Osteria

 The SC’s day of surprise in Philadelphia ended at the famous restaurant Osteria. I have heard many good things about this restaurant & celebrated my 27th birthday at one of the owner’s Mark Vetri’s other restaurants, Amis last summer. Osteria was nominated as best new restaurant in 2008 by the James Beard Foundation, and the chef won the James Beard Foundation Best Mid-Atlantic Chef in 2010.  I was really excited to partake in some amazing Italian food which I hoped would be reminscent of our honeymoon in Rome.

We started out by sharing the Polpo pizza which featured octopus, tomato, red chili flakes & smoked mozzerella. The crust was perfectly thin & crispy & was reminscent of my favorite pizza at Nashville’s City House. I’m usually not a huge fan of smoked flavor but the smoked mozzerella was not overpowering & I found myself really enjoying it. Lately I have become a lot more adventurous when it comes to eating meats & I got over the tentacles of the octopus & ended up loving the flavor & texture of the meat. The pizza earned a big thumbs up from both of us!

Moving on we both opted for pasta dishes. For me, the homemade paparadelle ragu with venison caught my eye. When in Rome one of our favorite dishes was paparadelle with lamb so I was hoping for a similiar dish at Osteria. However, I was a little disappointed when there wasn’t any tomato in the sauce. This dish was ok, but not my favorite. It didn’t help matters much that the SC ordered a dish that ended up being almost exactly the same as mine except with different noodles & meat. I was pretty disappointed in this dish. I really think I just ordered the wrong thing though.

We ended our meal with three scoops of house made gelato which unfortunately were devoured so quickly I didn’t get a picture The standout was the cinnamon gelato but they were all amazing. So cream & rich in flavor. Luckily the meal started and ended on a good note so I will forgive the main dish