Footloose in Philly

From the Food Vault Dept.: Recently, I was reminiscing about the variety of restaurants I found in Philadelphia in 2008, and the crazy trip I took one evening to get from one to the next in order to sample a single entreé at each. You might want to learn about it, too, I reasoned, so here is the piece I wrote about it. Please note that this was eight years ago, so there’s no telling who’s still in business.

                                                                                            

DURING THE LONG DRIVE home from Philadelphia last weekend, my family and I visited Valley Forge and sought lunch in a nearby town. We found a street flanked on several blocks by chain stores and restaurants, but we also spotted an obviously local place promising pub food. It was so disgusting inside – filthy walls, sticky tables, apathetic servers – that we hightailed it to one of the chains and contented ourselves with an acceptable, if boilerplate, meal. 

Noodle soup at Viet Huong

It was a depressing end (on the culinary side) to an otherwise delightful weekend, during which my wife escorted my daughter to a concert by her favorite rock band at a downtown arena while I drove around South Philly that evening to check out recommended restaurants. Finding those restaurant has never been easier when you take advantage of current technology.

Having been consulted by a visiting alt-newsweekly writer in the past, I sent my own request to Drew Lazor at Philadelphia’s City Paper, and he and his colleague Felicia D’Ambrosio generously put together a list of eateries reflecting the area’s ethnic variety. The magazine’s website (citypaper.net) also has restaurant listings and a lively food-related blog. [Note: The paper folded in 2015.]