Our amazing friends, Lisa and Chris, sent us tickets as an Anniversary present for a food tour here in Philadelphia. It must be extremely popular because we only managed to reserve our spots three months later! I was really surprised to see that most of the people on the tour actually lived in Philadelphia. Each restaurant on the tour is locally owned and tends to serve typical Philadelphia fare.
The tour began at a famous Italian pizza place where we had tomato pie (thick crust, room temperature tomatoes and garlic). The old woman behind the counter made sure we saw all the celebrity signs hanging on her wall, but as a disclaimer she wanted us to realize that while all the celebrities shown had "tried her product" they had not all actually stepped foot in the restaurant.
The guide also took us through some Philadelphia streets we might not have ventured on and a couple of historical parks. It was a tad cold out, but it broke up all the eating.
We of course ate cheesesteaks at a local Philadelphia Deli :)
The guide brought us pretzels (the soft kind!) to eat in "Pretzel Park" and we also stopped for authentic roast beef sandwiches in another Italian shop. I gave my sandwich to Chase, but he let me eat his canoli. Yum.
My favorite stop was a local cafe selling La Colombe coffee, which I've developed a weak spot for since moving to Philly. Out of all the places on the tour, I'm most likely to return to that cute little spot.
The last place on the list was an all-natural bakery. We ate the MOST DELICIOUS red velvet cupcakes. I gently nudged Chase into understanding how wonderful it would be to have a cake from there on my birthday. Hopefully he takes the bait.
