Chicken liver mousse is Philly’s latest restaurant menu hit

© Tyger Williams/The Philadelphia Inquirer/TNS Chicken liver mousse at Redcrest Kitchen in Queen Village. "I treat it like it's butter," says chef Evan Snyder, who carefully monitors the mousse's temperature, going so far as to whip it every 30 minutes.

Could it be that 2023’s culinary sleeper hit is ... chicken liver mousse?

This winter, the savory, velvety smooth spread seems to be everywhere. At Gass & Main in Haddonfield, it subs in for peanut butter in a dressed-up play on ants on a log. At Fishtown’s Tulip Pasta & Wine Bar, it’s piped into savory cannoli shells. At Ambra in Queen Village, it’s shaped into a sphere and dipped in cocoa butter.

At some restaurants, it anchors a composed toast, like at a.kitchen, where it’s slathered on country bread, drizzled with pear mustard, then topped with pine nuts and smoked dates. But at far more places, it’s simple, a go-to variable in a sweet/sour+savory+bread equation. A small sampling: Cry Baby Pasta (fig mostarda, pistachio); Ember & Ash (brioche, pickles); Abe Fisher (rye toast, house pickles); Bar Hygge (toasted foccacia, pickled red onion); and Spring Mill Cafe (baguette, cornichons).

© Tyger Williams/The Philadelphia Inquirer/TNS Chef Evan Snyder puts Concord grape gelee onto the chicken liver toast at Redcrest Kitchen. "Cooking in fine dining, you learn how to make the things you didn't necessarily enjoy growing up taste a lot better."

Chicken liver mousse is nothing new in Philadelphia. It’s graced menus since at least the 1970s and gained steam through the ‘00s. By 2019, it was the recurrent star in Craig LaBan’s list of favorite liver dishes. (Nick Elmi, please bring back ITV’s chicken liver mousse stroopwafel!)

© Jessica Griffin/The Philadelphia Inquirer/TNS Chris D'Ambro, chef-owner of Ambra, assembles chicken liver mousse bonbons, a three-day process. The bonbons are a "little sidecar" to a warm raddichio salad that's served in Ambra's multicourse tasting menu.

But the current preponderance of mousse seems to eclipse that late 2010s peak. Why? Some chefs point to inflation.

© Jessica Griffin/The Philadelphia Inquirer/TNS Chicken liver mousse bonbons at Ambra. Chef Chris D'Ambro says he's been refining this concept for years — maybe as far back as his Talula's Table days, when he first coated chicken liver mousse with Concord grape jelly.

“It’s a pretty affordable menu item you can put on and not lose your tail like you do on everything else,” says chef Lee Styer, who serves chicken liver mousse on the Dutch’s dinner menu, the same one found for 12-plus years at its predecessor, Fond.

© Tyger Williams/The Philadelphia Inquirer/TNS Chicken Liver Cannoli at Tulip Pasta & Wine Bar in Philadelphia, Pa., on Wednesday Dec. 28, 2022.

Styer browns apples, onions, rosemary, and thyme in bacon fat, deglazes the pan with brandy, then sears the chicken livers. He purees them with cream, then strains it through a fine sieve. The key to its silken texture is barely cooking the liver. “Well-done livers tend to be gritty and grainy,” he says.

The mousse was on the opening menu at Fond in 2009, and it became one of the restaurant’s mainstays — so much so that it stuck around even as the East Passyunk Avenue spot changed concepts. “People still come in for it.”

A customer favorite

Across town in Rittenhouse, another mousse has been on the menu since day one, at Friday Saturday Sunday. There, milk-soaked chicken livers are blended with slow-cooked onions, garlic, butter, and cream. Ample dabs of mousse adorned with apple butter and mustard seeds sit atop squares of toasted brioche. The bar-menu bite has exceptional staying power due to its popularity.

