36 Hours in Philly: Eats

I shared all of the sites from Philly last week. Today I'm here to share the best part: the food.

My sister and I had eaten a bagel prior to getting on the road. However, we'd purposely split one bagel so that we'd have room to stuff our faces once we'd gotten to Philly.

Reading Terminal Market
We started our foodventure at Reading Terminal Market. There are so many stalls to choose from so make sure to grab a map when you enter.

If you live in Philly, I totally recommend picking up your produce at the market. It's crazy affordable and actually quite fresh.

My sister agrees with Charlie's stance on pears. He enjoyed his at the Italian Market, but pears are pears.

Melt Kraft
We decided to start our foodventure off with a grilled cheese. These guys make their own cheese; enough said!

We went with a melter skelter and a somerset.

This guy was a grilled cheese master. He was babysitting three different sandwich presses and everything was timed perfectly.

The Somerset was made with gruyere, whole grain mustard, and cornichons. It was awesome.

The melter skelter was made with raclette, pickled green tomatoes, jalapenos, BBQ chips, and watercress. I love a good stretchy cheese photo. I could stare at them all day.

Carmen's Hoagies
And since we were in Philly, we also got ourselves some cheese steaks. E actually went and ordered this for us while we were scarfing down the grilled cheeses, so I don't have any cooking action shots for you. Sorry!

Spicy peppers with gooey cheese and tender meat on delicious crusty bread equates to one perfect sandwich.

I have to be fair and say that though this cheesesteak was delicious, I'm not this style of sandwich's biggest fan. I prefer a stronger cheese to Philly's cheese whiz sauce.

Okonomiyaki
For dinner, instead of going out, we decided we would make something at home. S&E wanted to make us okonomiyaki. I'm eventually going to have to recreate it at home; I'll share it on my food blog when I do. So, while we were at the market, we picked up some cabbage and some seafood.

Um, would you look at those mutant giant shrimp? Don't they look like lobster tails?

Okonomiyaki basically means "whatever you want." It's a super chunky pancake made with cabbage and you throw in whatever else you like. This version had squid, shrimp, and spam. Oh! And cheese! It's topped with a donkatsu sauce and sprinkled with bonito flakes. It's delicious.

We ate it with some fridge pickles that I brought with us from home (as a housewarming gift).

Mac's Tavern
Before dinner though, while we were still out and about, we stopped by Mac's Tavern for a drink. This place is co-owned by It's Always Sunny's Rob McElhenny and Kaitlin Olson and a bunch of other people.

It was actually quite popular with college kids and they had a really good list of 17 different beers on tap (in addition to bottled beers).

I tried an Ithaca Ember Rye Porter, just as a nod to my Alma Mater's town.

The Franklin Fountain
After our round of beers, we walked down the street to the Franklin Fountain, which is an old-timey ice cream and soda shop.

They make amazing sundaes and banana splits.

I opted for honeycomb ice cream on a sugar cone with sprinkles. It was so huge that I was spilling everywhere and had to ask for a container. The honeycomb ice cream was SO good. I need to try and make it at home.

And apparently, ice cream used to be packaged in these takeout style containers originally. Who knew?

Tria
Our final meal in Philly was at Tria. It's a small-bites kind of place and it was super cozy and perfect for the type of lazy afternoon we were having.

We had the chicken liver mousse with cornichons...

.. The roasted figs with prosciutto...

... The roasted beets with feta...

... The crab-stuffed peppers...

... The bruschetta with ricotta, pistachios, and honey...

... The prosciutto cotta sandwich with scamorza and broccoli rabe and a tomato spread.

... And the bruschetta with goat cheese and pesto. Everything was really delicious and fresh and well prepared. Plus, it was all served really promptly.

For dessert, we got the spiced panna cotta with cranberry compote and the flourless chocolate torte with hazelnuts. The panna cotta was super creamy and had an almost chai tea spice flavor. It was delicious and the acidity of the cranberries offset the creaminess of the custard nicely.

The chocolate torte was not what we were expecting. It was more like a dense chocolate mousse than a torte. I usually imagine something more cake-like when I imagine a torte. It was still delicious though.

So that's it for Philly.

Next up will be Italy. I still have yet to plan everything because I haven't made any decisions on which cities we must visit (except for Positano) so you'll be seeing a lot of what I learn and choose right here. My planning posts seem to be some of my most popular so I hope that you like them. Thanks for reading!

xoxo.