News
On the menu? A 100-layer lasagna. Plus: can’t-miss collab dinners, a Fishtown wine tour, and the return of Panda Fest.
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Borromini, the new Italian restaurant from Stephen Starr, is opening this month on Rittenhouse Square. / Photograph by Laura Swartz
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) Starr in Rittenhouse, steaks in Fishtown, the temporary return of a neighborhood favorite in Kensington and a 15-foot inflatable panda. So let’s get right into it and kick things off this week with …
Borromini Is Opening at the End of This Month
If it feels like we’ve been talking about this massive Italian restaurant project in Rittenhouse Square for years, that’s because we have been. I can’t even remember the first time we talked about Starr picking up the old Barnes & Noble space at 1805 Walnut Street, but it was at least two years ago — and these days, that might as well be forever.
But now, we have some actual opening information. Most notably, we know Borromini is planning a preview party on August 21st, with a public opening happening “shortly after,” according to their PR. So to me, that seems safe enough to call it an August opening. The preview is on a Thursday night, after all. And Friday August 22nd is just sitting there on the calendar (if the team is feeling confident enough for a weekend debut), or if they’re not, there’s a nice, quiet Monday just a couple days later. There are no reservations available yet, so I can’t say for sure, but if I was a betting man? I’d say those doors will be open by the last weekend of the month.
In the meantime, we know a few other things now, too. So let’s run down the details, shall we?
Borromini is Starr’s first original concept in Philly in four years. It isn’t like he hasn’t been busy. He’s been buying and opening restaurants in New York and Washington D.C. the whole time, but this will be his first truly local project since LMNO hit Fishtown in 2021.
The restaurant will occupy two stories on Walnut Street. There will be multiple first-floor dining rooms, upstairs seating, and a patio with a view of Rittenhouse. It’s going to be a BIG space. We’re talking north of 200 seats. And all of them are essentially right across the Square from Starr’s other Rittenhouse destination, Parc.
In the press, they’re making a big deal out of the Starr team traveling to Italy to find “authentic inspiration” for the menu, but that means less to me than the actual names that are attached to this kitchen. Starr has tapped chef Mark Ladner to design the menu. And if that name sounds familiar, it’s because Ladner has won pretty much every award a chef can win during his time in New York, including a James Beard award and two Michelin stars while at Del Posto. But Ladner also helped open Babbo in NYC under Mario Batali and Joe Bastianich, and Starr is currently in the process of buying Babbo from Bastianich in an attempt at revitalizing the brand after Batali got his ick all over it and was forced to step away following accusations by multiple women of sexual misconduct. Ladner is reportedly coming back to the kitchen at Babbo under Starr, but not before lending his talents to the Borromini menu design, including bringing the “100-Layer Lasagna” that made him famous at Del Posto.
In terms of the day-to-day, Borromini will also have another Starr veteran in charge. Julian Baker (of Starr’s Le Zoo in Miami) will stand as exec chef, and will be overseeing a menu that’s full of classic Italian offerings. We’re talking mafaldine in lemon sauce. calamari calamarata (which is pasta shaped like calamari rings, tossed with fresh tomato and actual calamari), rigatoni carbonara, bucatini amatriciana, and more.
So yes, it’ll be a very, very Italian restaurant in a city already full of very, very Italian restaurants, but you wanna know something weird? Starr doesn’t actually have one of those. I mean, there’s Pizzeria Stella, I guess. But in Philly, Borromini will be his first dedicated Italian restaurant in years. And that alone will make this an interesting experiment.
When it opens, Borromini is planning for dinner seven nights a week. Lunch and brunch services will be added once everything is up and running smoothly.
Now what else is happening this week …
Bottomless Fries in Fishtown
Steak frites, the only menu item at Medium Rare / Photograph courtesy of Medium Rare
We’ve talked before about the steak frites specialist Medium Rare coming to Philly, but now we know exactly when that is happening — and it is soon.
This Friday, August 8th, will be opening day for the Washington D.C.-based mini-chain with its single-item, prix-fixe menu and orders written in crayon. 1540 Frankford Avenue will mark Medium Rare’s ninth location overall (and its first in Philly), and they’re banking everything on the simplest menu concept imaginable: You come in, you pay $32.95, you get a culotte steak, cooked to order, secret sauce, fresh-cut fries, a salad and bread, and … that’s it.
Seriously, that’s the entire menu.
Yes, there are complimentary seconds. Yes, you can just keep eating. But steak frites is all this place does and, honestly, I kinda like the simplicity of that.
The feel of the joint is playful, casual. There’s French pickup lines on the cocktail napkins and orders are written directly onto the paper-covered tables. To complicate things just a little, there is also a brunch menu that is slightly more far-reaching (including a breakfast sandwich, french toast, eggs benny, steak and eggs, and unlimited cocktails), but the core concept here is steak and french fries, served until you don’t want any more steak or french fries.
The new Medium Rare will be open every night for dinner. Brunch is on Saturday and Sunday. We’ll see y’all there.
Cadence Returns for Two Nights at Emmett
Jon Nodler and Samantha Kincaid / Photograph courtesy of Concept Blue Media
I loved Cadence during its run at 161 West Girard in Kensington. Husband-and-wife chefs Jon Nodler and Samantha Kincaid did great work in the kitchen, but the thing I liked most about the place was just how cool everything about it was. This is from the review I wrote back in 2018:
“‘Come on in, guys,’ said the first person to wander up to the host’s station. ‘We’re just hanging out, having a nice chill Tuesday night.’
