dozens of antique photos, some of area families. Brunch is served on Sundays, and private parties, business meetings, wedding rehearsal dinners, etc., of up to 100 can be accommodated.