Inside North Philly’s Daring New Restaurant Honeysuckle | Eater Philly

"Philly’s best living room sits in North Philadelphia along a corridor of repurposed warehouses and churches, where comfy cognac-colored couches invite lingering, a pearlescent-lit column studded with photos of June Jordan, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Octavia Butler anchors the room, and a vinyl shelf hides pressings of Baduizm, Voodoo, and other R&B staples. Reimagined as a third space–meets–dining destination by Cybille St.Aude-Tate and Omar Tate, it’s a lean, smart, inventive restaurant-living room-cultural lab where the founders float from kitchen to floor greeting regulars and elders, the music hums at a modest level, and the whole place feels familial, comfortable, and safe. The team’s curiosity is on full display: in-house fermentation specialist Jamaar Julal experiments with new strains of sake while cultural storyteller Chelsea Martin teaches the history of Carolina Gold rice, which appears in a vegetarian legume dish with eggplant and cabbage and folds into Julal’s sake alchemy. The menu delivers both comfort and spark — silky deviled eggs crowned with black truffle, a winkingly named Black Caesar with smoked herring, Parmesan, and breadcrumbs that playfully bite back, a two-person Mississippi tamale stuffed with beef cheek and oxtail where lima beans make a quiet, sturdy cameo — alongside staples like a half-dozen oysters, roasted chicken, and the frothy Zou Zou coupe. Ambition extends beyond the plate to in-house R&D and food restoration practices, even as they juggle long hours, permit limbo, and tight margins; the joy, purpose, and open-armed hospitality make it easy to root for them, and I left wanting to marry everything I’d eaten." - Tre Johnson