© Tyger Williams/The Philadelphia Inquirer/TNS Chicken liver mousse on a toasted brioche, with Concord grape gelee, pickled celery, chervil, and toasted peanuts at Redcrest Kitchen on Thursday, Feb. 2, 2023.

“We brought three items back post-COVID,” chef Chad Williams says. “That was the one we had to have.”

Williams put the mousse on the restaurant’s opening menu to honor its place in his culinary memory. “When you first start cooking, you eat some things that you aren’t familiar with that really blow your mind,” he says. The chicken liver mousse at the erstwhile Cashion’s Eat Place in D.C. was one of those.

“I wasn’t really any sort of adventurous eater before I started cooking,” he remembers. “That was one [dish] that just seemed so improbably delicious. It should be repulsive, but it’s amazing.”

While some chefs relish the deep, iron-y “primal deliciousness,” as Williams describes it, others just can’t.

“I hate chicken liver mousse,” declares Bloomsday chef Kelsey Bush.

But Bush was persuaded to add it to Bloomsday’s menu after front-of-house staff requested it. Plus, poultry supplier Earl Keiser brings livers whether they want them or not, Bush says, so “it’s a great waste-streaming product.”

The deal was sealed when sous chef Jared Witt stepped up to make the mousse. “He makes it just like his grandma’s,” Bush says. Witt soaks the livers in buttermilk to remove any metallic flavor, then sears it, emulsifies it with butter, and strains till completely smooth. A quenelle of mousse comes with rotating pickled garnishes (“something sharp and fruity”) and Merzbacher’s bread.

Though she’s still not a fan, Bush has come to love something about chicken liver mousse. It “can be that hip, avant-garde, vogue thing, or it can be the thing grandma made for you.”

A cheffy treat

Chef Chris D’Ambro goes the avant-garde route at Ambra, the tasting-menu sibling restaurant to Southwark, where mousse and toast has been a staple since 2016. But D’Ambro and longtime sous chef Ryan LaFrance wanted to push boundaries, so they began developing something different in 2017: a chicken liver bonbon. It was inspired by chef Dominique Crenn’s Kir Breton amuse bouche, a cocktail cleverly encased in a cocoa butter shell.

D’Ambro and LaFrance adapted that technique for what’s essentially a “liver lolly.” It’s a three-day process that starts with baking pureed Primal Supply livers in a water bath — to maintain its rosy pink color — then piping it into sphere molds. Half of each sphere gets a candied pistachio, the other is stuffed with beet agrodolce. They’re chilled, smushed together on a skewer, then dipped in cocoa butter with a bit of beet juice (added accidentally at first) for flare.

The bonbon has evolved since its debut in 2017, but it’s always been anchored by the same principle. “You want texture to break up that creaminess, and you always want some sweet and some acidity — creating that one biter without using a piece of toast,” D’Ambro says.

Still, there’s something undeniably satisfying about chicken liver mousse on toast — especially one with the luxuriously airy texture it has at Redcrest Kitchen, where chef Evan Snyder whips the mousse every half-hour. “I get a little neurotic with it,” he says.

Snyder channeled childhood in a recent toast, a mashup of PB&J and ants on a log. A generous smear of mousse on a thick slice of brioche is topped with Concord grape jelly, pickled celery, and crushed smoked peanuts. The livers themselves are cooked with “tons of port ... a ton of garlic and shallots, a ton of butter, a good amount of cream.” It’s no wonder it’s delicious.

There’s a nostalgia to chicken liver mousse for Snyder, a connection to the chopped liver he begrudgingly ate as a kid. “In my mind, I was like, ‘If I can just make this chopped liver more palatable,’” he says. “Cooking in fine dining, you learn how to make the things that you didn’t necessarily enjoy growing up taste a lot better.”

And that may be another reason why this simple, cheffy treat is on so many menus today: It’s preparing us for what’s to come.

As Friday Saturday Sunday’s Williams says, “You don’t start ‘em with tripe. You start ‘em with chicken liver and that softens them up.”

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