A Four-Day Feast in Philadelphia

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/22/travel/philadelphia-culinary-food-destination.html

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If you are looking to reclaim a coherent sense of America after this nervous breakdown of an election season, let me suggest that eating your way through Philadelphia is a fine way to start.

It is, to state the obvious, a city bound up in our collective history — old by a young nation’s standards but ever evolving, with neighborhoods that are distinct and at the same time reflective of a shared fearlessness. Ninety-five miles from New York, 61 miles from the Atlantic, Philadelphia (population, 1.5 million, fifth largest in the United States) is what it is because of the Dutch, German, Irish, Russian, Italian, Polish, Greek, Filipino and Korean immigrants who have added color and character to the City of Brotherly Love’s ruddy fiber. Those same qualities happen to define a great eating city as well.

Philadelphia was, of course, America’s first capital city. Whatever it may have lost when George Washington prevailed upon Congress to resettle along the Potomac River 136 miles to the south, the city did not forfeit its culinary primacy, then or now. Even leaving aside its indigenous cheesesteak sandwiches and soft pretzels, Philly as a culinary destination feels like an organic accomplishment — the natural outcome of being itself — rather than a banal eventuality of economic development. Each of these four restaurants I recently visited felt instantly approachable and un-self-conscious. These ineffable traits, as much as the sheer deliciousness of the food itself, made my four-day inhalation of Philadelphia memorable.

The casual air and corner location of this Cypriot restaurant in the South Philly district known as Queen Village confers on it the timeless vibe of a neighborhood joint, though in fact Kanella has occupied this spot for not much more than a year. Just outside on the adjacent small park overlooking the Delaware River, two Labradors gnawed on their tennis balls. Inside, the chef, Konstantinos Pitsillides — a bald and lithe 48-year-old native of Cyprus — prowled from table to table with catlike intensity.

The informality of Mr. Pitsillides, in his T-shirt and apron, belies his professionalism. He explained to me that Cypriot cuisine bore influences of Turkey and North Africa — adding as an example, “Greeks don’t use cilantro.” The dishes themselves amounted to a dazzling tutorial. After the familiar if excellent three dips — puréed beet, yellow fava bean and the potato-garlic Greek staple known as skordalia — came a summer vegetable salad with the more surprising elements of tahini, pomegranate and tarragon.

The menu’s main courses featured other Cypriot riffs on Greek standards: barley as an accompaniment to braised lamb, whole fish wrapped in grape leaves, a red snapper fillet dashed with basil. I gravitated to the day’s grilled meat, which happened to be kofta, a meatball whose chief ingredients were lamb, basturma (an air-cured beef), apricots and pistachios. Eating them threw me into a geographical tailspin: Wherever these flavors were taking me, I had no desire to leave.

The food does most of the talking at this spacious, unprepossessing restaurant. Its furnishings are minimalist, the lighting subdued. On the menu’s flip side is a wine list consisting of a mere 26 selections, though they’re an interesting lot, ranging from Lebanon to Crete to Slovenia. The one item resembling a flourish — the handsome wood-fired brick oven showcased by the open kitchen in the back of the restaurant — is also the single most important influence on Kanella’s cuisine, other than Cyprus itself. In other words, Konstantinos Pitsillides has his priorities right.

Kanella Cypriot Restaurant and Bar, 757 South Front Street, 215-644-8949; kanellarestaurant.com. Dinner for two without drinks or tips, about $70.

A Philly-worshiping friend of mine whose lust for meat is likely to land him in prison someday nonetheless insisted to me that one of the city’s top restaurants was vegan. Well, O.K. We live in strange times, and I do concede that wondrous things can be done to impart edibility to a beet. Still, I suspected that my friend was grading Vedge on a curve of Everest proportions, so I booked for a Monday night, on the early side, leaving myself time for a cheesesteak in the event that my vegan dinner proved to be a lighter-than-air experience.

My skepticism evaporated the moment I walked into the century-old townhouse where the chef-owner husband-and-wife team of Kate Jacoby and Rich Landau have been drawing crowds since Vedge opened five years ago. There is nothing earth-mothery about Vedge’s raffish oak interior, nothing to suggest that excessive wellness is afoot. For that matter, the upmarket clientele in the Midtown Village enclave casually referred to by all as the Gayborhood looked anything but austere. By 7 p.m., the place was packed and a cacophony swelled beneath its high ceilings. Fortunately, my two dining companions were TV commentators with indomitable vocal cords.

We ordered a white blend from the Italian region of Friuli and then instructed our server to bring us approximately two-thirds of the menu, which is divided into Vedge Bar (light starters), Grill (more substantial vegetable dishes) and the Dirt List (roots and other below-ground sides).

