News
Plus: Food & Wine names David Suro-Piñera a “Drinks Visionary,” the Feast of Seven Pickles is back, and Vetri drops a new cookbook.
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Inside Scusi Pizza / Photograph courtesy of Scusi Pizza
Howdy, buckaroos! And welcome back to the weekly Foobooz food news round-up. Just a few quick things to get through this week, including (but not limited to) a chef from a Michelin-starred restaurant bringing (more) pizza to NoLibs, Marc Vetri’s new pasta book, a big cocktail award for David Suro, and the return of the Feast of the Seven Pickles. So let’s get right into it, shall we? We’ll start things off this week with …
Scusi Pizza Has an Opening Date in NoLibs
French chef Laurent Tourondel has had a long and storied career. In his 40-odd years in the kitchen, he has worked with everyone from Jacques Maximin to the Troisgros brothers. He has cooked in France, Hong Kong, London, Moscow, and New York City. He’s won stars from the New York Times, and his restaurant, BLT Fish, earned a star from Michelin in 2005. He was named one of Food & Wine‘s 10 Best New Chefs, was a restaurateur of the year according to Bon Appétit, and later went on to open a dozen different concepts in cities all across the United States — from a pizza joint in Sag Harbor to a coffee bar in Westhampton and a seafood restaurant on the Florida coast.
But he never opened anything in Philly. At least not until now.
Scusi Pizza — a concept that he first tried in New Jersey — is scheduled to open to the public on Saturday, November 21st, at 1099 Germantown Avenue in Northern Liberties, in the Piazza Alta building next to the Piazza apartment complex. And Scusi is just one of a pair of operations he’s bringing to the Piazza, but since there are not a lot of details yet on the second one, let’s deal with his pizza spot first.
At Scusi, “the spotlight is on pizza … guests can expect a bold approach to classic pies and slices, layered with unexpected twists and craveable extras,” according to LT’s press. That means slices and whole pizzas, straight pepperoni-and-cheese, and Grandma pies set alongside a Francese with mushrooms, prosciutto cotto, Comté, Gruyère, and a Provence-style spicy herb oil with African roots. There’ll be dipping sauces for the crusts (pesto, hot honey, truffle aioli, and ranch), Italian sandwiches on house-made bread, and Mediterranean small plates like whipped ricotta with freshly made focaccia, stromboli with soppressata and provolone, escarole and anchovy salads, and charcuterie plates with Italian cheeses and hazelnuts roasted in truffle honey.
Oh, and for dessert? Someone in the kitchen is getting weird with the soft-serve machine because they’re promising a rotating list of options which include things like vanilla with candied orange and pistachio, chocolate hazelnut with butterscotch or vanilla, and caramelized popcorn.
There’ll be light cocktails, a small-production Italian wine list, takeaway bottles to drink with your to-go pies, and local beers on draft. And honestly, all of this sounds great — and exactly in keeping with Tourondel’s second act as the guy who makes restaurants full of things that people want to eat every day. Not fancy, not stilted — just good.
And to back him up, he’s got local chef Georgeann Leaming (ex of R2L, Suppa, Samwich) running the kitchen, which is a smart move for any out-of-market operator making a first run at Philly’s scene because, as we all know, Philadelphians can be … particular.
And Scusi isn’t the only location he has planned for the neighborhood. At some indistinct point in the future (no opening date has yet been announced), Tourondel will be opening Terra Grill in a space at the Piazza Alta, right next door to his pizzeria. All I know about Terra right now is that it will be an American concept featuring wood-fired grills, and that it will be opening “soon.”
As always, you’ll know more when I know more. Meanwhile, what else is happening this week?
Food & Wine Names David Suro-Piñera of Tequilas a “Drinks Visionary”
Over the weekend, Food & Wine magazine named their inaugural class of “Drinks Visionaries.” Like their lists of Best New Chefs and Global Tastemakers, this collection of talent is about putting the spotlight on booze industry pros who are defining or reshaping the business. And David Suro-Piñera certainly fits that bill.
For decades, he has been championing sustainable, traditional tequilas and mezcals, writing books, producing spirits, and running one of Philly’s most venerable fine-dining Mexican restaurants, Tequilas. Even after a fire shut the place down for two years, Suro-Piñera (and his family) came back stronger than ever, turning one restaurant into two and balancing the traditional against the bold and the modern.
Here’s what F&W had to say:
“After a fire forced a two-year closure, Philadelphia’s beloved restaurant Tequilas Casa Mexicana reopened in March 2025 to cheers from agave fans. Founder David Suro-Piñera — educator, importer, and coauthor of the James Beard Award–winning Agave Spirits — has spent decades championing sustainable, tradition-minded producers through the Tequila Interchange Project, Siembra Spirits (including Siembra Azul), and the Siembra Suro Foundation. As his three children steer the refreshed restaurant — now split between fine-dining Tequilas and all-day café La Jefa — Suro-Piñera remains hands-on, connecting drinkers to Mexico’s agave culture.”
