Puyero Is Bringing Arepas and Tequeños to University City
Plus: Mighty Bread introduces aperitivo hour, Forsythia revamps their menu, and a two-day bacon fest worth driving to.
Howdy, buckaroos! And welcome back to the weekly Foobooz food news round-up. We've just got a few quick things to get to this week, including (but not limited to) a two-day bacon festival in Easton, Winterfest news, two local cookbook launches, an update from SEA Market, and a big name from Philly's restaurant history returning to the kitchen. But let's kick things off this week with ...
Eating Venezuelan in University City
You guys know Puyero , right? They're the Queen Village arepa specialists who've been stuffing Philly full of pabellon arepas and fried plantains for a half-dozen years now. The place is crazy-good , bringing Venezuelan flavors, big cachapas, and plantain sandwiches to the neighbors and anyone else smart enough to seek the place out. Plus, they have tequeños, which are kinda like cheese sticks if cheese sticks were dough-wrapped, deep-fried, and dipped in herbed mayo instead of marinara. So like cheese sticks, but better. And Venezuelan.
Anyway, Puyero has been doing their thing on South 4th Street for a while now. But I just got word that they're planning on expanding. As a matter of fact, they've already got a new space picked out and everything.
Puyero's second location will be going into the Shop Penn retail district in University City at 3428 Sansom Street. The new spot will offer space for dine-in, as well as takeout, delivery, and catering. The menu looks like it'll be largely the same, focusing on arepas, patacones, fried plantains, and other street foods, but there's nothing about that that isn't good news. Puyero has a kind of perfect balance with their original location — a short, tight menu with everything on it done incredibly well — so I'm glad owners Gilberto and Simon Arends and Gil's wife, Manuela Villasmil, aren't looking to complicate things.
Oh, and the new location? It's opening soon. Shop Penn is saying the new spot will be open sometime next month. And while maybe November in Philly doesn't exactly make you think of Venezuelan food, it should. Because there's no day that isn't the right day for arepas. And between this new UCity Puyero and the Autana ghost kitchen I told you about a couple weeks back , it's starting to look like a VERY good time for fans of tequeños and tres leches in Philly.
Now what's next?
Mighty Bread's Aperitivo Hour
Mighty Bread has changed a lot over the years. Starting out as a wholesale bakery, it became an every-other-Saturday retail shop that offered takeout, sold groceries and bread and produce during the pandemic, opened a cafe space with breakfast sandwiches and pastries, and then opened a bigger cafe space with courtyard seating and a weekend brunch.
A few weeks ago, the place officially became a brewery too. Kinda. Owner Chris DiPiazza got himself a brewery license, contracted out to a local production brewery to make his Amici Del Pane Italian pilsner, and started offering it on tap and in cans for his guests — along with wines from Mural City, and Bloody Marys at brunch.
But along with the beer, DiPiazza and his crew also started offering what they're calling Aperitivo Happy Hour , "An Italian-inspired tradition that blends great company, delicious drinks, and a celebration of life."
So a happy hour, basically. Except, in this case, a very Italian kind of happy hour that's less about pouring cheap drinks down your throat and more about connecting with friends and neighbors over cocktails, beer, and small plates from the kitchen.
This happens every weekday, from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m., and the menu looks so good. We're talking bowls of olive with bay leaf and orange, salumi and cheese plates with Mighty Bread baguette, plates of Jimmy Nardello peppers and anchovies, scallop toast with aji chili butter, and bowls of mussels with bread to soak up the broth. Simple, but satisfying. Easy, approachable, and exactly the kind of thing that sounds good to most people at 4:30 p.m. on a Tuesday when the sun is still out and dinner is a couple hours off yet.
Speaking of New Menus ...
Now that we've actually had a couple of chilly nights in town, it's starting to feel like time for fall menus to start rolling out. To wit: Forsythia just dropped a whole new menu for the season, including a 10-day dry-aged duck (for two) with caramelized endive, satsuma, and pistachio in a classic sauce à l'orange, poulet à la crème with black truffles and baba au rhum for dessert, with rum-soaked brioche, and a pumpkin-spice crémeux — because fall wouldn't be fall without a little pumpkin spice somewhere.
Forsythia's bar is getting in on the seasonal action, too. They're doing fall cocktails like the Carrot Me Home with bourbon and a house-made carrot-turmeric gastrique (plus lemon, ginger, orange, and amaro), which, to me, sounds like halfway between the worst thing in the world and maybe drinkable in an emergency. But that's probably because I really don't like carrots. The Boozy Suzie, on the other hand? That's butter-washed gin, cognac, Grand Marnier, and a burnt orange cordial, and THAT sounds excellent.
Meanwhile, over at the Logan Hotel, Urban Farmer has given a makeover to the brunch, bar, dinner, and dessert menus. They're seasonal, sure (with root vegetable salads, squash soup, truffled potato puffs, and spiced doughnut holes with a cider caramel), but have more to do with exec chef Sonny Ingui flexing a little for the dining room — most notably with a tableside service of A5 Japanese wagyu carpaccio, prepared tableside, seared on a Himalayan salt block, and served with parmesan cream and wheat blini.
The new menus are also part of a larger refresh of the concept that included the recent opening of the restaurant's first chef's table experience — a "Butcher's Block" dinner served at a private table next to the kitchen, which includes "a three-course dinner, a full kitchen and butcher shop tour, an overview of the house-grown mushroom program and dry aging process, plus tableside preparation and cooking by executive chef Sonny Ingui, and more." Urban Farmer only does the Butcher's Block meals on Thursday nights, with a single four-top table available at 5:30 p.m. and 8 p.m., with a max of two couples per seating. If that sounds like your kind of thing, reservations are available here .
