Beyond 50 Best Restaurants: Why the Best Seat in a Restaurant Is at the Bar

The counter at Laser Wolf / Photograph by Daniel Knoll

What will dining in Philadelphia look like in 2026? Here, our food editor Kae Lani Palmisano shares her love of dining at the bar and why we should all be bellying up to the counter for our next meal. This story is part of our 50 Best Restaurants package, which you can find in Philadelphia magazine’s February 2026 issue.

I used to think of restaurant bars mostly as liminal spaces. Don’t get me wrong — the bar will always be a convivial and inviting place, but I couldn’t quite shake the feeling that it was also a boozy purgatory I passed through while waiting for my table to be ready, on my way to the main event. A place where I’d grab a drink and an appetizer (ordered off a separate small-bites menu, of course) before moving into the dining room.

But over the past couple of years, the experience has evolved, and I’ve grown to love the bar. For starters, more restaurants are offering the full menu, so no more Frankensteining a meal out of deviled eggs, charcuterie, and mozzarella sticks. Hell, you can order the whole suckling pig at Bolo’s (#31) rum bar if you want to. (I’ve done it; you should too.) Same goes for the 10-dish salatim at Laser Wolf (#17).

The full menu also comes with full and seemingly increasingly expert bar service. A friendly barkeep at Bastia (#14) once gave me poetic tasting notes for the Corsican 55 and insisted I try it with the swordfish brochettes. The cocktail opened my world to its inspiration, the French 75. At Pietramala (#13), the counter offers front-row seats to the kitchen, which, during my last visit, gave me the chance to ask the chef how he gets the eggplant to the creamy consistency of a non-Newtonian fluid. (The trick is slow-roasting it overnight in their hearth.)

For the solo diner, of course, the bar is a social experiment. One night at Illata (#7), the stranger to my right shared his bottle of Friuli orange wine with me. The two of us then bonded with the stranger to my left over the wispy, cloudlike gnudi.

But date night is really where the bar shines these days. Royal Sushi & Izakaya (#9) may be packed, but it’s that excited energy that makes sharing the sushi rolls and sips of sake with your long-term partner feel like a first date. Meanwhile, the warm ambience and elegant menu of modern Italian dishes plated like works of art make Southwark’s (#30) bar an exceptionally romantic spot for a rendezvous.

Sure, the dining room will always be the main attraction, but now that restaurants are treating bars as a destination instead of just a side quest, they’ve become a place worth visiting on their own — a night out with all of the festivity and none of the fuss. And in a time when we’re so isolated, it’s nice to connect with others without a table in between.

>> Click here to read our 50 Best Restaurants in Philadelphia list.

Published as “Counter Culture” in the February 2026 issue of Philadelphia magazine.