Where do I start?
Jose Garces has a gift for coming up with things that I didn't know I wanted until he comes up with them. When we lived in Philadelphia, I went to every single one of his restaurants. I didn't know I wanted to stuff myself on suckling pig with smoky, silky chickpeas and spinach until Amada. I didn't know I wanted to nibble little open-faced sandwiches of duck confit with cherries and bleu cheese until Tinto. I didn't know I wanted to share neo-Mexican tapas like short ribs on flatbread with crowds of friends in a hot pink place with lucha libre masks on the wall and a vintage car in the front window until Distrito. And then there was Village Whiskey (speakeasyish bar food) and Chifa (Peruvian-Chinese fusion), each of which I only went to once, but still recommended happily to visitors and Philadelphians alike, because I liked what I saw... and ate.
And now there's Garces Trading Company, on Locust between 11th and 12th, because I didn't know I needed:
- a combination restaurant/market/wine store (yes! a wine store! in Philly!)
- a pastry case with something beyond cupcakes in it
- to be offered "some walking-around cheese" upon entering a room (to be fair, I suppose I could have guessed I needed cheese, it's the walking-around part that was novel)
- yet more house-made charcuterie
- a marketful of olive oils and balsamic vinegars in small tanks with spigots, so you can taste them before buying, and fill the bottle yourself for purchase
- a hot vichyssoise so rich and buttery it reminded me of chowder, studded with three things I adore: bacon, potatoes, and scallops
The only hiccup on my visit was a jar of "purple condiment" -- you guessed it, something else I had never heard of and had no idea I needed until I saw it -- that was priced at $4.50 on the shelf but rang up at $15. So I made the choice to live without purple condiment, given how much I was already spending on lunch and my market takeaways.
Lunch was the aforementioned vichyssoise chaud, for nine dollars, and the chef's selection of three meats (which happened to be rosette de lyon, chorizo, and finocchiona, three of my favorites). And some pretty incredible bread. More food than I could eat (especially since I had indulged in some other Philly treats that morning, from Capogiro and Flying Monkey) -- it is certainly possible to spend a lot less. Sandwiches, salads, soups, and pizzas are all priced between $9ish and $18ish.
Market takeaways were a bottle of roasted walnut oil (for a celery/walnut/date salad I will no doubt write about here) and one of cinnamon pear balsamic. Prices aren't cheap, but because you can taste, you know what you're getting.
Of course the only issue now is that I don't live in that neighborhood anymore -- or, indeed, even in that city -- so I can't get there too often. But I suppose that's okay. Too much of a good thing is still too much, right?
(Still... thank goodness for BoltBus.)
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