Philadelphia 2015
Ah.....last time I was in Philly, it was the winter of 2003. My friends and I took a day trip. We basically did all the touristy stuff. We had a cheesesteak, saw the Liberty Bell, went to Chinatown (well the bus stopped at Chinatown), took the subway...etc. I can't believe it's been 12 years since I last went to Philadelphia. I should really go more often, it's only a 2 hour bus ride. Oh boy and the food....the food scene is so awesome there. Great hummus, GREAT FRIED CHICKEN, awesome Vietnamese food, excellent cocktail bars, and so SO good Italian food.
I was only there for 3 days. I took the 10:45a Bolt Bus and arrived around 12:30p. Walked to my Airbnb (my first Airbnb, it was a weird feeling staying at someone's actual apartment) in Center City and went straight to Cafe Diem for some super delicious Bun Bo Hue.
Next I stopped at the Big Gay Ice Cream shop.
Then in the afternoon, I met up with Mo (friend and old roomie) for some happy hour pizzas and beers at Nomad Roman Pizza. For happy hour, they have $5-$7 pizzas and $4 draft beers. The pizzas were alright but my favorite was the one topped with cherry tomatoes.
And then we hopped over to Franklin Mortgage & Investment Co. for a flight of tiki drinks.
The next morning, I made sure to trek over to Federal Donuts (on Sansom St) right at 11am for their famous fried chicken. I got a half order of fried chicken with a dusting of buttermilk ranch. I finally understand the hype. THE HYPE IS REAL. So freakin good.
After fried chicken, I went to COOK, where Doug and Bryan were doing their multi-dessert tasting event.
When I was looking up pie places (like Four & Twenty Blackbirds and Petee's), I didn't find much except for Magpie. Their special September pie is a Nutella cream pie. !!!!
For dinner that night, I went to Cheu Noodle Bar (thumbs down). I should've gone to Little Nonna's for pasta.
On my final day, I woke up early for some hummus at Dizengoff (same chef as Federal Donuts and Zahav). WOW, just wow. I never had hummus this delicious before. Chef Michael Solomonov is a treasure.
To make myself feel better about the mistake I made the night before for not getting Italian food for dinner, I trekked over to Amis for brunch. Got the rigatoni with sausage and an egg yolk. Mighty delicious.
And then just before leaving, I stopped at Federal Donuts for 6 donuts to bring back. =)
Gentry Chicken
This past Saturday I attended the first ever Gentry Chicken NYC pop-up at the Old Bowery Station. Gentry Chicken is run by Leonard Shek, whom I've known through the internet but have only met the first time on Saturday. He told me he was doing a fried chicken pop-up. Oh, you can't say no to fried chicken meals. Leonard did fried chicken 2 ways, original and Japanese (toshiro mifune). Both were mega delicious, crispy....juicy fried chicken. There were also pickles, salad with tomatoes, mac n'cheese, and corn.
Hit up Gentry Chicken if you want to find out where's the next pop-up.
Golden Hour At The Pie Shop
