1. Stateside

Chef George Sabatino is having a helluva year. He’s won contests and awards. He’s in command of the kitchen at one of the busiest, most popular restaurants in the city. Rumors say the James Beard House has even been sniffing around. So the question is, is Stateside really deserving of all this attention? Is it really as good as you’ve heard? Yes, it is. Everything about the place—from the ever-changing, weirdly locavore menu that touches on every vital food trope in play on the national scene, to the bar, the room, and the hum of energy from a crowd that knows it has found itself at the center of something exciting—marks Stateside as not just Philadelphia’s first truly post-gastropub restaurant, but the place where American cuisine has finally come into its own.

Don’t Miss: The smoked pork rillette with Korean BBQ sauce. It’s at the top of the menu and is perhaps the most pointed example of Sabatino’s modern notion of borderless but firmly rooted locality.

At the Bar: As good as the menu is at Stateside, the selection of American whiskeys, bourbons and ryes is almost as impressive.

Visit one of the 50 Best Restaurants in Philadelphia:
Stateside, 1536 East Passyunk Avenue, 215-551-2500.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 4th, 2013 at 4:34 pm and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.