For years, one of the best ways to spread the plant-based message has been to show people that their traditions can be enjoyed and their cravings can be satisfied without animals. In the mid-2010s, companies like Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat used this strategy to mainstream vegan meat faster and with a scope like we’ve never seen before. In 2022, Kraft Heinz tapped Chilean food-tech company NotCo and its artificial intelligence to veganize nostalgic favorites like Kraft mac and cheese and Oscar Mayer wieners. And in 2024, the FDA approval of lab-grown meat has unlocked the potential for major change of our food system, putting us on the brink of a possible global food revolution.
But amidst all the venture capital and high-tech tinkering, there’s another movement taking the opposite approach, wielding comfort and challenging the notion that meat (plant-based, lab-grown, or otherwise) needs to be at the center of the plate.
Today, more and more chefs are creating a new lane by getting back to basics and reintroducing people to plants, pure and unadulterated and in ways we’ve never seen before. For them, a parsnip can become as tender and flavorful of a piccata as any cut of veal. White sweet potato and aged tofu can be transformed into a sumptuous, cheesy pasta sauce that’ll make you forget all about heavy cream and Parmesan. And in Philadelphia, Chef Ian Graye is doing this perhaps better than anyone in the country right now at his Italian-inspired, plant-forward restaurant, Pietramala.
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Chef Ian Graye’s culinary vision at Pietramala: A plant-based revolution
Celebrating its second birthday this October, Pietramala has achieved a lot in its short lifespan. In 2023, it was one of Bon Appétit’s 24 Best New Restaurants. Later that year, VegNews readers named it the Best New Vegan Restaurant in America in the VegNews Restaurant Awards, and Graye himself earned a Rising Star Game Changer Chef Award by leading culinary industry resource StarChefs. But Pietramala’s success didn’t happen overnight.
Pietramala/Instagram
Graye, a Queens native, started as a dishwasher at Brooklyn’s vegan institution Champs Diner. From there, he worked his way up and embarked on a decade-long career working in some of New York’s finest kitchens, including abcV, Hearth, and the Michelin-starred Blue Hill at Stone Barns. The pandemic brought him to Philadelphia, where he laid roots for his own culinary vision with pop-up Moto Foto, specializing in comfort classics like meatball subs and fried King Trumpet sandwiches. Eventually, he got the opportunity to helm Philadelphia’s iconic Blackbird Pizzeria before its closing in 2022, and in turn, inherited the space and equipment to create his own restaurant. From there, the spark of Pietramala was lit.
And with a career like his, Graye was not only equipped to bring the best parts of the restaurant industry to his new venture, he made it a point to leave the worst parts out, too. In an interview with The Philadelphia Inquirer, Graye said:
“I want to essentially make a restaurant that I’d enjoy working at, and one that I would want to come to if I wasn’t working,”
This meant a working environment, Graye says, that’s free of tempers, entitlement, and condescension—where creativity, learning, and lifting each other up is at the forefront. And for the food, Graye stays away from mock meats and processed foods, keeping it simple with a focus on seasonality, fermentation, and preservation. “Plants on a pedestal,” as the restaurant’s mantra goes.
Richard Bowie
A neighborhood gem in Philadelphia’s Northern Liberties
The charm of Pietramala starts way before you even walk through the doors. Located in Philadelphia’s hip, walkable Northern Liberties neighborhood, Pietramala shares its picturesque, treelined block with a red-brick barbershop, a boutique messenger bag shop, and Joy Cafe—an old-school vegan café that’s been slinging fare like “cheezy” chickpea-flax omelets and carrot-tofu smoothies for two decades.
As I walked in, I was welcomed by softly glowing, peach-colored globe lamps hanging among houseplant vines suspended from the ceiling. The space is segmented in two: a romantically lit front room (boasting an open kitchen along one wall, five two-seater tables along the other, and two emerald velvet booths at the front) plus a tiny back room, where the vibe feels more like Sunday dinner in Grandma’s dining room with a few wooden tables clustered closely together and lots of conversation and laughter.
After being seated with a menu, I took time to soak in the ambiance. In other cities, top plant-based restaurants might feel ritzy and high-end or impeccably sleek and modern. But in Philadelphia, the most talked-about vegan restaurant is all about intimacy—feeling homey and upscale all at the same time.
Pietramala/Instagram
Pietramala’s magic, mystery menu
The menu, which rotates weekly, was tight, concise, and a little mysterious—with straightforward dish names paired with just a handful of ingredients as descriptors. I ordered the Heirloom Cucumbers (with a description that simply read “freshly made tofu, green coriander tamari, and benne seed”), the Charred Peas (“cashew ricotta, carta di musica, nasturtium”), and the Broccoli (“spring onion, green garlic, tofu”).
Pietramala/Instagram
I smelled the Heirloom Cucumber dish before I saw it—a soy-forward, herbal aroma that had me salivating in an instant. The plate looked like an enchanted forest straight out of a Miyazaki film, full of herbs and flowers, greens, browns, and pale whites. Cucumbers were cut into chunky crescent moons and smashed into jagged spears for a variety of different bites before being joined by paper-thin sheets of crispy yuba in a chilled, coriander-infused tamari vinaigrette— a light and mellow pool of umami I wanted to slurp straight out of the bowl. Soft, housemade tofu played off the crunchy, crisp textures of the dish and soaked up more of that refreshing tamari, while toasted benne seeds (an heirloom ancestor of the sesame seed), green peanut oil, and fresh herbs and tiny flowers from Pietramala’s own garden rounded everything out.
