🍂Pumpkin spice latte season already?! | Let’s Eat

This week, we look at fall, in the coffee department, anyway. Also, we share late-summer cocktail recipes, word of a sweet romance, and news about a family’s homespun food business.

❓ But first, a quiz. Marc Vetri will join Stephen Starr and Jose Garces as new food brands on the renovated club level of the Wells Fargo Center. His pizza stand will be called:

A.) MVP

B.) Dribbles

C.) You’ve Tried the Rest

D.) Za’mboni

Get the answer, and the rundown of what will be cooking at the arena, here.

📝 Send me tips, suggestions and questions here.

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— Mike Klein

“The first sip of a Starbucks ‘pumpkin spice latte’ or ‘pumpkin cream cold brew’ cues the unofficial start of the fall season for many customers,” the java giant said Tuesday while announcing the availability of PSLs. Tuesday, August 30 — six days earlier than last year’s PSL release. You’ve gourd to be kidding! Well, consider that hometown fave Wawa broke them out last week. My colleague Tony Wood explains it’s all in the name of caffeinated competition.

It’s really highball season. A highball, writes M. Carrie Allan in the Washington Post, is a spirit lengthened with a bubbly, nonalcoholic mixer, and that typically the mixer will be at least double the amount of spirit — a civilized, relatively low-ABV drink. Allan shows you how to mix a Cuba Libre, a Campari and soda, and our old friend Tom Collins.

It’s about a Philly couple, Milk Jawn ice cream, and a beach. Colleague Stephanie Farr’s scoop on Paul Kimball’s proposal to Sarah Keller will melt your heart.

Community fridges are outdoor pantries stocked with food that neighbors can give and take. The fridge outside of Bebashi, which serves Spring Garden/Callowhill, was vandalized, writes my colleague Massarah Mikati, and organizers have vowed to rebuild.

When Poorva and Rajus Korde moved to the Philadelphia area, shipments of homemade food followed from Rajus’ Maharashtra-born mother, including a spicy-sweet tomato-and-pepper condiment called lonsa. (Say it “LOAN-sa.”) There must be 50 ways to love your lonsa, so they turned it into a business called Aaji’s — Marathi for grandmother. It’s available at many farmers’ markets and a few retailers.

Big booze news from my colleague Robert Moran: New Jersey has announced that third-party services — such as DoorDash and Instacart — will soon be allowed to deliver alcoholic beverages from restaurants, bars, and liquor stores to customers at home.

At the days-old Arepa Grub Spot, first-time restaurateurs Julio César Rivas and Fabian Sanchez are dishing an ambitious selection of Venezuelan-style arepas, patacónes, empanadas and cachapas from a storefront in the Italian Market, just up the block from Cristina Martinez’s South Philly Barbacoa and Casa Mexico.

Rivas, a house mover in the U.S. for five years, told me that cooking was so much of a passion that he took courses to refine his technique. Then came the pandemic, and he enlisted his mother, Nubia Castillo, and Sanchez to invest in his dream: a restaurant.

Rivas has two young Venezuelan American workers making arepas all day and handling the prep. Rivas makes the main dishes, including asado negro — the Caracas beef-round specialty that takes three days of marinating and roasting. Above is a chicken patacón — chopped and seasoned chicken between “slices” of twice-fried green plantain ($9). Below is a specialty arepa called reina pepiada, basically American-style chicken salad and avocado on an arepa. It grew to fame years ago, thanks to the spouses of American oil workers in Veneuela. There’s a full menu of breakfast arepas, too.

Hours of operation are long, and you have to stop in. Rivas tells me that they are resisting the delivery apps and their high commissions and are talking to young people to do bike deliveries.

Arepa Grub Spot, 1112 S. Ninth St. Hours: 7 a.m.-10 p.m. Sunday-Thursday, 7 a.m.-3 p.m. Friday and Saturday.

Briefly noted

Cavanaugh’s Rittenhouse is in its soft-opening mode at 1921 Sansom St., a block west of its home of 20 years. The sports bar is 1½ times the size and now offers pizza (crust is on the thicker side).

A little intel for the Rittenhouse crowd: J’aime French Bakery in Washington Square West will branch out in October with a second location, J’aime French Cafe, at 17th and Pine Streets.

Elkins Perk’s 20-year run near the Elkins Park SEPTA station has ended, per a sign on the coffee shop’s door.

Philly-based Simply Good Jars, which sells shelf-stable salads packed in jars and got a $500,000 investment from Mark Cuban and Lori Greiner on Shark Tank last year, just struck a deal to sell in 60 Costco stores in nine states.

Chicken chicken everywhere. In fact, the Philly area will get a hot, new contender Friday, Sept. 2 as the Philippines brand Jollibee opens at Bustleton and Cottman Avenues in the Northeast.

But to kick it back old school, we have Speck’s, which has been a part of the Collegeville area for 70 years —most of that from a low-slung building at Germantown and Ridge Pikes. Order at the front and take in the retro setup (and that includes the prices — figure under $50 for four people).

The fluorescent-lit dining room includes a lunch counter ringed with white stools and the requisite Coca-Cola and Slushee machines. Specialty is “broasted” chicken, fried in a pressure cooker and sold by the order or piece. Crispy, thin crust, juicy inside, and that extends to the boneless chicken sandwich ($5.80) served on a hamburger bun. (None of that “brioche” stuff here.) Sides include fried pickles, mozzarella sticks, cheesy mac-and-cheese, mashed potatoes, and coleslaw.

Speck’s Drive-In, 3969 Ridge Pike, Collegeville. Hours: 10 a..m.-9 p.m. Monday-Friday, 11 a.m.-9 p.m. Saturday, noon-8 p.m. Sunday.

We’re headed south this week, in a manner of speaking. Fried green tomatoes, those crunchy, sour treats served with herb aioli and shishitos on the side, were a hit at Southwark in Queen Village for reader @stafford.music. (Incidentally, expect news soon on the reopening of Southwark sister restaurant Ambra.) On the other side of town, @smhhcd shares blissful memories of the SouthGate fries, with garlic, gochugaru, and gochujang aioli, at SouthGate in the Rittenhouse/Fitler Square neighborhood.

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