This Vegan Dinner Membership Is Philly’s Candy Little Secret

Tucked away on a slim facet avenue in south Philadelphia, a transformed warehouse sits. It’s not full of dusty bins or storage cabinets, however with hanging plant pots dripping with flowering succulents. A rolling glass storage door curls away to disclose a comfy inside of blush pink partitions, mismatched hanging image frames, and fewer than a dozen petite tables punctuated with flickering candles and Mason glass jars of recent flowers.

Miss Rachel’s Pantry

However you gained’t discover any menus to pore over or to-go diners grabbing takeout orders—the eatery, open only some nights per week, hosts five-course, set-menu, farmhouse-style meals that friends reserve weeks prematurely. That is Miss Rachel’s Pantry, and together with fully residing as much as its slogan as “a candy little vegan restaurant,” it’s additionally simply the most effective within the nation.

Miss Rachel’s Pantry

How did all of it start?

Chef Rachel Klein—Miss Rachel herself and the mastermind behind the meticulously curated weekly menus—started her culinary journey as a vegetarian rising up in a decidedly non-vegetarian family. Between taking occasional cooking courses and alternating by means of just a few front-of-house positions in numerous eating places, Klein’s ardour for the culinary world blossomed. But it surely wasn’t till she started working as a personal chef and marriage ceremony caterer, promoting vegan meals at Philly punk reveals on the facet, {that a} dream to open her personal brick-and-mortar location took maintain.

In 2012, after working her catering enterprise by means of shared kitchens and her personal tiny house, Miss Rachel’s Pantry (a reputation impressed by her grandparents’ Nineteen Fifties luncheonette, The Pantry) opened its first tiny location within the West Passyunk neighborhood of Philadelphia. Simply three years later, the Pantry expanded, transferring 5 minutes away to a way more spacious location in its present neighborhood house. 

Rachel Klein

Every little thing concerning the house is charming, from the retro fridge tucked right into a nook to the nice and cozy glow from the hanging globe lights. However as soon as you are taking your seat on the white, café-style tables, that’s when the consolation really begins. A sublime place card is laid earlier than every visitor, informing them of the 5 programs for the night. To make sure nobody taste overpowers one other, Klein takes particular care to steadiness salty, spicy, or in any other case pungent flavors in her creations. Warmth seekers and lovers of uncooked onion could also be momentarily dissatisfied, however that’s certain to dissipate because the concord of the meal begins to daybreak on them.

The restaurant is BYOB, which means diners can usher in a bottle (or two) of wine, beer, or cider to take pleasure in with the pre-fixe menu. Servers circle the room in excellent synchronicity to make sure everybody’s drinks are located earlier than dinner begins, dropping off small plates of flaky biscuits with herbed butter to whet appetites earlier than the meal actually kicks into excessive gear.

@phillyveganspotlight

Homestyle cooking meets advantageous eating

Whereas nobody dinner is ever the identical, a cohesive meal that flows from begin to end is assured, and at Miss Rachel’s Pantry meaning the primary course is at all times soup. Recent corn bisque with palmito crab meat (constructed from hearts of palm) napped with chive-infused oil and sautéed, garlicky corn or native heirloom tomato bisque with golden-fried, ricotta-stuffed squash blossoms dabbed with lemon crema, habanada pepper (a pepper that tastes like habanero, minus the spice), and basil agave honey will sprint any misguided perception that soup can’t be a stand-out dish. Particularly in the event you occur to luck upon a bowl with meaty additions like apple cider seitan and chestnut sausage served over a clean celeriac-rutabaga bisque completed with chutney-glazed golden croutons.

Miss Rachel’s Pantry

The second course turns the main target to salads, however don’t anticipate watery iceberg or bland vinaigrettes. As a substitute, the restaurant’s housemade cheeses are sometimes the star of creations corresponding to a fig and cold-smoked watermelon salad with recent cashew milk mozzarella, tossed in a wealthy maple-black garlic dressing and showered in a crispy cornmeal topping. In one other iteration, buttery cashew burrata sits like a crown jewel on a mattress of child gem lettuce, paper-thin slices of fennel, and juicy, rosé-colored grapefruit segments earlier than being wearing a aromatic basil French dressing and sprinkled with heat, toasted hazelnuts. And typically, the salad course is changed with a chunk of vegan frittata served alongside rose radishes infused with smoke over delicate leaves of lettuce, with a pungent caper dressing and tangy-sweet caramelized onion and mustard jam. 