The avocado stuffed with an aromatic romesco sauce and pickled cauliflower was our first clue that we were in for a long evening of the best kind. As with the salt-roasted gold beets with capers and smoked tofu (cheekily described on the menu as “pastrami on rye”), the dish’s flavor combinations were wonderfully assertive, exploding expectations in mid-chew. More basic items — smoked eggplant with Italian salsa verde, grilled brussels sprouts with smoked grain mustard, broccoli rabe with black garlic tahini — were no less exquisite. Midway through our epic vegan meal — a phrase I never expected to write in my lifetime — Ms. Jacoby wandered by our table to see if there was anything else we required. When we asked her how she and her husband had decided to commit themselves to a vegan regimen, she answered that they had begun with a broader vegetarian approach — “but then we kept experimenting, until we decided we could do this,” she said with a smile.

But that’s the best part about Vedge: It doesn’t taste like an experiment. Instead, it’s just a great dinner — the one we wanted, whether we’d known it or not.

Vedge, 1221 Locust Street, 215-320-7500; vedgerestaurant.com. Dinner for two without drinks or tips, about $75.

I had not planned on coming here. My goal had been to score an early-dinner table at Laurel, the much-heralded prix fixe creation of the “Top Chef” star Nicholas Elmi in the agreeably scruffy neighborhood of East Passyunk. They take reservations at Laurel 90 days out, but on a Tuesday night in the dead of summer I believed I could beat the odds. Alas, the Uber gods were not with me, and by the time I arrived, all tables were claimed. Taking the measure of my state of heartbreak, the hostess smiled pleasantly and said, “Would you like to try next door? It’s our new place — we just opened a few weeks ago.”

“Next door” turned out to be a low-lit and slender barroom with five tables in the back and a low soundtrack of indie-rock heroes like the National and Spoon. Behind the marble bar, three hip servers clad in blue aprons kept vigil. I was “in the valley” — the translation of the Lenape Indian word from which Passyunk is derived, and also the expansion of the sister restaurant’s actual name, ITV.

Mr. Elmi is French-trained, and the weekly rotating seven-course menu at Laurel reflects his restless desire to push boundaries. ITV is a more grounded à la carte version of his three-year-old flagship, one that emphasizes the acute flavors of fresh ingredients. I took my place at the bar and started with the velvety Green Zebra Farm tomato salad with pistachios and red onions. What then followed was one of the best dishes I would encounter during my stay in Philadelphia: a smoked trout and trout roe lasciviously spread over chewy pumpernickel bread. Like the salad, the dish cost $8 and stole the thunder from my entree, a succulent if slightly undercooked hay-cured poussin (whole chicken) with string beans and abalone mushrooms.

ITV’s wine list properly tilts toward France, though its various signature cocktails seem more in keeping with the barroom’s brooding sleekness. That lucky night, I had claimed a barstool at Mr. Elmi’s newest venture with no effort. Weeks later, word would be out and Laurel’s kid sister would become Philadelphia’s latest object of desire, with not enough of her to go around.

ITV, 1615 East Passyunk Avenue, 267-858-0669; ITVPhilly.com. Dinner for two without drinks or tips, about $80.

When you hail as I do from Washington, D.C. — a city teeming with overachievers, and correspondingly full of restaurants bent on underachievement — there are places you encounter elsewhere that feel so right so immediately that you are overcome with grief for the absence of such a spot in your own puny world. Vernick, for me, is that restaurant: I knew, upon entering it, that I would like to eat here once a week. Instead, Philadelphians have the bragging rights to Greg Vernick’s stellar outpost on Rittenhouse Square, where it has garnered best-in-the-city accolades since its opening four years ago.

First, the space itself: warm and accessible but subtly dramatic, the staircase from the ground-level barroom spilling out into a dining room that, with streaked wooden floors and keenly angled lighting, offers a theatrical view onto the square’s dignified brick structures. The restaurant was already full when three of us arrived at 7 p.m. and took our places upstairs among moneyed patrons bristling with self-congratulation. Whatever attitude Vernick exerts is largely confined to its sassy cocktail list, replete with jaunty if obscure monikers like Chucho el Roto and the Crossing of 1909.

By contrast, Greg Vernick’s food menu is deceptively straightforward: whole Amish chicken. Pork chop Milanese. Grilled black sea bass. The touch of the well-traveled chef (who has worked in kitchens from Vancouver to Tokyo to Qatar) is famously light, which is not by any means to say dull. Among the small plates, a salad consisting of grilled heart of romaine wedge topped with figs and aged Cheddar was textbook. Mediterranean simplicity. More beguiling was the bowl of warm Parmesan custard covered with caramelized baby artichokes, while the sumptuous presentation of sweet pea ravioli flecked with braised rabbit and lavender was nearly too lovely to ravage. The achingly tender duck breast, on the other hand, was a clear invitation to attack, and so I did — though the cunning side pleasure to this dish was the leg, which had been refashioned into a magnificent chorizo.

Not every dish hit the mark (the somewhat mushy summer squash Bolognese comes to mind), and the kitchen has a tendency to oversalt. But the surmounting culinary triumphs combined with the graceful ambience left us all in agreement: We would be back again and again, if only we lived in Philadelphia … and why, exactly, didn’t we live in Philadelphia?

Vernick Food and Drink, 2031 Walnut Street, 267-639-6644; vernickphilly.com. Dinner for two without drinks or tips, $100.