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!

Manakeesh Cafe is a University City joint that bills itself as lebanese fusion. I don’t care what it is, I just know that it’s awesome and cheap. On 45th and Walnut, it occupies a beautiful building with ridiculously high ceilings, and a little bit of outdoor dining space. There’s flatbreads, appetizers, coffees, and lots of desserts. And it’s now one of my favorite places in Philly. The hummus is served with piping warm pita. There’s a whole lot of it!
This is one of the manakeesh, where their name comes from. It’s a lebanese flatbread, baked in an open flame oven, and topped with whatever suits your fancy. This particular one was the lahm bajeen, a mix of ground lamb, tomato, and spices. While the coloring was a little disturbing and raw looking, it was indeed cooked, and indeed super tasty. It doesn’t even taste super lamb-y, as I don’t typically care for lamb. But I thought this was excellent. Lamb on pizza – do try it!
We also got the honey manakeesh. I suppose this is more of a dessert one, as it had sweet cream and was drizzled with raw honey. This was rolled up and warm, and damn, it really hit the sweet spot. It would be a perfect replacement for a bagel and cream cheese in the mornings.
At Manakeesh Cafe, they have an impressive display of middle eastern sweets. Not sure what to get, I asked the guy at the register to pick out a couple of baklava for us. I told him that I trusted him. So we ended up with two pieces of this flaky, super sweet, honey-laden treat. His picks were perfect. 
We also got an adorable Turkish Coffee and one of their many fancy coffee drinks. This was the Caffe Beirut, a latte with caramel and hazelnut. It was as good as I thought it would be. It’s a nice casual spot where you put in your order and you get a number. Then they bring your food out to you. If this was in center city, I’d be there all the time! 

I recently got a chance to go to Chicago and actually hang out for about a day before having to do what I went there for, which is work. It’s a pretty cool town. It was unseasonably warm as well, so it was especially nice to wander about.
Our first team dinner was at Giordano’s, so we could try chicago-style deep-dish pizza. The pies take awhile to cook, so you order your food in advance while you wait for it to cook and while you wait for an open table. There are plenty of bars to keep you busy during the wait.
We also ordered a regular thin-crust pie for those not into the deep-dish. This wasn’t particularly exciting to me.
Here’s a plain deep-dish. The size of this pie was huge. It was almost scary. And the depth was also surprising. I had never experienced genuine chicago-style pizza. Plus, I actually don’t really like deep-dish pizzas, in general. But this thing? I surprised myself and really enjoyed it. It’s mostly cheese, and that’s no exaggeration at all. It’s just filled with pounds of melted cheese. There’s a bit of a crust at the bottom and up the sides. But basically, you’re looking at a big hunk of melted cheese. A delicious hunk of melted cheese. I could barely eat one slice. After that, I was pretty much done!
Oh, and right after I got to my hotel, I walked to Hendrickx Belgian Bread Crafter and had an almond croissant. This thing was really different from any croissant I’d had before. I highly recommend it!