10/26/2022 0 Comments Panorama philadelphia![]() A braciola roulade of veal skirt steak, gently cooked sous-vide for a day instead of simmered to shreds in the usual gravy, was sublimely tender but still intact beneath garlic croutons and a light Genovese ragù - the ultimate new school/old school update. Perfectly seared sweet scallops are dabbed with a zingy zabaglione sauce studded with piquant capers. The polenta beneath his crispy duck breast with huckleberry mostarda is brightened with cheese made from fresh goat's milk brought by Green Meadow Farm. Gentile takes another classic Italian flavor combo, the black pepper and Pecorino twang of cacio è pepe usually featured in pasta, and infuses it to spark the creamy fluff of cheese inside the beggar's purse of his handmade burrata mozzarella. A pancetta made from lamb lends a gamy depth to the excellent paccheri all'amatriciana. The meatball gets enriched with trendy Wagyu beef and supersized over a pedestal of polenta glossed with sage brown butter and mahogany veal ragù. The new Panorama's food is still inspired by Italian traditions, but it's now presented with a decidedly fresh American approach. When presented with a starter as striking as his hen of the woods - a cast-iron-roasted pouf of a coral-shaped mushroom set over dark swirls of black garlic pesto - I can understand why Sena decided to trim "Ristorante" from the name. #PANORAMA PHILADELPHIA UPDATE#Sena's most important move, though, was hiring a talented young chef in Matthew Gentile, 33, an alum of Lacroix at the Rittenhouse with stints at Ela and Parc, who arrived at a kitchen used to cookie-cutter vegetable medleys and tired pasta trios and who instantly went into update mode, sourcing seasonal local farm ingredients, turning to modern techniques, starting a fresh-bread program, and making his own cheese. But the classic Italian cuisine that might have been cutting edge when it opened in 1990 had grown stale, predictable, and dated, especially by the dynamic standards of Philly cucina post-Vetri and Le Virtù. ![]() He still had one of Philly's great wine destinations in the restaurant at his Penn's View Hotel, which features a 120-bottle Wine Keeper that is the largest single wine-by-the-glass preservation system in the world, as certified by Guinness itself. ![]() But it's rather what he did after that 2015 call that impressed me most. One could say Sena's timing for a chef change could not have been better. The restaurant, now called simply Panorama, is better - and more relevant - than ever. Now, after returning to experience the delight of a hand-pulled burrata stuffed with cacio e pepe-flavored cream and the wonder of braciola reimagined for the era of sous-vide, I'm especially glad I did. There went a lot of time and hundreds of dollars in expenses as we made the correct decision (despite being up against deadline) to push "pause" on the review and wait to see what the next chapter for this Old City pioneer might be. ![]() "Are you kidding me?" he replied with classic Neapolitan swagger. ![]() So it's fair to say my timing was supremely rotten when, after several meals in mid-2015 at what was then known as Ristorante Panorama, I made the call to inform Luca Sena that I was about to write a review of his restaurant. Timing is everything when it comes to wine and food, not to mention restaurant reviews. ![]()
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