ARI MILLER
EXECUTIVE CHEF AT POST HASTE
PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA, USA
Ari Miller is the executive chef at Post Haste, a cocktail bar and restaurant in the East Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia. In addition to his role at Post Haste, he is also the chef behind Poi Dog in Philadelphia, further reflecting his ongoing exploration of bold, culturally informed flavors and community-driven cooking.
Previously, he was the executive chef of The Rosewood Hotel in Washington, D.C. for celebrity-chef Wolfgang Puck. Prior to that he was the chef/owner of Musi, a critically-acclaimed restaurant where he created a higher standard in the Philadelphia food world for using artisanal, often local, hyper-seasonal produce, cheeses and meats.
There were few restaurants that took the avoidance and innovative reinvention of would-be food waste to the level that Chef Ari Miller did at Musi where he was named Best Chef by Philadelphia Magazine in 2019. Miller’s menus were grounded with exquisite, hand made pastas that had nothing to with Italy, while exhibiting a constant and utterly delicious repurposing of rinds, tops, tips and often tossed-away bits.
He draws upon flavors honed after a decade spent in Tel Aviv, but with restraint. As Hillary Dixler Canavan WROTE, while naming Musi one of Eater’s 16 Best New Restaurants of 2019:
“Musi prioritizes the things that diners ought to demand — a menu informed by local product and a kitchen connected to the region’s best purveyors — but the restaurant doesn’t beat you over the head with it.” It is this work that Miller continues at Post Haste.
Chef Miller is 4th generation Philadelphian, his maternal great-grandparents having owned a small grocery at 7th & Snyder in the late 19th century. Though he grew up in the suburbs, weekends were spent in Old City and the Northeast with his grandparents or walking South St with high school friends.
Beyond the ubiquitous cheesesteaks and hoagies inherent to his Philadelphia upbringing, it was the Jewish delis and his family’s Ukrainian heritage that informed his culinary point of reference.
In troubled times, he turned to the God of matzo ball soup, chopped liver, tongue, hard salami, corned beef specials, kasha and farfalle.