Osteria
640 North Broad
Street
Philadelphia, PA
19130
Since really getting into food in college, I have learned a
lot about the Philadelphia dining scene. One person that has become an
inspiration to be has been Marc Vetri. He is an extremely successful chef in
the Philadelphia area, with his flagship Vetri being among the best restaurants
in the country year in and year out. He also is partners in 3 other
Philadelphia restaurants, has published cooking books, has a very successful
foundation and won in Kitchen Stadium on Iron Chef America. One of the places
that he is a partner in is called Osteria. I had been desperately wanting to go
there for some time and was saving a gift certificate that I had been given to
go there with my girlfriend. On the Friday after labor day, we headed over to
North Broad to try my long awaited destination.
We were seated in an outdoor covered veranda next to the
main dining room, and were immediately greeted by out waitress. She dropped of
an ipad for us to browse the drink menu on (super cool) and brought us a basket
of bread. It contained three types of bread and some bread sticks. One of those
types of bread, a pesto bread, was mindblowingly good. It wasn’t bread with a
pesto spread on it, it was bread, with pesto baked right into it. It was
outstanding!
When our waitress came back we ordered our drinks, me an
Italian beer I had never seen before called Menebrea Ambrata, and my girlfriend
ordered a bourbon and champagne drink with fruit juice of some sort. I also put
in the rest of our order. I wanted to get a full taste of the menu, so I order
us one thing from each section of the menu; the Margherita pizza, porchetta
tonnato, fusilli with veal bolongnese, and rabbit casalinga. We split
everything, so it wound up being a really perfect amount of food.
My beer was really good. It was sweeter than most amber
beers I have had, but it had a smooth after taste and really paired well with
our meal. The pizza and the porchetta came out together. I had ordered the
pizza because I had seen Mark Summers say it was one of the best pizzas he had
ever had on the Food Network. I grabbed a slice of pizza first and was very
impressed with it. While my girlfriend didn’t agree, I thought it was a really
fantastic Margherita pizza. She thought their was too much sauce and not enough
cheese, but I thought it was fantastic. I loved getting a bite of the crust,
cheese, sauce, and basil all in one bite. It was simply heavenly. The porchetta
changed the pace quite a bit, but it kept the quality up to the maximum. The
flavor was phenomenal, and the parmigano and arugala salad on top and dressing
it was slathered with made for a perfect little morsel. I had never had a slice
of a homemade porchetta before, but I loved each bite of it. It had incredible
pork flavor.
The pasta and meat dishes came out next, and they brought
the quality of the food to its highest level yet. The fusilli was clearly made
fresh, something I had never experienced before. The meat had been cooked low
and slow, and the sauce stuck to the pasta perfectly. The rabbit dish was
amazing as well. It was cooked in a sage brown butter sauce and served over creamy polenta
and chunks of pancetta. The rabbit was pull off the bone tender, and the sage
and brown butter combined to become a combination of liquid gold flavor. There
was one think I really didn’t like and it kept this dish from being perfect for
me. The bones weren’t broken down cleanly, so there were shards of bone
dispersed throughout the dish. If the dish wasn’t so good, I wouldn’t have
finished eating it, but I put up with the bone pieces because it was absolutely
delectable.
When it came time for dessert, I was stuck between two
things to order. When I asked our waitress which one we should order, she
didn’t even hesitate in helping me make my decision. She recommended the
polenta budino, so she sold me. It was a polenta pudding with a nutella mousse
and it was topped with candied hazelnuts. I never would have thought I would
eat a dessert with polenta in it, but it was hands down one of the best
desserts I have ever eaten. My girlfriend agreed as we discussed it while
wiping the cup clean. I now have two budinos in my top 10 dessert dishes of all
time, so maybe I need to find more places that make them. The espresso that I
ordered was super strong, and a nice change from what some other restaurants
call espresso. It was really good coffee, and something delicious to pair well
with my dessert.
Four pints for Osteria. Osteria really blew me away. If it wasn’t for the bone
pieces in the rabbit dish, I would have had an absolutely flawless meal from
start to finish. I will be going back for as long as it hangs around, because
Marc Vetri and his partners really know how to run a good restaurant with some
fantastic Italian fare. Run, don’t walk to Osteria and try it now! Cheers!
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