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.]

Blogging being the obsession it is, every city has its share of passionate critics, and those blogs are easy to search. Albany has a helpful variety that I consult, and I noted that Philadelphia’s City Paper did a roundup a while back of its favorite blogs.

Armed with those restaurant names and addresses, look for websites. Those aren’t always as easy to discover, if they exist, and sometimes are insufficient or outdated. The quickest and best tool is a phone call. And be sure to do what I forgot to do when I remembered to call at all: ask about parking.

The clientele at Penang

I even go so far as to look the places up on Google Maps and use the Street View feature to get a look at the place. But your most important gadget is a GPS. For my first stop, I sought Wing Phat Plaza (1150 Washington Ave.), a bright yellow strip mall of Asian stores and restaurants, with more Vietnamese restaurants in one block than exist in the Capital Region. Spaces in the small parking lot are snapped up aggressively quickly, but I bested a Jersey driver for a slot and had an early meal at Viet Huong Restaurant – rice noodle soup that sporting thick chunks of stewed beef, fatty meat in a liquid so meaty that I confined myself to a few slurps and packaged the rest, saving room for more stops.
 

Grilled octopus at a popular Greek restaurant named Dmitri’s (795 S. Third St.) sounded appealing, and I made it there in spite of a fit of wackiness from the GPS. Instead of sending me on a highway along the Delaware River, I was led through a maze of one-way residential streets, each block ending in a stop sign, traffic light, or, as far as I could tell, free-for-all. And the tiny dining room of my destination was packed, the sidewalk thick with waiting customers. I couldn’t imagine the crowd thinning too soon, and moved on to Chinatown. 

The route was more direct, but parking on the narrow streets eluded me. I dropped the car at a for-pay lot where it was crammed into an array that couldn’t possibly be untangled when I chose to depart.

Malaysian cuisine has yet to arrive in Albany, so I elbowed my way past the sidewalk crowd in front of Penang (117 N. 10th St.) and got a single seat. I liked the warehouse-y feel of the interior, with its creative use of corrugated steel on the walls. Again, just a few spoonfuls from a very hot clay pot of green curried chicken, set off with lemongrass and chilis. And a few spoonfuls were enough to liquify my face, which I consider a spicy recipe’s mark of success. 

Potluck Café is a short distance down the street, at 220 N. 10th. We see endless similar-looking Chinese takeout storefronts, but none offering “Frog with Three Kinds Mushroom in the Hotpot.” I like to boast of epicurean adventurousness, but that was daunting. I settled on pork kidneys with homemade hotbean paste, a more rugged meat than the veal or lamb kidneys I’m used to, but excellently sauced.

Gelato at Capogiro

I marveled at the parking attendant’s skill at vehicular Tetris as he brought my car to the head of an exit lane. I wanted to get to a restaurant named Indonesia (1725 Snyder Ave.) I was eager to sample fare from Ethiopia or Eritrea. And I was running out of hunger. I drove a short physical distance for a huge change of neighborhood, and entered Wazobia (616 N. 11th St.) for a Nigerian meal.

It’s humbling, as a middle-aged white guy, to be the minority. I gamely introduced myself and explained my purpose and was served a tray of steaming goat stew with sides of amala, a sticky yam derivative, and okro, a stringy, viscous okra soup.

And then pathetically addressed each item individually, forking into my face a bit of this, a bit of that. “This is Nigerian food,” explained a man named Peter, taking pity on me. “You mix it all together, that’s how it’s supposed to be eaten.” Then he launched into a fascinating comparative survey of African cuisines, describing so many unfamiliar aspects that I failed to follow much of it. 

What better way to finish than with something sweet? Capogiro is famous throughout the area for its hand-crafted gelato, served in a welcoming storefront on Sansom Street..

Had I done more careful research, I would have discovered that the recently reopened, very acclaimed Indian restaurant Minar Palace (1304 Walnut St.) closes Saturdays at 7. It was well past 9 when I read the sign on the door. Good as the GPS was at delivering directions, that didn’t stop me from misinterpreting some of them and ending up suddenly crossing the Delaware into New Jersey and laboriously finding my way back.

Cafeteria-style offerings at Wazobia

My luck continued lousy: Vic Sushi (2035 Sansom St.) had just closed when I neared the place, taking my hope of sashimi with it, and the walk to Almaz Café (140 S. 20th St.) also proved fruitless – I missed the place by minutes. 

But got there in time for lunch on Sunday, this time with the family as we sightsaw the city. We sat in the tiny balcony of this coffeeshop that also sports a creative Ethiopian menu, so I was able to enjoy cappuccino with my zilzil tibs – tender beef strips sautéed in butter with an aromatic sprig of rosemary, leaching its juices into the enjera, the soft bread on which it was served. 

I couldn’t persuade my tablemates to go gursha and abandon their forks in favor of scooping the food in swabs of enjera, but I did it and enjoyed it and hope I earned some spiritual redemption for having been so lame at Wazobia. 

We finished our Philadelphia visit with dinner at Distrito (3945 Chestnut St.), one of three city venues run by chef Jose Garces. The combination of outrageously pink decor, deliciously described menu items, and a potent margarita turned my wife into an instant enthusiast.

Beginning with the tiniest imaginable portion of yellowtail ceviche – but the cherry-sized scoop of sangria sorbet redeemed it. I’d argue that the fried whole-wheat wrappers on the squash and poblano purée are more like empanadas than quesadillas, but I can’t quarrel with the inspiring intricacies of its flavor. And the rabbit molé was as beautiful to see as to consume, served in a small metal pot with the meat and the sauce, that wonderful purée of nuts and peppers, separated into adjoining areas. By the time we finished, five dinner selections and three dessert had laid waste to our appetites.

I feel very prepared now to return to Philadelphia and try out the places I missed, but with technology like this, the whole country, to put it in culinary terms, is my oyster.

– Metroland Magazine, 6 November 2008