Josh and Colleen Lawler’s devotion to modern American farm fare shows up in the witty “bloody beet steak,” a slab of roasted beet seared like meat and served with a slick of tangy house-made yogurt.
Konstantinos Pitsillides’s straight-to-the-point cooking evokes the Cyprus of his childhood. Example: braised rabbit with basturma, Armenian dried beef cured with garlic, fenugreek, and red pepper.
This homey, candlelit spot in Northern Liberties is like old-world Europe. Iberian classics like carne de porco à alentenjano are made new with Berkshire pork, tiny cockles, and Virginia littlenecks.
Chef Peter Woolsey came home from Paris determined to replicate the city’s romantic bistros. Order the oeuf du pêcheur, a poached egg served with plump mussels in a tarragon-and-cream sauce.
At this citadel of worn wood and limestone in Society Hill, Michael Solomonov’s Middle Eastern combinations include mellow, musky, eggplant salad served next to nutty hummus with blistered flatbread.
The Bolognese, which layers fried lasagna with red sauce, smoked mozzarella, roasted peppers, sharp provolone, and a sunny-side-up egg, will make you forget all about those touristy cheesesteaks.
Jose Garces’s contribution to Philly’s sandwich legacy: the cubano clásico, roast pork and house-cured tasso with Gruyère, mustard, and pickles, plancha-pressed to give the cheese just the right ooze.
Chef Brian Ricci marinates free-range Lancaster County chicken thighs in ginger and Indian-spiced yogurt and roasts them over glowing wood coals until they’re dark and luscious.
A luminescent backdrop for Marcie Turney’s Mediterranean cooking: pasta with oven-roasted mushrooms and arugula, shot through with preserved lemon and walnut pesto under a dollop of soft ricotta.
Proof that pub fare is more than a fad here: the fish-and-chips, which achieves the pinnacle of moistness and flavor when its crust puffs up to encase the cod, letting the steam work its magic.
