Kiddo’s vegetable-forward menu makes for a promising debut

Ever since I was little, I’ve adored potato pancakes and secretly hoped that one day I’d come across one as big as a plate. Lucky for me, Kiddo has delivered. And it’s not just a big, old regular white spud latke, but a brilliant orange rösti made from grated sweet potatoes and carrots, crisped on the plancha, and folded into a crunchy half moon beside a zesty white ajo blanco thickened with house sourdough, earthy sweet hakurei turnips, and a peppery green arugula salad.

If this is what reconnecting with a “childlike appreciation for the natural beauty of organic vegetables” looks like, I’m all in. That is one of the stated goals of Kiddo, the charming new restaurant Elizabeth Drake and her husband, chef Wyatt Piazza, opened in October at the Gayborhood corner of 12th and Pine Streets where Pinefish had operated for several years.

Kiddo’s menu is “vegetable-forward,” but it has prompted some blowback from Philly’s robust vegan scene. “We get the most flack from the plant-based community,” says Piazza, who’s always willing and able to modify his food. “But it’s our goal to accommodate any guest.”

The details of the rösti, which needs to be modified to become vegan since it’s usually cooked in butter and the default sauce is milk-based, say a lot about the gray zones Kiddo deftly navigates in a modern restaurant landscape. This menu features two meat entrées and an occasional seafood special — with the focus on environmentally low-impact, locally raised proteins such as duck and heritage pork. It is also laced with a fair bit of dairy, including some ethereally light goat cheese fritters with apple jam that sparkles with black pepper. And I’ve got no problem with that — I love great cheese!

As an enthusiastic omnivore myself, I appreciate the flexibility of the less dogmatic approach. It’s also a smart strategy for a new restaurant aiming to build a broad audience for their business, recently named one of USA Today’s top new restaurants in America. The couple met in Ithaca, N.Y., and moved from Sonoma to Philadelphia in 2019, where Piazza worked at Parc before becoming a sous-chef for Townsend Wentz at Oloroso and A Mano. And they are guided in their new venture by the pursuit of sustainability, the subject of Drake’s other career in higher education (and the wine industry before that).

The sourcing of ingredients is the most obvious aspect to tackle, from the choice of growers to cross-utilizing fruits and carrots between the bar (where they get juiced) and the kitchen (where scraps are turned into vinegars and jam). This isn’t groundbreaking. In fact, Kiddo’s diligent composting and recycling is standard among more conscientious kitchens in town. But Drake and Piazza also incorporated sustainability into elements of design. They’ve maximized natural light through the arching bay windows of the long bar room on its 12th Street side, while using low-energy LED lights for the main 28-seat room, outfitted with the natural wood tones of red oak floors and rock maple tables. There are sound buffers tucked into the black ceiling grid to soften the noise.

Drake even upcycled dozens of pictures from local thrift shops to create the tasteful montage of framed modern art that spans the dining room wall. If there’s an elusive sense of well-worn familiarity to this Kiddo space, maybe it’s because that cute watermelon painting or pear print used to be yours?

There’s plenty of room to grow in their pursuit of sustainable perfection, like one day replacing the fossil fuel-fired kitchen they inherited. And I’m not sure being ranked the fifth best new restaurant in America by USA Today is quite the blessing it seems. It risks overselling what Kiddo is at the moment: a promising new neighborhood restaurant, more than a national destination.

Of course, that’s how good restaurants often become great in Philly: by serving their neighborhood crowd first. The sense of community and accessible bar of entry to Philadelphia’s restaurant industry for entrepreneurial young talents like Piazza and Drake, both 29, are among the reasons they chose to move here to begin with.

They already have all the elements in place to grow. The service is pleasant and well-informed. The dining room, with its wainscoting and banquettes trimmed in soothing “Cook’s Blue,” is a comfortable place to eat. That’s especially true during the mellow brunch service as diners sip on cherry-tinged Kiddorito cocktails and nibble sourdough Dutch babies soaked in maple butter and scattered with preserved Lancaster blueberries.

