Talula's Garden: Not Too Late To Enjoy The Garden

One of the cutest and lushest outdoor dining spots in Center City is the patio at Talula's Garden, this year's new urban daughter to Amy Olexy's much lauded rural Talula's Table in Kennett Square.

Yes, the temperatures are dipping and the season for dining under the stars is quickly fading, but it's not too late to eek out a few more weeks of outdoor dining. Talula's Garden is stretching the al fresco season as long as it can with it's new staff of outdoor heating lamps.Talula's Garden is not just a restaurant with "seasonal American food inspired by the farm and garden" by Amy Olexy, but is also a restaurant by Stephen Starr, who is undeniably a master at designing themed restaurants. Theme for Talula's Garden: farm and garden. For all of you out there that swoon over Urban Outfitter's home and garden shop, Terrain, you are going to love Talula's Garden; it was hit with the same rustic and repurposed, but deliberate and chic design aesthetic.

Mix-and-match dinnerware lends to the rustic, chic vibe.

Wanting only a drink and small snack some place on the way home after traipsing through the city, we recently warmed up under a heat lamp for a glass of wine on Talula's patio just off Washington Square Park — a perfect place to escape the harsh edges of the city and unwind.Determined not to let summer slip away, I ordered a glass of Millbrook rosé at the patio bar.A few weeks ago I was tasked with finding bottles of vegan wine (animal products are often used as fining agents), and this is not made easy by wine labels, which almost never disclose if a wine is or is not vegan. Keys such as the one above on Talula's Garden's wine menu are very much appreciated.

Now, if only Talula's Garden would put a similar key on their dinner menu to denote vegetarian and vegan items, although I'm afraid not much at Talula's Garden is vegan. (Vegan dishes can be made at Talula's Garden. Check out Living On The Vedge's glowing experience.)Only wanting a small nibble, we decided on a cheese plate since cheese is one of Olexy's passions. From the six cheese plates on Talula's Garden's menu, we went with The Locavore cheese plate featuring six cheeses made in the region, and accompanied by drips and drops of honey, jams, dried fruits, and nuts, as well as a bowl of mixed breads.There's nothing I like more than sampling and comparing foods side to side. On their own, each of the six regional cheeses are great, but, side by side, there were some definite standouts (Pipe Dreams Ashed Goat Log and Birchrun Hill's "Fat Cat").

My absolute favorite cheese, though, was the Bailey's Dairy Ricotta, which is actually Talula's housemade Ricotta with cow milk from Bailey's Dairy. I was amazed at how sweet, buttery and creamy this cheese was, and declared it a perfect topping for apple pie — or any dessert that would couple with whipped cream or vanilla ice cream.

The garden at Talula's Garden is quite a nice little sidestep from the city sidewalks, and we hope to get back to the garden soon while the weather is still amenable.

Talula's Garden
210 West Washington Square, Philadelphia, PA 19106

(215) 592-7787

Cooperage

Back before Cooperage opened in April of this year, I was excited for the "gastropub meets Southern Soul" wine and whiskey bar, but was a little miffed at the first peek of the almost vegetarian-hostile Southern influenced menu. I bit my tongue and waited to see what developed from the Curtis Center's first floor bar and eatery. While not a vegetarian haven, the menu (a tad different than the online version) turned out to have a few items to choose from, although mostly in the bar snacks, sides and salad section.
While the interior is dark and modern, overall the feeling is of a chain restaurant or hotel restaurant (I'm sure I felt this way because the restaurant is in the interior of an office building and business types were happy hour-ing). Cooperage does try to bring the down home feeling with small touches like Mason drinking glasses and dish towel napkins.
What got me initially excited about Cooperage was the fact that they serve boiled peanuts. You won't find boiled peanuts on the menu, but take a seat at the U-shaped bar or one of the dining room tables and you'll be presented with a complimentary ramekin of hot, salty, boiled peanuts cleverly placed in a tub with room for discarding shells. Who gives you complimentary anything sitting at a bar anymore?!
My mint julep flavored with the fruit of the day (blueberry and peach on my visit) was strong and served in a silver cup (no silver straw, though) as juleps should be, but I'd skip the fruit flavors next time and just ask for a regular ol' julep.
Sit down for dinner and not only will you get complimentary boiled peanuts, but you'll get complimentary cornbread. The red chili flecked cornbread straddled the line between sweet cornbread (a no-no in the South) and non-sweet cornbread, but leaned more so to the traditional Southern non-sweet cornbread. A smart move on their part, because people around these parts just complain when there is no sugar in cornbread.
Hushpuppies with blueberry jam were up next. Now hushpuppies are savory bites of cornmeal batter usually studded with onions and sometimes other savories like green peppers, and often times fried in fish grease. I do appreciate the absence of fish grease since I don't eat fish, but was not happy with what seemed to be the exact same cornbread batter (minus the chilis) fried up with no savory seasonings. And the blueberry jam just took this dish farther into the land of sweetness. These are not hushpuppies.
The cobb salad comes topped with charred corn, pistachios, avocado, marinated jicama, tomatoes, and fried okra. A hearty, filling, interesting, but unrefined salad I could see many Curtis Center employees eating as a lunch entree from the small, to-go Cooperage Cafe located right next door to the restaurant. The only flaw: the okra was fried to an oblivion, so much so that the okra actually lost moisture and shrank.
The sweet potato tots were also fried to an oblivion. These are poor, dimly lit pictures, but in real life the grated sweet potato balls were also black. The grease also did not taste fresh. One bite and we just said no. The green tomato chutney was sweet and spiced like apple pie filling. Even if the sweet potato tots were edible, I'm just not sure about this dish. It's like someone said, "Hey, sweet potatoes and green tomatoes are cliche Southern ingredients, let's put them together somehow." Even if the tomatoes in the fried green tomato sandwich weren't fried to oblivion black in old grease, I don't think this sandwich with seasoned chips would be much to write home about. Some mayo, Burrata cheese, poorly cooked tomatoes, and lettuce on a hoagie roll that did not taste like it was from one of Philly's finest bakeries. It was a lot of bread and some poor fillings. Even though the tomatoes are red and the heritage is Italian, you'd find a finer fried tomato sandwich at Chickie's in South Philly.

Oh, Cooperage! You kinda made me sad with your Southern influenced offerings — at least the veggie offerings. You did make me very happy with the complimentary boiled peanuts, though. My suggestion: stop into Cooperage for a drink to discover just how good boiled peanuts are. Then carry on.

Cooperage
601 Walnut St., in Curtis Center building, Philadelphia, PA, 19106
215-225-COOP
Mon-Fri: 11:30am-10:30pm
Sat: 4pm-10pm
Sun: 4pm-9pm
Cafe hours: Mon-Fri, 7am-5pm