6 Restaurant Reviews That Sum Up Philly Dining in 2023

From left: Seared cauliflower at Ground Provisions / Photography by Casey Robinson, Wawa pepperoni pizza / Photography by Jason Sheehan, a bowl of khao soi at Mawn / Photography by Michael Persico

I have been doing this job for a while now. And I have put together a lot of these year-end lists of the best (or at least most interesting) pieces of criticism. Sometimes it’s tough to scrape together a handful of reviews that really speak to the edible moment. Sometimes it’s a cinch. And this year? I could’ve made a case for twice as many as I’m actually including here.

The year kicked off with finding the best meatballs in the city at a small Thai restaurant in Midtown Village and ended with eating Saltines at the bar after what could’ve been one of the worst dinners of my life. So say what you will, but 2023 was never boring. Here are the restaurants (and the reviews) that I’m going to be thinking about long after the ball has dropped in Times Square.

Grandma’s Philly

January, 2023

Beef meatballs at Grandma’s in Philly / Photography by Casey Robinson

“I had beef meatballs here that I can’t stop thinking about — tender, not overtly herby or sour (like I expected) but subtle, served in a thin, sweet gravy and topped with slivered scallion and flakes of fried onion for just the barest crunch. I ate the first one distractedly, not really paying attention, but then stopped, focused, drawn up short by the delicate sweetness, the hint of acid, the ego-free simplicity. In this city so obsessed with meatballs, trying to add to the canon is a baller move. You’ve got to believe that your meatballs (or your grandmother’s meatballs, in this case) are better than all the other meatballs out there. And here, Jainon’s confidence isn’t misplaced.”

Yeah, I said it. Best meatballs in Philly. Fight me.

Kalaya

March, 2023

Clockwise from right: Gaeng massaman nua; pad pak kad dong; goong chae nam pla; goong phao at Kalaya in Fishtown / Photography by Ted Nghiem

One of the biggest stories from the front half of 2023 was the opening of Nok Suntaranon’s new Fishtown location. And one of the biggest questions was whether or not she was going to be able to capture the same magic here as she had in her OG spot in Bella Vista. I’d spent a good part of the end of 2022 talking with Nok about her life — everything from her childhood selling shrimp paste beside her mother, to her days as an airline hostess with a sideline gig as a smuggler, to the wild swing that was her first solo foray into the restaurant business on South 9th Street — so eating here was kind of like the final culmination of all those long conversations. I would’ve been heartbroken if the place hadn’t been as good as I was hoping it would be. As it turned out, though, I had nothing to worry about.

You can read the full review in all of its glory here.

Tabachoy

May, 2023

Chance Anies (front) with the Tabachoy team, from left: August Kitchel, Liz Ortega, Manuel Ruiz, Jake Loeffler, Nick Schon, Curtis Patey. / Photography by Paolo Jay Agbay

“At the counter, I’m picking at my ukoy — a massive deep-fried sweet potato and carrot fritter crowned with big head-on shrimp. It’s nearly the size of a playground dodgeball, as crisp as corn flakes, and served with a rough chili-vinegar dipping sauce thick with diced onion. It’s got serious Tabachoy energy: big, fun, surprising and delicious all at the same time. “Lighthearted,­ heavy-bellied” is the organizing mantra of Anies’s menu.

It’s the perfect description for the ukoy, a meal all on its own. Joy and abundance, which are like currencies in a place like this that gets louder as the night rolls on, voices ringing against pink walls. Whole parties share pancit canton — lime-shot egg noodles with matchstick carrots and snap peas, studded with Chinese sausage and dressed in fish sauce — and pork belly sisig with a fried egg under the glow of a gold neon pig and the tranquil gaze of a portrait of Anthony Bourdain done in the ecclesiastical style of a sainted icon. The tables are close-set, nearly communal, but there’s always room. Anies takes a phone call: last-minute reservation. Sure, he can squeeze them in. “Gonna be a little bit tight,” he says, “but we’ll manage.””

Ground Provisions

August, 2023

Seared cauliflower at Ground Provisions / Photography by Casey Robinson

“On a warm night in July, a simple slab of polenta cornbread, crisped brown around the edges, topped with a slice of yellow heirloom tomato, leads off the summer tasting menu like a sly open-face tomato sandwich. On the side, a shooter of roasted peach gazpacho that — for the first time in longer than I can remember — upends my perfect streak of hating every gazpacho put in front of me. It’s room-temperature, smooth, with a sweet base squashed under the weight of savory notes and a lace of char.”

I’m going to remember that meal for a LONG time. As much as Ground Provisions has been a cultural reset for the Landau/Jacoby Vedge empire, a single meal there in the heat of the summer acted like a six-month palate cleanser for me as well — reminding me of just how good food can be when the people cooking it care about it more than just about anything else.

