The new Fiore is the best-kept dinner secret in town

A few minutes late, as usual, we hustled to make our reservation and turned the corner only to find this stretch of Frankford Avenue uncharacteristically quiet. The thought entered my mind as we approached Fiore’s front door just as my wife said it out loud: “Is it even open?”

Or is Fiore just the best-kept dinner secret in town?

I grasped the door handle hopefully and pulled. The lights were on, but turned down low. And as Steely Dan’s “Doctor Wu” floated through the little room, it cued a mellow soundtrack as we picked out our table, one of several available. We then promptly dove into a memorable dinner. There were springy batons of fresh-baked focaccia to soak in the tangy pickling liquid of giardiniera vegetables and a juicy salad of multicolored citrus layered with myriad shades of fennel. A crispy mozzarella en carozza sandwich with fried sesame bread revealed ribbons of anchovy fillets suspended on the oozy white curds of its cheese pull. And oh, those pasta wonders! Fluted half-moon dumplings that glowed crimson with ricotta and beets needed little more than a gloss of brown butter sparked with preserved lemon and the tiny crunch of poppy seeds to make my eyes flutter.

It’s been two months since Fiore’s married chef-partners, Justine MacNeil and Ed Crochet, added a dinner service to the second incarnation of their Italian-themed restaurant, which relocated here in late 2023 as part of a significant downsizing from their original space in Queen Village. Considering the handcrafted quality and fair prices, with pastas and entrees ranging from $19 to $29, how is this restaurant’s night-time service not already completely full?

In a town defined by strong allegiances to neighborhood dining, and a scene awash in a flood of buzzy new openings every month, it could be that attention spans and memories have grown short. The couple’s original venture, Fiore Fine Foods, was a destination-worthy darling in 2019 when they moved from New York City to open their Philly debut in a sprawling Front Street space with a live-fire hearth, liquor license, and all-day hours. MacNeil had previously been the executive pastry chef at Del Posto in Manhattan; Crochet was executive chef at Storico, formerly operated by Stephen Starr at the New York Historical Society.

That not-so-long-ago pedigree is news to many East Kensington locals, who mostly consider the new version of Fiore — which replaced the Flow State coffee bar — a daytime haunt that’s simply more evidence their neighborhood is cool. The dinner launch has been decidedly low-key.

“Who knew?” shrugged a Kensington-based food industry friend I met outside Fiore’s bustling storefront one recent weekend day. A typical Sunday morning line of hungry brunchers extended from the pastry counter out the front door, where they patiently waited with menus in hand, perusing the array of egg sandwiches, pistachio cream-stuffed cornetti, and char-spotted tomato pies that have made Fiore a go-to oasis for Italian-themed brunch, lunch, and early morning pasta-delivery orders, a unique feature noted in its inclusion in The Inquirer’s 76 dining guide.

“We can get as many as five orders for cacio e pepe through DoorDash by 8 a.m.,” says MacNeil, who notes that a strong takeout and delivery business, which comprises at least 50% of their revenue, has helped create the volume to make such a small restaurant space viable.

The decision to dramatically downsize from the first Fiore was a lifestyle move — sacrificing 100 seats and a liquor license in the original space for a 28-seat BYOB initially focused on more manageable daytime hours — to accommodate the birth of their son, Roman. After navigating the continuous pandemic pivots of their first restaurant, the shift felt like going “from hanging on to a roller coaster to driving a car,” says Crochet. “There are still plenty of potholes, but we’re in control of this.”

This is not the first time the two have deliberately taken a major detour in their careers prompted by a challenging circumstance. One of the reasons they came to Philadelphia to begin with was a deadly fire that demolished their Williamsburg apartment 10 years ago and destroyed everything they owned. “Everything goes up in the night, and you kind of look around at what you have left and really rethink if that’s where you’re supposed to be,” MacNeil says. Moving once more, from Queen Village to Kensington, is part of that continuum, she says.

“I love to just be in this tiny place now,” MacNeil says. “Every move from here on out is with the goal of not being all-star super-chefs, but making a life that’s sustainable for ourselves and the people around us. We just want to cook food for people, that’s all we want to do.”

This talented couple certainly has the daytime service down pat. You can’t go wrong with any of MacNeil’s pastries, from the sugar-dusted bomboloni to the split maritozzi rolls yawning wide with sweet clouds of whipped cream. Her Italian drinking chocolate alone — the syrupy elixir of Tuscan dark chocolate magic, sweetened by the vanilla cream of a marshmallow melting on top, triggering all the happiness receptors inside your brain — is worth the trip during the cold months. A chilly coupe of shakerato coffee flavored with the same intense chocolate, expertly rattled in shakers over ice by manager Courtney Testa, is its worthy warm-weather counterpart.

