Philly, part two: the food

We managed to sample food from five good restaurants in three days, which I thought was pretty impressive since we ate breakfast at the (appropriately named) bed and breakfast. Here's the good, bad, and ugly, with emphasis on vegetarian (which can be either good or ugly depending on your carnivorous tendencies, I suppose).

The first night we didn't want to venture far from the bed and breakfast, so I found a Philly pizza place that had an outpost in Jersey, Tacconelli's. The suburban location turned out to be a plus, because the wait wasn't too bad for a Friday night. They made a thin-crust, sweet-sauced pie, loaded with garlic. (Okay, it was garlic powder, but that made it slightly sweet instead of overly spicy.)

Lunch the next day was New Harmony's vegetarian dim sum, and turned out to be two plates laden with food in every shade of the rainbow, as long as your rainbow is all brown. I'm told that meat-eater's dim sum is also protein heavy, and they did their best to replicate the heavy, oh- my-heavens-how-could-I-eat-that-much feeling with tofu, gluten and assorted fake meats. Tasty, definitely... but, well, brown.

Which left us ill equiped for our fancy dinner at an upscale vegan restaurant, where they served up more tofu. The whole experience was rather "meh" so the less said, the better. I continue my search for a fancy all vegetarian restaurant where I would choose to eat a second time.

Sunday we brunched on crepes at Beau Monde (with most of Philly, it appears, as the dining room was deafening). If I did it over, I'd skip upscale vegetarian and double our time with the crepes. Excellent: mushrooms with a cream sauce, and then a caramel crepe for dessert. I think we could have eaten two or three each, if we weren't starting to feel the pinch on the pocketbook at that point.

We ended with Capogiro's gelato, which should have been fabulous. Either we had simply eaten too much to appreciate it, or this place made (How else can I say it?) weird gelato. We tried a rosemary goat cheese honey flavor, which was exceptionally smooth from the goat cheese, but the rosemary overpowered any pleasure derived from the eating. Apple with apple brandy was less odd, but the flavors just didn't blend.

In the end, we gave up, tossed the rest of the gelato out and drove home to eat spaghetti. Home sweet home and noodles.