7 South Philly restaurants to try at The Inquirer Food Festival

During his years as a chief culinary lieutenant for Jose Garces, Dave Conn came to appreciate the power of great ingredients and the romance of live fire. Those two elements are the defining characteristics of Alice, the corner restaurant and bar Conn opened in the Italian Market three years ago. Its lively bar frames an open kitchen where the smoke and heat of a coal-fired hearth touches the majority of the menu, from roasted oysters bubbling with garlic butter to grilled hamachi collars and a prime-grade ribeye streaked with hickory barbecue sauce and vibrant green garlic puree.  While the ever-changing seasonal menu may feel like it has no set boundaries, snippets of Conn’s personal history shape its contours and edges. Roe-topped latkes and creamed kale nod to his Jewish heritage. A variety of grilled naan flatbreads hearken back to his first job at an Indian restaurant. The occasional tribute to New Orleans is inspired by the first place he learned to cook, Ethel and Ramone’s (now Ethel's Creole Kitchen) in his native Baltimore.  Conn plans to tap at least some of those flavorful themes for this year’s Inquirer Food Festival, starting with a prime ingredient — giant sweet prawns from Australia — and serving them with an heirloom tomato étouffée that evokes that classic sauce from Louisiana, but with a lighter touch and a seasonal flair that’s all his own. — Craig LaBan

Carlos Aparicio has always excelled when his hands are working dough — first at Parc, where he developed the Rittenhouse Square brasserie’s renowned French bread program, then at the wood-fired pizza hearth of Zavino in Midtown Village. It was not until he opened his original El Chingón in 2022 near East Passyunk, however, that the sesame-speckled cemita rolls he bakes for this casual all-day cafe would establish him as one of Philadelphia’s most talented Mexican chefs.  Those swirl-topped cemita rolls, a tribute to the classic sandwich of his native Puebla, come overstuffed with refried beans, shredded quesillo cheese, chipotles en adobo, and herbal pápalo aioli, along with a range of possible proteins, from the classic milanesa beef cutlet to birria or perfect al pastor. Aparicio’s boundless creativity to explore multiple regions of Mexico’s culinary traditions is just as evident in his vibrant aguachiles or the fresh-baked conchas for dessert, which also showcase stellar Mexican-themed ice creams.  For this year’s Inquirer Food Fest, Aparicio turns once again to bread for inspiration, in this case a Puebla-style bolillo de agua, a round bread similar to a torta, but crunchier and dusted with toasted flour. He plans to stuff it with the slow-cooked pork specialty of cochinita pibil and a salsa negra made from charred chiles, a unique pairing of two regional flavors — Puebla and Yucatán — that makes for one unforgettable sandwich. — Craig LaBan

Philadelphia’s Mexican dining scene has blossomed into a golden age as a generation of immigrants — largely from the state of Puebla — have created heartfelt tributes across the region to the flavors of home. But chef Chelo Manzanarez of El Mictlan in South Philadelphia stands out, in large part because his cooking is one of the rare local examples inspired by Guerrero on Mexico’s Pacific coast. Diners there can taste the seafood bounty of Acapulco in a frosty chalice of his seafood ceviche, a tomatoey brew brightened with orange juice, serrano chile spice, and the sweet sparkle of Fanta soda. There are crisply fried half-moons of pescadilla fish tacos, tiradito-style spoonfuls cradling cubed raw tuna in bracingly tart green tomatillo broth, and a soulful mole Colorado, whose rusty-red glow and punchy spice harmonizes 25 ingredients with the kind of Guerrero-style grace only his mother and kitchen accomplice, Anabel Carmen Casiano, can deliver.  While Manzanarez’s odes to tradition anchor his success, his creative spirit for contemporary interpretations are also unique, with some stunning fusion takes on seasonal risotto (guajillo salsa rice with scallops; cilantro crema risotto with with rajas and sweet corn) and stellar desserts.  For The Inquirer Food Festival, Manzanarez plans to showcase his take on yet another of his region’s traditional dishes, chochoyote masa dumplings, served in pipián verde with toasted pepita seeds and cilantro oil. “Chochoyotes,” he says, “are a testament to pre-Hispanic cuisine that has endured and evolved to this day.” — Craig LaBan

When Fiorella opened in 2020 as a pasta bar — a reimagining of the legendary, eponymous Italian Market butcher shop — its frenetic first nights felt like “a concert, but maybe more like a basement show,” according to its chef, Matt Rodrigue.   Owner Marc Vetri and Rodrigue made all the pastas, serving them late into the night. In the years since, Rodrigue has taken that energy and applied it to a short menu of Italian classics that have a seasonally driven, Philly soul.  Rodrigue left a teaching career to become a chef. “I physically had too much energy to be a teacher, too much to sit at a desk,” Rodrigue said. “But restaurants made sense. I love the intensity of it.”  Raised in a family of shipbuilders and electricians, Rodrigue has a natural instinct for working with his hands. “I love being in the zone and letting muscle memory take over,” he said. “And I love how specialized our menu is.” Another thing he loves: “the idea of restraint.” For Rodrigue, that comes in hewing to Fiorella’s pasta formats. It gives rise to creativity and unexpected touches, like using huitlacoche alongside black truffle and pairing seedy fresh figs with jiggly ricotta gnudi. (Expect something along those lines — but in baked-pasta form — at The Inquirer Food Festival.) Fiorella’s menu is simple, Rodrigue said. “But simple is hard. It’s hard to work within confines, but rules help you develop a vision.” — Kiki Aranita

