With 8 weekends in DC left, we headed up to Philly in early July to focus on one thing and one thing alone - eating good food. This has been an evolving passion for me and Nikki and visiting the city of brotherly love turned out to be a great opportunity for seeing our buddy Jeff Glenn and tapping into his like-minded love of analyzing meals in excruciating detail and knowledge of the city.
Jeff actually did a much better job of taking pictures and documenting the meals than I can do, so I stole a few pics and included them here. Jeff's work is at: http://picasaweb.google.com/jglenner/PhillyFoodWeekendWNikkiEvan#. He's a great photographer and I would for sure check em out.
I can say that we had some of the best food I've eaten in my life. We made every meal count and Jeff and I took running tours of the city each morning to ensure that we maintained plenty of appetite.
Nikki and I got in on Friday night and ate at a place called Alma de Cuba - highlights of the meal were fantastic ceviche and a chocolate cigar dessert. My coconut cocktail was also damn good (if a little girly). After retracing Rocky's run through the Italian market and South St the next day, we headed to Rouge for one of the best burgers in America - I'd say it was worthy of some kind of award, though Good Stuff Eatery in DC is still my #1 fave. We took a trolley/bus tour of the city, including stops at Eastern State Penitentiary and the Art Museum, and built up an appetite for Cantonese/Peruvian fusion at Chifa. I know if sounds weird, but the tapas-style reinventions of traditional plates like bao and empanadas were delicious. The highlight was actually the free cheese-filled bread with a guava-siracha dipping sauce that we are all pretty sure had crack in it. Second dinner was at Buddakan, which had strange and wonderful modern asian concoctions like edemame ravioli and wasabi tuna carpachio pizza. Not bad drinks either - apparently yuzu is the new hot mixer these days! The bento-box dessert was sooo good - I feel like my mother would have been in heaven! We saved just enough room for pinkberry-style yogurt on the way home and called it a successful day.
The next morning, Jeff and I ran around west Philadelphia unsuccessfully looking for Will Smith while I had flashbacks of the Penn Relays. Meanwhile, Nikki got to do some quality shopping! We all built up an appetite and converged on the Continental, where the highlight was definitely a cinnamon-marscapone-stuffed waffle in bourbon syrup. Mmmmmmm. My bacon-infused vodka martini was also not bad. Of course, we had to finish our Philly trip with some cheesesteaks. With the final game of the world cup playing in the background, we cruised South Street and settled on steaks from ishkabibbles and steaks on south (SOS). After a very close taste-test competition, we decided Ishka was the winner. While Jeff hit the road, Nikki and I went back and picked up a chicken-cheesesteak for comparison (not bad) and hit up the Philly Magic Gardens, where a local artist has spent 14 years creating a huge art piece in a lot and adjacent house comprised of all kinds of junk. Pretty cool.
Riding high on our good food kick, Nikki and I continued the trend when we got back to DC and visited Eric Ripert's West End Bistro, where we made special reservations to sit at the pass between the kitchen and the restaurant. Definitely one of the coolest dining experiences we have ever had!! We got to pick the brain of the head chef and see how it gets done in a high-class restaurant first hand. I took a picture of our grilled octopus, but all the food, including grilled striped bass and shrimp and grits, was awesome. We've got a long list of places to try here in DC, so hopefully we can squeeze in a few more memorable dining experiences before we leave!
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