For my birthday meal pick this year I selected Pietramala in Philadelphia where I was visiting my in law family for the week. Pietramala is a vegan restaurant which highlights “Plants on a Pedestal” aka a focus on plant based plates and local produce. We enjoyed the whole menu of 3 small, 3 medium and 4 large plates and 3 of the 4 desserts. The largest party size they take reservations for is 4, which is the perfect amount of people to order the whole menu – which guests are known to do!
The menu changes seasonally and is posted weekly so everyone’s experience may vary, though some dishes like the focaccia and beets seem to be signature offerings. They offer a few non alcoholic beverages and are otherwise BYOB. Overall we were impressed with the flavors and textures of all the dishes in bringing us both something familiar but also new – no wonder Pietramala made Bon Appetit’s list as well as Esquire’s list of Best New Restaurants in 2023 and VegNews Best 28 Vegan Restaurants in America listed it as 2023 Best New Vegan Restaurant.
Small Plates
– Market Lettuces, tarragon vinaigrette
– Focaccia, charred leek
– Golden Beets, preserved beet aioli, sour chard
This dish was my favorite of the three small dishes – I only knew this because of my research ahead of time, but the description is vague on purpose to surprise you with the flavors of a new york reuben and deli chips lunch!
Medium Plates
– Asparagus, fresh tofu, spring onion jus, porcini oils
My favorite of the three medium sized dishes, I could eat just this dish alone, and would have loved to have this perhaps on some jasmine rice to help soak up all the jus and oil. The only negative was that as a shared dish this is pretty difficult to eat with the broth and small individual plates for each of us – rice would have solved that problem too. But I’m sure there isn’t anyone growing rice locally for them to source from. BTW although the menu doesn’t list the farms, you can see them on their Instagram posts and even behind the scenes of making the dishes.
– Hakurei Turnips, nettle-ramp pesto, black walnut, crosnes
Loved the sear and flavor, the only reason this dish was not the favorite is that the turnips were really firm and I wish they had just been an itsy bit softer.
– Roasted Japanese Sweet Potatoes, chili oil, sumac tahini
I loved how crispy these sweet potatoes were – the sauce was nice but the sweet potatoes were so flavorful I found myself scraping some of the sauce off to just enjoy pure sweet potato flavor. My second favorite of the three, but it was a hard choice between this and the asparagus dish.
Large Plates
– Parsnip Piccata, day lily shoots, housemade capers
The texture of this dish was surreal in its perfection of crisp exterior almost like a schnitzel that makes it better than it’s inspirational meat version and this dish’s firm interior with creamy yet bright lemony piccata sauce. I appreciate that they pounded the heck of this and posted this to their gram.
– Cabbage, celeriac, horseradish, dill
I like the idea of this dish, but perhaps I was unlucky that I got a piece that had a lot of that freshly grated horseradish on it and other forkfuls were more plain – would have also liked to see a little bit more char to the cabbage but that’s personally how I love my cabbage – well roasted.
– Tortelloni, green garlic, cashew ricotta, spring greens
One dining guest at my table was looking forward to this the most and was rewarded for waiting for this second to last savory dish to the table. I love the jumbo size of the tortelloni, but with it’s lighter representation of spring I wish it had some earlier among these four larger dishes so we could have appreciated it more. Usually the server cleared and replaced our little individual plates and silverware between the small and medium to large dish changes, but they also did so between the parsnip and cabbage dish – perhaps precisely because of the strong flavors of the cabbage dish vs more delicate tortellini.
– Comb Tooth Mushroom, yellow eye bean miso, heirloom polenta
I loved this meaty combo of the mushrooms and polenta and especially the little fingers of this mushroom which were a little crispy. My favorite of the large dishes.
Dessert
– Crostata, chocolate, magnolia, macadamia
Would you expect this dish to be served warm or cold was the discussion – what would you think?
– Ginger Custard, preserved fruit, quinoa granola
– Scoop, celery ice cream sandwiched between tomato miso, sesame cookie
The celery-ness of the ice cream was a surprise initially but was refreshing and paired well with the chewy tomato miso cookie with a touch of sesame.
Thanks Waz Wu for your recommendation to visit Pietramala! I hope one day Veganizer can entice the chef to come visit Portland and perhaps do a collab or showcase. The in-laws I visited in Conshohocken rarely come into Philadelphia so I had to narrow it down to only one request in the city – and Pietramala was worth trading away any other Philadelphia stop this trip.
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