Tag: Best Things We Ate

The cleverest pastas tend to trick the eye and tease with wordplay. Are those postage stamps or francobolli? A plate of handkerchiefs or fazzoletti? Sorprese? Or surprise! It’s stuffed with nothing at all.

But no pasta shape is more visually convincing than caramelle, which closely resembles oblong candies in wrappers, with both ends twisted to contain the fillings. Fiorella’s cooks add another layer of wit to their current variation on the classic shape: Their caramelle are undeniably sweet (something that pasta often is not).

But the historic Italian Market butcher shop-turned-pasta bar isn’t sugaring its pasta. The caramelle’s sweetness comes naturally from late-summer corn simmered in butter and funked up with huitlacoche and black summer truffles.

“Huitlacoche is known colloquially as the poor man’s truffle,” said chef Matt Rodrigue, who loved the duality of uniting it with conventionally expensive black truffle — and with the fungus’ host.

“Pairing huitlacoche [corn smut] with corn isn’t reinventing the wheel but, again, it was simple. They grow together. It’s one of the few fungal infections that happen on a farm where the farmer is, well, not upset because of how much it can sell for,” he said.

It’s unlikely you’d fly to Italy and get a plate of caramelle pasta made with huitlacoche, but it’s an essential ingredient in Mexican cuisine — and in Philly’s Italian Market, which now contains far more Mexican businesses than its namesake suggests.

By cooking with locally available ingredients, Rodrigue is, in essence, hewing to Italian tradition and simplicity in his approach to making pasta, even if he’s not always sticking to ingredients from Italy.

“Simple is hard. It’s difficult to be restrained and to work within confines,” Rodrigue said. “But rules help you develop a vision.”

And so his caramelle filling is simply corn, huitlacoche, butter, and onion simmered together, pureed until silken, then twisted up into pasta. The candy-shaped batons are cooked, then dressed with pasta water that’s emulsified with chives by vigorously tossing the caramelle in the pan. The dish is finished with a snowdrift of Parmigiano Reggiano and black truffle shavings. The result is a marriage of cultures, aromatic funk from two different sources, and the last breath of the season’s corn.

“People pay for things. For truffles, for certain mushrooms. And I felt corn should be in that category and an all-star. Corn is perfect. It just needs butter and salt and you’re good to go,” said Rodrigue.

And Fiorella’s caramelle is a perfect salute to corn and its smut. But also, of course, butter.

It’s summer and that means I have one goal at basically all times: to be lounging in a pool. It’s the Florida girl in me, what can I say?

So when my boyfriend, Mark, and I decided to take some days off together for a staycation, Fishtown’s Hotel Anna & Bel immediately came to mind. The boutique hotel, in a historic property that once served as a women’s home, opened in 2024 with a heated pool in its luxe open-air courtyard. A stay at the 50-room hotel guarantees exclusive poolside service, enjoyed while lounging on a cozy recliner. (Sorry, no day passes here.)

We kicked off our first night as tourists in our own city with a meal at Bastia, the in-hotel restaurant with a Sardinian- and Corsican-inspired menu. Many excellent bites were had: skate cheeks over white polenta and sweet peppers that transported me back to the South, a bright artichoke salad with shaved Parmesan, and a morel tart that inspired at least one limerick about how good morels are.

But one special in particular really sang.

Mark loves eating fish and is an excellent cook, but he’s a hamachi collar skeptic, having tried so many that have been underseasoned, uninspiring, and so tough you have to scrape the should-be fatty meat off the bone.

He had all but written off the cut — until executive chef Michael McDonough’s hamachi collar with grilled fioretto cauliflower, beldi olive agrodolce, and golden raisin glaze hit the table. One bite and Mark was sold. “It’s as if they cooked hamachi collars like they were sweet barbecue ribs,” he said.

The fish itself was blackened and tender, lacquered with a complex glaze, and brightened by a spritz of grilled lemon wedge. Its meat fell right off the bone and melted in our mouths.

This special frequently appears on Bastia’s menu because the hamachi collar is leftover after the kitchen team preps the amberjack crudo that lives on the menu at Caletta, the restaurant’s moodier, more playful cocktail lounge sister. (Hamachi is the Japanese name for amberjack, aka yellowtail.)

McDonough said the accompanying components came together out of seasonality and theme. Fioretto cauliflower — whose heads are nuttier and less dense than standard cauliflower — is at its peak. Beldi olives (Moroccan cured black olives) and golden raisins are crossover ingredients in the Sardinian, Corsican, and neighboring North African trade hub.

My other favorite bite was good enough to order twice.

Bastia’s swordfish skewers are a mainstay on its menu. They start with a center-cut loin that’s diced and marinated in an herb blend of parsley and marjoram. McDonough preserves the herbs’ vibrant green color by emulsifying them in oil with a little bit of ice. From there, the kebabs are grilled and finished with Sicilian olive oil, fresh lemon juice, French sea salt, and walnut pesto. The set of emerald green kabobs are served atop a bed of black rice with citrus labneh.

We enjoyed the skewers so much, we ordered them the next day from Anna & Bel’s poolside menu, which pairs them with golden, traditional-cut fries. After a few bites washed down with Caletta’s dirty martini and tonic (a best-of-both-worlds drink off the bar’s aperitivo hour menu), we determined our future pool days have been ruined forever.