Yup, another post about Philadelphia, and arguably one of the most important. After all, you have to eat at some point during your stay, right? And why not try something new? Over the course of our stay, we made a point of not eating at chain restaurants to get the authentic Philly experience. I mean, Subway is okay, but I can get that back home just as easily as in Philadelphia.
Alright, first off, let’s talk about Philly cheesesteaks. I don’t know how other places serve it, but where we got it in the Reading Terminal Market, it really did just taste like an Italian Beef sandwich, and occasionally you’d have trouble biting a string of cheese and remember it was there. Granted, I like Italian Beef, so no complaints there!
Then we get to the restaurants themselves. Our hotel had an adjoining farm-to-table restaurant called Urban Farmer. The seating was wacky and fun, the food was fresh (as it should be) and tasty, and the entire place just felt homey. As I’ve found, most of the places I went in Philly didn’t put ice in the water, but in this case, it just contributed to the colloquial feel of the restaurant. I got an orange juice (I was feeling unoriginal), which was fresh-squeezed, and a Pear French Toast, with pear compote and pear slices adorning giant towers of bread. My mother got an English muffin with her omelet; the muffin was so huge that we just had leftovers for lunch that day.
Our first lunch in Philly was at a small ramen place in the local Chinatown called Yamitsuki Ramen (huh, I wonder what they serve?). It was a nice little place that feels like it should have kicked in claustrophobia, but didn’t. The water was served in little beakers, and the cold tea came in Mason jars. I got a refreshing mint and blueberry tea, as well as a pork and sweetcorn ramen. The pork was huge and had to be cut up just so that I could get to the noodles, which were under the gargantuan meat and pile of corn. My ramen also had what the internet (source here) tells me is called narutomaki, or Japanese fishcake. What’s funny is, to me, it didn’t taste like fish!
I mentioned in my Pack Up + Go post that they planned us a dinner reservation. The reservation was for a nice restaurant in the neighborhood called Garces Trading Company. Like a lot of fancy places, the lights were dim, but not so dim that I couldn’t read easily. They had an entire bar of olive oil and vinegar for the breads! I capped out at one slice of bread, though the bread was good, to save room for my minestrone and homemade mozzarella. Usually, I wouldn’t have ordered a minestrone, seeing as I can and do get those back home, but I noticed on the menu that their minestrone had asparagus and something called cranberry beans. That isn’t what I would usually imagine a minestrone to contain, so I tried it. And homemade mozzarella, well, it’s homemade mozzarella. Do I really have to justify that? After dinner, they brought out dessert. I had a chocolate mousse with pistachios and raspberries on top.
Last but certainly not least, I’d like to mention the nice Mexican restaurant we went to for dinner on Sunday. El Rey is, again, a small restaurant, and one of the two Mexican restaurants on Pack Up + Go’s recommendation list. The difference? El Rey still had seats open, whereas El Vez didn’t. At El Rey, I got tamarind juice (yes, juice, not the soda) and three tamales, one chicken, one pork, and one veggie. Unlike most tamales I’ve had, the toppings were actually on top of the corn stuffs (yes, I know, very scientific terminology). For dessert, I had rice pudding flan, and Mom had a chocolate rendition of pastel de tres leches.
Overall, there was so much to eat in Philadelphia, it was almost overwhelming, but all of the food that we did get to try was delicious!