Oh, and Also ...
While we're talking about hotel restaurants, Sylva Senat — the Top Chef alum and former exec at two of Philly's most talked-about restaurants from a few years back ( Tashan and Maison 208 ) — will be taking over culinary operations at the Sofitel Philadelphia in Rittenhouse Square, including its Liberté Lounge .
Senat has had a career full of big names. He went to culinary school at the Institut Paul Bocuse in France, worked for Jean-Georges Vongerichten in New York, and ran Buddakan for Stephen Starr in both NYC and Philly, all before the two joints mentioned above. Recently, he's been working as a private club chef and culinary consultant, but has now come back to the day-to-day grind and will be officially taking over operations at the Sofitel starting November 1st. The launch of his new menus at Liberté coincides with the recent overhaul of the space that was finished earlier this year.
So what's for dinner? I'm so glad you asked. Senat is keeping it French with an all-day menu that leans on the modern and the approachable, with the Haitian inflections that he's long been known for. This means cheese boards and oysters, tartare de boeuf with a quail's egg, duck fat confit chicken wings, ratatouille under a puff pastry lace, red wine braised beef short rib, and a 16-ounce New York strip with sauce glacée and pommes anna galette.
One of the most interesting things about the new board? He's got pikliz a griot right at the top, and pikliz a griot was the hands-down best plate he did at Maison 208 back in the day — crisp pork belly over a deconstructed cabbage slaw and a spike of Scotch Bonnet salt for heat. Back then, his simple plates were more appealing than his complicated, architectural, interactive modernist experiments, and it looks like he's brought that lesson forward here. Either way, I've always been both fascinated and mystified by Senat's cooking, so I'm really curious to see how everything shakes out at Liberté.
There's also going to be a new happy hour program, a bar menu, new breakfast/brunch services at Chez Colette, and more. Senat has command of the whole show in Rittenhouse, and he's looking to put his mark on all of it.
More details when I get them. Watch this space.
Meanwhile ...
How Far Would You Drive for a Two-Day Bacon Festival?
Because if the answer is, About an hour and 20 minutes, then today is your lucky day because the good people of Easton (which is up near Allentown) are throwing a bacon-focused food festival that they're describing as "Two days of grease, love, and happiness."
On November 2nd and 3rd, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., the entire town of Easton is basically being given over to bacon fanatics. With 150 food and drink vendors, live music on several stages, a costume contest, pig races, beer pairings, a hog-calling contest, a 5K mascot race, and a bacon-eating contest (the first one to eat a full pound wins), there's something for everyone. And for their 13th annual Bacon Fest, Easton is basically expecting everyone to show up because they've got not one, not two, but three shuttles set up just to get people close to the festivities.
So yeah. It's gonna be a big deal. And if you're one of those people who has substituted an overwhelming love of bacon for an actual personality, then this is kinda like your Woodstock. But for those of us who just kinda like bacon a lot, it still sounds like a good time. I mean, I'm kinda curious how fast I can eat a full pound of bacon, aren't you?
All the information you need about this year's PA Bacon Fest can be found right here .
Now who has room for some leftovers?
The Leftovers
After a postponed opening earlier this year, it looks like the Southeast Asian Market at FDR Park is also going to be shutting down early this year. Because of a change in the schedule for the Eagles game on November 3rd (the start time got moved from 8:20 p.m. to 4:20 p.m.) and because FDR Park is being used for paid parking for the game, the last day for the SEA Market will be Saturday, November 2nd.
The announcement was made on Instagram over the weekend. So if you're looking for a last turn through one of Philly's best markets, make it quick and get there while you still can. Otherwise, you're out of luck until the market reopens in spring 2025.
Speaking of the changing seasons, Independence Blue Cross RiverRink Winterfest has announced its opening day. It all kicks off on November 29th this year, and tickets for ice skating went on sale yesterday. In terms of food (which is really what's important here), they're going with a winter twist on boardwalk classics, plus crabfries and cheesesteaks from Chickie's & Pete's and Mexican street food courtesy of the crew from Cantina La Martina — who have been VERY busy lately .
Meanwhile, the team at Jansen is celebrating nine years in Mount Airy with a five-course champagne dinner paired with bottles from the legendary Laurent-Perrier cellars. It's a serious blowout, all caviar, foie gras, scallop with champagne cream, olive oil-poached sea bass, roasted pheasant, and a brown buttercream financier with quince and lavender.
Chef David Jansen is pulling out all the stops, as are the crew from Laurent-Perrier. So if you're down, tickets are $245 a head, and reservations can be made here .
Finally, this week, we've got some local book news. Rich Landau and Kate Jacoby's new book, The Vedge Bar Book, will hit shelves on November 19th. It's got recipes for 75 vegan cocktails, bar snacks, and small plates, taken from the menus of their award-winning restaurants. For those of you who've got some vegetable enthusiasts on your Christmas list, pre-orders are available now .
And at Kalaya in Fishtown, Nok Suntaranon is celebrating the launch of her book, Kalaya's Southern Thai Kitchen, and her Netflix debut on Chef's Table with a Friendsgiving collaboration dinner with Shola Olunloyo of Studiokitchen on November 27th. There's no menu for this one yet, but according to Nok and Shola it'll be "Southern Thai flavors with tropical West African influences," and that sounds kind of amazing, right?
