Provenance

Provenance is one of the 3 restaurants that earned a Michelin star from the Guide’s first year in Philadelphia. They feature a tasting menu of Korean-inspired seafood-heavy French cuisine. The restaurant has a Chef’s counter with about 10 seats in front of their open kitchen as well as a small room of tables in the back of the restaurant. For my meal I was seated at the counter.

The non alcoholic drink selection was nice. In addition to several mocktails they also have an extensive selection of teas. Additionally, all guests received a welcome beverage (that I believe was a sparkling buckwheat tea) and you can also opt for complimentary barley tea instead of the usual still or sparkling water, which was a nice nod to the tea a lot of Korean restaurants offer.

As can be seen from the menu and my pictures below, the general style of Provenance is to give you multiple dishes at once, often a main dish and a sidecar but with a couple of big spreads that allow you to taste the food in any order you please. There was a total of 25 dishes grouped into about 10 rounds of food.

The meal

The meal began with a canapé spread that included a razor clam in pickled garlic and black soy, a fried soft-shell Sawagani crab served whole over some Dungeness crab, some prawn prepared in a vinaigrette made from the head, a mussel cooked with black tea and dusted with almond flour, and an oyster with ssamjang and fermented lime. The crab was interesting, good flavor with the soft-shell providing a nice crunch, and the sauces for the oyster were good as well. But overall this was by far my least favorite course. The flavors were generally quite mild and for the mussel and razor clam in particular I could not taste any of the other ingredients. Thankfully things got much better after this.

The next course was a salad of marinated seasonal vegetables topped with shaved black truffle and served with fennel vinegar gelee and anchovy aioli. The vegetables were flavorful (apparently procured from a farmer’s market that opens across the street on Sundays) and the gelee/aioli provided a tangy creaminess. This was essentially a refined salad and quite pleasant to eat.

The official first course was a play on baked potatoes, with Golden Osetra caviar on a potato custard with sour cream and onion chips and dill oil. I can’t recall what the foam was exactly but it had a bit of sourness so might’ve been a creme fraiche foam. The caviar was portioned enough to provide the right amount of saltiness and the chips had a nice potatoey flavor that added a fun crunch to the creamy foam. The dill oil provided a refreshing herbal lift to the whole dish. This was a fun and tasty dish. There was also a sidecar containing a single bite of a buckwheat crepe wrapped around a twice baked potato and chive creme fraiche with a bit more caviar on top. This bite was a surprising burst of flavor and had a very pleasant velvety texture from the potato. An excellent bite.

The second course featured scallops that had been breaded and were served with a lemon-caper jam. I’m a sucker for scallops paired with something acidic and this hit the mark, with the breading as an interesting crunch. But the real highlight of this course was the sidecar: a scallop “hot dog” with a scallop “sausage” in a brioche bun topped with caper relish. Not only was this a cute presentation but the taste was excellent. Somehow the scallop sausage tasted like scallops but with a perfect “hot dog” texture. The bun was light and buttery and caper relish had the perfect sweet and tangly flavor. The kind of bite that made my brain simultaneously think “scallops” but also “hot dog with relish”.

Next came bread service, with what might be my favorite bread and butter course I’ve had in the United States. The bread was a sourdough milk bread that had a light caramelized sugar crust that was sweet and crunchy on the outside and pillowy soft on the inside. The butter was good quality butter but was enhanced with perilla oil and kimchi that they make in-house. If this had been a regular milk bread with regular butter this would have been great but the additional oil gave it the luxurious property of instantly coating your mouth when you take a bite and the tanginess of the kimchi balanced the sweetness of the sugar glaze perfectly.

It was during this bread course that pretty much everyone at the counter simultaneously went “oh damn that’s good”. We had all been keeping to ourselves but the shared delight in the bread course broke the ice and got people chatting (most others were doing the wine pairing and I think the pours might’ve been generous). By the end of the meal we were all talking with each other and the head chef even joined in. It was a rare communal experience I’ve only ever had one other time (another Korean spot, Meju in NYC) and it made for a really special night.

