Restaurant Details

It’s hard to imagine a better setting for Northwest Philadelphia’s best restaurant than a 324-year-old home clad in Wissahickon schist inside and out, with an herb garden hedging the brick patio out back. Chef-owner David Jansen’s menu is ever-changing, but you can count on top-notch cooking and elegantly plated dishes: Think a savory bonbon composed of tuna rolled in thin-sliced avocado and topped with paprika-spiced tempura crunch and needle-thin red pepper threads, or grilled branzino draped over a butter-poached lobster-asparagus salad with a sweet corn purée. Silken sauces — the French-leaning sort you’d expect from a student of Jean-Marie Lacroix — are one of Jansen’s hallmarks, as are the desserts. There’s the chocolate love cake (complete with a ganache silhouette of Robert Indiana’s sculpture), but pastry chef Patrick Conroy’s seasonal “chouxffin” — a craquelin-topped cream puff that in summer was swimming in a sweet-tart strawberry glaze — is equally irresistible.