🍪 A guide to Philly’s best cookies | Let’s Eat

Bakeries are churning out cookies full steam for the holidays, and we share our favorites. Also this week: Craig LaBan visits a cool South Philly shop that’s equal parts butcher, sandwich shop, and trattoria. We also offer some of the wildest cocktails (literally), and drop restaurant news.

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Chestnuts roasting on an open fire? Pshaw. Give me cookies baking in an oven any day this time of year. Whether you’re craving chocolate chip, alfajores, pignoli or something else, contributor Michelle Reese has run down Philly bakeries making cookies for every taste and tradition. And stay tuned next week for recipes!

Shown above: The black-and-white cookies from Essen Bakery.

Straight out of the New Jersey Pine Barrens and into a cocktail: That’s the negroni that bartender Danny Childs is holding. Childs, known for using foraged ingredients at his “day job” (bar manager at Farm & Fisherman in Cherry Hill), is doing a guest appearance at the W Philadelphia Hotel (1439 Chestnut St.). “The Secret List,” a pop-up starting at 4 p.m. Dec. 2-4 and Dec. 9-11, will include five Childs cocktails, a view of Philadelphia City Hall, festive lighting, and cozy outdoor heaters. Indoors, Joshua Lang will spin vinyl. That negroni, by the way, is made with gin, Cran-pari (Campari infused with Pine Barrens cranberries), sweet vermouth, and a homemade Pine Barrens amaro (pine, juniper, cedar, birch).

Want some warm ideas for fall-winter outdoor dining and drinking destinations? Colleagues Nick Vadala and Hira Qureshi have come up with a bunch.

Heavy Metal Sausage Co. is a retail sausage and sandwich shop by day, a pop-up tasting menu trattoria by night, and critic Craig LaBan tells how it’s bringing exciting new life to a South Philly corner. 🔑

Kensington Community Food Co-op was on the brink of closing, writes colleague Lynette Hazelton. Then came a last-ditch fundraiser, which gave it a second chance.

Two natives of Georgia who met 15 years ago in the U.S. embassy in Tbilisi have gone into the restaurant business together with a BYOB called Sakartvelo at 705 Chestnut St. It’s the second Georgian restaurant in Center City Philadelphia in just the last couple of months. Above is a dish of khinkali, the thick-skinned soup dumplings filled with beef and pork that are knot to be missed.

A shakeup at the Jersey Shore: The Exchange, a food hall in Linwood, will be closing in 2023, and now comes word that Mike Fitzick of Bakeria 1010 will be coming to Philadelphia, where he will take over Spuntino in Northern Liberties with a new pizza concept. Both shops are open for now.

Chef Dane DeMarco of Burgertime NJ in Audubon, Camden County, plans to branch out with a second restaurant in January: Gass & Main, an American BYOB taking over the shuttered Valente’s at 7 King’s Court in Haddonfield. DeMarco says they will use local, seasonal, and sustainable ingredients for lunch, dinner, and brunch in a vintage American farmhouse theme including antique farm tools from their father’s collection. (It’s awl good.) The name? It’s the cross street in Las Vegas where DeMarco and Sierra Lander got married in 2020. “Expect to see fun plays on retro foods and bites, elevated and modernized, bougie cheese balls, shrimp cocktails, and a focus on vegetables,” DeMarco told me. “There will be small plates, snacks, and entrees, and there will definitely be burger cause it’s American after all.”

Need to know the latest in Philly-area restaurants?

Halal Mexican food? Obaid Khan emigrated from Pakistan in 2014 and opened Philly Halal Kitchen in Cedarbrook. Though he loves Mexican food, particularly tacos, he says his choices are limited because he eats only halal food. One day he met Felipe Cabrera, the Mexican-born chef who owned the now-closed Tacos California in South Philadelphia, and decided to set up a halal Mexican takeout spot at 15th and Cherry Streets, near City Hall and LOVE Park and across from Family Court.

And so they did a few weeks ago.

Tacos Texas is just a hole in the wall that kept the hot-dog-theme wallpaper from its previous occupant and a very small counter for eating. Most customers take out. Khan has been running deliveries himself until the delivery services start next week. To further complicate matters, Tacos Texas for now has no website or social media. I’ve snagged the menu, which reads a lot like Cabrera’s previous homespun offerings: cemitas, tacos and birria tacos, chalupas, burritos, salad bowls, and gyros (a specialty from Philly Halal Kitchen). That’s the birria tacos above.

Tacos Texas. 125 N. 15th St., Philadelphia, 215-964-9705. Hours: 9 a.m.-10 p.m. Monday-Saturday.

The orange liquor-license transfer notice at 2600 W. Girard Ave. in Brewerytown is for a relocation of Rybrew, the popular bottle shop/eatery now at 2816 W. Girard. Owner Ryan Pollock says it should open in the new mixed-use building on the corner of 26th Street and Girard Avenue in mid-January. Pollock also owns Harper’s Ice Cream at 2827 W. Girard (across from the current Rybrew) as well as Rybread at 1711 Fairmount Ave. in Fairmount.

Philly-raised writer Ben Mervis leads a culinary tour through the United Kingdom in his new tome The British Cookbook. Which dish does he not discuss?

A) shepherd’s pie

B) Spice Girls kidneys

C) Dublin Bay prawns

D) haggis

Check Hira Qureshi’s Q&A and get the answer.

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