Fishtown hit Tulip Wine Bar delivers casual style, local wines, and spirit of the moment

Everyone loves pasta. Many of us prize a glass of good vino, too. But that only partly explains why Tulip Pasta & Wine Bar has swiftly become one of Philadelphia’s most coveted reservations.

This charming newcomer glows bright from its little storefront in the heart of Fishtown and has mustered a host of key virtues — accessible style and good cooking without too much fuss, a serious locavore mission (including its wine and wheat), and an intimate neighborhood vibe. Those things resonate in 2023.

Add the energy of an open kitchen and chef counter, the limited space of 40 seats, with 20% of them set aside nightly for walk-ins, and you have the perfect recipe for a 9 a.m. reservation scramble on Resy 30 days in advance of your target date. It’s a lot of hype for a little pasta house to live up to. But Tulip’s appeal is impossible to deny.

The house-made noodles certainly deserve their share of praise, from the ruffled mafalde ribbons glazed in a frothy cheese sauce tanged with a peperoncini twist on the now ubiquitous cacio e pepe (using fermented chili paste in lieu of the usual black pepper) to the plump ravioli blushing pink, earthy, and sweet with tart sumac and charcoal-roasted beets.

I also can’t stop thinking about the tortellini en brodo that chef and managing partner Alexander Beninato recently produced as a special. Golden consommé came bobbing with tulip-shaped dumplings — their fine pasta skins rolled from house-milled flour, their stuffing savory with local mortadella and cheese — that struck the perfect note of refined simplicity that often defines pasta at its best. Just two elements are at play inside that bowl. But the craft that went into drawing such layered flavors from the intricately folded tortellini and that patient broth was so irresistible, I could have eaten them by the bucket.

Of course, specials always change, and this 15-item menu continuously evolves with the seasons. Who knows what surprises will greet you by the time your reservation is finally up a month down the road?

If you’re lucky, you’ll find Tulip’s fantastic savory take on a cannoli, the crunch of its wine-infused pastry shell stuffed with silky chicken liver mousse, pistachios, and bittersweet kumquats from Bhumi, New Jersey’s Asian citrus specialist.

One thing is for certain: Tulip Pasta & Wine Bar, which glows like a butter yellow light box from behind its wide-paned windows at the corner of Norris and Tulip Streets, has resonated so well because it strikes a delicate balance between laid-back style and earnest culinary energy that feels like a date-night event — but with check averages hovering around $55 per person.

Also key is a unique partnership that gives this space a Pennsylvania-centric liquor license as a satellite tasting room for Wayvine Winery & Vineyard in Nottingham, Chester County, which technically owns the restaurant, with the food operation managed by Jason Cichonski’s Ampere Hospitality, which also runs Messina Social Club and Attico. As a far more economical option to a traditional full liquor license, the concept of a tasting room with an ambitious menu offers a promising new revenue model for small restaurants that, five years ago, might otherwise have opened as a BYOB.

Its success is partly reliant on the notion that a local winery is worth pairing with. And Wayvine is one of the rising stars in a new generation proving Pennsylvania can indeed make interesting wine.

Brothers James, 30, and Zachary Wilson, 33, have transformed part of their family’s former 260-acre dairy farm into a vineyard. And their location in Southern Chester County is capable of producing some of the ripest fruit and most enjoyable reds in the state, like their dark-fruited carmine (a cross of cabernet sauvignon, Carignane, and merlot), an almost Euro-style barbera with earth tones and good acidity, as well as aromatic whites (riesling), rotating pét-nat experiments, and a soon-to-be-released vermouth steeped with organic herbs and botanicals from the farm. The vermouth is already used in the barrel-aged negroni on Tulip’s small cocktail list.

In many ways, Tulip is an extension of the pasta journey Cichonski began when he bought an extruder to create flavor-infused noodles at his former restaurant, Ela, which he spun off into the retail-oriented Little Noodle Pasta Co. with the intent of one day opening a casual pasta counter. It’s an idea that Cichonski, who launched a version with a partner in Denver (now closed), still aims to open in Philly one day.

Tulip delivers a considerably more polished restaurant experience than Little Noodle’s quick-serve concept, with a cozy suite of peach-colored dining rooms, and well-versed servers like Lauren Cadwell and Ryan Nagle guiding guests through the menu with smart Wayvine pairings (and complimentary tastings in the process).

On the flip side, Tulip is a far more casual venue for Cichonski’s partner and lead chef here, Beninato, who most recently was the chef de cuisine turning out the nine-course modern French tasting menu at Laurel.

A break from the tweezer life has been a welcome shift for Beninato, who can now plumb his Italian family roots for inspiration while also diligently pursuing Mid-Atlantic sourcing. Among the group’s greatest ambitions: an acre of Redeemer wheat is planned to be grown this spring at Wayvine to truly root the core of this restaurant’s flavors in the terroir of the owners’ fields.

The concise menu is already driven by that spirit. Among the best starters is local tuna crudo dressed with pickled summer husk cherries and Susquehannah Mills sunflower oil. Every table, it seems, orders the creamy stracciatella pulled from Caputo Bros. curds, and for good reason. It comes mounded over a squash caponata beside a warm cast-iron pan of salt-flecked focaccia.

Grilled broccolini from Green Meadow Farm arrives with zesty bagna cauda and sunchoke chips. And while the mushroom arancini may seem laden with dairy, they are in fact vegan, enriched by the cashew-coconut milk cheeses of Philly’s innovative Bandit.

I appreciate Beninato’s efforts to make Tulip’s cuisine amenable to dietary restrictions. Gluten-free pasta, and care to avoid cross contamination, is available for most dishes, and the ricotta-spinach gnudi are naturally gluten-free, although these overly chewy little cheese balls were among the menu’s least exciting options. The tiny grooved shells of gnocchi sardi with lemongrass-braised pork and bok choy were also good, but shy of great.

More memorable were the vivid seasonal touches on the crab ravioli, with toasted pepitas in a crab-infused sage brown butter and Old Bay-scented cubes of honeynut squash that accented the crab’s natural sweetness. There was also so much sweet crustacean inside those sunshine-shaped dumplings, it was like eating mini-crab cakes encased in gossamer pasta medalions.

The broad, silken sheets of pappardelle were rolled in snappy bundles around a luscious ragù of braised Elysian Fields lamb whose flavor was deepened by an earthy gravy infused with porcini and chicken of the woods mushrooms.

For dessert, Tulip keeps it simple with some familiar ideas. Some fresh ricotta fritters with pawpaw crème anglaise. A creamy lemon and mascarpone panna cotta with hazelnut crumble. A chocolate polenta cake (hello, Vetri classic!), which comes with cannoli cream, which, if you ask nicely, they might actually also use to fill their cannoli shells for dessert — instead of chicken liver mousse.

Everyone loves a cannoli. And Tulip clearly has that covered, too.

2302 E. Norris St., 267-773-8189; tulippasta.com

Dinner Wednesday and Thursday, 5-9 p.m.; Friday and Saturday, until 10 p.m.

The entrance is not wheelchair accessible because are two steps. However, bathroom is wheelchair accessible.

Gluten-free pasta options are available, with attention paid to avoid cross contamination.

Reservations are open on Resy 30 days in advance at 9 a.m.