The magazine actually had a lot more to say about David and his career, but this sums it up pretty well. And now he joins 11 other bartenders, winemakers, importers, and drinks experts from across the country as one of the best at what he does. You can check out the full list of winners right here. Or maybe just head over to Tequilas and have a drink.
Meanwhile …
The Feast of the Seven Pickles Is Back
Feast of Seven Pickles / Photograph by Mike Prince
Every December for the past four years, the crew from the Fishtown Pickle Project have thrown a little pickle party.
Every year for the past four years, it has completely sold out.
Now in its fifth consecutive year, the Feast of the Seven Pickles is returning with a seven-course, pickle-centric menu (and “pickle sundae bar”) at Percy in Fishtown on Tuesday, December 16th. The menu will be a collaboration between Percy’s kitchen and FPP co-owner, Mike Sicinski. They’re calling it “The Diner Edition” and the menu will feature starter courses of deviled eggs and latkes with smoked fish and pickle slaw (which they’re calling “a nod to Chanukah, as the event falls on the third night of the holiday”), followed by pumpkin soup with winter squash kimchi, a corned pork belly Reuben with sweet onion pickle glaze, fermented red cabbage kraut and rye bread gremolata, then antipasto with Fishtown Pickle Dip, a pickle-brined chicken schnitzel, and then, for dessert, that aforementioned “Pickle Sundae Bar” set up in Percy’s “Sound Lounge” featuring fermented honey wet walnuts, tea-pickled golden raisins, hot fudge, whipped sour cream, fermented fruit, and more.
There’ll also be a pop-up holiday market on-site, with a portion of the proceeds going to Sharing Excess.
Tickets for the Feast of the Seven Pickles go on sale this Friday (National Pickle Day) on the Fishtown Pickle Project website. There will be two seatings this year, the first from 5 to 7 p.m., the second from 7:30 to 9:30 p.m. Tickets will run you $105 (with $10 from each ticket also going to Sharing Excess), and there will be 65 seats available for each seating, so … yeah. Make your plans and be ready on Friday when the tickets go live. Because this event is absolutely going to sell out fast.
Now who has room for some leftovers?
The Leftovers
Kouklet’s Brazilian tapioca flatbread / Photograph by Mike Prince
Kouklet & Tanda Bakehouse recently opened a new South Philly location, and they just launched a new breakfast and lunch service focused on Brazilian tapioca flatbreads. It’s a staple street food in Brazil, and the Kouklet team is bringing it to 1429 Wolf Street, filling their griddled flatbreads with creamy chicken, slow-cooked beef, mortadella with whipped ricotta and pepper jelly, scrambled eggs, and more. You can check out the new menu right here, or just stop by and check it out for yourself.
I don’t write a lot about cookbooks here. When I do, it’s generally because something weird is happening. Or because I can make a few good jokes. But when Marc Vetri has a new book coming out? I’ll make an exception.
Vetri has written a handful of books over the course of his career, but 2015’s Mastering Pasta? That’s kind of a masterpiece. By turns nerdy and technical, opinionated and welcoming, it was a book that codified Italian pastamaking from a chef who had built a career on making noodles and then decided to teach himself even more.
The new book — called simple (and perfectly) The Pasta Book — is about noodles, too. But it’s also about sauce. And the way sauce and pasta play together. About adhesion and emulsification, about matching and balancing. It is a heavy digression on a topic that Vetri probably thinks about every single day of his life, packaged here as step-by-step, sauce-by-sauce instructions on how to improve your pasta game and understand why sauces and noodles behave the way they do.
It’s heavy on the photos, focused on the recipes, less technical than Mastering Pasta, but no less well-researched. And it is available right now, so with the gift-giving season fast approaching, it’s certainly something worth considering for the pasta obsessive in your life.
Over at Almyra in Center City, they’re launching a new happy hour program with five new $7 cocktails (including a Greek margarita and a whiskey cocktail topped with sweet peach foam) and a jumped up food menu offering new tastes like crab wontons with feta, skewers, lamb ribs, spanakopita manti dumplings, tuna crispy rice, and flaming saganaki.
The new menu is available daily, from 4 to 6 p.m.
In Rittenhouse, Walnut Garden is becoming Walnut Wonderland and debuting its brand-new holiday finery tomorrow — in a sure sign that the holidays are really coming up fast. There’ll be penguins (probably not real ones), candy canes, neon character sculptures, a 22-foot-tall tree you can walk through, eight 12-foot Christmas trees (all fully decorated), and an art installation of decorative wreaths and 1,000 holiday ornaments. There’ll be drink specials and $9 DIY s’mores. And the official tree lighting happens tomorrow, November 12th, at 5:30 p.m. Going forward, hours will be Wednesday and Thursday from 4 to 10 p.m., Friday and Saturday from noon to midnight, and Sunday from noon to 10 p.m.
Dining and Cooking