The cocktail program overseen by Bohdan Darway, another Townsend-Oloroso alum, is excellent, with crisp riffs on classics that revealed layers of flavor through handmade touches, from a date syrup and orange oleosaccharum for the Landline, a version of an old-fashioned, to the gingery house falernum in the Double Tap winter daiquiri.

Piazza’s kitchen, where he teams up with Logan Brendel, turns out well-executed food that’s interesting without being overly precious. The two meat dishes on the dinner menu are delicious. There’s a thick, honey-glazed Duroc pork chop with duck fat-enriched sweet potato puree, shaved Brussels sprouts, and pickled pears. A pepper-encrusted duck breast is tender and perfectly cooked over smoked parsnip puree with walnuts and pickled dried cherries. The brunch menu picks up where the dinner menu’s meats leave off, turning pork scraps into patties of excellent sausage, and using savory duck confit for sweet potato hash with sunchokes and a sunny-side up egg.

But the menu’s vegetable-focused offerings are at least as interesting, bolstered by seasonality, smoke, and fermentation. I especially love the celery root carpaccio, which is smoked whole over apple and cherry wood before being cooked sous vide in a wine barigoule, then sliced into snappy, paper-thin medallions beneath bitter dandelion greens, sweet roasted sunchokes, pickled onions, sheep’s milk feta crumbles, and fried parsnip ribbons — an intricately nuanced medley of textures and flavors.

The fact that Piazza makes good pasta is no surprise, given his turn at A Mano (not to mention growing up in an Italian American household). I appreciate that he brought a little extra funk to the often over-sweet genre of pumpkin ravioli, fermenting the pumpkin first before blending it with ricotta, and cutting the richness of its butter sauce with tart beet gastrique. That dish has since been seasonally replaced by another incorporating sweet potato.

My favorite of the current pastas, though, is a house-extruded bucatini, a toothy nest of hollow pasta strands sporting a garden green glaze of pea tendril pesto that mingles with the delicately nutty snap of sunflower seeds, the tang of pickled shallots, and the earthy umami of smoked chestnut mushrooms from North Philly’s Mycopolitan.

Piazza’s self-professed sweet tooth guarantees that dessert is also one of Kiddo’s valued food groups. The cookie plate is a nod to the chef’s own childhood obsession, turning a blueberry muffin into a cookie alongside another stuffed with walnut and caramel, a mint chocolate shortbread sandwich, and a citrusy poppy sugar cookie. The fresh churned ice creams are also a draw, with a vanilla-rich scoop adding à la mode decadence to the apple-stuffed zeppoli, and salted caramel ice cream delivering a next-level buzz when doused tableside with a hot shot of Rival Bros. espresso.

The best dessert-like dish I ate here? It was actually at brunch, where we feasted on the mountainous French toast as a final course, a creamy, custard-soaked stack of thick-sliced house brioche lavished with brandied apples, candied pecans, Pennsylvania maple syrup, and whipped cream. If that over-the-top plate doesn’t stoke your inner-Kiddo sense of wonder, nothing will.

1138 Pine St., 215-398-3377; kiddorestaurant.com

Dinner Wednesday through Monday, 4 to 10 p.m. Brunch Saturday and Sunday, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Closed Tuesday.

Wheelchair accessible.

Pastas and large plates, $22-$36.

Drinks: Cocktail program offers excellent variations on classic styles, elevated by seasonal twists and well-made house mixers. There are several local beers and ciders, as well as a thoughtful zero-proof program built around fresh shrubs. A small wine list of about 20 labels, including half available by the glass, focuses on moderately priced wines from producers across the globe that use organic or biodynamic practices.

There are several gluten-free options, and kitchen is able to modify dishes, except for the pastas. Most vegetarian dishes can also be modified to be vegan.