Laser Wolf, Philadelphia
I have never, not once in my life, been described as “cool” by anyone who actually had a right to use the term with any kind of authority. It’s why this blog tells you the eatings are cool, but not the eater.
Cool is, as the famous saying goes, a little like pornography. You know it when you see it, but it’s pretty hard to define.
Cool can be self-conscious, but most often it looks effortless. A cool apartment, a cool outfit, a cool vibe. They obviously take effort to put together, but it is the ultimate appearance of a lack of effort which actually makes it cool. Writing rather tortured prose about cool is definitely not cool. It is quite the paradox.
Happily though, actually being cool is not a requirement for going to most cool places, which will let in plebs like me on the condition you spend your money quietly and without disrupting the actual cool people. If you’ve ever been inside a Soho House, you know what I mean.
Philadelphia is not somewhere most people consider cool, but if you haven’t seen your partner in two months and it is the first place you go on holiday to see each other after such a lengthy absence and its sunny and you have a nice apartment in Rittenhouse Square, it feels pretty cool.
Philly has a reputation for dive bars, sports fans who regularly boo their own teams and Sylvester Stallone running up a long set of stairs in Rocky. As it turns out, based on a sample size of one weekend getaway in spring, the city’s rough around the edges reputation feels a little overblown (just as does the length of those stairs, which I skipped up on a morning run in what felt like no time).
Unlike most major US cities, Philly felt affordable and affable. There was a nice man with a typewriter in the park who wrote us a poem, as well as some pretty European architecture, some American historical sights and a lovely neighborhoody-vibe, where nurses and teachers could still afford to live walking distance to work. Yes, there are Philly cheesesteaks too, which were good in a cheap and dirty kinda way and eaten leaning forward while sat on a park bench to avoid cheese whizz getting on my shorts.
But all of that cool-but-understated stuff about the city was just the appetizer. The main course was a visit to the very self-consciously cool Laser Wolf, a hip eatery in an up and coming, rough and tumble area of town (where else?). The premise here is simple, you pay an inflated price for a main course of grilled meat, fish or vegetables, but are rewarded with copious amounts of hot and cold mezze, bread and (afterwards) soft serve ice cream for free.
The concept, as well as the food, is quite brilliant. For those familiar, it is like having an Ottolenghi-quality salad bar (free refills!), followed by the most perfectly grilled meats and fish you have ever had. We sat at the bar, made friends with the barman, and generally had a time that was pretty impossible to fault. It provided the backdrop for the kind of night which just feels right. Effortless, fun, satisfying.
As we dawdled home in the darkness, down pretty brownstone streets and with the warmth of the day turning to the slight chill of a spring evening, I found my mind wandering. What made this place so cool? Perhaps it was the unexpectedness of it all. The effortless sense of somewhere just being itself and getting on with it. So Philly, even though I have no right to say so, I think you’re super cool.
