We are interrupting your local Pride celebration for a restaurant review! June is a very active time in the city as it is the start of summer, pride celebrations, and our iconic city wide Happy Hour, Sips. One of my favorite activities to do during this time is try out new restaurant’s in the area, places participating will create a Sips menu for you to try their delectable dishes and creative cocktails every Wednesday form 5pm-7pm. You can find the full list with the brochures they hand out around the city or check out their website here! Prunella is located on 13th and Sansom, which is part of a very restaurant busy area with places like Darling Jacks, El Vez, Barbuzzo, and Pearl & Marys. So if you find that Prunella is short on space, you can always head down the line to find somewhere else to eat. Which is actually how we ended up at Prunella!

I’m going to breakdown the experience into four different categories and then wrap up with my decision if I would go back again.

Vibes

Like most of the upcoming restaurants, they tend to lean towards this hipster, industrial, farmhouse, contemporary style. If any of that makes sense. But they have giant marble wall running across the backside of the bar down onto the bar top itself with exposed piping, intimate pendant lighting, and a view of the large wood stack on the back wall. a calling reference to their wood fire oven that they make their delicious pizzas in.

Even though the colors of the restaurant were pretty neutral, it felt really bright and energetic without the help of bright blinding lights. Which credit could be given to the greenery that hangs around some parts of the restaurant. As a whole, it makes an upbeat and enjoyable environment.

Food & Drink

The Sips menu was pretty limited (which is normal) but still had plenty of options for all the different taste buds in the group. Since we’re young and don’t have really well paying jobs just yet, we opted to all get a couple of things to share instead of trying out their whole menu. To be fair, their pizza’s are a really good sharing size, so no one left the restaurant hungry. To start we ordered the whipped ricotta ($7), which my friends and I are total suckers for at any restaurant. The combination of the soft cheese, sweet honey, and toasted sourdough makes a simple but perfect combination to water our tastebuds.

For our main course we got two of their in-house made pizzas, which was a Plain Jane, and the Daily special, golden roasted tomatoes with mozzarella, basil and golden tomato sauce (both $11). Now the Plain Jane was good, classic tomato and cheese pizza, but I craved something a little more. And that daily special had hit the spot completely, almost like it was meant to be. The pizza’s came out hot but easy to grab and the presentation was perfect for the table sizes they have. We still had plenty of room for us to salivate on our respected plates.

And of course, to pair it we each got a Sip’s special drink (which really shows where the tastebuds diverge), I got the house red which was at $6, my friend got a house beer for $5, and my other friend got a house made cocktail titled “Birds & Bees” for $7. We each enjoyed our drinks and while I can’t remember much of the experience of drinking their wine, I feel like that’s still a good thing because it went down so smooth and was easy to enjoy with the rest of my meal.

Service

Now, I’ve written before about how I like my service. I’m not impressed with white glove, up tight, no personality type of service. It actually ends up making me feel super awkward and unwelcome. But there was none of that at Prunella, both our wonderful waitress were so involved with us, talking about the heat, as well as giving us some guidance on some of the popular dishes on their menu. They were well knowledge on the restaurant and still had such a bubbly and personable attitude which really heightens the dining experience. I don’t have a personal preference on how they fill waters (I know it’s quite shocking that people do) but they were ghostly about it. I never felt like they were intruding or reaching over they did a great job making the glass feel like it was always full without me knowing.

Reservations

So like most places in Philly you have the option to reserve dining room seating (indoor) or outdoor seating. What also makes things a little frustrating during this time is you can not reserve seating for the Happy Hour/Sips menu, it’s a first come first served bases, with only bar seating and outdoor seating being available for walk-ins during those hours. And as I said early the restaurant is a bit of a tight squeeze so indoor seating only has a maximum of up to four guests per table. Although leading up to the experience is flustering, it was quite worth it. As I had said before, we just started making our way down a line of restaurants and we were lucky enough to end up at Prunella who had plenty of seating outside. So bring your hair clip, your handheld fan, and dress for the heat.

In Conclusion…

I would definitely return! I actually already have since writing this post! I ordered take out on a Saturday and it was super quickly prepared and an easy pick up. I had ordered the whipped ricotta again but got the White Claw pizza which was really delicious. The White Claw was a basic mozzarella pizza with basil drizzle and thin slices of roasted garlic in the dough which was incredible. I didn’t heat it up as it wasn’t too cold, but even then, the pizza was still delicious as it had been the first time I ate there!

Thank you so much for reading! Have a wonderful day!