Restaurateur Marc Vetri's foundation puts healthy food on Philly schools' menus

BY NIGHT, he serves dinner for $135 per person. By day, he serves . . . chicken tenders?

Philadelphia chef-restaurateur Marc Vetri is haute, yet dudelike: He's into fast bikes and light-as-air spinach gnocchi with brown butter. His business partners are guy-gourmets, too. Manager Jeff Benjamin likes country singer Kenny Chesney and fine Italian wine. Chef Jeff Michaud goes for boxing gyms and melt-in-your-mouth pasta. Still, no matter how rugged their pastimes, team Vetri has built a big-time business pleasing the hoity-toity set via superchic Italian grub.

Since 1998, Vetri, the chef's first place, has been Center City's most exclusive ristorante. North Broad Street's Osteria, his team's second, specializes in wood-fired pizzas topped with octopus or pistachio pesto. Amis, their newest, serves little plates - grilled veal tongue, Swiss chard ravioli, extra-fancy meatballs - that add up to big bucks.

Team Vetri's next trendy trattoria is expected to open in early 2012. Alla Spina will be a Boot-theme beer hall, neighbor to Osteria and collaboration with fellow important restaurateur Stephen Starr.

So far, critics and culinary know-it-alls have expressed endless acclaim for and bestowed umpteen awards on every one of Vetri's ventures. Philly's deep-pocketed eaters agree, booking tables weeks in advance - Recession? What recession? - and shelling out Benjamins to nibble asparagus flan with quail egg, one of the options in his first restaurant's celebrated multicourse, $135-per-person menu.

And if Vetri invites them to, say, a $300-a-pop fund-raiser for his eponymous foundation, they will come. On Tuesday, about 1,000 such fancy foodie fans are expected at the restaurant group's sixth annual "Great Chefs" event in Urban Outfitters' supercool HQ in the Navy Yard. (Past attendees have included Eagles offensive lineman Winston Justice, Phillies second baseman Chase Utley and his wife Jen, and former Eagle and now New Jersey Congressman Jon Runyan.)