Philly’s restaurants are on top | Morning Newsletter
And the search for 413 forgotten Philadelphians
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Welcome to Wednesday. Keep your umbrella handy because it’ll be rainy at times with a high near 42.
It feels like Philly restaurants have been getting a lot more love on a national stage. Our main story crunches the data to find out if this is more than just vibes. Turns out, the numbers don’t lie.
— Paola Pérez (@pdesiperez, morningnewsletter@inquirer.com)
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🎤 I’m passing the mic over to data reporter Aseem Shukla.
Last month, after we saw Philly restaurants win award after award from eminences like the James Beard Foundation, the New York Times, and lots of others, my editors and I started wondering: has Philly always gotten this kind of love from outsiders? I mean, we know the food here is awesome — is everybody else only figuring this out now?
The answer is an emphatic yes. At least when it comes to fancy food publications, we’re getting more kudos than we ever have before.
How do we know? We decided to pull up the best new restaurant and chef lists from five different publications going back to the 80s, and tallied up which cities were represented over time.
Here’s what we found:
🍴 Most of the time, Philly restaurants got somewhere between the 9th- and 15th-most mentions, compared to other cities’ restaurants. Not terrible, but not great either.
🍴 Confusingly, restaurants in D.C. and even Boston(!) got more mentions than us most of the time.
🍴 But just in the last 5 years, since 2019, Philly was mentioned more often than any other city besides New York and Los Angeles.
The next question was, why? To find that out, I talked to every professional foodie I could reach. Not just our esteemed Mike Klein and Craig LaBan, who had lots of sage thoughts, but professional list-makers from other publications, as well as plenty of restaurateurs.
The answers they provided weren’t unanimous, but lots of them really thought that Philly’s special combo of great taste, cheap rents, and supportive chef community made for the perfect recipe for success. Others were more cynical, and thought the Philly love was just media chasing the next tasty fad.
Whatever’s going on, the numbers are clear: Philly restaurants are winning a ton of popularity contests. — Aseem Shukla
Dig into our new interactive to see exactly just how much everybody loves our food.
What you should know today
The family of slain Temple University Police Officer Christopher Fitzgerald is seeking the death penalty for his alleged killer, 18-year-old Miles Pfeffer.
I-95 North will be closed in Center City near Penn’s Landing for the first weekend in February, and significant backups are expected. Here’s what to know.
The Colored Girls Museum will remain open at its 140-year-old, three-story Victorian home after months in limbo.
Plans to build a new police station in North Philly are moving forward, despite concerns from community members that it goes against the legacy of a historic Black neighborhood.
In Germantown, residents are protesting apartment building proposed for a surface parking lot, arguing that it violates the spirit of the neighborhood’s potential historic district.
More Philadelphia-area hospital workers are vaccinated against COVID than the flu. Check your local hospital’s rates.
Community members worried about school board proposals to limit library books or police the participation of transgender students now have a statewide group to help fight those policies.
Fed prosecutors insisted upon tough punishments after cop cars were set ablaze during the George Floyd protests. Most cases resulted in lighter sentences, the last of which was handed down Tuesday.
Yikes! Philly ranks third in the country among cities with the most bedbugs. We’ve gone up in rankings over the last few years.
Tickets for the Phillies’ first home games of the season go on sale starting tomorrow, and they will sell out fast, so check out this refresher on how to get yours.
Avis Wanda McClinton has spent the last decade commemorating and recognizing unmarked African American burial sites in Quaker graveyards.
She’s the community liaison for Haverford College’s project “Manumitted: The People Enslaved by Quakers.”
Quakers’ role: They were among the first advocates for the abolishment of slavery. In 1780, Pennsylvania became the first state to mandate the gradual release of all enslaved people. But McClinton’s review of centuries-old documents show that Quakers had also condoned slavery.
At the center of the project are Quaker freedom guarantees, papers also known as “manumissions,” for 413 enslaved African Americans who were contractually freed in the Philadelphia area between 1765 and 1790.
The full identities and fates of those named in the documents remain unknown. The goal is to find out who they were and what happened to them after their emancipation took effect.
Keep reading on the effort to uncover what happened to the 413 forgotten Philadelphians.
🧠 Trivia time
On Monday, Joel Embiid became the ninth player in NBA history to score at least 70 points in a game. Monday also marked the 18th anniversary of which basketball legend’s 81-point game?
A) Elgin Baylor
B) Michael Jordan
C) Kobe Bryant
D) David Thompson
Think you know? Check your answer.
What we're...
🚘 Learning: How to avoid predatory towing practices.
👀 Curious about: Yummy Roman pastries popping up throughout the city.
💃 Anticipating: Madonna and 14 other concerts to warm up the Philadelphia winter.
🧩 Unscramble the anagram
Hint: West Philly native just picked up his first Oscar nomination
COMMON LOADING
Email us if you know the answer. We’ll select a reader at random to shout out here. Cheers to Jan Dalina who correctly guessed Tuesday’s answer: Tina Fey.
Photo of the day
I’m starting my day with lemon ginger tea. I followed this Bryn Mawr chemist’s technique for the best cup. Thanks for starting your day with The Inquirer.
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