At Two Fish, expect a multi-course meal featuring more than two fish

Chances are, you know this month’s chef – Michael Stollenwerk, whose former Queen Village restaurant, Little Fish in 2009 earned two bells from Craig La Ban before being named Bon Appètit’s  “Third Best Restaurant in the Country.” No small fish, for a New Jersey native who’s been swimming against the current most of his career, opening his seafood-centric restaurant in Queen Village, the same year the Brazilian steakhouse, Fogo de Chão, opened its doors just off Dilworth Park.

Spanish Octopus with Yukon potatoes and chimichurri rojo. | PHOTOS COURTESY FELICE LEIBOWITZ

Chef Stollenwerk’s kitchen debut was quite humble. Finally able to reach the stove and the shelves in the fridge, at about age 12, he seared a couple of steaks, glazed in soy sauce, for him and his younger brother.

“It was either be hungry and cook something,” he explains.

From a young age, Chef Stollenwerk learned the value of hard work, watching his own mom work two jobs before becoming a bus boy at the age of 13.

“I worked all over. I was a fry cook at The Tuckahoe Inn and a line cook at a bunch of chains, all before turning 18.”

With his sights set on working at The Washington Inn, in Cape May, N.J., Chef Stollenwerk dropped off an application at the restaurant and simultaneously enrolled at The Academy of Culinary Arts, hoping for word there would be room at The Inn (so to speak). When word came, Chef Stollenwerk was ecstatic, staying on as a sous chef for two years. He credits the Inn with giving him exposure to fine dining and a fish-heavy menu.

When I ask him, “why fish?” he responds, “Because with meat, regardless of the cut, it’s got to be cooked to a certain temperature. Fish is more challenging.”

Leave it to Chef Stollenwerk, a “Who’s Who chef,” according to Art Culinaire Magazine, to want to work with a more difficult protein. Featured in issue 101, Chef Stollenwerk wrote about a Japanese concept that Google translates to  “refined,” and can be used to describe, “a taste, a visual aesthetic, or even a person.”

At Two Fish BYOB in Medford Lakes, N.J., the chef and his girlfriend Felice Leibowitz embody this philosophy, with Stollenwerk
running the line and Leibowitz in charge of the front of house.

They dazzle diners with their dizzyingly delicious and dynamic approach to all-things hospitality. Getting a reservation requires a bit of effort though. To quote the restaurant’s website, “Reservations can be made through the restaurant directly at (856-428-3474) beginning on the first of each month for the ENTIRE following month.” A booking isn’t complete though, until someone
from the restaurant calls to confirm.

No-shows (they’re rare) frustrate the chef, who’s already ordered the food in anticipation of their arrival, investing time reviewing the reservations to come up with new and inventive ways of serving diners something they haven’t tasted prepared the same way before.

After eating there twice and sitting down with the chef, if his approach to cooking could be captured in one word, it would be “fresh.” Not only in the way the chef sources menu items but in the way he makes Two Fish’s weekly six-course tasting menu for $100/per person as filling as it is fun.

A 40-minute drive from Center City, the restaurant’s location is bucolic, situated next door to a laundromat and a few doors down from a family-owned smoothie shop and coffee roaster. It’s the perfect setting for the chef, who’s laid back and who works with his back to a creek out back behind the restaurant.

My last time in, I got to try chef’s Spanish Octopus. Half German, his preparation of Yukon potatoes and chimichurri rojo tipped me off that his other half might be Italian.

Felice confirmed that, and I can confirm that the octopus cemented him in my mind as “Philly’s seafood whisperer,” the nickname Eater attributed him in 2016.    

German on his dad’s side and Italian on his mom’s, the chef’s earliest and most vivid memories can be traced to visits with his mom’s family, eating pizza and pasta – lasagna, specifically. Maybe it’s because of that formative experience that Chef Stollenwerk sets time aside every day the restaurant’s open to eat a family meal alongside Felice and the restaurant’s runners, who alternate days.

Run, don’t walk, to make a reservation at Two Fish in Medford Lakes, N.J. As we know, there’s a pretty good lead time to secure one.

Two Fish BYOB: 34 Trading Post Way, Medford Lakes, N.J. 08055.