🍷 Philly’s best indie bottle shops | Let’s Eat
A guide to the feast of the seven fishes, a look inside a gorgeous coffee house, and Craig LaBan finds no rules but lots of energy at Sao.
Whether you know a lot about wine or very little, you’ll love these 11 independent shops.
Also in this edition:
Seven fishes: A guide to the traditional feasts.
Gorgeous coffee house: The new Trung Nguyên Legend even has a roof deck.
The best things we ate: Sweet, salty, hearty — and sticky.
West Philly restaurant drought? Read on and I will explain.
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It’s easier than ever to swing by a neighborhood shop and leave with a special wine bottle at a friendly price. Sande Friedman shares her favorite indie wine merchants in Philly and the suburbs.
🍷 In these cold days, here’s a luxe Chardonnay worth warming up to, says Marnie Old.
If you’re after squid ink risotto, surf and turf, or mostly just pasta, Kiki Aranita has you covered for this year’s crop of seven fishes feasts with an array of festive, mostly fishy Philly restaurants.
The largest U.S. location of the Vietnamese coffee brand Trung Nguyên Legend has opened near the Mummers Museum in Pennsport. Beatrice Forman stopped to visit the onetime cabinetry showroom, now a two-story destination with a year-round roof deck for espresso tonics, Vietnamese egg coffees, and phin pour-overs.
Critic Craig LaBan found much to enjoy at Phila and Rachel Lorn’s Sao — a love letter to Philly, set to a soundtrack mix of vintage R&B, Cambodian rap, and Frank Sinatra.
An accolade for Omar Tate
Chef Omar Tate, who co-owns the Michelin-recommended Honeysuckle on North Broad Street with his wife, Cybille St.Aude-Tate, just received an $85,000, no-strings-attached grant from the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage. Pew says the grants support timely and compelling new projects and long-term stability. “Tate uses food as a medium for storytelling and cultural preservation,” it blurbed. “His curated culinary experiences assert cooking as a fine art that can express complex narratives about identity, memory, and history. In his visual artworks, collaborations with other artists, and his Philadelphia restaurant Honeysuckle, Tate connects people with Black creative lineages and cuisine.”
A sweet (and spicy) Market Street pop-up ... belly-warming Indian food ... a sticky dessert at Paffuto ... a Greek spin on American Sardine Bar’s namesake food. Read on to see where we’ve been eating.
Scoops
Barcelona Wine Bar, the syndicated Spanish tapas house, appears to be in the initial stages of planning a second Philadelphia location, complementing its eight-year-old spot in East Passyunk. A real estate solicitation mentions Barcelona as a tenant in an adaptive reuse of an old warehouse on North Lee Street in Fishtown, next to Pizzeria Beddia and Hiroki and across from the new Pip’s, the cider bar by Ploughman Cider. No comment from a Barcelona rep.
Vons Chicken, a South Korean-rooted chain big on the West Coast, ventures east next month to open at 1714 Washington Ave., next to AutoZone. Vons’ menu includes Korean fried as well as baked chicken, plus sides such as mandu and tteokbokki. Local franchisee Thao Le, who found Vons in California while visiting family, has assorted restaurant experience, including serving at Pietro’s Italian in Center City.
Restaurant report
Hira Qureshi tried falafel at more than 20 restaurants while scouting Middle Eastern cuisine for The Inquirer’s 76. Here’s her rule: good falafel = good restaurant. She maps her picks.
Briefly noted
Eric Berley of Old City’s Franklin Fountain and Shane Confectionery now has a third business on the block. The Cacao Pod — a private event space that doubles as head chocolate maker Kevin Paschall’s chocolate roastery — rocks the same ye olde look at 104 Market. The space, which fits 24 guests (18 seated), is equipped with an ice cream counter, soda fountain, and hot chocolate bar.
Bombay Express completes its move from Marlton to 219 Haddonfield-Berlin Rd., the Centrum Shoppes in Cherry Hill, opening Thursday.
Homegrown 215 opens its second location, at the former Bison Coffee shop at 1600 Callowhill St. (enter on Carlton), on Saturday.
The Concourse at Comcast Center (1701 JFK Blvd.) has two openings teed up for Dec. 15: Pagano’s Market (Italian classics, prepared foods, and desserts) and Kenny’s Wok (a fast-casual pan-Asian concept creating dishes using robotic-wok technology; it’s a version of InstaFooz, the Chinatown shop Poon owns with David Taing).
Panchoʼs Mexican Taqueria in Atlantic Cityʼs Ducktown neighborhood — which has been running 12 hours a day, seven days a week, for 20 years — will close for what owner Josh Cruz predicts will be a five-week-long renovation.
Sisterly Love Collective, the alliance of women in the food and hospitality industries, will host a pop-up holiday market from noon to 4 p.m. this weekend at the old High Street Bakery space (101 S. Ninth St.).
Oyster House’s latest guest chef in its lobster-roll series is Amá chef Frankie Ramirez. His roll ($39), whose proceeds will benefit PAWS, includes butter-poached lobster, salsa macha, refried beans, and cilantro macho on a split-top bun, served with hand-cut fries. It’s on through Saturday.
Red Gravy Goods is a new gift shop from Valerie Safran and Marcie Turney (of Barbuzzo, Bud & Marilyn’s, Little Nonna’s, and Darling Jacks) at 1335 E. Passyunk Ave., across from Cartesian Brewing/CJ & D’s Trenton Tomato Pies. Kitchen wares are part of the line and the big sell is a hat patch bar: about 100 patches designed by Safran and team that can be applied on-site.
Center City District Restaurant Week returns Jan. 18-31 with 100-plus restaurants offering three-course, prix-fixe dinners for $45 or $60 and two-course lunches for $20. (The district skipped the promotion this fall for the first time in 22 years.) Here’s the rundown.
❓Pop quiz
A bar is on the way to Center City whose specialty will be:
A) “the most tequilas under one roof in Philadelphia”
B) 50 varieties of Champagne, plus caviars
C) an espresso martini fountain
D) snacks whose names all start with the letter “G”
Find out if you know the answer.
Ask Mike anything
I would have thought that with the college campuses nearby and booming University City business in general, the big spaces that formerly housed Pod, Distrito, and City Tap House would have been taken over by new restaurants already. Why do you think that is not the case? — Lyndsey M.
My real estate sources say the main force that makes large spaces tougher to fill in University City are the colleges’ schedules, which create slow summers and winter breaks. One also cited a lack of older architecture (which restaurateurs gravitate toward) and the surfeit of new construction, which tends to make rents more expensive.
On the bright side, I’m hearing that a tenant may be on the way to the Pod space next to the Inn at Penn (3636 Sansom St.). This year, the UCity/West Philly area has seen the new Gather Food Hall at the Bulletin Building, as well as a slate of smaller destinations: Out West Cafe (5127 Walnut), Corio at uCity Square (37th and Chestnut), Haraz Coffee House (3421 Chestnut), and Good Hatch Eatery (4721 Pine). Next year’s crop will include Mi Casa and a Tous Les Jours bakery at Schuylkill Yards.
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