KYW Newsradio is taking a look at Philadelphia’s entertainment scenes this week with a series of special reports called “The State of Entertainment.” The focus today is on the city's culinary culture.
PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — When travel guide publisher Lonely Planet picked Philadelphia as one of the top 10 cities in the world to visit in 2024, the highlights it listed were: food, food, and more food.
Take this with all the James Beard Foundation Award-winning restaurants and, clearly, the city’s dining scene is having a moment. And industry leaders think it’s not just a flash in the pan.
Inside the kitchen at Bolo, at 20th and Sansom streets, codfish fritters called bacalaitos are flipped by the dozen on the stovetop next to a pot of boiling water for seafood. They are just one of the many dishes on the menu inspired by Chef Yun Fuentes’ childhood in Puerto Rico.
“Bolo is the nickname that my grandfather was given by my younger cousin when he was unable to pronounce ‘abuelo.’”
Fuentes got into cooking out of necessity, taking a job first at a Puerto Rico McDonald’s.
“I’m just a Puerto Rican kid, man. I started cooking because I had to,” Fuentes says.
That experience led to his first professional kitchen job at The Parrot Club in Old San Juan.
“They showed me that this could just not be food and drink. That there’s something else behind it. That you can put on a show. That you’re here to entertain. We’re entertainment.”
Over the following 30 years, Fuentes worked his way up through some of New York City’s top restaurants before arriving in Philadelphia 12 years ago with just a backpack.
“I landed in Philadelphia, and it captured my imagination,” he said.
The city has also captured the country’s culinary imagination in recent years. Chefs like Fuentes have been racking up multiple James Beard Award nominations and awards — in addition to rave reviews from publishers from Lonely Planet to the New York Times.
“We’ve, for a long time, known that there’s been some great restaurants in Philadelphia, but now I think the rest of the country is really paying attention,” said Ben Fileccia, an executive with the Pennsylvania Restaurant and Lodging Association.
Fileccia says the city’s success has been aided by local chefs cross-promoting and collaborating with each other: “They’re raising this mantle of having this amazing restaurant scene by working together and not by working against one another.”
Something else that has supercharged Philly’s dining scene: The Chef Conference, founded by lawyer-turned-chef Mike Traud. For more than a decade, he has created a forum for the city’s culinary titans to mix with national food journalists and restaurant leaders.
“One of the offshoots of that is that we get to host all these national journalists for four days,” said Traud. “And when they’re here … they have to eat.”
Fuentes is not even a year into his journey at Bolo, and he is a semi-finalist for this year’s James Beard Award for emerging chef.
“The best way I can describe it is that there is true brotherly love in this industry,” says Fuentes.
“The fact that people are looking at me? I don’t know what to say. I still look up to many of those that are on those lists. I look up to them.
“It’s an honor, and it’s an honor to be able to do it here in Philadelphia because it means so much more. Philadelphia has given me something that I was looking for, that I was fighting for, and now I have it, and I really, really hope that I can pay it back.”