Miss Rachel’s Pantry

And whereas the restaurant focuses closely on homestyle meals, there’s a heavy lean towards Italian advantageous eating, with an ever-present housemade pasta course. Miss Rachel’s Pantry’s resident pasta professional Chef Rodger Holst masterfully transforms semolina flour into an assortment of stylish pasta dishes. Assume spring pea and lemon ricotta-stuffed cappellacci with a light-weight, brilliant lemon-butter sauce and parsley caviar. Or casoncelli full of recent chèvre, caramelized onion, and kabocha squash in a velvety sage cream with apple sausage. The inventiveness doesn’t cease there. Rachel’s has even mastered a vegan model of squid ink-style, crab-stuffed cappellacci served in a conventional wine-butter sauce with micro-scale, plant-based capesante (a Mediterranean scallop). 

Miss Rachel’s Pantry

Shifting into the fourth course, plates are cleared to make approach for what would historically be a “meat course,” however in fact, at Miss Rachel’s Pantry, it’s a chance to point out off the kitchen’s unbelievable transformation of greens. Shredded hearts of palm are was fried, crispy palmito piccata and served with seared maitake mushrooms over a mattress of whipped rutabaga and flash-seared rapini. Complete roasted maitake mushrooms are crafted right into a refined and hefty meatloaf that includes a crunchy, Maillard-induced crust—left over from a glazing of sticky-sweet, black garlic ketchup—locking in moisture, whereas a dousing of mushroom-red wine gravy provides much more unctuous richness. 

In one other mouthwatering entrée, a juicy watermelon fillet is coated in a beneficiant crust of crushed pistachios and sesame seeds earlier than being seared and positioned over a mattress of creamy, whipped eggplant with a bracing lemon-horseradish tzatziki and a facet of garlicky inexperienced beans. Each meaty essential shines brilliant concentrate on vegetation, with all the pieces lovingly made in-house with not a single meat substitute in sight. Even probably the most veg-skeptic eater can be hard-pressed to go away a lick of the superbly balanced sauces, whips, or glazes behind on their plates. 

Don’t skip dessert

As stuffed diners contentedly lean again of their chairs, forks clinking down onto plates, and a low rumble dialog rising within the dimly lit house, tables are cleared to make approach for a very spectacular dessert course. Miss Rachel’s Pantry lets pastry chef Carley Leibowitz lead a candy finale that’s indulgent with out being too cloying or heavy.

@carley.muffins/Instagram

The course might go chocolaty—like a spongy cacao-hazelnut cake topped with crunchy sugared hazelnut brittle and a scoop of impossibly mild vanilla bean ice cream with a beneficiant drizzle of salted caramel sauce. It might go Mexican-inspired. Assume moist tres leches cake topped with melt-in-your-mouth, brown sugar ice cream, spiced pears, and candied slivered almonds. Or possibly fruity—the fluffy lemon cake with a thick vanilla buttercream frosting topped with a neighborhood blueberry compote and lime leaf-purple basil ice cream will win over even the staunchest of chocoholics. 

@carley.muffins/Instagram

Every dessert is designed to go away glad diners with a candy be aware on the finish of every meticulously crafted meal. Visitors luxuriate over miniature cups of espresso or steaming mugs of tea as they chat with Klein herself, who makes the rounds to thank every get together for attending as a delicate hum of dialog softly fills the glowing restaurant. The small transformed warehouse seems like a real group gathering for that golden second in time, and everybody lingers to take pleasure in it.

As friends rise from their tables and start to slowly file out of the comfortable eating house and again into Philadelphia’s buzzing Saturday evening, they’re left with the lingering tastes of an unforgettable meal and the heat that comes from Miss Rachel and her candy little vegan restaurant.