Italian in South Philly

Nido
1540 Ritner St
Philadelphia, PA
215-755-0860

Nido is a small 32 seat restaurant deep into south Phila, away from all the touristy parts of the city, and serves up Italian food more like what you would get at home, not that heavy noodle and tomato sauce stuff of bad chain restaurants. Nido is the 1st floor of a typical Phila. row home, and it looks like a neighborhood restaurant that locals would like to walk to for dinner when they do not want to cook. Prices are about $10-15 per entree. This restaurant does not sell liquor, but you can BYOB. The table of us had meals of seafood risotto, mushroom potato gnocchi, and salmon in a tomato cream sauce. My gnocchi was light, fluffy, delicate with a savory sauce made of mushrooms and garlic. I had to get more bread to sop up the last drops of sauce. Every bite I took, I had to say "yummm!" The main dishes were fabulous to say the least.

The desserts were pretty, and we had creme caramel, ricotta cheese cake and cannoli. The chef made a very lovely creme caramel, the cannoli was just so cute as you can see from the photo, and the cheese cake was made with chocolate, a little grainy because of the ricotta, and served on the warm side, as the kitchen must have been very warm from the day's cooking. Italian desserts are tough to compete with in the fine city of Philadelphia because Philly has such a strong Italian history, and there are delicous Italian bakers all over Southeast PA, NJ and NY.