Until about twenty-five years ago, the only places to eat out in Philadelphia outside Chinatown and South Philadelphia were Horn & Hardart and Bookbinder's. Those were grim days indeed. Then, in the early 1970s, an unprecedented flourishing of new restaurants run by talented young chefs—the Philadelphia Restaurant Renaissance—educated local palates as never before. Today, Philadelphia is home to a variety of cuisines, turned out by top-quality kitchens, and a discriminating dining public.
While good places to eat are plentiful throughout Philadelphia, several sections of the city easily reached from the site of the meetings are well worth a visit, both for their restaurants and for other points of interest. Center City has the highest concentration of historical sites, museums, and shops; it also has some of the best and most elegant restaurants in town. Certainly Le Bec-Fin, the French restaurant created by chef-owner Georges Perrier, deserves its reputation as the city's, perhaps the country's, finest. Here the most expensive meal in town is nevertheless the best value in food, service, and atmosphere. Other elegant places worth trying are The Fountain in the Four Seasons Hotel and Ciboulette in the Bellevue. There are many good, less expensive restaurants in the area, including La Buca, Jeannine's Bistro, Shiroi Hana, and Friday, Saturday, Sunday.
Near the site of the meetings is Main Street in Manayunk, until ten years ago the run-down business district of a neighborhood that flourished as a mill town around the turn of the century. Though
Manayunk is still one of the most tightly knit neighborhoods in the city, Main Street has been rejuvenated by its many good restaurants, as well as interesting shops and galleries, and now attracts visitors from all over the area. Restaurants here run the gamut from Le Bus, a cafeteria offering abundant, tasty food, through Jake's with its upscale contemporary cuisine, to Kansas City Prime, a fancy new steakhouse.
In the 1960s, South Street was made famous by the Orions (“Big Girls Don't Cry”) as “the street where all the hippies meet.” Today, it continues to earn its reputation as one of the city's liveliest locations, where crowds gather on weekend evenings to eat in its varied restaurants, browse in its trendy shops, and generally be seen. South Street offers eating opportunities ranging from an assortment of pizza places to formal dining at the Monte Carlo Living Room, with French, Italian, Thai, Chinese, Japanese, Greek, and Lebanese food also represented. My own favorite is San Carlo, a small Italian restaurant, both intimate and sophisticated, and very reasonably priced.
Penn's Landing, with its attractive location on the Delaware River and its many outdoor concerts, has in recent years acted as a catalyst for the development of the waterfront. Ferries to and from the new Camden Aquarium operate every half hour, and water taxis offer service on the Philadelphia side of the river, stopping at the many dance clubs and restaurants on the water. Elizabeth at Katmandu, a refurbished riverboat, is the poshest of the dance clubs. Among the many fine restaurants, La Veranda (Italian) and Meiji-en (Japanese) are especially good, offering both a meal and a view.
To return to what we started with, Chinatown and South Philadelphia are still very much there, and still very much worth a visit. Chinatown is what you'd expect—lots of pretty good Chinese food and, lately, Thai, Vietnamese, and Japanese as well. South Philadelphia has many small, friendly neighborhood establishments. At the corner of Passyunk Avenue and Ninth Street, Geno's and Pat's compete to give you that unique Philadelphia experience, the original cheese steak. Despite many imitations, there's really nothing like it. But beware: if you go to Bookbinder's, everyone will know you're a tourist.