7 Reviews That Outlined Philly Eating in 2025

Reviews

Spread at Little Water and Amá’s wood-fired octopus / Photography by Gab Bonghi (initially printed in “Little Water: A Poetic Exploration of Land, Water, and Comfort Food)” and Bre Furlong (initially printed in “This New Philly Restaurant Is Raising the Bar for Mexican Food“)

2025 was Philly’s year.

In terms of dining, anyway. In professional kitchens and dining rooms, at barstools and banquettes, 2025 was the year that Philly came to play. And even if, in our hearts, we will always be the underdogs — even if (and I hope this remains true) we will never, ever care what the rest of the world thinks of us — Philadelphia’s chefs and restaurateurs and everyone who fills the seats every night knows that this moment? It’s special.

So how lucky am I that I got to spend my year eating my way through what will likely be some of the most remarkable seasons in Philly dining history? It was a year that began with cheesesteaks, had cheesesteaks in the middle, and kinda ended with cheesesteaks, too. It had everything in it that comprises the complete Philadelphia food pyramid: Pizza, genius, comfort, tacos, pasta, hot dogs, sushi, fish caramel, and Wawa. And my reviews covered everything from heavy metal corndogs  and Georgian khachapuri to brilliant tasting menus, killer cocktails, and a Wes Anderson version of a French grocery on East Passyunk.

It was a really good year for eating, is what I’m saying. And looking back on it now, I think there were a few distinct moments that really explain what it was like to dine out in Philly in 2025. And it all began with …

An Octopus in Ambler

Carnitas de pato and ravioles de aguacate con cangrejo from La Baja / Photography by Breanne Furlong (originally published in “La Baja Is Chef Dionicio Jiménez’s Best Cooking Yet“)

La Baja, February 2025

“On a freezing night in Ambler, deep in the post-holiday slump, I slide alone into a two-top table at Dionicio Jiménez’s new restaurant to eat roasted baby beets sprinkled with pistachios in a homemade crema called jocoque — brought to Mexico by Lebanese people fleeing the Ottoman Empire in the late 19th century — and a chile relleno stuffed with scallops and chorizo under a blanket of melted queso asadero and swimming in a pool of Thai green curry. On the wall above me, there’s a sculpture that I love. It’s big, garish, weird — an elephant head with blue butterfly wings and an octopus body, arms writhing against the whitewashed brick in the main dining room.”

That’s how my yr began — alone within the suburbs consuming a outstanding dinner underneath the gaze of the alebrije that watches over Dionicio Jiménez’s eating room at La Baja. We might have misplaced Jiménez’s beloved Cantina La Martina this yr, however I spent most of 2025 telling anybody who would pay attention that La Baja — with its chimeric menu of duck bao and corn ribs and ramen mud — is definitely the restaurant that we should always actually be being attentive to on the subject of what’s coming subsequent, each from Dionicio and the meals world as a complete.

Fire and Metal

A seafood tower at Jaffa and a mapo chili canine and the Gintonic at Doom / Photographs by Ed Newton (initially printed in “The Jaffa Paradox: A Buzzy, Bright Space That Feels Surprisingly Hollow“) and Courtney Apple (originally published in “Doom: Where Metal Meets Corn Dogs and Cosmic Brownies)“

Jaffa, March 2025 and Doom, April 2025

“There is a part of me that always believed I would find myself alone at a metal bar drinking gin at the end of the world. There is, maybe, a part of all of us that believed that. Some piece of our collective consciousness, steeped in the opening montages of a hundred different post-apocalyptic films, that knew this moment was coming and was just waiting for it to arrive.

What’s surprising, though, is that the hot dogs are so good.”

These two evaluations — of Michael Solomonov’s Jaffa in Kensington and Justin Holden’s Doom on seventh Street in Callowhill — ran in back-to-back points, they usually have been each, of their means, about dimension. Physical, emotional, psychological — they have been in regards to the type of actual property {that a} bar or a restaurant can take up in your head earlier than you even stroll by way of the door. The Jaffa assessment was about an oyster home, however it was additionally a meditation on expectation and disappointment. On the dissonance of competing visions. Doom was principally about sizzling canine, cosmic brownies, D&D, and the place we wish to be when it feels just like the world is coming aside round us. Separately, they’re simply evaluations of two very totally different eating places. But checked out collectively, they are saying one thing about Philly’s rising pains and keep true to your self and the stuff you love within the face of success.

A Fish within the Clouds

Spread at Little Water (clockwise from left): Halibut; uncooked bay scallops; hash browns with crab and uni; peekytoe crab salad. / Photography by Gab Bonghi (initially printed in Little Water: A Poetic Exploration of Land, Water, and Comfort Food)

Little Water, May 2025

A bit of halibut, some potatoes, a pair clams, and a lifetime of observe: That’s all it took to assemble the plate that stands as the only most memorable dish I had in 2025.