On the savory side, MacNeil’s fresh-baked rolls are essential to the cafe’s next-level handheld delights, including the puffy, delicately crusted schiacchiata roll for an egg sandwich with house fennel sausage, herbed aioli, and fontina cheese. The chicken Parm sandwich is an easy contender for the city’s best, a garlic-buttered rustic round roll cradling a juicy breast encrusted in focaccia crumbs, glazed with a Calabrian chile-spiced tomato sauce and melted mozz.

Yes, there are a handful of outstanding pastas on the breakfast and lunch menu, too, including a recent fettuccine in lemon butter with poppy seeds whose magic was its minimalist touch. But I couldn’t help feeling every time I visited as if Crochet’s impressive noodle skills were simply biding their time for a proper evening showcase. Now that Roman has turned 3, and dinner has at last been unveiled three nights a week, they are absolutely among the highlights.

At least half a dozen pastas are usually available, and they frequently change. On one visit I devoured some agnolotti del plin stuffed with fennel-scented porchetta in a saucy puddle of rich chicken stock. Another plate of dumplings on that visit, spinach-greened pansotti touched with nutmeg, were glazed in a nutty brown walnut pesto. At another dinner the following month, the chef marked the start of spring with daisy-shaped ravioli filled with green garlic and tossed with savory nubs of rendered guanciale.

Crochet’s gnudi were airy orbs of ricotta richness, lightened with a hint of lemon zest over an earthy saute of creamy mushroom ragù. The smaller, but equally tender potato gnocchi seemed to nod to the Polish flavors of nearby Port Richmond with a rustic garnish of caraway-scented sauerkraut and bacon. Fiore’s toothy mallorredus, pasta shells tinted yellow with saffron in the Sardinian style, basked in the tomatoey crumbles of a fresh sausage ragù.

Other, non-pasta high points on the dinner menu include some cheesy cacio e pepe fritters with tomato jam and a lovely radicchio salad to start.

The menu has some worthy medium-size plates that serve well as entrees when a few are shared, including a fritto misto of monkfish, kabocha squash, and lemon wheels. The agrodolce pork ribs, glazed with apple-fennel puree, are a sweet-tart meaty tribute to Crochet’s days as chef de cuisine at Craft. Two other entrees — a culotte steak with pickled kohlrabi and a meaty cobia fillet broiled in fresh cardamom leaves and served over chrysanthemum greens cooked with anchovy — were notable for the chef’s creative use of less common proteins to keep prices under $30. But they were not otherwise especially memorable.

The same cannot be said for MacNeil’s standout desserts, which range from a crumbly citrus-scented torta sabbiosa, which happens to be gluten-free, to a torta della nonna pastry pocket filled with vanilla cream. A slab of glossy chocolate bonet, a dense Piedmontese chocolate flan blended with amaretti cookies, is satisfyingly indulgent. Fiore also makes excellent gelati, from peanut butter cup to mint cookies and cream, and classic vanilla, which I’d recommend affogato-style with an espresso.

But it is MacNeil’s panna cotta I adore most, because hers is one of the few I’ve had outside Italy whose cream isn’t mixed with so much gelatin it bounces. At Fiore, the unmolded panna cotta tower sways gently when it lands on the table, its silky vanilla cream set just enough to hold its shape beneath the latest seasonal garnish. I enjoyed the winter edition’s dark caramel and cocoa-nib sweetness, but the panna cotta’s new spring look — a festive tumble of diced pink rhubarb cubes and syrup scattered with crumbles of cardamom-pistachio brittle — tastes like the hopefulness of warm days to come.

I doubt this dining room will remain half-full for long, as word gets out that Fiore’s dinner service is finally back. For this couple, and its lucky new neighborhood, that is a good thing.

2413 Frankford Ave., Philadelphia, Pa. 19125; 215-339-0509; fiore-finefoods.com

Breakfast and lunch menu Sunday, Monday, 8 a.m.-3 p.m.; Thursday through Saturday, 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Dinner Thursday through Saturday, 5-8 p.m.

Lunch entrees and pastas, $10-$16. Dinner pastas and entrees, $19-$29.

Wheelchair accessible.

There are always a couple gluten-free pastries and the entire dinner menu, except for the house pastas, is either gluten-free or can be modified. With so much baking on-site, however, environment is not ideal for those sensitive to cross contamination.