Mawn

October, 2023

From left: Chef Phila Lorn; a bowl of khao soi at Mawn. / Photography by Michael Persico

“On the tables, curls of crispy chicken skin and whole fish picked down to the bone. Saht koh — ground rib eye packed onto a stick, similar to kofta kebab — with a sting of ginger and lemongrass. Head-on shrimp curled like leggy commas on a small plate, wearing leaves of Thai basil and smelling of fish sauce. The menu is a page, single-sided. It reads like a poem. An elegy, really, for a culture and a cuisine nearly lost to war and genocide but very much alive now on South 9th Street — remixed, modernized, spiked with American and Jewish and Thai influences. There’s papaya salad dusted with ground shrimp, tamarind and bird eye chili; chicken noodle soup fortified with schmaltz; piles of sliced, perfect-pink rib eye stacked like the aftermath of a bad Jenga game and crowned with a forest of green herbs and prohok (like chimichurri if chimichurri was both sweet and angry all the time).”

So about that former Kalaya location on South 9th: Can you imagine the kind of pressure there must’ve been in being the next restaurant in the space that made Nok Suntaranon famous? And can you imagine anyone other than Phila Lorn being willing to take that chance? Mawn is a stunningly good restaurant, and a fascinating nexus of art and cuisine and memory and culinary assimilation. The greatest compliment I can offer him, his team and his remarkable restaurant is that not once during any of my meals there did I look up and think to myself, Remember when this used to be Kalaya?

My Loup

December, 2023

Spread at My Loup / Photography by Michael Persico

“It’s hard, this place, because it looks like it should be one thing and feels like something else. Because there is this beauty and care in the fan of figs against white china and the scallop with chervil and apple, but eating here just feels like a meal at a friend’s house. Like an after-hours industry dinner at a great bistro once all the regular customers have gone home. It’s rigorous and offhand at the same time — just something thrown together for fun, without any tyranny of expectation. The kind of thing the people who really know how to cook cook when no one is looking.”

There was a story about one of my dinners at My Loup that I never got to tell. I showed up there one night alone, sat down at the bar, ordered a gin and tonic, ordered dinner in a staggered series of flights, sat back in my chair and realized — at precisely the worst moment — that I’d lost my wallet somewhere between the parking garage and the restaurant.

I had nothing — no ID, no credit cards, no cash, nothing to pay for dinner with and nothing to prove I wasn’t just some weirdo who pulls the whole “Oh, I must’ve left my wallet in my other pants” scam just to get free meals at fancy French-Canadian restaurants. Worse, the parking garage was one of those new ticketless ones where the card you pay with when you roll in is what you use to lift the gate when you’re ready to leave.

So did I freak out? I TOTALLY freaked out. I was fucked. Thoroughly and completely. I quickly explained my predicament to the bartender, who then explained my predicament to a manager, who then told me not to worry — they’d hold my order and my seat while I went running through the streets of Philadelphia like a crazy person thinking that I could… I don’t know. Find my wallet just sitting there, undisturbed and un-stolen, somewhere between my barstool and the parking garage?

Well guess what? I FOUND MY GODDAMN WALLET JUST SITTING THERE UNDISTURBED AND UN-STOLEN ON THE GROUND IN THE PARKING GARAGE! No one had taken the cash, the cards, my ID, anything. It was a Philadelphia miracle.

And I told EVERYONE about it as I went scurrying back to My Loup. The security guards at the parking garage cheered. At the bar, all the other customers who’d heard the story applauded. The bartender freshened my drink, and I then proceeded to eat one of the most amazing meals of the year.

Swear to god, no dinner has ever tasted so good. And I have never been happier to be a Philadelphian. I love this fucking city and everyone in it sometimes. Not all the time, but sometimes. And this was definitely one of those times.

In Defense of Wawa Pizza

October, 2023

Wawa pepperoni pizza / Photography by Jason Sheehan

“There’s a lot of people out there right now dunking on Wawa pizzas. They’re dusting off the ol’ thesaurus and trying to come up with the cleverest way to say dull. They’re comparing them to cardboard, to doormats covered in cheese, and that’s cool. Lazy, but cool. Because everyone is entitled to their opinions. And as a long-time restaurant critic who’s spent years saying mean things about food for money, it would be unbelievably hypocritical of me to say that all those people were wrong.

So I’ll say this instead …

Where the fuck did you think you were? What did you think you were going to get? Because before you go getting all high and mighty about it, let’s not forget: You’re eating pizza from a gas station.”

Look, someone had to stand up for Wawa’s pizza. And I was proud to be the guy to do it. My affection for these pizzas has become something of a running gag around my house where, every time we can’t think of what we want for dinner, I suggest a pizza from Wawa and my son, mimicking the awful commercials hyping the roll-out, yells, “Wawa has pizza!?!” And then we laugh and laugh.

Seriously, though. I have eaten quite a few pizzas from Wawa since they became available and I have liked every one of them. They’ve become my default order when I’m not absolutely dying for a hoagie. And no matter what the high-falutin’ food media has to say about these pies, I’m not changing my mind.