"It’s been six years since I last visited La Viola, a small BYOB Italian restaurant in Center City, Philadelphia. But things look just as I left them. The menu, which has more cursive curlicues than a head of ringlets, serves the same vitello carciofi, pollo rollatini, and green spinach-and-ricotta gnocchi that it did when I was in college. The staff is just as jovial and eager, reciting the daily specials with all the pomp and pride of a royal court’s MC. The clientele is still that quintessentially Center City mix of older well-to-do couples, middle-aged women, and of course, large groups of UPenn students making their first stop on what will be a long night of drinking and dancing ahead. Thank goodness some things never change." - ByBrette Warshaw