January 26, 2006 Issue                                               

©2005 The Chestnut Hill Local

Reviewer’s ‘Best Restaurants of 2005,’ part two
by LEN LEAR

Server Raymond Cheung helped provide a festive New Year’s Eve for customers at Cin Cin. (Photos by Len Lear)

•Cin Cin, 7838 Germantown Ave.: The only complaint I’ve ever heard about this Chestnut Hill gem is that it’s always so crowded for dinner that even customers with reservations may have to wait for a table, especially on weekends and holidays. But the Asian/French cuisine is well worth waiting for. Ambrosial dishes like the taro-crusted crabcake with Asia pear and micro-greens; roasted ginseng-plum duck with Shanghai baby bok choy and dates in a ginseng-plum emulsion; or the miso-glazed Chilean sea bass with shiitake mushrooms, fresh asparagus and sweet peppers will make you “epicurious” about how the chefs create such magic. I’d stand in line to watch them open a can of Pringles. Call 215-242-8800.

Fernando Sauri owns and operates Tamarindo’s, one of the finest Mexican restaurants in the Philadelphia area.

•Tamarindo’s is a six-year-old BYOB in the Homemaker Shopping Center, 36 W. Skippack Pike (Route 73) and Butler Pike in Broad Axe, just before Blue Bell. It is well worth a trip from Chestnut Hill; over the years we have eaten at dozens of Mexican restaurants in the Delaware Valley, and in my humble opinion, this is as good as it gets. I have no hesitation using such superlatives because I have been highly recommending it to friends and strangers for five years, and every one who has tried it has come back with a rave review of his/her own. Chef Eduardo Voirol previously cooked at the Four Seasons Hotel, Ritz Carlton Hotel and Circa. You can’t possibly go wrong with grilled jumbo shrimp marinated in chile ancho, honey, lime and herbs over roasted peppers, zucchini and mango with a homemade salsa. And there are always tantalizing specials such as a skirt steak rolled up with spinach, Chihuahua cheese, green tomato salsa and pieces of corn. The flavors will linger in the mystic chords of memory long after dinner is over. And owner Fernando Sauri offers complimentary Margaritas to all customers. For more information, call 215-619-2390.

Yong Kim owns and operates Bluefin at 1017 Germantown Pike in Plymouth Meeting, which serves great Japanese food at very reasonable prices.

•Bluefin, nestled in a small strip mall at 1017Germantown Pike in Plymouth Meeting, is another great ethnic BYOB, offering the most reasonably priced upscale Japanese cuisine in the Delaware Valley. Three years ago a reader called me several times, pleading with me to visit Bluefin and write about it. “Once you eat there, you’ll know why I keep calling you,” she insisted. She was so right. I could not count all of the people I have since told about Bluefin who later urged other friends to go there. The sushi bar, the tempura and teriyaki dishes are all nonpareil. I’d rather pass a kidney stone than not be able to return soon to Bluefin. Call 610-277-3917.

•The Blue Horse Restaurant & Tavern, which opened last July 2 at 602 Skippack Pike (Route 73) in Blue Bell, is a great addition to this area. It’s just a shame it could not be in Chestnut Hill, where the owners, Shawn and Rachel Sollberger, wanted it to be. (The rent here was prohibitive.) Several nights a week live musicians play acoustic rock, folk, pop, blues and/or jazz. In the rear of the restaurant, there is even a take-out bakery with croissants, donuts, etc., prepared by pastry chef Andrew Smith, a former “Best of Philly” winner at Rococo and Patou in Old City. Sollberger has created a “New American” menu that marries classic American dishes to other cultural influences. Dinner salads and appetizers are mostly in the $5 to $8 range, with most entrees from $15 to $22. Every night there is a “Blue Plate Special” such as pan-fried rainbow trout, roasted pork loin or Yankee pot roast, all $15. Sollberger is a great young chef whose “specials” really live up to the name. A recent pan-seared halibut with shrimp and mussels in a lobster broth was sublime, as was a tender steak with a red wine demi-glaze, capers and an olive tapenade. Call 215-641-9100.

