Two Philadelphia restaurants, Mawn and Meetinghouse, were named among the 50 best in America by The New York Times.
The New York Times released its “America’s Best Restaurants 2025” list on Monday, and two dining establishments in Philadelphia landed in the top 50.
To make the list, The New York Times wrote that 14 reporters and editors took 76 flights around the country to eat more than 200 meals in 33 states.
Meetinghouse in Philadelphia makes New York Times restaurant list
Meetinghouse opened in 2023 at the old location of Memphis Taproom in Kensington and didn’t take long to get national recognition.
New York Times writer Nikita Richardson said the menu might look “basic,” but “nothing” at the tavern on Cumberland Street is basic.
“An expertly dressed green salad is stacked high enough to become the stuff of restaurant legend, the hot roast beef sandwich tastes as if it were invented in the kitchen mere minutes ago, and humble pork-and-beans takes on new life,” Richardson wrote. “Meetinghouse is “just” a tavern, but it’s the tavern you might have fantasized about while reading historical fiction as a kid, where even the simplest dishes taste divine because of every arduous moment that led up to this meal. No need to fantasize any longer.”
Reservations at Meetinghouse can be booked through the Resy app.
Philadelphia’s Mawn makes New York Times restaurant list
Mawn, the South Philadelphia noodle house with “no rules,” is no stranger to being nationally recognized. Phila Lorn, the chef at Mawn, won a James Beard Award earlier this year. He runs the restaurant with his wife, Rachel.
“The pinnacles of the menu at this modestly self-described “noodle house,” like the wild boar prahak and banh chow crepe salad, tend to lean into the Cambodian cooking the chef Phila Lorn grew up eating at home,” New York Times writer Brett Anderson wrote. “But a tour through the whole roster of bright, salty-sour salads, curries and hot and cold noodles is to experience Southeast Asian cuisine as fenceless terrain. There isn’t a dish you won’t ache to eat again.”
Reservations can be made on Mawn’s website.
Mawn Chef Phila Lorn named one of 10 Best New Chefs by Food and Wine
The accolades just keep coming for Mawn. Earlier in the day Tuesday, the magazine Food and Wine dropped its list of the top 10 “Best New Chefs” around the U.S. Lorn was one of them.
The magazine said he “fuses Cambodian roots with Philly verve” and heaped praise on the khao soi, a curry noodle soup well known in Northern Thailand, as well as the chicken noodle soup, which incorporates Rachel’s Jewish heritage and is “a brilliant riff on both pho and matzo ball soup.”
The couple just opened a new restaurant, Sao, on East Passyunk Avenue.
It might be easier to get a table at Sao, described as a crudo and oyster bar. As Food and Wine describes, Mawn’s block of reservations opens up on the 1st of each month, and the 2,000 seats are gone within a minute.
