Chef Omar Tate of Honeysuckle Honored as a Pew Fellow

Omar Tate / Photograph by Clay Williams

Howdy, buckaroos! And welcome back to the weekly Foobooz food news round-up. Just a few quick things to get through this week, including (but not limited to) Omar Tate’s big win, a new restaurant from the old Cheu Noodle Bar team, Red Gravy Goods from Safran Turney, Medium Rare’s PJ party, and Mawn in the New York Times (again). So let’s get right into it, shall we? We’ll start things off this week with …

Chef Omar Tate Honored as a Pew Fellow in the Arts

The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage just released their list of awards for Philadelphia-area cultural organizations and artists, and chef Omar Tate of Honeysuckle was among the 44 institutions and individuals sharing this year’s $8.6 million in grants.

According to Pew, Tate is “a visual artist and chef, and owner of the restaurant Honeysuckle, who integrates curated culinary experiences and contemporary visual art with a focus on cultural preservation of the African diaspora.” And that’s true. He’s an artist, a poet, an essayist, and an activist. Tate and his wife, Cybille St. Aude-Tate do a lot of things in this space. But what’s most notable to me is that he’s primarily a chef who has spent years using food as the medium through which he explores these ideas.

Seriously, if you’ve only got a minute, read the beginning of this profile I did of Tate, back in the early pandemic. It talks about where he was and what he was doing when the world stopped: serving dishes named for the MOVE bombings and roasted yams inspired by Ralph Ellison, author of Invisible Man to Manhattan swells at $150 a pop. The Honeysuckle that exists today? That’s a direct descendant of those dinners. It’s just another chapter in the story Tate has been telling us for years. And I love that this kind of recognition (and this kind of money) is going to help keep that kind of thing going.

Because food is never just food, right? Even the blandest, dullest meals you eat come with a history and a backstory that can be fascinating if you just take a minute to think about it. Food in general is like that “cerulean blue” scene in The Devil Wears Prada — it all has a narrative. It all comes from somewhere. A big part of Tate’s work (including the parts that involve blowing my mind with McNuggets and a bread course) is about telling those stories, making sure any of us lucky enough to find our way into Honeysuckle’s dining room understand them and remember them.

So anyway, that Pew grant? That’s money very well spent.

And if you get the chance, you should really check out dinner at Honeysuckle. You’ll come away well-fed and smarter, which is always nice.

The Best Dish at Mawn (According to the New York Times)

Mawn banh chow salad / Photograph by Alex Lau

Phila and Rachel Lorn’s Mawn has been getting a LOT of love lately — both from us and from some really big national outlets. But yesterday, the New York Times put out their 2025 list of the best individual dishes in America, and guess who made the cut again?

This time around, they’re specifically calling out the banh chow salad at Mawn, with its roasted peanuts, chili heat, and coconut rice crêpe, saying:

“As lacily crisp as a Parmesan tuile on the outside, and plumped by ground chicken and shrimp within, the savory coconut rice crepe is objectively the star of this ‘salad.’ But the tangle of soft lettuces and what the menu calls ‘backyard herbs’ bring a lot to the plate: levity, structure and the thrown-together appearance of everyday Cambodian American home cooking, only with a chef’s attention to details.”

And yeah, all of that is exactly right. And it’s a pretty good capsule description of what makes Mawn so great in the first place. But seeing it on the list got me looking at a bunch of the other best dish winners from this year, and it made me start thinking about the nature of these lists in general and just how remarkable the food scene is in America right now.

Most of the time, these lists focus on entire restaurants — trying to tell us everything about a place with a picture and a handful of words. The same places repeat, the same models of service and modes of design get rewarded over and over again. And not to say that any of the places picked aren’t deserving, but it can feel like a lot of noise to read about 25 or 50 or a hundred whole-ass restaurants in far-flung cities that you’ll probably never go to.

Individual dishes, though? Those are snapshots. And while they may define the nature of a restaurant’s general vibe (as the banh chow does at Mawn), a single plate is easier to get your head around. And the best of them can say a lot about what we love and what we crave and where we are with only a handful of ingredients.

So you could dream about entire Michelin-starred tasting menus in New York or the retro cocktail bar scene in L.A., or you could look at a plate of tempura-fried blowfish tails from Chubby Fish in Charleston, South Carolina, and actually picture yourself eating that. You could see Dungeness crab rice at Tomo in Seattle, a plate of cachapa from Doral, Florida and butterflied mountain trout drowned in beurre blanc at Judith in Sewanee, Tennessee and think about how amazing, deep, and wide our food culture has become over the past 20 years, and how delicious.

A single dish is approachable in a way that an entire restaurant normally isn’t. It is a flag on a hill in the distance, showing what’s just over the horizon. And I like lists like this one because while the idea of driving to Baltimore to eat off the menu at the Duchess might seem like a vague and aspirational daydream, I can actually see myself rolling up for a plate of the shrimp and corn patties that chef Kiko Fejarang offers as a taste of her Pacific Rim influences in a neighborhood bar atmosphere. So including Mawn’s backyard salad, with its Cambodian street food flavors and Philly address, is perfect because it lets people who aren’t from here and may never even come here know what we’re about here. And it does it without a single mention of cheesesteaks.

Restaurant Aleksandar Reboots

Restaurant Aleksandar / Photograph by Dan Heinkel

In Rittenhouse Square, Restaurant Aleksandar is remaking itself, leaning into the cuisine of Serbia (and the surrounding areas) and launching a new cocktail program.

