Cicala

Joe and Angela Cicala opened their eponymous restaurant, in the lavishly restored Divine Lorraine Hotel, just weeks before the pandemic shuttered the city. It’s time to go (or go back) for house-cured salumi, whole roasted sea bass, and maccheroni alla mugnaia, a hand-pulled single strand of pasta. Every dish is the luxury we deserve after this year. 699 North Broad Street, Philadelphia, PA 19123, cicalarestaurant.com.

Sorellina

The sister operation to chef Joe Cicala’s fine-dining restaurant Cicala at the Divine Lorraine couldn’t be more different from its sibling across the lobby. Where Cicala is slow, Sorellina is lively. Where Cicala is formal, Sorellina is drop-in casual. Where Cicala glorifies the history and traditions of Italian cooking, Sorellina embraces the anarchy and street-punk sensibilities of young, revolutionary Italian pizzaiolos with its all-electric ovens, high-hydration crusts, and Italian hip-hop on the radio. Drop by for a burrata, mortadella, and pistachio pesto pie, a couple of Aperol-heavy cocktails, and a plate of ’nduja battered and fried like sweet-and-sour chicken. 699 North Broad Street, Philadelphia, PA 19123, sorellinapizza.com.

Le Virtu

Whether you want taccozzette as delicate as cashmere or a four-foot-long spaghetti tube with out-and-out bounce, Joe Cicala knows how to roll the dough. 1927 East Passyunk Avenue, Philadelphia, PA 19148, levirtu.com.

Le Virtù

From four-foot-long noodles to smoked gnocchi and silken tagliatelle slicked with rabbit sugo, Joe Cicala rolls and stretches his dough with a rare (yet affordable) touch. 1927 East Passyunk Avenue, Philadelphia, PA 19148, levirtu.com.

Takeout Pizza

There are times when we resent how obsessed this city can get with pizza. How in 2020 — an era in dining when we ought to be fawning over Sri Lankan curries and Nigerian jollof rice — pizza still consistently gets top billing.

And there are other times — like … now, when the world feels so unsteady — that we’re very happy seeking solace in the basics. Finding comfort in pizza. Letting Philly’s pizzaiolos, you know, take care of us in our time of need. Because if nothing else, pizza is as comforting as comfort foods get.

When we were still in the red phase, some shops, like Pizzeria Stella(420 South 2nd Street) in Society Hill, Barbuzzo (110 South 13th Street) in Midtown Village, and Wood Street Pizza (325 North 12th Street) in Callowhill (which, not for nothing, is one of the city’s best classic pizza shops), provided us with DIY pizza kits that kept us occupied and well-fed during the quarantine. Wood Street’s Dean Kitagawa even commissioned his wife, Sarah D’Ambrosio, to create artwork on some of the pizza boxes. “It was a small thing we did to establish a connection with our guests — a connection we lost when we pivoted to just doing takeout,” he says.

Philly found comfort in pizza even when the style of pizza was completely new to us. Much as it did in almost every other major food city in the U.S., Detroit-style pizza took over Philly. Of course, it got the aged-dough/high-quality-ingredients treatment we’ve become so used to seeing; witness Dan Gutter’s focaccia-like frico-crusted pies from Circles + Squares (2513 Tulip Street) in Kensington, or even his less Detroit-y pan pizzas — à la Pizza Hut — at Pizza Plus (1846 South 12th Street) in East Passyunk, or the fat, deeply caramelized squares at Sidecar Bar & Grille (2201 Christian Street) in Grad Hospital. The ranch-drizzled, banana-peppered monstrosity at Emmy Squared (632 South 5th Street) was a delicious addition to Queen Village.

Neapolitan pizza, a food trend that came as quickly as it left this city, found new life at Gigi Pizza (504 Bainbridge Street), across the street from Emmy Squared. They do a sort of hybrid NYC-meets-Napoli pie baked in a wood-burning oven, with a crust that’s somehow both airy and stiff — essentially, a big middle finger to the chewy, soupy pies favored by the Neapolitan pizza gods.

We saw our fair share of illegal pizza activity, too, which has become something of the norm in this city after @pizza_gutt paved the way back in 2017. Instagram “pizza shops” like @pizza_jawn and @freelancepizza_ began delivering pies (baked who knows where) to their thousands of eager followers.

And in maybe the longest slog of quarantine, Joe and Angela Cicala, the chef-owners of Cicala at the Divine Lorraine and former owners of Brigantessa in East Passyunk, launched an illicit pizza “speakeasy” out of their backyard in South Philly, with proceeds to help pay their laid-off staff. On its first day, the Cicalas sold 200 pizzas in 40 minutes. They sold out again on the second day. And on the third day, seven cops and two city health inspectors shut the operation down. Pizza-obsessed, indeed.

Rebecca Ahrens-Nicklas and Kiran Musunuru

These two physicians led the CHOP and Penn Medicine team that, in May, made medical history by successfully using CRISPR gene-editing therapy to treat an infant born with a rare metabolic disease. Baby KJ was only months old when the team started administering the individually tailored therapy for his CPS1, or severe carbamoyl phosphate synthetase 1 deficiency. The landmark gene-correcting approach spares KJ the need for a liver transplant down the road and prevents neurological damage that could prove fatal. Doctors say he’s now growing well and thriving.

Tria Fitler Square

Fitler Square might be the most picturesque public space in the city, and the newest Tria outpost has the absolute best vantage point. Get there early for an outdoor table, enjoy your wine with a view of the sun setting behind the trees, then stay for chef Karen Nicolas's "medium plates" -- which means a proper dinner, in Tria-speak. (Yes, this Tria has a full menu!) 2227 Pine Street, Philadelphia, PA 19103, triafitlersquare.com.

Theatre Contra

We’re pretty sure we’ve never given out a Best of Philly award for live readings before because, well, they generally inspire yawns. But then we discovered this scrappy young theater company that does dramatic live readings of scripts from movies like Die Hard, Snakes on a Plane and The Fast and the Furious. The events are held at a variety of bars and venues: Watch them do the Nicolas Cage-John Travolta sci-fi action movie Face/Off on September 4th at Tattooed Mom. theatrecontra.com.

Mark Horowitz

The next time you need a custom conducting baton, turn to this retired actuary and actuarial software developer. The Ambler resident (whose father was the late, world-renowned baton maker Richard Horowitz) crafted replicas of Leonard Bernstein’s originals for Bradley Cooper’s Maestro. He designed a beauty bearing a rosewood handle for the Curtis Institute of Music’s Benoit Gauthier, and has created wands for the Philadelphia Orchestra’s principal guest conductor Nathalie Stutzmann and Riccardo Chailly of La Scala. Horowitz makes only about 25 batons per year: After all, he is retired. He’s doing this for fun — which is music to our ears. Horowitzbatons@gmail.com