Inside Philly’s Most Inventive New Restaurant
From lamb belly with charred eggplant to sea lettuce-wrapped halibut, Emmett's chef Evan Snyder paints with bold strokes of culinary artistry.
The dining room at Emmett / Photography by Ed Newton
On the floor at Emmett, the servers seem to float from table to table. The evening sun spills through venetian blinds into the dim room. Laughter bubbles up from a table along the wall and seems to catch and spread in counterpoint to the soft music humming from hidden speakers.
A server asks if this is my first time here and I lie and say yes, because I like hearing them talk about the place. Hearing them try to describe a menu that is a dozen things all at the same time.
“Well then, welcome,” she says. “How hungry are you?”
“Starving.”
The börek lamb pie at Emmett
She seems genuinely happy that I’ve found the place, a table, a seat. Like I’ve won a prize or something. The dining room smells like garlic and grill char and cardamom and chilies. The dinner menu has just changed, she says. It’s very exciting. And the cocktail menu is like someone crashing a liquor store into a community garden: bourbon with carrot juice and lemongrass; gin with fennel, lime, and fermented honey, dusted with pollen. It’s strange and recursive, with motifs from the menu (leeks, lamb fat, fennel, and lime) appearing throughout.
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.
Years ago, this building was home to Cadence. One of those places you either knew and loved or didn’t know at all. But I loved it. It was cool and quiet and confident. Welcoming, always. Nights there could be so soft because there was no mission, no manifesto. No sense that anyone in the place was ever trying to prove anything to anybody.
And Emmett, now, with its long, narrow space and warm light, has inherited some of that cool, I think. That same easy composure and self-assuredness. In the kitchen, chef Evan Snyder plays with color as much as he does with flavor: pale earth tones, deep reds, and a hundred different shades of green. The kitchen’s börek is smoked lamb neck inside an envelope of phyllo, topped with spring and English peas, and Pink Lady apples, the whole thing washed in a rich lamb jus the color of old bricks. A plate of grilled prawns comes with lamb belly and a puddled ramp pistou as thick as green paint; a jet-black smear of burnt eggplant so deep with savory notes it’s like a black hole on the plate, drawing everything to it; and green herbs on top like fallen leaves.
Plates come when they come. There are sesame madeleines, barely sweet but buttery soft, served with a bittersweet and house-made strawberry jam and butter touched with honey and ras el hanout. A rye tartlet with Wagyu and horseradish. Little Gem lettuce hearts, quartered and dressed in black garlic yogurt with preserved lemon, topped with an Egyptian dukkah — ground nuts and spices, chased with rose.
Rye tartlets filled with a Wagyu tartare
Every new dish is surprising. Is intellectual, but considered. Feels like food first, a story second, and art a distant third. Emmett’s menu is Mediterranean in that it is a cradle of a thousand different flavors — Egyptian here, Italian there, North African, Turkish, and Levantine all working together. The kitchen does a tasting menu that you can order without feeling like you’re committing to a marathon, but almost all of it is also available à la carte, to mix and match however you choose.
It’s best to go slow. To sink into the place. You break apart madeleines with your fingers, drag lamb belly through charred eggplant, close your eyes, and taste the sting of gin and lime on your lips. When the halibut arrives, it is wrapped up in sea lettuce like a gift, steamed and soft and served in a green harissa two shades darker than the walls, with the chewy buds of shimeji mushrooms, fat fava beans, and clams, each bursting with oceanic flavors. Like so much at Emmett, it is smart and beautiful at the same time, but delicious more than anything else.
Chef Evan Snyder
For dessert, there’s savory soft-serve. I skip it, but appreciate the thought. Instead, I sink back in my seat and watch the room fill and empty, the light crawl across the floor. Emmett has its own speed: a dream-like state that isn’t lethargy, but a full and conscious calm. When the rocks rattle at the bottom of my cocktail glass, my server asks if I want another drink, and I tell her no. I’m good. She nods and moves off, leaving me alone in the moment because there’s no rush here.
There never is.
3 Stars — Come from anywhere in Philly
Rating Key
0 stars: stay away
★: come if you have no other options
★★: come if you’re in the neighborhood
★★★: come from anywhere in Philly
★★★★: come from anywhere in America
Published as “Emmett Dreams in Color” in the July 2025 issue of Philadelphia magazine.
