The Art of the Tasting Menu

Friday Saturday Sunday’s sweetbreads, fusilli, and strawberry tart / Photography by Clay Williams

Tasting menus go way beyond what’s on the plate. They’re a look into a chef’s personal story, their personal tastes, and what inspires them. And the overall experience, from the progression of the meal to the intuitive service, and make or break the meal. Here, Philly Mag contributor Adam Erace talks to Friday Saturday Sunday’s chef Chad Williams to get a behind the scenes look at what goes into his tasting menu. This story is part of our 50 Best Restaurants package, which you can find in Philadelphia magazine’s February 2026 issue.

After years of an à la carte mindset, the city and its chefs have fallen back in love with tasting menus. Numerous permutations have appeared lately, from choose-your-own adventures at Emmett (#6) and Honeysuckle (#2) to the pseudo supper clubs of Rice & Sambal (#39) and Her Place (#15) to more traditional Michelin bait like Provenance (#16). The Guide certainly motivated some chefs to add tastings, but others, like Chad Williams of Friday Saturday Sunday (#5), have long evangelized the format.

“When you have to pack a menu with 25 different items, you’re going to have some duds,” he says. “Tasting menus provide an opportunity for chefs to showcase and curate their best.” They also offer us a look inside a chef’s brain: how they think about food, flavors, flow. Great tastings not only excel at that trifecta, but offer moments of delight. A little levity. And also, I would argue, brevity.

I used to avoid tasting menus. They felt too long, too overwrought. I’d get antsy. But the new iterations move at a much brisker clip as restaurants become better attuned to individual diners’ temporal neuroses. “We are very cognizant of this, of having everything clicking as efficiently as possible in the kitchen so people don’t get restless,” Williams says. The front of house, managed by his partner and wife, Hanna Williams, speeds up service for diners like me and slows it down for the sloths who “would be very upset if you move them too fast.” It’s a balancing act, he says, much like the menu itself.

Here, Chad Williams weighs in on how he and chef de cuisine India Rodriguez consider and create the perfect Friday Saturday Sunday tasting, featuring the menu from one of the best meals I had all year. (From cocktails to canelé, it lasted 82 glorious minutes.)

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Published as “Long Live the Tasting Menu” in the February 2026 issue of Philadelphia magazine.