•Nectar, 1092 Lancaster Ave. in Berwyn, took three years to build, but it was worth the wait. The only hard part for customers is finding a space in the parking lot since it fills up so rapidly every night. All you have to know is that the engine behind the creation of the 220-seat Nectar is Michael Wei, the entrepreneurial genius behind Yangming in Bryn Mawr and Cin Cin in Chestnut Hill. The Asian fusion cuisine that has fueled the success of Yangming and Cin Cin is on display at Nectar but in a jaw-dropping, multi-million dollar setting. Space does not permit a comprehensive discussion of the huge menu, but each dish is more remarkable than the one before. Diners all around us were oohing and aahing and commenting on the intermarriage of flavors. Appetizers are priced from $5 to $14, entrees from $16 to $29 and desserts from $5 to $7.50. There is also an express lunch for $9. The Dalai Lama has been quoted as saying, “Approach love and cooking with reckless abandon,” and the team at Nectar is clearly doing just that. For more information, call 610-725-9000.

•Coyote Crossing is actually two restaurants, one that has been at 800 Spring Mill Rd. in Conshohocken since 1996 and its sister (same owner, Carlos Melendez), which opened last January at 102 Market St. in West Chester. There are several reasons why the original Coyote Crossing has become the most successful Mexican restaurant in the Greater Philadelphia area: consistently good food and drinks, reasonable prices, excellent service, attention to detail and a spectacular setting. (The warm-weather outdoor patio is the area’s most beautiful.) The newer Coyote Crossing has the same menu in a Stephen Starr-like ultra-posh setting in a former bank building. Entrees start at $15. My favorites have always been the Chihuahua cheese fondue appetizer and the Chilean sea bass entree, which always seems to be available as a special. For more information, call 610-429-8900 (West Chester) or 610-825-3000 (Conshohocken), or visit www.coyotecrossing.com.

•Bliss: Even among the professional cooking fraternity, where relentless labor and perfectionism are as essential for survival as oxygen, Francesco Martorella stands out. If you’ve eaten at any of Philadelphia’s finest restaurants in recent years, you’ve probably tasted his food, even if his name is not familiar to you.

The South Philadelphia native, who spent his summers growing up in Italy’s Abruzzi region watching his grandfather make fresh pasta and olive oil, has been a chef at the Four Seasons Hotel, Ciboulette, Brasserie Perrier, Ritz-Carlton Hotel and Stephen Starr’s Pod and Avenue B.

After plying his trade for so many employers, Martorella finally opened his own restaurant, Bliss, at 220-224 S. Broad St., in November, 2004. Coincidentally, the restaurant is located next to the Bellevue Hotel, where Francesco’s late father was once a chef.

Martorella, whose cuisine was described by Gourmet magazine as “a cookery course in a capsule,” marries Asian, Italian, American and French ingredients and techniques. We were especially blown away by an appetizer of four feather-light ginger shrimp dumplings with baby shiitake mushrooms and a coconut/ginger sauce and by a Swiss chocolate fondue dessert with banana, pineapple, kiwi, figs and a chocolate brownie. Entrees range in price from $10 to $19 for lunch and $18 to $29 for dinner. A bar menu offers a selection of dishes such as tiger shrimp spring rolls and crispy risotto cheese beignets, from $7 to $24.

For more information, call 215-731-1100 or visit www.bliss-restaurant.com

•Susanna Foo has been called “The Julia Child of Chinese Cuisine.” At her eponymous restaurant, 1512 Walnut St., Susanna applies classic French cooking techniques to the finest Cantonese and Shanghai cooking. When Foo first came to the U.S. from Taiwan, she was surprised to discover that Asian food was created primarily from canned ingredients. She began to experiment with American produce and herbs, and eventually her innovative style inspired an entire generation of Asian chefs to follow suit.

Susanna, who also has a restaurant at the Borgata Hotel-Casino in Atlantic City, offers up such fusion dishes as wild mushroom chicken dumplings with chanterelle mushrooms, black truffle sauce and micro-greens; crabcakes with frisée salad, sundried tomato sauce, mango salsa and basil oil; herb-crusted big-eye tuna with soy sesame vinaigrette and a cream baby green and spinach salad; and panko-crusted goat cheese with Asian perar and roastedbeets, honeyed walnuts and toasted brioche. The prices at Susanna Foo are stratospheric, but so is the quality. For more information or reservations, call 215-545-2666 or visit www.susannafoo.com