Philly Eatery: RELISH

This weekend I traveled back to where my adult life began and where the best University exists, Temple University...Go Owls!! A place known as good ol' Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love. While there, I was introduced to a restaurant located in West Oak Lane.  It's a restaurant with live Jazz, known as Relish.  This African-American owned establishment serves a fancy spin on southern comfort food.  We tried about 3 or 4 different appetizers and 3 entrees.  My review is below:


APPETIZERS:
 1. Skillet Cornbread w/honey butter - amazingly soft with a slight resemblance to cake.
 2. Seafood Mac & Cheese - it had a great creamy but not over nauseating texture, with crab and lobster.  It still tasted like mac & cheese and was not overpowered by the seafood.
 3. Grilled Diver Scallops - giant scallops wrapped in a soft cooked turkey bacon with a mango chutney.  Anyone that knows me, knows that I absolutely despise turkey bacon and this appetizer gave my decision to stick to pork on this fork, merit.
 4. Fried Calamari and Okra - Nothing special, it was your run of the mill fried calamari and okra.  The aoli was quite tasty and actually made the calamari have flavor.  I would have preferred the appetizer if it was all fried okra!

Appetizers

ENTREES:

 1. Lamb Shank - By far the best entree on the table.  It was served in a Mediterranean style sauce and was a lot of food. Accompanied with your ice cream scooper mashed potatoes and collard greens.

 2. Honey Glazed Duck Breast - a very juicy, tender cut of meat with a cherry sauce.  This cherry sauce was a little over cooked for my taste.  It no longer had the intense cherry flavor that usually is a great contrast with meat such as duck. Accompanied with those single scooped mashed potatoes and garlic string beans.  The string beans were without a doubt cooked to perfection.

 3. Roasted Herb Chicken - well not much to say....chicken is chicken!  One thing I never order when I dine out is chicken.  It doesn't take the top graduate from the French Culinary Institute to be able to make a decent chicken.  So, not only did I not order this, but I didn't even taste it, I don't even remember what it was accompanied by. Nonetheless, this entree will not be reviewed by moi.  If it's any consolation, from what I heard, it tasted like....chicken.   Maybe the photo will help. 

In sum, I would definitely go back to Relish, and would recommend you try it as well.  The service was impeccable.  The waitress was sweet and knowledgeable about the food.  The food runners were timely and everything came out at the right temperature, at the right time.  The manager was there to greet guests and even made sure our glasses stayed full with wine.

Website and contact information below:

RELISH Philadelphia

7152 Ogontz Avenue

Philadelphia, Pa 19138

215.276.0170

http://relishphiladelphia.com/home.html