Less than an hour after my train pulled into 30th Street Station, I found myself compressed with about two dozen strangers into a South Philly dining room not much bigger than a two-car garage. Some of the crowd at Griddle & Rice lived in the neighborhood, others were visitors like myself, all of us bowing our heads over narrow countertops and small tables to share in the Indonesian restaurant’s breakfast spread. In this city, location is rarely a dealbreaker; seating is just a plus. If the food is good, the fans follow.

This spirit of enthusiasm and encouragement is helping to fuel one of the most electric and interesting restaurant scenes in the United States. It wasn’t always this way, though — at least not according to outsiders. Twenty years ago, the rest of the country was still figuring Philly out, and we didn’t always get it right. In 2005, the New York Times referred to it as New York’s “next borough,” as big-city folk flocked here for affordability and a slower pace.

Despite the comparisons, locals will tell you their city has never been defined by its proximity to a bigger, denser, more polished one. “Philly has this through line to it that not many cities have,” says Andrew DiTomo, the Philly-born chef and co-owner of Meetinghouse, a sprightly pub in the Kensington neighborhood. “It has this, like, very gritty kind of DIY feeling to it.”

Philly can seem markedly less DIY these days — particularly its restaurants, which in recent years have received plenty of national praise and a burst of attention from the Michelin Guide. But local chefs hold their scrappiness as a point of pride, something to be protected even as the city’s star rises.

“Being called scrappy to me is f—ing the biggest compliment,” says Phila Lorn, whose restaurants Mawn and Sao can barely accommodate the droves that show up nightly for the chef’s takes on Cambodian noodle soups, punchy dips and seafood platters.

Lean in, and you’ll find great cooking in every corner of the city, from cramped BYOBs to palatial destination restaurants. This multi-choice itinerary, built from my most recent jaunt, is just a snapshot, one of many ways to get your fill.

Breakfast

Griddle & Rice

On one of the first sunny Saturdays in March, the line at Griddle & Rice spilled onto the sidewalk in this sleepy corner of South Philly. The cafe opened in May, serving breakfast sandwiches, waffles, French toast and pancakes, but I had come for the Indonesian cooking that earned Amalia Utama, 20, and her parents legions of fans when they sold food from their home kitchen. I ordered at the counter and found just enough space to settle in with my nasi uduk, a glorious assortment of goodies orbiting a mound of sweet coconut rice.

I dipped tempeh, golden fried chicken and a puffy vegetable fritter into red sambal amped up with shrimp paste, and sipped iced coffee sweetened with bittersweet palm sugar. At first, Utama says, she and her parents were “skeptical” that their restaurant, far from the city’s commercial hubbub, would reach its target audience. But every morning, diners across the city gladly make the trip.

Lunch 

Kalaya

No chef represents the do-it-yourself spirit of this city quite like Chutatip “Nok” Suntaranon, the former first-class flight attendant and recovering Birkin bag reseller who, in 2019, opened a restaurant dedicated to the food of her southern Thailand. In a 32-seat space without a liquor license — Suntaranon says she could not afford one at the time — the chef served unapologetically fiery, beautifully ornamented dishes that turned the city on its head. In 2022, she moved her restaurant to a massive new home in Fishtown, its breezy dining room host to multiple palm trees and an elegant bar. Even as Kalaya evolved into one of Philly’s shiniest restaurants, Suntaranon preserved its heart and soul.

Lunch is my preferred time to dine, when sunlight streams through rows of skylights, making everything glisten. Start with kanom jeeb nok, delicate bird-shaped cod and radish dumplings that capture the intricacy of Kalaya’s cooking and the flourish of its chef, who is known to walk the dining room in a full Issey Miyake set. From there, it’s a choose-your-own-adventure with no wrong turns. Gaeng pae, a goat-and-lamb curry, is a maze of warm spices and searing heat. Goong thod kluae eases the burn, a river prawn barely smaller than a lobster, served in a pool of brown butter and shrimp paste.

You can go all out — a $98 tom yum fit for a crowd overflows with river prawns and barramundi — but I’m most taken by Kalaya’s simplest dishes. For dessert, Suntaranon tops sticky rice with velvety lobes of durian, the fruit’s pungency reduced to a gentle whisper by the coconut milk poured over the top. This chef knows how to turn a little into a lot.

John’s Roast Pork

I encountered John’s Roast Pork for the first time in 2024 while on a sickening quest to find the best cheesesteak in Philly. Somewhere along my 19-restaurant trek, I took a seat at one of the picnic tables outside this shanty-like spot and realized it was a different Philly sandwich that had my heart.

