Talula's Table

Living on the outskirts of Kennett Square, Pennsylvania for two years while attending school for horticulture, I can’t say that Kennett Square and its historic Main Street held many attractions for me. Kennett Square is the sort of place that excites your mother when you mention “quaint town.”

Thanks to the previous owners of Django restaurant in Philadelphia, Aimee Olexy and Bryan Sikora, who closed up shop in Philly to move to the country, there’s now a place in Kennett Square that excites me – and your mother.

Talula’s Table, a gourmet food shop with prepared foods, take away dinners, and catering, sits smack in the middle of historic Kennett Square’s main drag. Talula’s Table prides itself on making fresh foods daily with consideration to the season and local ingredients. They also make a concerted effort to prepare a few vegetarian options.

Recessed shelves and coolers are filled with gourmet goodies perfect for a picnic, or to take home and make a meal. Gourmet crackers, preserves, pickles, teas, chocolate, and other foodie fodder line the shelves. Fresh breads and pastries are made daily, and a wide selection of artisan cheeses is displayed in a case along with sides and entrees just waiting to be taken home and heated for dinner. Sandwiches made daily are stacked in a cooler and ready to grab and go. A coffee bar and bottled drinks will quench your thirst.

While Talula’s Table is set up for grabbing and going, there is a large farmhouse table in the middle of the store that can be booked for occasions, along with a round table tucked in the front corner and a couple of bistro tables on the sidewalk, if you would rather enjoy your eats in situ. That’s exactly what I did.

I sampled the goat cheese and beet salad with glazed pecans. The beets were perfectly tangy from a marinade, and I was delighted with the beet's different red hues. Sometimes it’s the little things that impress.

The only vegetarian sandwich option was egg salad on focaccia. I love egg salad, but am very cautious about eating boiled eggs at restaurants. I’m scared about rubberiness and freshness, so almost never eat boiled eggs that I don’t cook myself. I wasn’t afraid of the freshness at Talula’s table, so decided to take the gamble on rubberiness. The eggs were fresh and cooked perfectly. After all the deliberation, the egg salad turned out to be disappointingly bland. A couple of cranks of the pepper mill and some sweet relish mixed in would have livened things up. (All sandwiches come with a free little bag of chips.)

The mac and cheese is the style that can be cut into squares and retain its shape – just the kind I prefer. They heated that baby up, since I was dining in, and, let me say, the mac and cheese was absolutely dreamy and creamy. (I didn’t want to make that rhyme, but… it’s true.) As per my usual complaint about mac and cheese, I wish Talula’s Table’s mac and cheese had a sharper cheese mixture. That aside, I’d put Talula’s Table in a tie with Morning Glory’s mac and cheese as one of the best I've sampled in these parts.

For dessert I chose a banana cream cake solely for the reason that I had bananas on the brain. Those bananas are now on my hips.

Even though Talula's Table is not quick-lunch cheap (all of this food, plus two drinks, were split between one hungry person and one not-so-hungry person, and rang up to just under $30), I wish a gourmet food shop like this had been around when I was living in the area. I do drive through Kennett Square about twice a month for work, so maybe I'll forget to pack my lunch on those days.

Talula's Table, 102 W. State Street, Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, 19348
Phone: 610-444-8255
Open daily, 7am-7pm