“There is nothing in the world more comforting to me than fish and potatoes. In my worst moments, that is what I’ve craved. In my best, that’s how I’ve wanted to celebrate. A simple piece of fish, a little starch, warm and filling. It says sunlight and the sound of water to me. It speaks of a friend’s bar in the mountains where my comfort order was a piece of sole, a white wine beurre blanc, and mashed potatoes. And I suspect it says something similar to the Ruckers. That somewhere, they’ve felt that same comfort, and here, on this single plate, have chosen to glorify it with a simple fish and gorgeous technique. That, at its heart, is what all of Little Water is about.”

At Little Water, Randy and Amanda Rucker served me what was most likely one of many two most shifting plates I had all yr. They additionally served me some of the lovely. And what’s superb is that they weren’t the identical plate, however they arrived throughout the identical dinner — only one random night in Rittenhouse, within the spring of this notable yr.

Green Is the New Black

The eating room at Emmett / Photograph by Ed Newton (initially printed in “Inside Philly’s Most Inventive New Restaurant“)

Emmett, July 2025

“I know this place. I’ve been here before. The longer I spend eating my way through this city — the longer anyone does — the more things repeat. The more I end up sitting in dining rooms, sharing space with the ghosts of meals gone by.”

I ate right here as soon as with out actually occupied with it. Then I got here again as a result of I couldn’t cease. There’s one thing about the best way chef Evan Snyder’s Emmett is, in its personal, quiet means, defining a complete sector of Philadelphia’s eating scene proper now: a type of mushy, simple, customer-focused (quite than ego-driven) expertise that stands simply outdoors the intense highlight of shiny acclaim (although that will change now that tastemakers outdoors of Philly are beginning to discover the place). I’d get there quickly. And don’t sleep on the prix fixe.

Changing the Game

Amá’s wood-fired octopus / Photography by Bre Furlong (initially printed in “This New Philly Restaurant Is Raising the Bar for Mexican Food“)

Amá, August 2025

“There’s no time to eat everything I want to eat, no space here to tell you about the custom roasting and smoking grill Ramirez had installed in the kitchen, or the charmingly awkward first date at the table in front of ours, or how Ramirez brought his mom in from Mexico just before opening­ to teach him how to nixtamalize corn, or even about the brilliant tequila- and mezcal-heavy cocktails­ with their tomato shrubs and chapulin garnishes.­ But I tell myself that next time I come here, I will get an Uber so that I can drink my way down the list without having to worry about finding my car. I tell myself that next time, I will come late when the lights are low, close the place, and walk out into a city and a neighborhood that will be defined by food exactly like this in the future, that will remember Amá maybe not as the start of something, but absolutely as a continuation­ of an edible conversation Philadelphia has been having with itself for the past 20 years.”

If you wish to perceive something about the place Philly’s meals scene is headed sooner or later, Amá is the place it’s best to begin.

The Stories We Tell

Cybille St. Aude-Tate and Omar Tate at Honeysuckle / Photograph by Gab Bonghi (initially printed in “Why Honeysuckle Is the Most Important Restaurant in Philly Right Now“)

Honeysuckle, October 2025

At Honeysuckle, Omar Tate and Cybille St. Aude-Tate are using their space to tell a multi-layered (and multi-media, and multi-generational) story of Black foodways that speaks very loudly to this particular moment in Philly. All its recognition aside, Honeysuckle is a beautiful example of how dedicated artists can use every piece of their restaurant and every part of themselves to tell the story they want to tell — from jumped-up Big Macs that tell about burning money you don’t have, to vegetable boards that serve as lessons in geography, history, horticulture, and cuisine all at the same time.

Mostly, though, the place is just good.

“Not every dish is a manifesto. Not every dish needs to be. The hush puppies? They’re merely delicious: golden brown, set in thick dots of Cajun holy trinity relish (onion, bell pepper, and celery, which reappear as a digestif soda at the end of the meal), wearing marbled pink hats of country ham. And the seafood Alfredo is pure ego from the kitchen in the best possible way — edible proof that in this town where Alfredo is the mother of a thousand menus, their version (smooth as easy listening, rich as a crooked minister, made with crème fraîche, local shellfish, hand-cut tagliatelle, and a custom Bay spice blend they call New Bay Spice) can compete.”

I referred to as Honeysuckle an important restaurant in Philadelphia proper now. And that could be true, however it has loads of competitors.

Philly is in regards to the massive and the small, the flamboyant and the plain. It is equal components tasting menu and Sunday gravy, cheesesteaks, and caviar. And I wouldn’t wish to stay (or write) in a spot that was some other means. This yr passed by would possibly stand as some of the vital, most formative, most definitional within the historical past of Philly’s fashionable restaurant trade, however 2026 is already peeking ’not far away. And talking as a kind of guys who tracks cooks and eating places and the power of this trade, like that one bizarre good friend you bought who simply can’t cease speaking about crypto, I can confidently say that subsequent yr is already shaping as much as be a banger, too. Maybe we get even greater. Maybe all of it falls aside. Maybe we by no means see one other yr like this one ever once more.

2026 is the place we’re all going to seek out out.

See y’all there.