Best of Philly

2013 New American Restaurant

Marigold Kitchen

Robert Halperns cooking is as American as the Cabot-clothbound-cheddar cracker he likes to send out before appetizers, and as New as the liquefaction process that makes that cheese spill over your tongue like a stream of not-quite-molten lava. The amuse-bouches are the coolest things going in this timeworn rowhouse popcorn sauced with liquid nitrogen, ice-cream-droplet tricolore salad, chocolate-dusted corn ravioli which is good, since dinner comes with about a dozen of them.

501 South 45th Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104; 215-222-3699; marigoldkitchenbyob.wordpress.com/