A Pop-up Restaurant? What's that?

Well, I’ll tell ya! Let me explain: a pop-up restaurant is when a restaurant is conceived, assembled, opened, and closed all in a very short amount of time. Basically an empty space is transformed into a restaurant like poof magic sparkles! Ever seen those cooking competition shows where they have to sit down and think of a restaurant and it is only open for that one night? That is a pop-up. And this week I got to go to one! Let me back up. The restaurateur I have mentioned before, Stephen Starr, did this experiment where he teamed up with chefs from around the city and worked with them to put together pop-up restaurants where they are the executive chefs and he is like the financier or investor. He only plans to do three this summer, one with Aimee Olexy, the chef and owner (I think) of Talula’s Table  to do the first one. I didn’t go to that one. The second one was with Konstantinos Pitsillides of Kanella this was the one I got to go to. The third has not even happened yet but it will be featuring one of the cheftestants from the current season of Bravo’s Top Chef, which is kind of cool.

So Kanella. Oh Kanella. Where to start? Really with Kanella it is all about the food. Which is A.maze,ing. Kanella is a tiny little restaurant in Center City Philly, but not really in the hustle and bustle of things. It’s actually on the corner of a side street off the main drag towards the outskirts of the gayborhood. Gordon Ramsey would say that it is “simple, honest, and rustic” (compliments for him). It is an amazing restaurant. It’s Cypriot themed, but unlike a lot of other restaurants the chef/owner is actually from Cyprus. What is really cool about Cyprus is that the cuisine is a mix of Greek and Middle Eastern. So, needless to say, it is really, really good. So good, in fact, that it has been featured not only in pretty much every paper and magazine in Philly, but also on the Food Network on “The Best Thing I Ever Ate: Salty” for their Cyprus Breakfast, but also in other national magazines like Esquire.  Did I mention they have really good food?

What was the coolest thing about the Pop-up was that it was the Kanella food but with an amazing budget. And booze! Kanalla is a BYOB and I usually go there for breakfast, so I wouldn’t do a lot of boozing anyway. The Pop-up had “specialty cocktails” like the Salty Cypriot, which was a really fancy version of gin and tonic but pimped out. Best cocktail I have ever had. For dinner I had quail. Freakin’ quail with a chickpea salad, figs, and Spanish goat cheese! Those  Spanish goats know their stuff! It was out of this world good. T had a lamb kabob which with a ton of fixin’s. Beyond good. We had appetizers and desert too which were all just amazing. It was…expensive, but totally worth it! I wish that pop-up restaurants that good came around all over the world and more often so everyone would be able to have as good a time as we did!