Trey Popp
Posted by Trey Popp on May 3rd, 2013
A server who gets her customers laughing has them right where she wants them, but the bartender at Zavino had an unfair advantage on a recent Monday afternoon.
“Would you like a table?” she asked as I strolled in.
“Maybe I’ll just sit at the bar,” I said.
“Okay,” she replied brightly, filling a water glass as I parked my backside. “There’s just one thing you should know. Our pizza oven isn’t working. So everything from here down”—she held her hand across the middle of the menu—“isn’t available at the moment.”
“You had me at isn’t working,” I answered—or would have, if my wit were quicker. As it’s not, I chuckled, took in an explanation about weird wiring that occasionally knocks the za out of Zavino, and ordered what I’d come for in the first place. Because truth be told, the pizza at Zavino doesn’t really work for me no matter how hot the oven is—but the pasta is another story entirely.
Read the rest of this entry »
Related: Food, Reviews, Trey Popp, Zavino
4 Comments | Related Posts »
Posted by Foobooz on April 29th, 2013
Red Owl Tavern couldn’t put it all together for Trey Popp as the restaurant in the Hotel Monaco was the definition of hit-or-miss.
Such was the pattern: a few things to like in a dish, and then something else that marred it. Luscious house-made pastrami sandwiched in flaccid “grilled naan” without char. Exquisitely cooked sheepshead snapper over an underseasoned cassoulet. A dynamite linguica sausage—arranged on awkwardly oversized toast bites. A deep liquor list but completely forgettable cocktails. Even the beet pasta I loved at Square 1682 was gummy here. And service was a roll of the dice: swift and candid one night, clueless and interminable another.
One Star – Fair
Philadelphia Restaurant Review: Culinary Fumbles at Red Owl Tavern [Philadelphia magazine]
Red Owl Tavern [Official Site]
Photo by Courtney Apple
Related: From the Magazine, Reviews, Center-City-East, Independence Hall, Old-City, Red Owl Tavern, Reviewed, Trey Popp
1 Comment | Related Posts »
Posted by Foobooz on April 29th, 2013
Trey Popp reviews Sophia’s, the East Passyunk restaurant of Philadelphia’s prodigal son, Christopher Lee. What he finds is that Lee is only kind of involved.
My dinners—all of them—were incoherent and error-prone. Dishes clashed rather than complementing one another. Most of the “fun”-sounding ones were flat and boring. Carelessness afflicted too many others. Brussels sprouts were overcooked (really half-carbonized). Ice creams came in pools of their own melt. There’s a lovely apple coffee cake from Fond’s Jessie Prawlucki—but one night it turned up fridge-cold, in a kiln-hot bowl, after an inexplicably long wait.
Sophia’s spent its first month tinkering with a menu the restaurant abruptly discarded. It’s hard to imagine this second take will last much longer. And who knows? A third stab could be the charm. But for Christopher Lee to resurrect the hopes some people had for his return to Philadelphia, he’ll need to do something to reverse the impression that he’s really just phoning it in.
One Star – Fair
Philadelphia Restaurant Review: Phoning It In at Sophia’s [Philadelphia magazine]
Sophia’s [Official Site]
Related: From the Magazine, Reviews, American, Christopher Lee, East-Passyunk, Reviewed, Sophia's, Trey Popp
2 Comments | Related Posts »
Posted by Foobooz on April 1st, 2013
Trey Popp reviews Fork, the 15-year old dining institution in Old City that, thanks to New York import, Eli Kulp, is suddenly as fresh as anywhere in the city.
Kulp can cook, no doubt. Barely a week into his tenure, he put out a split-personality guinea hen that would go down as the best entrée I’d eaten in a year. The thighs were done up as fried nuggets with hot sauce; the breasts had a mysterious depth—and crackling skin—born of dry aging, complemented by a nose-tingling mustard oil, crème fraîche, and sweet pear and apple marbles that riveted me to the last bite.
Kulp does even better by duck. He hangs the carcasses in cold air for a week, spends another week Peking-ifying them—ballooning the skins with an air compressor, dipping them in a boiling vinegar solution, powdering them with baking soda, glazing them with maltose—and then veers sharply away from China, cooking the breasts medium rare rather than to death.
Three Stars – Excellent
Restaurant Review: Fork [Philadelphia Magazine]
Fork [Official Site]
Related: From the Magazine, Reviews, Ellen Yin, Fork, Old-City, Reviewed, Trey Popp
2 Comments | Related Posts »
Posted by Foobooz on March 4th, 2013
David Magerman set out to open a kosher Subway. What he got instead was a whole lot better. Trey Popp reviews Citron and Rose.
I’d lean toward the more rib-sticking fare—notably a veal breast roulade and apple/celeriac kugel that rise like volcanic islands over a lake of lava-hued beet jus. That and a Frisco Kid cocktail (rye, fernet, ginger, lime) could inspire a search for Ashkenazi ancestors in your family tree, just to see if they ever knew how to cook like this.
Three Stars – Excellent
Keeping it Kosher at Citron and Rose [Philadelphia Magazine]
Citron and Rose [Official Site]
Related: From the Magazine, Reviews, Citron and Rose, David Magerman, Jewish, Kosher, Main-Line, Merion, Reviewed, Trey Popp
No Comments | Related Posts »
Posted by Foobooz on March 4th, 2013
Trey Popp reviews the Saint James in Ardmore. What was once the culinary hope of the Main Line gets savaged.
