Now that Jansen has closed after a 10-year run at 7402 Germantown Ave. in Mt. Airy, I am convinced that the best fine dining restaurant in the area is La Provence in the Ambler Train Station. The upscale BYOB is perfect for special occasions or just for a great night out. The outdoor area is particularly stunning. The servers are professional to the max. General manager Ahmed Ahmed is another charmer.
La Provence is pricey, but is so well worth it, on a par with the best Center City restaurants. And co-owner Cindy Jiménez is delightful. Her husband, chef Manuel, was born and raised in Salamanca, Spain, and studied culinary arts at the Hôtel Montpelier in Switzerland. Cindy was born in Panama and moved to the Philadelphia area, working as a technician at Merck & Co. for more than 20 years.
As fate would have it, more than 40 years ago, she was asked by her then-boss to pick up chef Manuel at the Philadelphia Airport for a business meeting. And the rest, as they say, is history. The couple joined forces in opening three restaurants in Spain and Puerto Rico. After settling in the Philadelphia region, chef Manuel was the executive chef at Ristorante San Marco in Spring House.
Like so many restaurants, La Provence still has not recovered fully from the pandemic. Area restaurants including Iron Hill Brewery & Restaurant, Campbell’s and Earth Bread + Brewery, for example, which were once always busy, are now out of business. All of them reported never getting back their customer base, particularly their older customers. The owners of Earth Bread + Brewery have a second restaurant in Fairmount, with customers mostly in their 20s and 30s, and it is doing better than ever.
According to Cindy, “Things are definitely different ever since COVID. It feels like people are going out less as they get used to the takeout and delivery options. Our customer base is very loyal and supportive, but the current state of our economy is definitely making people a lot more cautious with how they spend their money, and given the fact that the restaurant business is more of a pleasure than a necessity, it is one of the top items on the list to be cut back on.
“Fine dining seems to be changing a bit in the grand scheme of things, but we will never change our views on it and try to keep it alive as long as possible. We do want to make it known that we are not trying to be just a special occasion restaurant but more of a permanent addition on our diners’ ‘go out’ list, and we try to make that happen with the many different daily specials chef Manuel creates.”
Plymouth Meeting residents Cindy and Manuel Jiménez opened La Provence in the Ambler Train Station on Sept. 11, 2019, replacing Trax, which had been there for 20 years. The business began with a home run, you might say, since area residents no longer had to trudge into Center City for exquisite French cuisine, not to mention the train station’s ample free parking. But after just six months came the pandemic. I can still recall eating outdoors there in the winter during the pandemic. The temperature was in the 40s, but we were actually warm because the table was surrounded by three heaters.
The quality of the food at La Provence is still ethereal. Trax had a few tables outdoors, but Cindy and Manuel, a chef who is as focused as a guided missile when he flexes his mussels, have created a Cinderella-like transformation. I call it “outdoorable” because it is undoubtedly one of the most eye-OK outdoor restaurant settings in the Greater Philadelphia area, replete with individual, private cubicles, lush plantings, flowers and a waterfall.
Onion soup with Gruyere cheese is a staple in French restaurants, but this version will make you feel like a member of the Smile High Club. An appetizer of baked escargots in ramekins with parsley-garlic butter mined sin-sational flavors that were natural and pure, and there are not many restaurants in the Philly area that offer escargots anymore.
An appetizer of imported cheeses with rhubarb strawberry jam and an ethereal red wine-black pepper reduction is a refreshing ode to autumn with every element singing in harmony. Pan-seared shrimp was an absolute epiphany. It steeped the heady essence of the crustaceans with a sublime coconut sauce. There is no asceticism when you devour this dish. Homemade gnocchi with Parmigiano Reggiano cheese, light cream sauce, filet tips and blue cheese crumble is another high-five.
A salmon special was suffused with flavor, its finish reverberating in waves of velvet for several seconds on my tongue. It was feather-light and as juicy and sweet as a just-picked Jersey tomato in August. As Gordon Ramsay would say, “Textbook.”
One could say that the road to success is always under construction, but at La Provence there is a pot of fine dining at the end of it.
For more information, visit laprovenceambler.com. Len Lear can be reached at lenlear@chestnuthilllocal.com.
Dining and Cooking