When it opened back in 2022, Aleksandar was a vaguely Eastern European restaurant that flirted around with a lot of different influences. There were pierogi, egg rolls, schnitzel, whole branzino, short rib pasta, polenta, mussels, lamb shank, and more. It was a little bit scattered, beautiful (at least in pictures), and even if it didn’t entirely hold together, it was at least ambitious.

Now, though, after a couple years of service, it seems like the team at Aleksandar has decided to focus on what they can do best: a kind of biographical menu of Serbian and Eastern European dishes that owner Aleks Alimpijevic and his mother, exec chef Svetlana Alimpijevic, grew up with.

They’re calling it “a love letter to the dishes the Alimpijevic family grew up with,” and it includes things like paprikash malfadine, pierogi with smoked gouda mash and horseradish crème fraîche, chicken schnitzel with hot honey jus (which is a nice twist on the hot chicken craze, actually), and a variety of mekiks — fried bread served warm with toppings like roasted pepper spread and farmer’s cheese, smoked salmon and dill, vitello tonnato, and egg with horseradish cream and pancetta.

“Restaurant Aleksandar is the story of where my family comes from and what we have learned along the way,” according to Alimpijevic. “The traditions we grew up with, the flavors we were raised on, and the way we were taught to welcome people all shape what we do here. I want Aleksandar to feel meaningful whether or not you share our background. It is about connecting with the story, the energy, and the experience.”

Beverage director Michael Ringland is also redoing the bar menu with an eye toward history and geography. He’s got a list of Georgian wines, plus new cocktails like the bourbon-and-Strega “Fall in Dresden” and a borscht Bloody Mary at brunch. To go along with the cocktails, there’ll also be a new late-night happy hour program every Friday from 9 p.m. to 11 p.m. with food and drink specials aimed at night-owls, industry crews just coming off shift, and anyone else looking for some schnitzel after dark.

The new menu (and happy hour) is available now. Check it out if you’re in the neighborhood.

Red Gravy Goods, Now Open on East Passyunk

Gourmand-themed gifts from Red Gravy Goods / Photograph by Neal Santos

Val Safran and Marcie Turney are expanding their hospitality footprint outside of Midtown Village with a new opening at 1335 East Passyunk.

Red Gravy Goods opened yesterday, December 9th, and it is a “bespoke boutique” and culinary gift shop offering gourmet goods, kitchenware, cookbooks, and cocktail kits, along with Philly-themed gifts, clothes, candles, and a “hat patch bar” that lets you pick from over 100 different custom-designed (and Philly-centric) patches to have stuck on a hat while you wait.

Though not specifically food-related, I think this is interesting because, in addition to a billion restaurants over the years, Safran Turney Hospitality has long had a hand in the retail side of things with Open House and Verde on 13th Street. Now, there’ll be Red Gravy Goods — which, not at all coincidentally, has opened just steps away from Pat’s and Geno’s, along a stretch of East Passyunk that has always been heavy with tourist traffic. Exactly the kinds of people who might want to go home with a pair of Eagles earrings, a Gritty hat, a local cookbook, and a FAFO coffee mug.

Now who has room for some leftovers?

The Leftovers

Golabki from Little Walter’s / Photograph by Gab Bonghi

For those of you who might’ve missed it, Banshee — the new, not-at-all Asian (except kinda a little bit Asian) restaurant from ex-Cheu/Bing Bing/Nunu guys Ben Puchowitz and Shawn Darragh and new partners Kyle and Bryan Donovan — is opening tomorrow at 1600 South Street.

I did a long look inside the new spot earlier this week, but here’s the highlights: Banshee is a Scandinavian-influenced, Japanese-inflected comfort food and small-plates restaurant with a French-y Spanish menu and butterscotch Krimpets for dessert.

Oh, and since we’ve already talked about East Passyunk once this week, how about this? Y’all know that Marra’s, the pizza spot that’s been at 1734 East Passyunk Avenue for almost 100 years, just closed down, right? Well, it looks like Dan Tsao, owner of EMei in Chinatown, has picked up the space and will be turning it into a second location of the Sichuan specialist.

Actually, more like a third location. Because way back in July I told you about Tsao also picking up the former John Henry’s Pub at 98 Cricket Avenue in Ardmore, with plans to expand the EMei empire there as well.

Anyway, we’re gonna have three EMeis (plus one TingTing’s) to pick from in 2026. And that’s nothing but good news.

Meanwhile, over at Oyster House, they’re doing a lobster roll collab with chef Frankie Ramirez of Amá that’s running from December 9th through the 13th. It’s butter-poached lobster, salsa macha, refried beans, and cilantro macho on a split-top bun, served with Oyster House fries for $39, with proceeds going to benefit the SPCA.

At Little Walter’s, they’re doing their second annual Wigilia dinner on December 23rd, featuring a helping hand from some of the city’s best Polish chefs. Pat Alfiero of Heavy Metal Sausage Co., Patrick Czerniak of Square 1682, Ryan Elmore of Mom-Mom’s Kitchen, and Ian Maroney of Carl will all be there, putting their spins on the traditional 12-course Polish Christmas Eve feast.

Tickets are $100 per person, and there will be two seatings — 5 p.m. and 8 p.m. You can make your reservations here.

Finally this week, for those of you already looking ahead to the new year, Medium Rare — the Fishtown outpost of the prix fixe steak frites chain — is announcing a New Year’s Day pajama brunch with prizes being handed out for best jammies. Naturally, the party will be happening early on Wednesday, January 1st. It starts at 10 a.m. and (mercifully) will run all the way until 5 p.m. Bring the family, bring your friends, eat French toast and steak and eggs, drink bottomless 25-cent mimosas, and celebrate the coming of 2026 in the only way that makes any sense these days: drunk and in your pajamas. Reservations are available here.