If the cucumbers were a forest floor scene, the Charred Peas were a romantic English garden. At first, all I could decipher was a tangle of nasturtium shoots and flowers, a few plump peas, and cashew ricotta on a crispy carta di musica—an impossibly thin, cracker-like Sardinian flatbread. But after a bit of digging, I unearthed a few more treasures: fat, little blistered snap pea pods with a savory, salty lacquer and surprising juiciness; dark purple snow peas with a punch of vegetal flavor; and a few razor-thin slices of jalapeño lending an unexpected but welcome contrast to the peas’ natural sweetness. Balance was the name of the game here, and how the lightly dressed greens, indulgent and creamy ricotta, crunchy flatbread, and savory-sweet peas all worked together made this a dish I won’t soon forget.
Meeting the creative force behind Pietramala
Throughout my meal, I’d glance up to the open-air kitchen 10 feet in front of me for a peek into the action. As someone who couldn’t hang with FX’s The Bear due to its anxiety-inducing pace and dialogue, I had an appreciation for how Chef Graye and his team ran their service.
Graye expedited calmly yet confidently, in a voice you’d have to strain to pick up above the din of conversation and the Fat Boy Slim-like beats playing in the background. You might catch him faced away at the stove, his figure outlined by a dramatic flambé, or faced toward the dining room, hunched unflinchingly over a wall of steam rising from a just-deglazed pan of something sumptuous—helming the controlled chaos of a kitchen with ease.
I was treated to a meeting with the chef when he brought me my final course, “Broccoli”—a dish he playfully kept simple in name to hide its true complexity. Based on the description of “spring onion, green garlic, tofu,” I expected perhaps a hefty fillet of broccoli, char-grilled like steak and paired with a few juicy planks of marinated tofu. But what Graye proudly presented instead was much more clever: a beautiful plate of what looked like a bright-green pesto risotto.
Pietramala/Instagram
The entire broccoli—stalks, stems, leaves, florets, and all—is used for this dish. To emulate Arborio rice, the stalks are grated and stewed down with green onion and green garlic until al dente. The quasi-risotto’s luscious sauce is made from the broccoli’s blanched leaves and tender stems, along with a few basil stems and a kiss of funky, spicy fermented green chili. It’s made glossy and rich with olive oil before delicately cut, bite-sized florets are added and cooked until just tender. The tofu—aged, fermented, salt-cured, and air-dried for three weeks— is generously grated over the top like a fine Pecorino Romano, and purple basil and more fresh cracked black pepper finish it off. Graye described the dish as “the broccoli stems that dreamed of becoming risotto.”
It was the perfect cap to a warm, intimate dining experience I wish never ended, and throughout my feast, I could tell I wasn’t alone. To my left, a booth of young professionals celebrated a birthday, toasting with their BYO wine and gushing about how good celery root is (in general; it wasn’t on the menu). To my right, I caught the tail end of a conversation between two husbands recounting a busy day of home renovations before they left and were replaced by a group of elderly locals, happily eating and chatting about the goings-on of the week.
Somehow, this fine-dining spot, exclusively serving plants in the land of cheesesteaks, feels like a true neighborhood haunt.
Pietramala/Instagram
Plants on a pedestal
My only regret during my dinner was coming alone. The three dishes were enough to fill me up, but other menu stars like Sourdough Focaccia with tomato bagna cauda, Roasted Sweet Potatoes with sumac tahini and chili oil, and Fresh Pappardelle with morel mushrooms, peas, and cultured cashew cream all had me longing for a friend I could steal bites from. A week later, scrolling through Instagram and seeing the Crostata that I passed on—with its chipped chocolate shortcrust, wild violet-andnectarine vinegar jam, and a marshmallowy, torched macadamia pastry cream—left me nearly inconsolable. But it’s important to always count your blessings, and the meal I did enjoy was perfect: a bucket list moment fully realized.
A meal at Pietramala is ephemeral. No one will look the same with a menu that morphs depending on the season, what’s locally available, and whatever ingredient or funky fermentation process is inspiring Chef Graye at the moment (his year-aged spin on an ancient Phoenician fish sauce made from spent beer yeast made local headlines). The constant, however, is the feeling you’ll have. The warmth of the ambience and the service. The wonder that’ll wash over you as you dig into a hunk of eggplant or a ribbon of carrot that tastes humble and comforting, yet new and avant garde—unlike any eggplant or carrot you’ve had before. This is a return to plants, and it’s good to be back.
@vegnews When VegNews’ Editorial Director Richie Bowie got a chance to visit Philadelphia for the first time, the first place he knew he needed a reservation for was Pietramala—the intimate, upscale hot spot named Best New Vegan Restaurant in America in the VegNews Restaurant Awards. #vegan #veganphilly #phillyvegans #veganfood #veganfoodie #veganforlife #plantbasedtiktok ♬ original sound – VegNews
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Richard Bowie (@wichiebowie) is VegNews’ editorial director based in Los Angeles, CA.
