Meat-centric Kensington Quarters hosts veggie-themed pop-up series

Since opening in late 2014, Kensington Quarters has positioned itself as a place that proudly caters to carnivores. Entering off Frankford Avenue, visitors get an immediate view of the restaurant's wood-paneled walk-in refrigerator, stocked with primal cuts from local sources that favor sustainable and humane farming.

From the butchery-inspired name to the charcuterie cured in-house, it's a place where lovers of meat meet to eat.

Head up the staircase to its lofted atelier on the last Sunday of any month, however, and you'll find a scene that may seem out of character: a bartender and a chef, crafting cocktails and plates that put the focus on seasonal vegetables.

This new Botanical Series, which was launched in January, is a new pop-up series highlighting the talents of two local food creatives: bartender Amy Hartranft, who manages Prohibition Taproom (a sister establishment); and chef Palmer Marinelli, a Philly kitchen veteran who is working on plans for a dual restaurant and sustainability consultancy. In collaboration with  Tim Kweeder, the general manager of Kensington Quarters, the pair take  a particular ingredient, or category of ingredients, and poke at its established limitations, creating a sort of live, open-to-the-public riff session powered by veg-centric ideas.

To be clear: Kensington Quarters already serves much more than just meat. Chef Damon Menapace's dedication to seasonality and sustainability extends well beyond burgers, rib eyes, and legs of lamb to include produce, as well as larder and pantry staples such as butter and flour. But this isn't clear to everyone at first glance — a big reason why the pop-up series serves as an enlightening bit of internal counterprogramming.

"People automatically assume we're a steak house, but at the end of the day, even when vegetarians and vegans come [in to eat], they're pretty happy, because there are options for them," says Kweeder, who has worked with both Hartranft and Marinelli at past jobs. "The overlooked philosophy of Kensington Quarters is that we're all about farmers — not just animal farmers."

Where this fledgling series is concerned, adds Kweeder, "it's root to leaf," not snout to tail.

For last month's inaugural event, the team went with the theme of "Evergreen" — not necessarily the first flora that comes to mind when planning dinner. Foraging along several undisclosed leafy locations within city limits, Hartranft collected bunches of pine needles, which she simmered with sugar and local cranberries to create a unique Oleo-Saccharum, a concentrated oil often used in old-school punch preparations. "It tasted like a forest," says Hartranft, who swapped it into an old-fashioned-style build to replace the traditional sugar.

Elsewhere, the bartender incorporated fresh blue spruce needles into a spin on the penicillin, a scotch-honey-ginger-citrus drink; brewed a batch of orgeat, a tiki drink building block, with pine nuts instead of the usual almonds; and used a potent spruce tip vinegar Marinelli had on hand in a martini-style tipple.

"By making the entire menu one ingredient family, you have to explore their total depth," says Marinelli, whose small-plate menu this first time around included duck smoked with pine, a fish crudo with pickled spruce tips, and coniferous mushroom hand pies. "By creating our own expectations — discovery first — creativity is a greater possibility."

For the second installment of the Botanical Series, scheduled for Sunday, Feb. 26, both chef and bartender are deep into their R&D process — this time, it will be centered around roots and root vegetables, ideal weapons to combat the late-winter chill.

On one recent afternoon, Hartranft broke the silence enveloping KQ's then-vacant upper level with heavy chopping and the mechanized buzz of juicers and blenders as she played around with a vegetal variation on the Ramos gin fizz. A classic New Orleans cocktail combining the titular spirit with egg whites, orange flower water, and cream, it earns its signature foamy crown from a period of overhead shaking. But although the original drink is an ethereal off-white, Hartranft's is a shocking pinkish purple, thanks to the local heirloom carrot juice she's working into the Collins glass — complete with carrot-green garnish, plucked right from the source.

This drink, which will also include the Japanese spirit shochu, coconut cream, and a few other elements, is close to complete, as is Marinelli's menu, featuring raw scallops with a condiment made from caramelized carrot juice and his version of the Irish side dish bubble and squeak. But not every experiment has produced a winning result. Hartranft's recent attempt to create a tincture with white radishes produced a pungent and ultimately unusable product. "I said, 'Everyone has to smell this, because it's a royal fail,' " she says, laughing.

False starts, of course, are all part of the process when it comes to an ambitious culinary undertaking — which will only get more so as Philadelphia moves into its warmest, most fertile months. "We have a whole calendar year planned," says Kweeder, who teases such upcoming themes as nuts, berries, and stone fruit — plus such left-field installments as weeds, such as dandelion and mugwort. "We've got some challenges ahead."