I hadn’t been to downtown Phoenixville in eons, and I knew it was all souped up these days, but I had no idea how cute it would be! It’s seriously cute. And there’s tons of shops and restaurants, including Majolica, a BYOB. This place is adorable. It’s warm and inviting, except for their metal table tops which are disturbingly frigid! It’s considered New American cuisine and it even made the Philadelphia magazine’s 50 Best Places to Eat Right Now list.
The meal started off with a complimentary amuse bouche of homemade potato chip with tuna ceviche and fennel. Delicious! This was definitely not a greasy chip from a bag! The salty and crispity chip went nicely with the soft tuna.
The menu is not large. As far as starters go, there are a few snacks, boards, salads, and flatbreads to choose from. We got one of the boards – pastrami cured salmon with cornichon, pickled mustard seeds, red onions, capers, and hard-boiled egg, with toasted pumpernickle slices. This dish was super cute and came out on this long wooden board. It’s definitely a DIY dish as you have to assemble your own little open faced sandwich. The salmon was quite good but we didn’t taste much pastrami in it. I really liked that instead of boring mustard there were whole pickled mustard seeds which popped in your mouth. This was a cute and tasty dish.
We also tried one of the flatbreads – scallop, sweet corn, smoked bacon, parmesan, and thyme. These are like long skinny pizzas. This also had lovely soft pieces of roasted garlic that just melted in your mouth. This was definitely good, but it wasn’t particularly exciting. None of the flavors were really wow, they were all just sort of good. Perhaps I just expected something a bit more interesting.
While we waited for our pasta entrees, they brought us a palate cleanser of cucumber sorbet. Mmm, this straight up just tasted like cucumbers. And I love cucumbers, so I thought this was totally awesome.
One of our pasta dishes was the fazzoletti pasta with duck confit ragout, parmesan, arugula . I don’t know what fazzoletti means, but from the looks of it, it’s just big wide sheets of pasta. This was super good and you could totally taste the duck fat, lots and lots of duck fat! It wasn’t gamey at all and the flavor worked well with the plainness of the pasta.
The winner of the night was the parisian style gnocchi with brussel sprout leaves, pancetta, apples, and truffle butter. This was unlike any gnocchi we’ve ever had. It’s not thick or chewy or doughy. It was crunchy-ish on the outside and the inside was just melt in your mouth. Turns out that these aren’t the potato based gnocchi that you might be thinking of. Parisian gnocchi is made with flour and specifically uses cream puff dough. Yes, while this is the same dough used to make eclairs and profiteroles, it can also be used to make a delicious pasta. This was so different and delicious! Service was good and everyone was friendly and accommodating. One odd thing was when we tried to get a reservation, they wouldn’t give us the time we wanted. Then when we got there, there were plenty of empty tables available. So what was that about? Do you not give reservations on the half hour? Other than that and the icy tables, it was a lovely dinner.

Instead of heading into the city, I decided to spend my last night in the burbs and ended up busting a gut at BCD Tofu House in Edmonds. I’ve been to one before in LA, so I knew what to expect. I ordered a spicy pickled crab & tofu combo. I got a whole bunch of banchan, including this entire grilled fish. It’s impossible to go hungry here. This banchan wasn’t particularly amazing, but it was just fine.
Here’s the crab. Typically, it’s one of my favorite korean dishes of all time. Here, it was only ok. The crab didn’t taste that fresh and the flavor was only so-so. But heck, there was tons of it! And most of the crab was claws, which a lot of you probably prefer.
Here’s my little steaming cauldron of soondubu! Yum! I think there was beef and seafood in this. It just seemed to have a little bit of everything. It was also ok.
They have the “purple” rice here, which is cool. The rice comes out in its own little cauldron, but when the server comes out, she transports the rice into a metal bowl and then leaves the leftovers in the cauldron with you. Then she fills the cauldron with hot water.
Then you can mix up the water with the leftover rice and also eat that. It’s actually probably my favorite part of such a soondubu meal, even though it’s probably the most boring! This place is pretty small, and there’s only one server working in the whole place. Despite this, the service was quite fine and the food came out quickly.

Since I can’t get ramen at home, whenever I’m in a place where I can, I get it. Upon Shirley‘s recommendation, I went to Boom. It’s by the same people who run Blue C Sushi, which is a Seattle conveyor belt sushi place. There are a couple of Booms in the area and I visited the one in Bellevue, which is connected to a Blue C. The place is big and modern, with a bar, lounge, and dining area.
I decided to try the pork buns just for kicks. I had no idea if they’d be decent, and to my surprise, I liked them! The buns themselves were warm and soft and fresh. The pork was shredded and fatty, which made it a bit juicy. For veggie fillings there was lettuce, cabbage, cucumber, and cilantro. It was all served with a ginger cherry plum sauce. Really, these were pretty good!
I wanted some spice so I got the kimchi tofu, with braised pork, tofu, kimchi, raw egg, and green onion in a spicy miso broth. The broth, kimchi, and the noodles were all pretty good, but it was a bit weird. The pork was in big hunks. It made it hard to eat. They really should think about slicing it. I liked the tofu quite a bit. But cilantro in kimchi ramen? Do they not know how much old korean ladies tend to abhor cilantro? To mix cilantro and kimchi is a bit scandalous. It was still nice to eat ramen though. I already miss it. Service was meh. I ordered a drink but I never got it. Yep, the server just completely forgot about it. At least he didn’t charge me for it, that would have made me livid.