You could have a blowout meal at a number of Philly’s Italian restaurants, but Chris D’Ambro’s reimagined Ambra is the one to covet this year. Rest assured, skeptics, the new Kalaya succeeds by sticking to its badass roots - only this time, with literal trees in the room. Not to mention a drink menu with Thai beer slushies, and ample space to wrangle a group for dinner. Not only does Kalaya 2.0’s food remain faithful to the restaurant’s practiced balance of sour-sweet heat there are now even more chili-sprinkled curries and large-format dishes to enjoy. When chef Chutatip “Nok” Suntaranon announced that her beloved Bella Vista Thai restaurant was moving to a 145-seat Fishtown warehouse at the end of 2022, there was consternation that the new place might lack the old’s sparkle. It shows diners that when food is cooked this close to the soul, luxury - the feeling that you’re being taken care of - comes naturally. FSS doesn’t mark its deluxe territory by throwing caviar-and-truffle parades. That is, if you want elegance sans stuffiness or fluff, eight courses that flow like they’re synapses firing inside Chad Williams’s brain (crisped sweetbreads with plantain and mushrooms, then gemelli draped in lardo and scallop XO, then sticky jerk-seasoned quail with a side of chicken-liver-stuffed coco bread). That is, if you want to try what is without question the most precise and innovative fine-dining food in Philadelphia right now. When a restaurant operates a city-defining bar downstairs (with great snacks) and a $150 tasting menu upstairs, the natural question becomes: Do you really need to do the tasting to get what’s going on here? In the case of FSS, you do. Grilled quail, coco bread and lamb ribs at Friday Saturday Sunday / Photograph by Ted Nghiem 2.
Go to these Philly restaurants with the confidence of the Phillie Phanatic on an ATV, or that guy who ate 40 rotisserie chickens for no apparent reason. Because, frankly, I or my co-writers ate at all these restaurants recently, and who among us without a corporate card has the time and resources to do such a thing?
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Rankings are also meant to help you make up your mind about how to spend your money. Actually, that’s why they’re back: to make you pay special attention, to celebrate the places that have been ignored on previous ranked lists, to declare emphatically that $15 worth of fried bananas and turmeric-doused chicken skewers at the Southeast Asian Market at FDR Park can be just as remarkable as a $100-plus meal. Rankings tend to have that effect on people. Perhaps you’ve already stopped reading these prefatory words entirely out of an obsession with said digits. It asks, 50 times over, how likely are you to shout from the rooftops about a dining experience, or demand that a friend cross the city for dim sum and vegan polenta and jerk chicken, or spend hard-earned money on an anniversary dinner?Īnd by now, I’m sure you’ve noticed that this year’s guide involves hot little numbers. This 50 Best list is the result of nearly a year’s worth of dining out, sometimes four or five or six nights a week. How could I have known that Philly’s best special-occasion meals would feel deeply personal right now, as they do at Friday Saturday Sunday, Her Place Supper Club, and Royal Sushi Omakase? How could I have anticipated that within minutes of plopping into my seat at Pietramala, Càphê Roasters, Irwin’s or El Mezcal Cantina, uncomplicated friendliness and a glass of Philly tap would make me realize that I belonged back in my hometown? (I grew up here this wasn’t a shock.) But after a hiatus from our city during which I wrote about restaurants and bars in NYC, I couldn’t have predicted the care and energy with which Philly’s restaurants would reposition themselves in this sorta-post-COVID world.
Which is to say, a Philadelphian’s unrelenting access to foods of all kinds. When I first signed on to be this magazine’s food editor, I was prepared for what I call Philly Restaurant Privilege. I knew what she meant: the revived freedom of schmoozing in a dining room without an iPhone in sight, the creativity coming out of Philly kitchens and onto plates, that bubbling, symbiotic joy that takes place only when everyone in a restaurant’s ecosystem - the diners, the porters, the front-of-house staff, the cooks - genuinely wants to be there. Not so long ago, a friend texted me to say that for the first time in years, she was having Fun eating in Philly’s restaurants. Royal Sushi & Izakaya / Photograph by Jesse Ito
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