MANAYUNK

By Caitlin Maloney

Photos by JPG Photography

Chef Craig Wilson was a freshmen at Harriton High School when he first stepped into a kitchen. Though Craig grew up on the Main Line, his family didn’t have a lot of money, so when he wanted to play football, he had to figure out a way to earn enough money to buy his own equipment. So, he walked into the Merion Cricket Club and asked for a job. He started as expected by washing pots, was promoted next summer to run the salad station, and then it was on to cooking hot food.

“Lo and behold I didn’t know I was actually stepping into what would be a lifelong career as a chef,” Craig laughed. “I was able to watch what was going on around me in the kitchen and was just very curious about it because it had the whole vibe of competition and team work and on top of that I come from a very creative family, so cooking really hit both sides of my brain.”

Craig spent time working at a lot of restaurants on the Main Line and in Philadelphia under European chefs before he eventually found his way right here to Main Street, for the first time that is. He was the chef at Steven’s, which was located in what is now home to Castle Roxx and he also ran the kitchen at U.S. Hotel Bar & Grill.

But after a few years on Main Street, Craig’s adventurous spirit got a hold of him and he packed his bags for Thailand for what would turn out to be a year and a half culinary experience. “I needed to be able to offer something unique as a chef because I didn’t have any formal training,” Craig said. “I was able to travel around Southeast Asia and picked up all these great cooking tools.”

His most treasured skill, Craig said, is the way he learned to make fresh curry using a mortar and pestle, a trade he still uses today for dishes at MAYA.J. “Everyone goes to Chinatown to buy a bag of curry — I was taught to get all the elements and I grind them fresh every day,” Craig said. “Everything was made by hand and it was fresh and delicious.”

In Eastern culture, the men go out to catch the fish and the women stay back and cook it, Craig explained. But when Craig joined the women in the kitchen after a day of catching fish, he quickly realized he was out of place.

“They called me the ‘Giant Chef’ because all the Asian women were small and so were their counters,” he laughed. “They were teaching me how to make all this great food and I was teaching them how to make pizza dough and burgers because that’s what they wanted to learn to make.”

Craig’s time in Asia had a huge influence on his personal palette and Thai and Vietnamese food continue to be his two favorite cuisines. “Thai food is up there, it doesn’t always get a fair shake,” he said. “But Vietnamese is definitely my favorite. I really just like delicious piles of fresh herbs and chillies, that’s really what it boils down to for me.”

Shortly after coming home from his year and a half adventure abroad, Craig and another chef friend packed their bags again, and their bikes, and headed to Western Europe. They flew into Amsterdam, put their bikes together and set off biking across the countryside. “Our goal was to cook our way through Europe,” Craig said. “I’ve always been adventurous — I’m very nomadic.”

They would walk into nice upscale cafes and restaurants and ask if they could peel potatoes or other manual tasks. Once inside, they would get to see how the brigade kitchen operated. “We would work for free for the day and then they would feed us dinner and we would be on our way,” Craig explained. “One night we actually slept behind a restaurant we were working on in the French countryside.”

While in Europe, Craig spent a lot of time in Spain and quickly grew fond of the way the Spanish tapas style of eating. So upon his return to the states, he headed to New York City and worked as a chef and eventually opened a tapas restaurant of his own called Tasca. Now at MAYA.J, Craig still features tapas portion sizes, but is quick to explain why he calls his current menu small plates.

“Tapas is specifically talking about Spanish food — it’s a word that’s indigenous to the Spanish culture — it’s all Mediterranean and Spanish style cuisine,” he said. “Small plates is just the word you can wrap around all of the different cuisines of the world. I’m giving you a little piece of that country when I turn out a plate from that cuisine.”

Instead of spending $35 on one large plate, Craig said he loves small plates because it allows you to graze eat and have a little variety instead of being stuck with one giant plate of food.

After operating a few other restaurants in New York City and the Finger Lakes, Craig finally felt the calling to come home. His original plan was to move back to Philadelphia for just a short period of time before moving to Costa Rica and opening a restaurant, a dream he had for some time. He decided spending more time with family was best. “I was originally planning on getting a job as a chef, but the itch to have my own restaurant started again,” Craig said.

After coming through Manayunk one day and seeing a for rent sign on the old Chabaa Thai building, Craig knew he was looking right at the perfect opportunity. “I really like Manayunk, I’m happy to be here,” he said. “I like seeing Tommy from Zesty’s and throwing back wine with Bruce [owner of Jake’s & Cooper’s], these are all guys I used to look up to and chefs I worked for when I was in my early twenties — they were the big restaurant guys, so it’s fun for me to be back on Main Street where I worked as a young chef and with the guys that worked so hard building this place up. I feel like I’m home.”

If you asked Craig last year if he thought he would ever own a restaurant on Main Street, he would have laughed in your face, because that was far from the plan he initially had. But besides his family, another thing was keeping Craig in Manayunk — his now wife Jaqi. Craig met Jaqi right before opening MAYA.J and though Jaqi was a little concerned about his new endeavour — her father had been in the restaurant industry for most of her life — she knew it was something that Craig was meant to do, so she happily jumped on board for the ride. Jaqi now helps with the backend of the restaurant, handling marketing, accounting, and managing their staff.

As for the inspiration behind MAYA.J, Craig joked that the current design was his fourth vision for the space. “When you walk into a place you have to figure out what the space lends itself to — I looked around at the restaurants already here and looked at what the street needed, and with my small plate specialty I just thought that global plates with craft cocktails wrapped around it would be great, and it seems to be working well,” he said with a smirk.

Craig hasn’t been on his own with the new venture though. Besides Jaqi, Craig pulled in his longtime childhood friend Eric Weinstein as his business partner. Eric has proved to come in handy in more ways than one, the first, was in the name.

