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I was on my bicycle headed north on Broad Street when I decided to take myself out for a romantic dinner. Luckily for me, the famed chef Marc Vetri just opened a new restaurant on the corner of Broad and Brown.

I strolled into Osteria sans reservation, expecting to be killed instantly by the withering stare of a snooty host. Surprisingly, everyone was sweet as pie. Since the dining room was full, I was offered a seat at the bar in full view of the open kitchen. I giddily struck up a conversation with a man in kitchen scrubs standing not six inches from my chair. Only after he took my order and I elegantly requested “the cheapest glass of red you have” did I realize that I was speaking with Mr. Vetri himself. This knowledge was enough to shut me up”"a good thing since my vantage point provided me with the perfect spot to observe Osteria’s inner workings.

The seamless service and the smoothly operating kitchen were of the quality that take restaurants decades to perfect. In fact, the waitstaff and the chefs had such an easy, joking rapport, it seemed they were merely in the middle of executing one giant dinner party. My candele with wild boar Bolognese was delivered in a deep ceramic bowl, the leggy tubes of candele happily swimming in a surprisingly light meat sauce. Chocolate flan melted across the plate, submerging my substituted blood orange sorbetto in a pool of bitter sweetness. The “cheapest glass of red” they had tasted anything but cheap.

It was such a good date, I might ask myself out again.

Osteria Philly
640 North Broad Street, Philadelphia, PA 19130
(215) 763-0920