South Philly’s Gabriella’s Vietnam is one of Philly’s most interesting Vietnamese restaurants, forever experimenting with interpretations of Vietnamese street foods and cocktails. Chef Thanh Nguyen loves to riff on classic dishes like xôi chiên giòn, a crispy fried sticky rice cake that she stuffs with chicken. (Look for it at The Inquirer Food Festival, where she plans on encasing a whole chicken in sticky rice.)  Nguyen strives to make the flavors of her youth in Saigon approachable to those not familiar with Vietnamese food while keeping up with Philadelphia’s ever-changing restaujant scene. “I’ll take things that are very popular there and bring them here and make it so people are willing to try them,” she said.  Her water fern dumplings are tiny works of art, layering open-face dumpling skins made from silken tapioca with many different textures and colors — mung beans, pork cracklings, fried shallots, and minced shrimp — then plating each one in individual ceramic dishes. She also serves exceptionally crispy bánh xèo, which straddles the line between omelet and crepe. She has turned these Vietnamese snacks and street foods into small plates that perfectly meet Philly’s current nibble-and-graze dining moment. “As a chef, I live in the middle, between the older generation of Vietnamese and a younger one that closely follows trends,” she said. “I have to understand both sides.” — Kiki Aranita

This East Passyunk oyster bar is both the sequel to Mawn — Phila and Rachel Lorn’s acclaimed Cambodian noodle bar in Bella Vista — and a restaurant with its own vibe, a mix of South Philly panache and vibrant Southeast Asian flavors.  The Lorns opened Sao on East Passyunk Avenue in 2025, just two years after hitting their stride with Mawn, where the couple earned their reputation as culinary powerhouses with a James Beard Award and commendations from Food & Wine, the New York Times, and The Inquirer.  Sao, meanwhile, is where the Lorns get to be low-key extravagant, dishing out corn pancakes topped with caviar, oversized chicken cutlets coated in a fish sauce caramel, and a parade of beautiful crudos. It’s become a heavy-hitter in its own right: Sao was named to Bon Appetit’s best new restaurants list in 2026 — an honor Mawn never earned. “It felt like Christmas morning … the joy of watching the rest of [Sao’s] staff find out,” Rachel Lorn said.  At The Inquirer Food Festival, Phila Lorn will be serving crab gravy with baguettes. It's a dish Phila calls close to his heart. As a kid growing up at Seventh and Jackson Streets, he used to beg his mom to make their version of Sunday gravy with bread his dad would pick up from Sarcone’s. “It’s a Cambodian dish with a South Philly story,” Phila said, just like Sao. — Beatrice Forman

At Tesiny, oysters and crudos are only the starting point. Grilled octopus comes over gigante beans, cherry tomato, and red chile. Skate wing is breaded and paired with celery salad, lemon balm, hazelnuts, and huckleberries. Squid skewers get hot paprika and sumac, with squid-ink aioli alongside. Lauren Biederman and Devon Reyes-Brannan call their intimate South Philadelphia yearling a seafood bar, but the menu is deliberately hard to pin down. That suits executive chef Kevin McWilliams, who took over Tesiny’s kitchen in June after years in some of Philadelphia’s most closely watched restaurants. A Palmyra native, McWilliams crossed the Delaware to Philadelphia in the mid-2000s to study photography at the University of the Arts, having already been “working in restaurants since I was old enough to get a job,” he said. “I started taking cooking seriously probably in my 20s.” His first major kitchen job was at Kensington Quarters under Damon Menapace. He later returned as a sous chef under Matt Harper, then moved through Marigold Kitchen with Eric Leveillee, River Twice with Randy Rucker, Lark with Nick Elmi, and Lacroix, where he again worked with Leveillee. He eventually rejoined Elmi to run the kitchen at Laurel during the East Passyunk Avenue restaurant’s final three years. Tesiny offered a different proposition: a tiny kitchen, a concise menu, and room to change course. After spending his first month watching how customers ordered, McWilliams settled on an approach that keeps seafood at the center without locking the restaurant into a rigid identity. The cooking is polished but not precious, with enough flexibility for the menu to shift with the product at hand. That extends to The Inquirer Food Fest. Asked what he plans to serve, McWilliams couldn’t commit to a dish. “Whatever I do is going to be based on what’s available and what products we have in-house at the time,” he said. The only thing he can say for sure: “It’ll be seafood-focused.” — Michael Klein