The next course was a lightly cooked black cod and a mussel along with a spinach “chlorophyll” sauce and some pil pil sauce. The black cod was well-cooked with just the right firmness and a buttery melt in your mouth flavor. The sauces were great too. Once again, the sidecar was the highlight, this time a billibi “chowder”. The mussels had a meaty smoky flavor and the chowder was rich and creamy. A perfect comforting bowl that made me want more.

Next came a steelhead trout that had been cooked in a vadouvan curry, giving it a lightly spiced flavor, and served with a red cabbage sauerkraut. The inspiration was the Chef’s visit to Alsace (the same region of France Gabriel Kreuther is from) and that also inspired the sidecar to be a salmon tarte flambeé. This was another win for me as I’m a big fan of pickled veg and seafood and the tarte flambeé had a perfectly “bready” flavor.

The final savory course was a poularde (milk fed chicken) topped with truffles and a “truffle boudin” sausage and served with sauce supreme, broccoli puree, and quince puree. But the fun part was the big banchan spread that included a broccoli tartare (EMP carrot tartare on watch??), buttered rice, white kimchi, pickled radish, and an incredibly rich umami bomb cup of shiitake ginger bouillon. As is typical of banchan, the whole is more than the sum of the parts and I loved going back and forth between dishes. If I had to nitpick, the flavors of the main plate felt a bit random even though they all tasted good. In the context of the spread I think a simpler protein and sauce would’ve sufficed without the purees or the sausage. But still, it was a fun finale to the savory courses.

The first pre dessert was some sort of pastry (I can’t remember if it was supposed to be phyllo dough or egg roll) filled with a medjool date, goat cheese, and cream foam. This was a nice “fruit and cheese” bite.

The second pre dessert was a double layered of orange sherbet on the bottom and fennel sorbet on top with some candied orange peel. This was a surprisingly strong flavor with sweet and sour orange and a rich herbal burst of fennel. Less of a palate cleanser and more of a palate power wash but I loved it.

Finally there came 3 desserts in pretty quick succession. A citrus pavlova with a cashew-almond cream that was light, fruity, and deliciously creamy. There was also a rich creamy goat milk cremeux with a tart blackcurrant sorbet and strands of chestnut cream. Both of these desserts had a very nice balance of tart and creamy.

But the standout for me was the chocolate pave with tarragon gelato. The pave was rich and dense with a deep chocolate flavor that by itself could’ve been overwhelming but was perfectly balanced with the fresh grassy tarragon. Maybe this is a well-known pairing in the baking world but for me it was a new experience that was exciting to try. All 3 desserts were very strong.

Finally, I want to highlight the service. There were many little things that the servers did that showed great attention to detail. They greet you by name. Any time someone got up to use the restroom someone would be there to pull your chair out for you on your return. More than once they had someone check the bathrooms and freshen them up. When the meal started the guy next to me (another solo diner) and I received separate explanations of the dishes but once he and I started chatting, the servers took notice and we started getting joint explanations. The head chef came out to talk to us all at the end of the meal. When some of the other diners mentioned that they were planning on going to the other starred restaurants, the chef spoke very highly of both and how much he enjoyed being part of the growing Philly fine dining community.
The servers all seemed to work well together and as the atmosphere got more communal they would join in on the laughs. They definitely contributed to the whole atmosphere being fun and lively while staying attentive to service. When asked if every seating turns out this fun, one of the servers said “not all of them, but it’s not uncommon either”.

Final thoughts

Overall Provenance was an excellent meal with great food and a spontaneously fun communal experience that’s the sort of thing I’m lucky to have experienced. And while I’m sure it doesn’t turn out that way every seating, I do think it speaks well of the restaurant that they have an environment where guests feel comfortable and have fun. The food was also quite strong and in my opinion they can hold their own against most of the 1 star restaurants in NYC. This is the sort of restaurant I’d gladly travel back to Philadelphia just for the chance to experience it again.