Philly’s Most Unforgettable Menu Is Also the Most Fleeting

Cappelletti with mushroom brodo and tuna with capers and puffed buckwheat at Illata / Photography by Bre Furlong

Twice in all my years doing this have I fallen in love with a salad.

And I don’t mean liked a salad. I don’t mean appreciated one. I mean fell head-over-heels for a cold plate, composed, dressed, and had it totally scramble my brains, changing the way I think about not just a single meal or menu, but food in general.

The first time was at Vetri. The kitchen served me a salad so perfect that it became my benchmark, the thing against which I’ve since judged every plate. I can’t remember the exact composition of the salad, only impressions: bright persimmon and peppery greens on a white plate, just the barest sting of salt from pale curls of romano. It was so simple, so pure, so lacking in ego, that it redefined for me what, to a chef, real control actually means.

The second time was at Illata.

Citrus — that’s what the menu called it. Just citrus. And in the description? Kohlrabi, cara cara orange, house-made XO sauce. What came was a plain white plate and, in the middle of it, a UFO. A translucent ravioli filled with marmalade. A blob of thick, sticky XO sauce, bricked in with pinky-red sections of orange, a careful brunoise of kohlrabi, and all of it shingled over with razored slices of kohlrabi cut so thin, I could see right through them.

Kohlrabi salad with cara cara orange

It looked ridiculous, but it ate like a bomb — gorgeously sweet and deceptively funky and salty and crisp and restrained, all at the same time. It was an arrangement meant to unfold in pieces — a nip at the outside first, then that shocking kick of citric sweetness, then, hidden in the middle of it all, this mound of explosively funked-up, fish-sauce-y, dark and vicious XO sauce. It laid me flat, I swear. And put me on edge for the rest of the night, because if a kitchen could do that, who knew what it might do next?

And now, guess what? It’s gone. Off the menu, as if I dreamed it.

I had a beautifully simple cod at Illata — done in exactly the way that cod is best used: cooked soft, bolstered with a luxurious sauce, and served with potatoes of any variety. Fish and potatoes? That’s the ultimate comfort-food combination for me. And here, in this bare white room with its little bit of exposed brick and DIY kitchen pass and dish window hacked into the wall, the fish almost melted. The sauce was a velouté of clouds and heavy cream. And on the side, a handful of baby potatoes, sitting in a puddle of green sauce and topped with a spread of turnip greens, lightly dressed.

I massacred that plate. When I was done, there was nothing left on it but three green stems and some memories. Leaning over, my server asked me, “Wasn’t that amazing?” and I said yeah, it was, and she said, “I know, and the kitchen just changed the presentation last week.”

Cappelletti with housemade sourdough bread at Illata

The chef, Aaron Randi, does that. His crew does that. They change the menu like they’re changing their whites. That beautiful cod? Before, it had been served as a perfect pale square, in broth, with oyster mushrooms and charred cabbage. A few days after I ate it, it changed again. And by the time you read this sentence, it might’ve changed 10 more times. My cod was the best cod. The perfect cod. But I have absolutely no doubt you’d say the same thing if you went and ordered tonight’s version. Or next week’s. Or next season’s.

The kitchen has steelhead on the menu, chopped and served with Meyer lemon and a Thai chili gelée; a bread course served like a fist of homemade sourdough smeared with butter; ricotta gnudi dusted with crushed hazelnut. The gnudi taste like a fantasy of northern Italian forests just after the rain — all nutty and thyme-scented and hearty in their bowl — but are such a departure from the experimentalism of that citrus salad that eating the two together could give you whiplash.

Illata’s dining room

It’s BYO, so it’s simple. Unpretentious. The menu is so short that it’s almost a poem. And the place has all of 20 seats, so it’s small and intimate and pretty much impossible to get into unless, like me, you just wander in off the street like some kind of idiot and sit at the bar and get your mind blown by some oranges and fish goop. And it is, at this delicate moment, one of the most surprising, remarkable and gently groundbreaking restaurants in the city. The kind of place where a salad can make you fall in love and make an entire city or scene seem young and sharp and unpredictable.

Even if only for one night.

3 Stars — Come from anywhere in Philly

Rating Key
0 stars: stay away
★: come if you have no other options
★★: come if you’re in the neighborhood
★★★: come from anywhere in Philly
★★★★: come from anywhere in America

Published as “The Ephemeral Joys of Illata” in the March 2024 issue of Philadelphia magazine.