2 Philly restaurants among country’s best new spots
Bon Appetit’s list of the best new restaurants in the country came out Wednesday. And while the entire neighboring states of Delaware and New Jersey got snubbed, Philadelphia has two spots listed among the best 24 restaurants in the country in 2023.
Though both find their roots in Italian cooking, the two restaurants couldn’t be more different.
Heavy Metal Sausage Co. is a heavymeated South Philly butcher and sandwich shop that transforms a couple nights a week into an improvised-feeling tasting menu trattoria, well-known even in the daytime for its house-made sausage and capicola.
“An elegantly plated slab of lasagna is a study in fine dining precision: homemade noodles darkened with pig’s blood and layers of rich pig’s head ragù, all crowned with a wobbly slice of headcheese,” wrote Bon Appetit’s Amiel Stanek. “You might forget where you are for a moment — before remembering that you’re pressed up against a humming deli case.”
The magazine singled out that pig’s head lasagna as one of the best dishes they had all year, a symphony of layered pork on pork on pork the magazine called “a giddy celebration of nose-totail cooking.”
But you won’t find a single molecule of meat at vegan Pietramala, a trattoria in trendy Northern Liberties. The restaurant coaxes big flavors out of humble beans and greens until you forget that anything was ever supposed to have pork in it at all. “Let the bold, confident flavors wash over you, and save your questions for the walk home,” Stanek gushed. “No bite will leave you wanting, no swipe of sauce will fail to elate. This is post-“vegan”; it’s beyond “plantbased”; it’s smart and fun and craveable in equal measure. The future belongs to restaurants like Pietramala.”
Of course, this is hardly the first time Italian restaurants in Philadelphia were praised by Bon Appetit in recent years — nor by Stanek, for that matter.
Stanek said South Philly rooftop spot Irwin’s made “the best pasta in the country” last year, listing it among the top 10 new restaurants of 2022. And in pandemic-damaged 2021, Bon Appetit staffers went wild for the gnudi at Queen Village spot Fiore, and the the freshly baked focaccia and heirloom tomato salad at Center City’s Via Locusta.
The love affair between Bon Appetit and Philadelphia may be unlikely to end: The Philadelphia Inquirer’s outgoing food editor, Jamila Robinson, has been tapped to take over the Editor in Chief job at Bon Appetit starting September, Conde Nast announced at the end of August.
Another Philadelphia restaurant, Friday Saturday Sunday, was named best in the country by the James Beard Awards this year.
Matthew Korfhage is a USA Today Network reporter in the broader Philadelphia region, covering culture, food, equity, science and why the trains don’t run on time. Email him at mkorfhage@ gannett.com or follow him on the site formerly known as Twitter @matthew korfhage.