Dear Daphni Opens This Week With Za’atar Cocktails and Sun-Drenched Vibes

Photograph courtesy of Dear Daphni

Howdy, buckaroos! And welcome back to the weekly Foobooz food news round-up. We’ve just got a few quick things to get to this week, including (but not limited to) details on the opening of Dear Daphni, Roxanne’s soft open, 12 Days of Caviar at Oyster House, and everything you need to know about East Passyunk’s Hot Chocolate Crawl. So let’s kick things off with …

The Deets on Daphni

Last week, we talked a little bit about the opening of the Schulson Collective’s newest glamour project — a 150-seat Mediterranean concept called Dear Daphni, opening just a block off Rittenhouse Square.

This week, I’ve actually got some details to share. Like how the bar serves a drink with za’atar in it and another that’s made of gin, lemon, and sumac honey with honey pearls — which sounds delicious, I imagine, if you’re the kind of person who really likes honey (which I am). How the kitchen is leaning HARD into the whole shared-plate thing, as if no one on Mykonos has ever even considered ordering and eating their own plate of Tunisian lamb. And how the taupe stucco walls and jewel-tone stained glass are there to make the dining room feel like a sun-bright day on the beach, and collapsing into one of the plush booths set into recesses in the wall is supposed to be like finding your own hidden beach cove.

Michael Schulson and his team make beautiful spaces. They just do. They specialize in taking big rooms in Philadelphia and making them look like big rooms… somewhere else. Sometimes New York, sometimes Paris, sometimes Corfu, or Saint-Tropez. This one is all dim lights and armchairs in the lounge, sexy booths and sand-colored walls, Mediterranean tea, Turkish coffee, and zero-proof cocktails to round out the menu at the bar.

And in the kitchen? Mezze and pita for the table, then platters of skewered lamb kofta and swordfish with Turkish pilaf and chermoula. There’s snapper crudo with saffron and pistachio, Moroccan meatballs, and whole a branzino for two. “The menu highlights the essence of the Mediterranean lifestyle—seasonal ingredients, vibrant herbs, and a shared table ethos,” according to the press kit. And while we’ve never exactly had a lack of Mediterranean restaurants in this town, doesn’t it strike you as weird that we’ve had three MASSIVE openings essentially back-to-back (to back)? There was Almyra, which opened almost exactly a year ago (and also just a block off Rittenhouse Square). Then there’s Mona, with its full-grown olive trees inside, which opened like a minute ago. And now, Dear Daphni. I’d say the whole “Mediterranean lifestyle” was having a moment in Philly, but it’s been a year. And these three restaurants alone have added something like 500 seats and a whole lotta kofta to the scene. So I guess we’ll just wait and see how that goes for them.

Dear Daphni opens this Thursday, December 12th, on the first floor of The Laurel at 20th and Sansom. It’ll be open nightly for dinner service.

Now what’s next?

Meanwhile, in Caviar News…

Oyster House’s 12 Days of Caviar / Photograph by Mike Prince

Remember Lauren Biederman’s caviar kiosk that she opened a couple of weeks back at 19th and Arch? Yeah, well, it looks like she ain’t the only one turning to the fancy fish eggs in order to liven up this holiday season.

Sam Mink and his Oyster House crew are launching their own “12 Days of Caviar” promotion starting this Friday, December 13th, and running all the way through New Year’s Eve.

“[W]e know how much people love caviar, so we decided to do something over-the-top this holiday season,” Mink says. To wit: Oyster House is offering three different caviar options for every lunch and dinner service between Friday and the end of the year. The kitchen is doing a 1 oz. tin of Italian caviar served with crispy sushi rice, house-made potato chips, cornmeal Johnny cakes, chive crème fraiche, soy eggs, and pickled red onions. Not your style? Then how ’bout fried potato latkes with crème fraîche and smoked trout roe? Or a spread of roasted Sweet Amalia oysters topped with caviar?

Now if it’s me? I’m going with options one AND two simply because I really love latkes but don’t love trout roe and still want to eat that sushi rice and those cornmeal cakes.

Anyway, you’ve got ’til the 31st to get the gang together and treat yourself to some caviar. And while you’re at it, Oyster House has a really good bar (with a massive gin collection) and an excellent happy hour, so just keep that in mind. Because nothing goes better with caviar than some latkes. But a cold gin martini comes in a very close second.

Anyone Else Down For A Hot Chocolate Crawl?

East Passyunk Avenue’s Hot Chocolate Crawl / Photograph by Kory Aversa

Because I absolutely am. I have been to two tree lightings and a Christmas parade already this year, and at precisely NONE of them did I manage to score any hot chocolate.

Now, I’m not saying that I couldn’t have brought my own. I totally could’ve done that. But I am, at my core, a very lazy man who will occasionally forget to put on pants for most of the day, so the odds of me ever planning far enough ahead that there is a piping-hot thermos of cocoa ready for me when I’m headed out the door are slim. No, wherever it is I’m going at this time of year — shopping, caroling, wassailing, the dentist — I just expect there to be hot chocolate available. Most of the time I’m disappointed.

But not ALL the time.