Gnocchi with braised brisket featured the meat in puzzlingly large hunks, too dry to shred apart. The “juice” of a flat-iron steak had all the umami of water squeezed from cardboard. There was a properly cooked salmon fillet (sauced, in December, with pesto), and I liked a crispy clam-and-bacon flatbread. But not enough to offset the watery mushroom soup.
No Stars – Poor
The Suburban Sins of Saint James [Philadelphia Magazine]
Saint James [Official Site]
Related: From the Magazine, Reviews, American, Ardmore, Main-Line, Reviewed, The Saint James, Trey Popp
3 Comments | Related Posts »
Posted by Foobooz on February 4th, 2013
Michael Santoro’s cooking at the Mildred might seem like a departure from what he did at Talula’s Garden but rest assured, Trey Popp finds lots of good work in those cast iron pots.
[E]ven if no one’s tweezing microgreens onto sheets of asparagus gelée at the Mildred, there’s more to Santoro’s homey cooking here than meets the eye.
Take, for example, the pickled dates hiding among rustic sunchoke knobs, sweet-potato tortellini and still-crunchy fronds of flowering kale I had one evening by the barroom log fire, the tortellini’s filling balanced by bursts of sugared acidity. Or the brace of quails served over beluga lentils and diced beets. The pair looked so simple until a knife-stroke revealed them to be stuffed with ground veal and pork, dried cherries and sage, all wrapped in a delicate lace of caul fat. Delicious.
Two Stars – Good
Philadelphia Restaurant Review: American Eats at The Mildred [Philadelphia magazine]
The Mildred [Official Site]
Related: From the Magazine, Reviews, American, Bella-Vista, Mildred, Reviewed, Trey Popp
No Comments | Related Posts »
Posted by Foobooz on February 4th, 2013
Trey Popp falls for Joe Carroll’s Fette Sau. Anointing the Brooklyn transplant as the best thing that’s happened to Philadelphia’s barbecue scene.
The first beef short rib I had here looked like it had just finished cooking. Biting through its layers of fat and meat, seasoned (but not overshadowed) by smoke, was like sinking into a down pillow on a feather bed in a backwoods hunting shack. The texture defied speech.
The one I got a week later? It could’ve ranked as the best barbecued short rib I’d ever had, but that first one still might be the best short rib, period. Expect something similar with the pork belly and flank steak—though neither of those was quite as show-stopping for me.
Three Stars – Excellent
Fette Sau Reviewed [Philadelphia magazine]
Fette Sau [Official Site]
Related: From the Magazine, Reviews, Barbecue, Fette Sau, Fishtown, Reviewed, Trey Popp
2 Comments | Related Posts »
Posted by Trey Popp on December 6th, 2012
Having your restaurant named in a top-ten list by a national magazine isn’t typically a cause for regret. But sometimes I’ve wondered if it might be for Mike Stollenwerk.
After Bon Appetit trumpeted his cooking at Little Fish in a December 2008 roundup of “new-style” fish houses, it seemed like the chef with the Popeye forearms was on his way to becoming the Poseidon of Philly’s pescetarian scene. The BA squib begat enthusiastic reviews from the local press (usually it works in the other direction). In 2009 he opened Fish on Lombard Street, adding about 40 seats and a liquor license to his portfolio. A year and a half later he debuted Fathom, a down-home seafood bar in (where else?) Fishtown. Soon there was chatter about two more places in the works in Brewerytown—and then the announcement that Fish was moving to a marquee address on 13th street, where it would double its capacity.
Flash forward to May of 2012. Stollenwerk had sold Little Fish, unloaded the underachieving Fathom to his partner, and there was nothing happening in Brewerytown. Then Fish itself went dark on 13th Street amidst a wave of rumors and conflicting reports.
“It wasn’t as much fun as I thought it would be,” Stollenwerk told me when I called to ask him about the dwindling of his restaurant empire. “It was more like babysitting. An ice machine’s broken here. The fridge is out there … I spent all day just driving around.”
Read the rest of this entry »
Related: Reviews, fish, Midtown-Village, Mike Stollenwerk, Reviewed, Revisit, Seafood, Trey Popp
4 Comments | Related Posts »
Posted by Foobooz on December 5th, 2012
Trey Popp’s second review in the December issue of Philadelphia magazine is of Forest & Main. Popp finds that the Ambler brew pub might not be perfect but it’s just right. And the beers sound worth the trip as well.
Endicott learned brewing at the University of Sunderland, near Newcastle, and it shows in ales that derive their personality more from bacteria and wild yeasts than high alcohol. My favorites were the Lunaire, a pitch-perfect Belgian sour fermented partly in old chardonnay barrels, and the Zaftig, a dark farmhouse ale with a buxom malt bill and slight barnyard funk. At four and five percent alcohol by volume, respectively, each was a refreshing departure from our high-gravity craft-brewing zeitgeist.
Two Stars – Good
Restaurant Review: Forest & Main [Philadelphia magazine]
Forest & Main [Official Site]
Related: Drink, Food, From the Magazine, Reviews, Ambler, Brew Pub, English, Forest and Main Brewing Co., Montgomery-County, Reviewed, Trey Popp
1 Comment | Related Posts »
50 Best Restaurants in Philadelphia
Foobooz's 2012 Top 50 Bars
Best of Philly - Restaurants & Bars
Best Italian Restaurants in Philly
Philly's 20 Best Drinks
