Why Honeysuckle Is the Most Important Restaurant in Philly Right Now

Cybille St. Aude-Tate and Omar Tate at Honeysuckle / Photography by Gab Bonghi

It was, I think, the best bread course I’ve ever had, and there was barely any bread on the plate.

As a matter of fact, there wasn’t even a plate. Just a rock, dug from the earth at one of the farms chefs Omar Tate and Cybille St. Aude-Tate work with at Honeysuckle and laid on the bare wood table in front of me.

The rock was flattish, brownish, rockish. The bread was a small cube, dark and rough-textured. Barely more than a bite to a hungry man, with nothing accompanying it but a blob of soft cheese and a tangle of shredded blood orange. But this wasn’t about satiation; it was about care. About memory and inspiration. And, honestly, it was a little bit about showing off, too, like, Hey, check out this cool rock! And this really tiny piece of bread! How much you wanna bet I can blow your goddamned mind with nothing more than a cool rock and some tiny bread?

The bread course

Thing is, it worked. It absolutely blew my mind. One single bite of the night’s heavy, nutty, earthy acorn bread, a sliver of the house-made triple-cream Brie, a dab of Jamaican blood orange marmalade, and I folded over the table like the wind had been knocked out of me.

I called my server over and asked her to explain the whole dish to me again. She told me the entire course was inspired by Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower — by the acorn bread made by the main character’s father and the fruits and nuts she’d gather to sustain her. She told me about the origins of the marmalade and how the kitchen makes the Brie. I was thankful because not only had I eaten something delicious, but I knew why it was that way.

And that is why Honeysuckle works. Because it is a restaurant, sure, but it is also a story that Omar and Cybille want to tell. It’s a conversation with every guest over the reach of three courses, amuses, digressions, and dessert, because the spiced, battered, and fried hen-of-the-woods mushroom offered as a snack before dinner isn’t just a fried mushroom, but a McNugget analog — a subversive commentary on fast food, arriving on a white plate, tucked into a little bright red box like a miniature Happy Meal, complete with a side of fry sauce that tastes like the kitchen stole it from a Chick-fil-A. Because the vegetable platter is a show of bounty restrained — a bite of this, a taste of that, salted pickles, raw fig, the thin sweetness from chewing a knob of raw sorghum and a shot of melon liqueur — and the McDonald’s Money burger is an over-the-top black-truffle-and-caviar parody of those days when the family had a few bucks to celebrate something good and took the kids out to McDonald’s.

Dishes from Honeysuckle’s menu

In the same way Honeysuckle Provisions, Omar and Cybille’s former University City spot, existed to uplift and glorify Black foodways, so too does this new, polished, fine-dining version. It just works on a whole different scale, seeking to honor the cuisines of Black ancestors while reclaiming a culinary narrative that puts food of the African diaspora in the center of the plate with stunning deconstructions of salad russe formed from small piles of meticulously cubed pickled beets and heirloom potatoes, or limes dusted with powdered Ghanaian shito that the house calls “Cheeto dust,” or roasted half-chickens rubbed with Haitian epis, perfectly cooked and served with grilled collards, chopped fine, all bitter and sharp and savory against the meat and dressed with a charred leek aioli to smooth everything out.

Honeysuckle’s Zou Zou cocktail

Not every dish is a manifesto. Not every dish needs to be. The hush puppies? They’re merely delicious: golden brown, set in thick dots of Cajun holy trinity relish (onion, bell pepper, and celery, which reappear as a digestif soda at the end of the meal), wearing marbled pink hats of country ham. And the seafood Alfredo is pure ego from the kitchen in the best possible way — edible proof that in this town where Alfredo is the mother of a thousand menus, their version (smooth as easy listening, rich as a crooked minister, made with crème fraîche, local shellfish, hand-cut tagliatelle, and a custom Bay spice blend they call New Bay Spice) can compete.

I could go on and on for an hour, but all I really need to say here is go. Go now. Go without knowing entirely what to expect. Ask questions. Maybe learn a little something along the way. But just go. Because the story Omar, Cybille, and their team are telling at Honeysuckle is a very personal, very important one.

And there’s no one in Philadelphia — or anywhere else — who can tell it better than they do.

4 Stars — Come from anywhere in America

Rating Key
0 stars: stay away
★: come if there are no other options
★★: come if you’re in the neighborhood
★★★: come from anywhere in Philly
★★★★: come from anywhere in America

Published as “Every Meal a Story” in the November 2025 issue of Philadelphia magazine.