If You Are Going To Do Restaurant Week, Order Local: Philly Homegrown + Restaurant Week at GTC

You know its restaurant week again, right? This week and next week, excluding weekends, the 3 or 4 course $20 lunch and $35 dinner is back. There is a twist this year though, a twist I am all about. Philly Homegrown (part of Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corporation) has worked with Center City District and participating restaurants to get at least one option on each RW menu to include locally sourced ingredients. Philly Homegrown is all about promoting both tourists and locals alike to appreciate our locally sourced food, and why shouldn’t we? We grow nice stuff around here. At Garces Trading Company, many of the lunch options have that red tractor next to them- meaning, this dish uses some local goodness. Lucky for me, I got to try those tractor approved dishes.

My first tip is not to pass on the bread with house olive oil. You’ll see, the portions are a little small and an extra piece of bread or 2 will help make you feel more satisfied when you leave.

The daily antipasti are always local during restaurant week; mine was roasted cauliflower, which was  stood out thanks to the black garlic pesto and orange tarragon vinaigrette.

I was happy to see that the lyonnaise salad was included as one of the locally sources dishes, this has been on the GTC menu for a while. The salad had a lot of things to make your mouth happy; pieces of duck confit, a very softly poached, runny egg, potatoes, and a mustard vinaigrette that was drizzled elegantly on the otherwise empty far side of my plate. The menu also mentions bacon lardons are involved in this salad, which really ended up  being one bacon lardon. So I had to savor the moment I consumed that one little, tasty piece.

The dessert (the one non-locally sourced choice) was my chocolate panna cotta. This was the most filling of all the courses. It was a trip of caramel, chocolate, and sweet cream topped with a little rice krispie and a macaron. When you eat this, you feel like a special snowflake and that all is right with the world.

If you are heading out for restaurant week, whether for dinner or lunch, I really encourage you to pick a locally sources dish for at least one of your courses. You get the freshest ingredients, while supporting local agriculture. Everybody wins!

Garces Trading Company, 1111 Locust St (btw 11th and 12th St.), 215-574-1099

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