Yeah, that was the welcome. No false formality. No pretending that we’d walked in just two steps ahead of the rush.
We were brought menus, hot tea, thick slices of local bread, and a smear of yellow butter that tasted halfway to cheese. And while empty restaurants normally freak me right the hell out, Cadence just … didn’t. The pale walls and soft music. The comfortable warmth, the good smells of coffee and garlic and roasting meat coming from the kitchen — those all helped. But more than anything, it was the quiet motions of the staff just going about its business. Every now and then, someone would pop over to the table to see how things were going, but the casualness of it was so natural, so unforced in this industry where, sometimes, everything seems forced. It was one of the most comforting meals I’ve had in months.”
That moment? It stuck with me. It changed the way I look at restaurants on a fundamental level. It changed what I’m looking for when I walk into a place for the first time.
Cadence closed a few years later. It was replaced by Emmett, which I also really liked — and no small part of my affection was the way that Emmett seemed to have carried forward a piece of Cadence’s soul. I’d say it was just the space, but really, it’s something more than that.
“Years ago, this building was home to Cadence. One of those places you either knew and loved or didn’t know at all. But I loved it. It was cool and quiet and confident. Welcoming, always. Nights there could be so soft because there was no mission, no manifesto. No sense that anyone in the place was ever trying to prove anything to anybody.
And Emmett, now, with its long, narrow space and warm light, has inherited some of that cool, I think. That same easy composure and self-assuredness.”
Anyway, for those of you out there who miss Cadence the way I do, here’s some very good news. Jon and Samantha (who went back to Wisconsin, where they met, after Cadence shut down) are coming back to Philly for a two-night stand alongside chef Evan Snyder at Emmett for a collaboration dinner in their former kitchen. It’s being billed as a collaborative dinner that will “marry Nodler and Kincaid’s signature reverence for seasonality and their Midwestern roots with Emmett’s blend of Levantine and Mediterranean influences, all through the lens of the live-fire hearth that anchors the kitchen.”
And the menu is exactly that. Sunchoke cannoli with smoked trout and horseradish crème fraîche, wagyu rye tartlets, lamb kubbeh with sumac labneh and pickled pear to start, a black bass with shrimp mousse, manti dumplings stuffed with Jimmy Nardello jam and muhammara, dry-aged duck with sweet corn and chanterelles, plus chocolate mousse with roasted-sweet-corn whipped cream, fall raspberries and polenta cake for dessert. And that’s only like half of it.
The dinners will take place over two nights, on Saturday, September 6th, and Sunday, September 7th. Dinner starts at 5 p.m. and runs all evening. Reservations are $150 a head, and will be available starting this Wednesday, August 7th, at noon on OpenTable. If you’re down, I’d be right there and waiting on Wednesday. Because I’m not the only person in town who loves both of these restaurants, so I think the reservations are going to go fast.
Now who has room for some leftovers?
The Leftovers
From left: Maddy Sweitzer-Lammé and Sande Friedman / Photographs by Neal Santos
Tiny Table Tours (which is run by Maddy Sweitzer-Lammé, one of Foobooz’s own) is bringing back its popular “Women In Wine” tour for a one-day-only Fishtown edition, happening on Saturday, September 13th.
Maddy will be running the tour, alongside former Di Bruno Bros. beverage director Sande Friedman, and they’ll be hitting all the high points in the neighborhood: Pizzeria Beddia, Pray Tell Winery, Kalaya, and Mural City Cellars. At each stop, there’ll be snacks, wine tastings, and the chance to talk with some of the city’s best wine pros.
Tickets go on sale this Wednesday, August 6th via Tiny Table’s newsletter (which you can sign up for right here). And if there are any tickets left after that, they’ll be released to the public via Instagram on the 8th.
Over at Tabachoy, Chance Anies is cooking a kamayan dinner with chef Sheldon Simeon who’s coming all the way from Maui to visit Philly for the first time. Chance is gonna show him the town, but while he’s here, they’re doing a collaborative Ilocano-inspired dinner on August 8th that’ll be served family-style, on banana leaves, and is meant to be eaten with your hands.
Tickets are $70. Get ’em right here.
Looks like we’re losing another classic Jersey diner. The Collingswood Diner, which has spent almost 40 years at 201 Crescent Boulevard, is shutting down. According to South Jersey Food Scene (and a sign posted on the door), the last day will be August 11th. Word is, the space is going to become a weed dispensary.
Last spring’s Panda Fest at Dilworth Park / Photograph courtesy of Panda Fest
And finally this week, lets talk about Panda Fest.
This is the massive Asian food and culture festival that debuted last April in Philly. It was such a success that organizer Xuan Xu has decided to bring it back — only this time, even bigger.
On Saturday and Sunday, October 4th and 5th, starting at 10 a.m., Panda Fest will take over Dilworth Park outside City Hall, filling the place with all the Asian food vendors they can pack into the space. There will also be music, games, cultural performances and a 15-foot-tall inflatable panda, but really, the food is all I’m thinking about.
And yes, here at the beginning of August, October might seem like a long way off. But I’m mentioning this to you now for two reasons.
First, it’s nice to have things to look forward to. And Panda Fest is definitely something worth looking forward to.
Second, tickets for the event (which sold out last year) are going on sale this Friday, August 8th, and the first 100 tickets sold for each time slot will be going for just $10 each.
Oh, and each attendee (whether you score those early-bird prices or not) will get a free panda pin AND an inflatable panda headband. Who doesn’t love that?
Tickets will be available here starting Friday. So start making your October plans now.
Dining and Cooking