Gone to Seed

When Peter Phillips was brainstorming with his business partner for Massi’s, their new sandwich shop in Astoria, Queens, he wanted something with a “homemade feel,” in both aesthetics and production. The bread would be made fresh every day, the fries cut in-house. And everything would be fried in beef tallow. It “just felt like a natural extension of what we were creating, with this focus on things that were pretty natural,” says Phillips. So when it came time to market the restaurant, centering that homespun framing just made sense — on Massi’s Instagram, they note the sourdough is fresh, reassure everything is fried in beef tallow, and finally, affirm that there are “no seed oils.”