Le Virtu

There’s something entrancing about Le Virtu—­something that goes beyond the space and the bare tables and the brick patio swarming with customers on warm summer nights. It’s in the food, in the handling of the sea-and-mountain­ dichotomy of Abruzzo cuisine.­ It’s the feeling that you want to move right in, spending weeks eating every single thing chef Joe Cicala can cook, because all of it—from the fried olives stuffed with porchetta to the fettuccine in pistachio pesto to the smoked potato gnocchi in lamb ragu—is comforting and familiar and yet intriguingly alien at the same time.

Don’t miss: The maccheroni alla mugnaia­—a single 60-foot strand of hand-pulled pasta, served for the whole table, dressed in extra-virgin olive oil, pecorino romano and black pepper.

Eat at one of the best Italian restaurants in Philadelphia:
Le Virtu, 1927 East Passyunk Avenue, Philadelphia, 215-271-5626.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 29th, 2012 at 2:48 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.