Depending on the day, you’ll find John Bucci Jr., the restaurant’s third-generation owner, on the line, filling seeded rolls with ribbons of roast pork, banana peppers, provolone, wilted spinach and spoonfuls of pork gravy. Each sandwich is about as heavy as a baby horse and tightly bundled in foil for easy transport.

With all respect to the legends, even the best cheesesteak is relatively one-note, but a great roast pork sandwich is a riot of flavor. John’s is the one to beat. Here, the sandwich comes plain — just pork on a roll — but regulars know to cut the meat’s heaviness with crunchy peppers, sharp cheese and the relief of a little greenery. You might be able to hack it so there’s no line when you show up, but catching the lunch rush is half the fun, jostling into the cramped restaurant to order and then finding your place outside. With this ritual, you join generations of hungry Philadelphians who have done the same for nearly 100 years.

Dinner

Sao

After Kalaya vacated its home on South 9th Street, it seemed only right that an equally determined and promising chef would move in. In Mawn’s spare dining room, Phila Lorn and his partner in life and business, Rachel Lorn, introduced the city to their vision of a noodle house pulsing with cool. In September, they followed up with Sao, their nearby raw bar.

“When we opened our first restaurant, we were trying to be a little bit more focused on some more traditional Cambodian and Southeast Asian flavors,” Rachel says of Mawn. “What we learned over time was we’re good to just do whatever we feel.”

A tray of raw oysters is a nice way to start the night at Sao, but I’m drawn to the crudos, refracted through a Southeast Asian prism to fantastic effect. Spot prawns luxuriating in brown butter and fish sauce are topped with hazelnuts and tarragon. A pool of sweet and spicy ponzu surrounds nearly translucent dayboat scallops strewn with Thai basil. On a more-is-more menu, the most maximalist of all is the hoe cake, a thick Frisbee of a corn pancake drenched in honey butter, crowned with smoked trout salad and sparkling with pearls of trout roe. I hope the Lorns keep doing whatever feels right.

Meetinghouse

Meetinghouse opened in 2023, but the corner pub has an old soul. As I caught up with friends over candlelight during my final evening in the city, we barely discussed what to order. The menu was tight, the choices obvious. It was Sunday, which meant DiTomo, the chef, was serving a roast. We’d have that, plus a green salad, pork and beans, a roast beef sandwich, and, sure, some shrimp cocktail. The beef arrived in thick slices, blushing pink, alongside a tower of piped mashed potatoes and a mound of green peas. It looked like something out of a vintage issue of Gourmet magazine. Meetinghouse feels undeniably old-timey, but never in a kitschy, built-for-Instagram way.

DiTomo, who has Irish and Italian heritage, grew up joining his father at the sorts of corner pubs Meetinghouse models itself after. So did co-owner Colin McFadden, DiTomo’s best friend since childhood, who runs the beer operation, including three brews he produces in collaboration with New Jersey-based Tonewood Brewing. Together, they’ve built my platonic ideal of a neighborhood hangout, a place that doesn’t reinvent the classics or lull you into false comfort (entrées cap out at $23). When the plates were cleared, we lingered over a double scoop of vanilla ice cream topped with a tableside float of crème de menthe, glowing shamrock green. Meetinghouse feels like the bar next door — the most comfortable place in the neighborhood.

Drinks

La Jefa

The story of La Jefa, a cafe and bar that opened near Rittenhouse Square in May, starts in 1986, when a Guadalajaran immigrant named David Suro launched an upscale Mexican restaurant called Tequilas. At a time when many Americans viewed tequila solely as the stuff of cheap shots and bad hangovers, Tequilas sourced high-quality agave spirits and began to shift the city’s perceptions. A 2023 fire shuttered the restaurant, and when it reopened last year, Suro’s son, Dan, took up the mantle.

At La Jefa, nested inside the renovated restaurant, the younger Suro mixes cocktails that speak to the subtle nuances and cultural significance of agave spirits sourced directly from Mexican producers. He gives a paloma extra depth with cooked-down agave and fashions burnt tortillas, Mexican rum and tequila from Jalisco into earthy mai tais, each drink a demonstration of the complex flavors that get drowned out in sticky-sweet margaritas.

Curious to taste the fullest extent of his vision, I ordered a $27 cocktail simply called “agave.” To make it, Suro ships cooked agave from a Jalisco distillery to his kitchen, then infuses it back into the tequila made from that agave. He also concentrates the cooked plant into a caramel-like nectar to incorporate into the infused tequila, creating a cocktail that ultimately has a flavor somewhere between molasses and the purest wedge of pineapple. If you’re lucky, he’ll bring scraps of cooked agave to the table for you to taste. You’d think that after so much extraction, the pulpy meat would be flavorless, but it’s sweet and heady, somehow still with more to give.

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