Reviews
Linger over wine, duck prosciutto, and raclette sandwiches at East Passyunk’s new French cafe.
Devoted foodies and restaurant newbies love Foobooz. Sign up now for our twice weekly newsletter.
Plates from Supérette / Photography by Ed Newton
It was a gorgeous day on East Passyunk — bright and warm, the air full of cherry blossom petals — and the traffic in and out of the doors at Supérette was brisk. Everyone wanted to be here. For a minute or an hour, they all wanted a glass of wine, a bottle of Orangina, a wedge of Brie and some duck prosciutto, or some olives to pick at, and to sit in the sun with a view of the Avenue and the Singing Fountain, and to know that they were in exactly the right spot on exactly the right day.
This is the magic of a great restaurant. It makes you feel in your bones like you’ve come to where you were meant to be. Even though it’s not really a restaurant, but a wine shop, a cafe, a French épicerie at the corner of East Passyunk and Cross, Supérette does that. It makes Philly seem like a movie. Like Wes Anderson curating a diorama of East Passyunk neighbors and French émigrés. Like it’s too good to be real.
The space (a former butcher shop) has been redone by Chloé Grigri and Vincent Stipo (of Superfolie, Le Caveau, and the Good King Tavern), along with partners Bernard and Jeanne Grigri and Owen Kamihira (El Camino Real), in soft greens and yellows, with subway-tile walls, counter seating, and booths around the bend of the bar. It is bright and cozy, buzzy and chill. It exists between states, in the friction of two competing ideas (restaurant/grocery, bar/wine shop) rubbing up against each other.
Supérette lives in those sparks. The old butcher’s case is now home to a dream picnic waiting to be assembled — sliced coppa and terrines, coiled links of sausage, and cheeses. Under the counter sit jars of green olives and bags of French Brets potato chips. The walls are lined with wine, the window seats with couples and families and kids. And in the open kitchen, Supérette’s crew assembles plates of octopus and sausage with fingerling potatoes in a green persillade and rough-cut French ham sandwiches on rustic bread smeared with cornichon butter, crowned with smashed potato chips.
The French ham sandwich at Supérette
Sitting there, splitting a bottle of Oyster River cider with my wife and eating warm raclette and coppa sandwiches mounted on fresh baguette, I am in love with the place, my life, the world, this moment. It is so rare these days to find that release — that permission to be present in an instant of joy. But Supérette can do that. It makes a glass of wine and a slice of cheese seem important and worth savoring.
And who could want anything more than that?
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 “Where Philly Finds Its Joie de Vivre” in the July 2025 issue of Philadelphia magazine.