Matyson

37 S 19th St

Philadelphia, PA 19103

Neighborhoods: Rittenhouse Square, Penn Center

We came here for Sunday brunch, which apparently is a relatively new development for Matyson.  As a spoiler, it was a great brunch!  We started off sharing the Shaved Tuscan Kale - a delicious mixture of quinoa, butternut squast, pepitas, parmesan, and oregano.  For a salad, this gave quite the buzz to my taste buds and felt very light.  Great way to start it off.  

Next up, we shared the Brisket Egg & Cheese with cheddar and a fried egg sandwiched between sesame brioche.  This sounds like a pretty heavy dish, but it was surprisingly very light as well  - all without losing an ounce of flavor.  

Still hungry, we split the Chicken & (scallion) Waffles - drizzled with Korean chili sauce and accompanied with a fried egg.  Again, this sounds like a heavy dish, but the chef pulled another Houdini and made the heaviness disappeared from the fried chicken.  If you order this dish, I'd suggest asking to have the chili sauce on the side - it's a bit spicy but also quite sweet.  So, unless you like your fried chicken sweet and spicy, get the sauce separately.  

A little hungry still, we asked to see the dessert menu.  Unfortunately, the pastry chef wasn't in so our options were limited. We went with Apple Crisp topped with vanilla ice cream.  Yes, you guessed it, this was pretty light as well!  Nothing paired with vanilla ice cream can go wrong, unless the vanilla ice cream is bad.  This was good. 

In my original review of Spice 28 I wrote that I would not consider going back there.  After posting my review on Yelp, the GM - Ben - contacted me inviting us to come back.  So, we did.  At Ben's request, I tried contacting him several times - through phone and Yelp - to let him know we would be coming, but I had no luck in reaching him.  But, we went anyway.

We started off the meal with the rock shrimp and Indian pancake - both of which were absolute let downs. The portion size of the Indian pancake was embarrassingly small.  The rock shrimp battered had no flavor and was entirely dependent on the dipping sauces to provide it with any hint of spice.

The tasteless rock shrimp

The mini Indian pancake

 As with the first time we had gone to Spice 28, the waiters brought out our entrees prior to us finishing our appetizers.  And again, our entrees became lukewarm by the time we actually ate it.  We had the Pad Thai and Blue Crab Fried Rice.  The fried rice was poorly seasoned - all I tasted was pepper, lots of pepper.  The Pad Thai did not get any thumbs up either.

The bland Pad Thai

The poorly seasoned blue crab fried rice

There was one point where we had two waitresses taking our order, and two waiters standing silently behind us.  Mmm...talk about awkward?

Needless to say, we won't be coming back, and due to the absolute disappointment, I'm knocking this down one star from my original review.