Food and Drinq

Photos by April Saul / The Philadelphia Inquirer

Eric Ripert, who wears the toque at New York's posh Le Bernardin, turned lots of heads early Friday afternoon when he toured Reading Terminal Market.

Could have been his rock-star looks. Also could have been the two photographers, lighting guy, chef de cuisine, publicist, restaurant manager and reporter tailing him through the market, packed as it was with Good Friday shoppers.

Ripert is opening 10 Arts, a restaurant perhaps best described as Le Bernardin Lite, under the rotunda at the nearby Ritz-Carlton Hotel. Construction, by the way, is proceeding nicely, as a look behind the temporary walls indicates. (No cameras allowed, I was told.) Workers recently installed a circular assembly of wine cabinets around the center, and various bars and counters are coming together. They're aiming for a cocktail party on May 20.

While construction workers build the dining room, and another crew outfits the kitchen, publicist Wendy Gordon is putting together a package of publicity materials to hand out to reporters and to place on the web.

No restaurant today opens without one.

Gordon arranged a photo shoot with Len DePas, who arrived Friday morning and photographed chef de cuisine Jennifer Carroll and newly arrived general manager David Weiss.

Ripert trained in from Washington midday and stopped at the hotel. The Ritz-Carlton had staffer Katelyn Poole greet him at the front door with a glass of champagne infused with essence of hibiscus. (In the photo, Poole is standing in front of one of the temporary walls that bars entry to 10 Arts.)

Gordon thought Ripert's shots would work better at Reading Terminal and the Italian Market.

You know, to show him off as a man of the people, shopping like the locals. (I thought it would be cool to have Inquirer photographer April Saul photographing the photo session, so I could write about the photographer photographing the photo session.)

We all set out on foot, around City Hall, along Market and up 12th Street.

As we entered the market, Ripert told me he looked forward to a hot Pennsylvania Dutch-style soft pretzel. The ones dunked in butter. (Yes, he's been to the Terminal before.) When we realized that Fisher's was off for Good Friday, his face dropped.

Ripert paused with Carroll at the Cookbook Stall -- snap, snap, flash, flash. He reached into his pocket and stuffed a buck into Philbert the pig (and warded off his photog, lest he seem to be courting a photo op).

We then barreled into the bustling aisles of Iovine Bros. produce. A worker carrying a case of carrots was asked to keep holding it over his head while DePas and his lighting guy snapped Ripert as he fondled greens or something.

Then we headed to Famous 4th Street Cookies, where owner David Auspitz told him the story about how the cookies are his wife's recipe. "Oh!" Ripert said brightly with mock alarm. "Your wife brings in money?"

Auspitz stepped out from his booth with a tray of warm cookies, which he thrust at Ripert. Auspitz plopped a bag of cookies into Carroll's hands.

Ripert took a bite and made that same quasi-orgasmic face that the guy in those infomercials does when the old lady makes him something on nonstick cookware.

Weiss, a transplant from the Ritz-Carlton in Marina Del Rey, was wide-eyed. And only three blocks from the hotel! He'd been to Quincy Market in Boston, but this had it beat by a mile. I'm betting that Weiss, who's probably 6 feet tall and a buck and a half, maybe a buck sixty-five, packs on a few pounds by summer.

Carroll, who grew up in Somerton and most recently was third in command in Le Bernardin's kitchen in New York, said this was her first time at the Terminal since she returned to Philly earlier this week.