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!

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.

The West of Broad side of South Street is recently replete with tons of restaurants. Sit-down, takeout, PIE, it’s all quite the transformation. One of these newer spots is adorable Rex 1516. It’s so cute and moody, and rather romantic looking. It’s southern-inspired cuisine, and there are plenty of homecooked style dishes on the menu.
I’m a sucker for mac n cheese, so of course I had to get it! Rex’s version contains gruyere, fontina, swiss, roasted tomatoes, and is topped with crispy ham. It’s not an ooey gooey type of mac n cheese, which isn’t a bad thing. Sometimes I find those types too rich. It’s just cheesy enough, and the ham was a nice surprise.
We continued with a couple of more small plates, including the Crawfish Pot-Pie and the soup of the day. The pot-pie contained a 3 cheese spicy crawfish etouffee in a golden pie crust. The soup was a potato-based mushroom soup, which had a little kick. We were afraid that it would have too much of a mushroom taste, but it was actually pretty potato-heavy and yummy.
Lastly we shared the Moules Frites – a big plate of PEI mussels, sweet potato fries, bacon, roasted tomatoes, and thyme, in a Dijon-porter broth. This was a great way to end the meal, as the small plates had certainly got us started, but we didn’t need our own entrees. As a fan of sweet potato fries, in general, I’m happy to report that these are some of the best in the city! The mussels and the broth worked really well together, and we both enjoyed these immensely. We had a great time here, and the service was attentive and friendly. The atmosphere is low-lit and romantic and they play excellent music!