When people ask me for restaurant recommendations, one place I regularly mention is Barbuzzo. It’s just great. And I can’t possibly imagine anyone not liking it. The food is superb, the place itself is adorable, and it’s just a lovely experience. My only reservation would be for large groups. Barbuzzo is just too small to be good for big groups. But it’d be perfect for a romantic date, girls night out, or dinner with the parents. Anyhoo, my last visit there was for my birthday. The cheese board! As a self-proclaimed cheese wuss, I’m sometimes reticent to go for cheese plates. But hey, it’s a new year, a new me, and I’m going to be more experimental, especially with cheese. With nothing overly of the blue variety on the plate, I enjoyed everything. I want more cheese boards!
I’m a sucker for octopus, so whenever I see it on a menu, there’s a good chance I’m getting it. This is the grilled mediterranean octopus salad with sopressata, fingerling potato, taggiasca olive, roasted peppers, cucumbers, herbs, and lemon. Whoo hoo! When cooked well, especially grilled, octopus is super tender. It gets a bad “rubbery” rap because of how many times it can be cooked poorly. This octopus was tender and smoky, slightly tart from the lemon, and rich with the roasted peppers and herbs. 
We thought it would be fun to try one of the pizzas, so we picked one of the very few that had meat! Here’s the prosciutto pizza with roasted grapes, gorgonzola, walnuts, arugula, and vin cotto. Perhaps the sound of grapes and walnuts and arugula on a pizza sounds odd, but to the tastebuds, it’s great.  
I don’t recall this exact dish, but it’s a strozzapretti pasta with duck, I think? This was my favorite dish of the night. It looks so simple… just some pasta with some shreads of meat in it. But dang, I could not stop eating it. The pasta was chewy and buttery and the duck was tender, fatty, and had a nice mild flavor. Oh it was so darn good!
And you have to end every Barbuzzo meal (heck, every meal!) with the salted caramel budino. It’s famous for a reason. So just be sure to order it. You’ll be glad you did!

I don’t often end up going to new and cool restaurants right after they open, but it just kinda happened that way with Cheu Noodle Bar. It was a last minute decision that ended up working out. On the Saturday night of their first week, we happened to be in the neighborhood so we thought we’d give it a shot. They said it would be about a 45 minute wait for a 2-top, but it actually ended up 30 minutes. It’s pretty small on the inside, with one long bar, behind which all the cooking is done, and a fairly small number of tables. The menu is also fairly small, which I like! 
Instead of complimentary bread or peanuts or shrimp chips or whatever, they crush a package of shin ramyun into a bowl so you can snack on the uncooked noodles that are now covered with the flavor packet powder. It’s delicious! But shin ramyun is spicy, so be careful! That big red piece almost killed me!
I’d read that the bbq rice cakes were a must order, so we definitely got those. Oh my word. I could eat these all day, every day! The term rice cakes may scare some people off, but they are the kind of chewy rice-based asian rice cakes, not the crunchy diet snack food. As a korean, I call these ddeok, and I freakin love ddeok, in all forms. And these were amazing! The rice cake pieces seemed a bit caramelized so they were crispity on the outside and chewy and hot on the inside. They’re sweet and savory and just amazing. I just wish that there were more in a portion! It seemed so tiny and they were gone so soon and it made me sad! :-(
M got the ramen which had a thick and porky broth with hunks of melty pork belly. 
I got the brisket noodle which came with a giant matzo ball and brussels sprouts in a spicy broth. This was so good! The broth is slightly spicy and a little bit sour, which is right up my alley. There were several thick pieces of brisket and oh boy, the matzo totally filled my belly! Cheu was so much fun. They just added some new items to the menu so we’ll definitely go back! Service was good and friendly and the food came out fairly fast!

To continue on with my extreme laziness in blogging, I’m finally posting on this dinner from Pumpkin from forever ago. I don’t even remember what season it was! But I’m pretty sure it was from last summer. So I apologize in advance for the lack of timeliness in the menu and seasonal ingredients. But regarless, Pumpkin still has one of the best sunday night prix fixes to be had. The bread! So warm and so good.
My cucumber and grape soup that was served cold. I love me some soup. And I love me some cold soup. This is so much more exciting than a common gazpacho type cold soup. The cucumber taste was mild and the grapes were just the right pop of sweet. I would drink this out of a glass… or even a pitcher. Just put the funnel in my mouth and start pouring.
Salmon pate with spicy foam! The foam was so spicy! There were a few hunks of watermelon on top of the salmon.
Fregola sarda with cheesy foam and coddled egg. What is fregola sarda? I don’t really know. It’s big round bits of pasta, kinda like israeli couscous. This foam was so cheesy!
A big hunk of cheese! It reminded us of feta, but was a very creamy consistency. And there were some bits of green plant that were completely mysterious, but quite tasty. Beets too, and some kind of pickled onion type thing. We have no clue, but we ate it all!
There were adorable tiny purple potatoes with my beef! And more mysterious green things that I happily ate.
Fish with mushrooms and more foam! I didn’t even realize until now just how foam-heavy this meal was! And every single foam was completely different from each other.
Chocolate cake with mango sorbet… just about the most mango-y thing you’ll ever taste!
Banana budino! There’s not much for me to say, other than just reiterate my love for Pumpkin. It’s one of my favorite restaurants in all of Philadelphia. I’ve never been disappointed. It’s just a lovely place.