Mustard Soup for the Soul
Finding Your Escape in the City
Whichever way you look at it, it’s been a wild few weeks here in the United States, and while every four years the second week or so of November plays host to something that captures national attention, it’s always a time of year that I pay attention to. This is for both a self-centered reason, my birthday is November 10th, and a reason that’s a bit less selfish, my girlfriend’s birthday is the 20th. This year, we were especially eager to find a good way to escape not only our own emotions about the fate of the world, but the world in general. We were hoping to take, I think, a bit of a mental vacation from the ever-refreshable Twitter feed of doom that we were finding to be far too present in our lives.
On the 10th, she kept her dinner plans for us secret. We grabbed a drink in Center City Philadelphia and hopped in an Uber that promptly started to head south. As we crossed Washington, and then headed east across 11th, I realized where we were going.
Noord Eetcafe opened recently, in 2013, and serves some combination of Dutch comfort food, Scandinavian cuisine, and “New American” food, depending on how you categorize what they’re doing there. The menu, ever-shifting with the seasons, offers all kinds of seafood, various vegetables, and their signature mustard soup. They typically supplement this with a few specials, which can include old favorites that have since moved off the regular menu or simply the daily inspirations of the chef. It is, hands down, my favorite restaurant in the city.
While the food is most responsible for this, it’s far from the only reason. Noord is in a rather small space, tucked away in a corner of Passyunk Square and complete with large windows that allow patrons to look out into the square and admire the fountain that sits in its center. The area is one of the most well-known and lovely parts of the city and yet still out of the way enough to ensure that it never seems overcrowded. That sentiment is mirrored in the restaurant itself, which feels almost like someone’s home. “Intimate” is probably overused to describe places like this, but that is the feeling you get from Noord. It’s close. It’s quiet. It’s comfortable. It’s intimate.
They also manage their small space quite nicely. Too often restaurants of this nature place individuals from different parties right next to each other with little space in between, making it impossible to have meaningful conversations with those you’re with without everyone next to you becoming hip to your life. This isn’t a threat to privacy so much as an obstacle to real conversation, a hurdle to the escape. At Noord, this isn’t the case. You’ll likely overhear a bit from those next to you, but you’ve certainly got enough room to be personal.
When I moved to Philadelphia, I had a great deal of trouble discovering places that felt like home to me. I grew up in a town with 5,000 people and had 70 students in my senior class. I arrived as a college freshman in 2008 and entered both a city with over a million people and a University where my class was over 2,000 students. It was culture shock I was not prepared for, to say the least.
That was some time ago, and 8 years later, I’ve acclimated to the city and started to understand how to use it to my benefit, both when I want to be a part of the crowd, vibrant and alive, and when I’d rather be in my own corner. Thanks to my experience here, and the fact that I’ve lived in several neighborhoods during those years, I’ve started to understand how to make a place yours.
Noord has been one of those places. Passyunk Square in general, out of the limelight of Center City, is another. Sometimes it’s not a place, necessarily, but a time. Bob and Barbara’s is packed on weekends and some weeknights, but on others it’s relatively empty, cheap, and a great place to bring out out-of-towners looking for a special kind of Philadelphian experience. Honey’s is packed on weekends, but their dinner is arguably as good as their brunch and it seems that hardly anybody knows it.
Shortly after our trip to Noord, we had my girlfriend’s birthday to celebrate. I wanted to replicate the feeling of escape from my birthday, but do so in a vastly different environment. We went to Samwich, a small, BYOB in Northern Liberties that serves large portions with healthy amounts of carbohydrates and inspires you to take a nap afterwards. It’s bright inside, decorated with comic book heroes and complete with Mad Libs books on the tables. Instead of serving an exotic mustard soup, they offer massive, delicious, tater tots. We’ve been there several times before and almost every time we’ve been the only ones. More often than not, other patrons order delivery from Samwich, but we find it to be a great place for conversation.
On the face of it, Samwich and Noord could not be more different. One is a rather upscale, foreign cuisine-oriented, fine dining establishment in a prominent part of South Philly. The other is almost quick-service, used mostly for delivery, located down an alley of sorts in a newer part of Philadelphia. Despite these differences, though, they share a similarity in the fact that they offer a bubble, a place to escape from everything around us in our own pocket of the city.
Not only is that kind of thing essential for city living, being able to center yourself in what can sometimes seem like insanity, it’s essential for life. Wherever you are, geographically or otherwise, those places that provide some serenity and simple pleasures are truly important. When you’re not sure how to feel, when the world seems to be too much, when you need to re-center with those you’re close to, or when you just need to eat a really, really good meatball sandwich. I’m thankful Philly has provided those places for me, and while Noord, Samwich, and others will always hold a special place in my heart here, I’m hopeful that I’ll be able to find something to fill the Mustard soup, massive tater tot-sized whole in my life wherever I go next.