“We were struggling for a name for the restaurant, but we wanted to keep everything in the family so he threw out the name MAYA.J after his daughter Maya and son Jesse,” Craig said. “Once I heard it, it stuck. It has a little ethnic sound to it as well, so it’s the perfect fit, plus I love the kids.”

When it came time to crafting the menu, Craig wanted to make sure it hit a lot of areas if he was going to call himself global. “Some things I’ve made before and some things I hadn’t,” he said. “The mac and cheese, I’ve been making that for years and I have some secret ingredients in there that I’ll never share with anybody,” he said. “There’s a lot of people that make mac and cheese, but I’ll put mine up against anybody's — it’s the only thing that I’ll be cocky about because I know it’s good.”

Craig also knew it was important to offer a lot of gluten free and vegetarian options for Manayunk diners. “Manayunk is different in that it’s a big health conscious town now and the diners are getting wiser and smarter about what they are putting into their bodies,” he said. “We are going to keep expanding on that — my fall menu will include even more vegan and vegetarian options.”

Beyond Craig’s regular selection of land, farm and sea based menu items, he also offers unique nightly specials. “I like to keep those fresh and moving and I’m going to be honest with you, I try to change my menu seasonally, but it’s really when I feel like everyone starts getting bored with it,” Craig laughed. “I want my cooks to be inspired and I don’t want them to feel like it’s boring or mundane and I want my customers to look forward to new items.”

Not only are diners taking note of Craig’s unique menu, the press is too. MAYA.J was just named one of the best new restaurants in Philadelphia by Thrillist. And besides the noteworthy food, the cocktails are also getting some attention. Their craft cocktails are all skillfully made with fresh ingredients and homemade juices and syrups. “We just try to make good solid simple cocktails,” Craig said.

As for Craig's favorite menu item at MAYA.J, he recommends his Raman. “It’s the bomb,” he said. “I just think it’s beautiful and I love to make it — I take pride in the raman broth I make.” When not dining at his own restaurant, Craig and Jaqi often head to their favorite Vietnamese restaurant, Pho Ha on 13th and Washington. “Let’s face it,” he said. “We eat out most nights of the week at least two nights will be down there, otherwise at home we’re happy with white rice with a fried egg on top or our daughter Noelle will whip together some crazy delicious salad for us.”

After just being open a few months on Main Street, Craig already started to get the itch again to have another restaurant and thought having a BYOB Italian place would offer people another choice on Main Street. So, when a restaurant went vacant just a few doors down from MAYA.J, Craig didn’t hesitate to scoop it up and Gigi Italian Bistro opened in August.

“Part of it was offering a more simplistic understandable restaurant,” Craig said. “There’s a lot of funky restaurants on Main Street, but there’s just not anyone blowing out good mom and pop Italian food.”

And Craig’s no amateur when it comes to Italian food. He owned and operation Union Block Italian Bisro in the Finger Lakes for seven years. “I turned a bookstore into a 50 seat restaurant and people would wait for three hours to eat there. I sold it to my manager and it’s still thriving and still killing it,” Craig said proudly.

As for the menu at Gigi, it matches closely to the menu he created for Union Block. ““I’m doing healthier versions of the old classic Italian dishes — a lot of fish, homemade and dry pasta and four of my speciality sauces,” he said. His four staple sauce options include his parmesan creme sauce, his long sauce, which is most similar to a marinara, and his short sauce, which is a quick pan made sauce with garlic and basil, and lastly he has his pomodoro sauce. There’s also the Gorgonzola cream sauce which is admittedly his favorite and he describes his bolognaise as “out of this world” — and we can’t argue that. For the pizza lovers, he also makes Roman style thin crust pizza including his favorite the Biacno.

The dining experience at Gigi has all the comforts of home, big oversized chairs and cushioned benches for seating. The goal for Craig was to make it feel laid back. And how can we forget the Gigi’s lining the walls of the restaurant? To make it feel like a true family establishment, Craig reached out to his social media community to send in pictures of their Gigi’s (grandmothers) and the response was overwhelming — he’s still trying to get them all up on the walls. “I came home to be with my mother and my memories of my mother and grandmother were them taking care of the family and cooking for us,” Craig said. “So this is homage to them and all the mothers and grandmothers who worked so hard to cook and take care of their families.”

For Craig, he’s excited to be back in the kitchen at Gigi, making some of his favorite Italian dishes, but he says it’s still fun to see MAYA.J grow. “I bartend one night a week at MAYA.J so I can see people and talk to them to get the pulse of the restaurant,” he said.

For Jaqi, she thinks Gigi and MAYA.J are the perfect balance for Craig. “MAYA.J is his food playground, GiGi is the stability, so he has a nice balance between the two,” she said. “We’ve planted seeds here and want to be here for awhile — we bought a house up the hill and my parents even moved a few doors down.”

Craig’s life is much more tame now than in his traveling days — he lives right up the hill from his two restaurants, he and Jaqi recently got married and baby number one is on the way, ready to join his two stepchildren, Noelle and Lucas. But, Craig has no plans of stopping yet and to him, his adventure on Main Street has just begun.

“You have to understand that I knew what Manayunk was back in the day and when I came back here, I saw all this development that was going on and I see the revitalization happening right in front of me and I want to be a part of that,” he said.

Since he opened both restaurants, Craig said other Manayunk businesses have been really supportive. The Little Apple, Pineapple On Main and Gary Mann Jewelers all dine at both restaurants often and have been helpful in getting the word out. Brandy from The Little Apple also gave Craig that great Manayunk sign for his photoshoot. As for what’s next, “we’re talking to some other people about some really cool ideas on Main Street,” Craig said. “We’re here long term, we want to grow with the community, we’re hunkering down for the long haul.”