Lyle's Guide to Philadelphia Restaurants

This lists my favorite restaurants in Philadelphia. It's shamelessly biased toward center city and the area around Penn, and towards good food. All restaurants listed here are quite reliable, unless otherwise noted. The absence of a restaurant from the list might just mean I haven't made it there yet, especially if it is on the Eastern side of Broad -- but it often means something else. Many popular or well-known restaurants are not listed here; See references at the bottom of the page for more "commercial" guides and contact information for places like the Chart House or cheesesteak or steak places.

* denotes a place recommended to take business guests/seminar speakers
Q is a quieter restaurant
L is a louder one
O indicates outside dining available
All phone numbers are area code 215.

Lyle Ungar

P.S. Feel free to send suggestions or feedback to me at ungar@cis.upenn.edu.

Last modified January 2012

New restaurants on my list to try

Semi-New

Current favorites

The passayunk 3; all BYOB (plus one bonus restaurant)

Medium Expensive, Center City (reservations recommended)

Recommended for a great meal. These are where we take visitors; See below for neighborhood restaurants. Listed roughly in order of my current enthusiasm for the restaurant (price adjusted).

More Expensive, Center City

Around Penn

Center City - West (Rittenhouse/Fitler Square)

See also the many restaurants on Restaurant Row in the "expensive" section above. The bottom half of this section are perfectly nice local places, but not worth crossing town for.

Center City - Central (moderate priced)

Try also the many places in the Reading terminal market(922-2317) and in Chinatown (see below). Also note that the expensive restaurants listed above mostly in this area.

Chinatown

Chinatown is full of reasonable restaurants; just wander north of Market between 9th and 11th.

Northern Liberties

There are a host of fun places in Northern Liberties; I wish I made it there more often. This section is not really up to date.

Center City - East

This section is a rather less complete and less reliable than the others; I'm too lazy to walk to that side of town. There are a huge number of cool restaurants opening on Market Street east (near Fork and Tangerine).

South Street

South Philly

Manayunk

I don't make it out to Manayunk often, since there are so many great places in center city, so this section under-represents the area. My favorite there is:

Fun

Philadelphia Magazine's top ten

A bit idiosyncratic, but all worth trying. Generally not cheap, although I find some (e.g. Lacroix) well worth the money and some (e.g. Morimoto) shall we say "less worth the money". And i haven't tried the ones out of the city. Most are reviewed above. Of course, one should cook most nights. Here are a few

Other

I often get asked where to take groups of people for work, parties, etc. This is a bit out of my expertise, as I'm more of a small group person. Still, I'll try to help. I tend to take people to Chinese banguets such as
  • other options (described above) are Park, Rangoon and Cedar's

    On my list to try

    Cheesesteaks

    I'm not an expert on cheesesteaks, but since I get so many questions, I asked     Craig Laban, and he said that Gino's is better than Pat's, but that much better than either is John's Roast Pork at Front and Snyder. By-the-way, Craig's reviews are quite good, but he is bit less picky than I am.

    Takeout

    The Graveyard

    Breakfast in Philadelphia

    I don't eat breakfast out, since I like my own breakfasts better than those in restaurants. Or I just grab a pastry and coffee near Penn e.g. at Picnic (warning: no espresso) or Buck's County Coffee (34xx Sansom). The White Dog serves brunch; I don't know if they do breakfast on weekdays. If you want to travel, Morning Glory 735 S 10th St 413-3999 is a highly recommended breakfast place (with lines on weekends).

    Other Restaurant listings for Philadelphia

    For convention center visitors

    email:ungar@cis.upenn.edu