Rosemary brings big city restaurant vibes to Delco’s Ridley Park

Who carries quarters anymore? Not me. That’s why I was mildly flustered when I parked for dinner on Hinckley Avenue in front of Rosemary in Ridley Park. Not only does this quaint but very quiet business district charge street parkers until 9 p.m., the tiny Delco borough (1.1 square miles; pop. 7,100) still uses old-fashioned coin-operated meters. But Philip Breen already had his coin roll in hand to make change for guests when we entered the foyer of his four-month-old restaurant.

“We just quartered all the meters on the block at the top of hour,” Breen told me with a wry smile from the host’s stand, flexing the fine-tuned anticipation skills of a do-anything hospitalitarian trained over a decade under Stephen Starr, followed by a stint with Defined Hospitality at Condesa. He expressed a hint of annoyance that increased evening meter enforcement had seemingly coincided with his $2 million renovation of the old Burgundy Lounge pool hall into this bright modern American bistro with sidewalk seating, stylish cocktails, and a chef whose resumé includes Michelin-starred restaurants.

You’re definitely going to need to pump at least 75-cents’ worth of quarters into that meter if you plan to linger over chef Elijah Milligan’s lavish raw bar platter bearing half a dozen seafood delights, from tuna tartare with compressed watermelon cradled in shiso leaf bundles, to Savage Blonde oysters topped with yuzu-jalapeño gelée. There are also crab claws and gochugaru-marinated shrimp.

And who can blame this community, which has lost significant revenue from its commuter train station lots since the pandemic, for making the most of its first new restaurant to open with evening hours in a quarter century?

“We still see meter revenue in bags of money,” borough manager Rich Tutak told me. “But we’ve definitely seen an uptick at night.”

The promise of a financial bump is not the only positive effect of Rosemary’s arrival. It’s brought the emotional boost of some destination dining cachet to a downtown that’s already been on a modest rise with a popular breakfast-lunch cafe, the BrickHaus, and a Euro-style bakery called Ardour, whose moist pistachio cake is a dessert highlight on Rosemary’s menu.

With well over 100 seats between its bustling open dining room and bar, greenhouse, and outdoor tables, and a notable chef in Le Bec-Fin and Stateside alum Milligan, Rosemary has the potential to be a significant draw for the southern half of Delaware County. Outside of Media, this area has too few options for this kind of restaurant experience. It’s not fine-dining fussy so much as it is date-night ambitious, up-to-date and lively, with clean white walls, chestnut wood accents, a green-tiled bar, cozy banquette seating, and a collage of mirrors framing the energetic space. (There’s even some welcome soundproofing tiles to attempt to buffer the noise.)

Breen’s front house experience comes through in the warm hospitality of a locally recruited dining room staff that’s young but enthusiastic. His knowledge of good spirits plays well in my favorite cocktail there, a rum twist on an old-fashioned that swaps Zaya 16 for the usual whiskey, and frozen coffee ice cubes that add another subtle layer of flavor as the drink melts. Whiskey cocktails, meanwhile, like the underappreciated boulevardier riff with rye called Old Pal, get a quality boost from Michter’s.

With a start like that, such a welcoming vibe, and several tasty opening nibbles to stoke the appetite — try the tender grilled rib eye skewers over Turkish flatbread with an aji verde lime yogurt dip on the side — it’s easy to see the potential for Rosemary and root for this promising new project to succeed.

As I dove deeper into the menu, some hits and misses revealed how challenging it can be to execute ambitious dishes with enough consistency to merit $30 to $40 for entrees in a suburban zone where the skilled kitchen talent pool is even scarcer than Philly’s also-challenged labor market.

Milligan isn’t going for the gastro preciousness of Le Bec-Fin, San Francisco’s Petit Crenn, or Michael Chiarello’s Bottega in Yountville, the last two among the most notable kitchens he worked at during four years in Northern California. This menu largely features familiar ingredients with global twists — grazing Asia, Latin America, and the Mediterranean — balancing accessibility with bold-flavored style.

A riff on the seafood mousse from Georges Perrier’s famous crab cake gets an update inside charcoal black pasta ravioli sauced with creamy Calabrian ‘nduja chile butter. Chicken marinated in a Peruvian-style brew of lime and cumin gets hickory smoked and served with aji verde and salsa negra. ‘Nduja makes another spicy cameo in the garlic cream pooled atop the baked oysters. And Milligan’s roasted octopus dish is so distinctive, served over lime yogurt, with sundried tomato jam and crunchy wasabi rice pearls, it was emulated closely by one of Rosemary’s local competitors (on a special at Media’s Towne House), down to the trout roe garnish. Imitation is a form of flattery, of course, though Milligan used a feistier characterization on social media.

Some other dishes fell short, either by concept or execution. Delco residents “love sauce,” Milligan tells me, and I won’t blame anyone for wanting to maximize flavor. But the natural delicacy of scallops was lost inside the pink lava flows of heavily creamed and roux-thickened sauce Americaine and an already rich lobster risotto. There wasn’t simply too much sauce for the mahi-mahi market fish special: The Thai-style red curry was so intensely concentrated it wasn’t properly balanced or enjoyable to eat.

Meanwhile, technical shortcuts to mitigate lack of experience on the kitchen line led to their own issues. The big pork rib eye with farro and huckleberry jus was mostly delicious, but the meat itself had been overly brined then precooked sous vide, resulting in the bouncy resilience of lunch meat. A reliance on the more forgiving smash burger technique, instead of properly cooking a plump patty to order, can only go so far if it simply results in two juiceless patties of overcooked beef for $19. No homemade bun or truffled aioli will save it.

Given those other issues, I was pleased with the savory oomph and tenderness of the beef rib eye, also precooked sous vide but properly grilled. It was also topped with bits of ground beef in black garlic Bordelaise, and dusted with shaved horseradish for my first ever experience with beef-crusted beef. Crisply seared salmon was a safe choice over curry-scented couscous, pureed broccolini, bitter radicchio, and a limoncello vinaigrette.

The pastas are all made in-house, and vehicles for hearty, rich preparations rather than explorations of noodle finesse. But I enjoyed the deep autumnal savor of the braised and smoked lamb necks over mafaldine ringed with carrot sauce. The tagliatelle tossed with a truffled green parsley puree came laced with tender duck confit and topped with crispy duck cracklins that also hit the mark.

Rosemary now has a pastry chef and has begun making some of its sweets in-house, like the sugar-dusted beignets, though Milligan has promised to keep Ardour’s pistachio cake. It’s delicious and he wants to keep supporting another of Ridley Park’s notable new food businesses.

But I’m glad to see Rosemary, which is named for Breen’s paternal grandmother, keep evolving forward into an ever-ambitious future. Its kitchen flaws can be easily remedied with more experience. And its impact has already been so clearly positive for this rising pocket of Delco dining energy. The borough is now even on track to embrace 21st-century parking app technology in the near future. The initiative had already been simmering, borough manager Tutak says, “but the new restaurant has kicked us into the next gear.”

25 E. Hinckley Ave., Ridley Park, 610-671-3770; rosemaryrp.com

Dinner Monday through Saturday, 5 to 10 p.m.; Sunday, until 9 p.m. Brunch Saturday and Sunday, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Wheelchair-accessible.

Entrees, $19-$40.

Most of the menu is gluten-free or can be made gluten-free, including celiac-friendly noodle substitutions for the pasta made by Delco’s Settantatré.