On Saturday, December 14th, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., East Passyunk is having its third annual Hot Chocolate Crawl. There are more than two dozen restaurants, bars, cafes, and coffee shops participating this year, all of them pouring their versions of classic cocoa (for $3), premium and spiked cocoas (for $6), and ice cream-infused cocoa (for $8). And no, I don’t exactly know what “ice cream-infused hot cocoa” would be either. I mean, is it just cocoa made with melted ice cream? Because that is fucking brilliant, and I would like to nominate whoever came up with it for the Nobel Prize in ice cream. Or chemistry. Or whatever.

Anyway, tickets to the Hot Chocolate Crawl are $12. That gets you a mug (with a lid). The mug gets filled with whatever cocoa you choose, as often as you choose, for six straight hours, at everywhere from Juana Tamale to Barcelona Wine Bar, from Townsend to P’unk Burger. There’ll also be live music, carols, sales, and specials by local merchants, and the whole thing is basically the set-up for living your own private Hallmark Channel Christmas movie where you put on your cutest hat and scarf, get your hot cocoa mug, and go strolling down East Passyunk Avenue, meet the young, attractive owner of a small, local shop that’s in danger of losing its lease to the greedy landlord trying to buy the family business, and the only way to save it is for both of you to spend the holiday season destroying the tyrannical American oligarchy and dismantling the systems of capitalism that see human beings only as mechanisms of ever-increasing consumption.

And also, you probably go ice skating or something.

Tickets for the East Passyunk Hot Chocolate Crawl are available now. All the information you could possibly need can be found right here.

Now who has room for some leftovers?

The Leftovers

A sneak peak at Loretta’s. / Photograph courtesy of Bloomsday

I’ve been watching Alexandra Holt’s 2.0 version of Roxanne come together for a while now. Back in September, the first details about her new space at 607 South 2nd Street (the old Queen & Rook) started coming out: 65 seats, a kind of hybrid BYO/local liquor license kind of situation, an à la carte menu with a tasting menu option, plus a staff — which is a huge departure for Holt, who ran the original Roxanne as a kind of manic, doomed, one-woman show every night.

And now we have something like an opening date. According to Roxanne’s Instagram, there are seats available for “soft opening parties” this month, reservations are currently being taken for a New Year’s Eve service, and Holt says, “We open fully for à la carte and tasting menu options in January.”

The restaurant’s website is live. So check it out if you’re interested in getting an early look at Roxanne.

Speaking of soft openings, Venezuelan favorite and certified arepa specialist Puyero is just about ready to debut their second location at 3428 Sansom Street in University City. I just got word that Friday, December 13th, is going to be the big day, and the restaurant is giving away free empanadas to the first 100 people through the door (starting at 11 a.m.).

Oh, but wait. If Friday is just too far away, Puyero is also doing a soft open on Thursday the 12th and offering three free tequeños alongside every order. Which is nice because Puyero’s tequeños are awesome.

And if that’s STILL not enough good news for you, then how ’bout Loretta’s (which is yet another place we’ve been keeping a close eye on) coming out of their soft-open phase, which has been going on for a couple weeks now, just down the street from Roxanne at 410 South 2nd Street? The place officially opened for realsies over the weekend, and word on the street is that they’re just killing it.

The bakery/cafe/coffee shop from the team behind Bloomsday and Green Engine is doing breakfast hand pies, meatloaf patty melts, and sweet and savory Viennoiserie-style pastries. And if that isn’t enough to get you out of your chair and out to Headhouse Square, I don’t know what is.

Come to think of it, between the new Roxanne, Loretta’s, and Nich Bazik’s groundbreaking experiment in Michelin-baiting, Provenance (which I wrote about, at length, right here), Headhouse is really having something of a moment. Which is nice. It’s always fun to watch a neighborhood blow up in real time.

In some other not-so-happy news, after 15 years of serving up hot and heavy brunch with hangover-curing abilities, Hawthornes announced they’re closing on Instagram… at least for now. “We are taking this time to focus on our hospitality group as a whole and its plenty of exciting new projects on the horizon,” they wrote in their Instagram post. “We will find a new home for Hawthornes when the circumstances are perfect while imminently resurrecting Sonny’s & WineDive along with some other dope shit.” So we’ll keep an eye to see what the future holds for Hawthornes. In the meantime, their last service will be January 5th for anyone who wants one last crabby dick Benedict or a final summit up hot mess mountain.

Finally this week, Famous 4th Street is celebrating the flavors of Hanukkah with a prix fixe holiday feast they’re making available for dine-in or takeout for the entire holiday week. We’re talking chopped liver with onions on house challah, kreplach filled with meat and onions (because is it even really a party without dumplings?), a choice of a half herb-roasted chicken or brisket with gravy (I’ll take the brisket, thanks), latkes, applesauce, sour cream, honey-roasted carrots, and then sufganiyah and an assortment of rugelach for dessert.

Know how much that’ll cost you? $39 a head, which is just a bonkers price for a holiday prix fixe dinner. They’re also doing it as a take-away meal kit that serves four people for just $155. And all you have to do is order it here (or by calling the restaurant) and then go pick it up. The earliest available pickup is December 24th until 5 p.m. The restaurant is closed on the 25th, but then back in business again throughout the week of Hanukkah (December 25th through January 2nd).

Or you could just show up, of course. Because eight nights of brisket, rugelach, and latkes? That’s a very nice way to send off the year.

Maybe I’ll see you there.