Taste With Tori: Miss Rachel's Pantry
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- It's a bakery that invites you to make yourself at home around the farmhouse table. And it's not the kind of eatery you'd expect to find in South Philly.
It's a Taste With Tori.
Besides the delicious food, this place offers people a once a week unique dining experience.
Walking into 'Miss Rachel's Pantry' is like walking into your mom's kitchen back in the 50's!
You'll find owner Rachel Klein in an old-time apron, wearing horn-rimmed eyeglasses and opening a vintage refrigerator.
On the table there are warm sticky buns and French chocolate brownies.
Klein is fussing to make everything perfect and everything vegan.
That means no ingredients using dairy, eggs or meat.
"I think people think they're going to get a big glob of tofuey mess," she said. "But we're very creative with it and anything that you can have kind of traditionally, you can have veganized."
And that would include a grilled sandwich of vegan blue cheese with a hot wings-style spread made from soybeans.
There's a pub cheese dip.
"We take cashews and we grind them up with some probiotics with sun dried tomatoes and smoked paprika," explained Rachel.
Miss Rachel's Pantry sells soups, sandwiches and sweets Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
But on one of those days something special happens here under her crystal chandelier.
"You know we do our dinners on Saturday night which is something I really love and prepare all new dishes for twelve people," she said.
It's a six course dinner!
A recent menu featured corn meal crusted fried green tomato on red pepper cream sauce topped with a black radish slaw.
There was potato chowder and brussel sprout salad .
Another course was kuri squash and ginger dumplings with black garlic butter sauce.
The menu changes with the seasons but what doesn't change is the cozy seating.
"We have the farmhouse table which I think also adds to the kind of communal aspect of things," she said about the seating arrangements where diners all sit together. "So often you sit at a restaurant and you didn't make eye contact with the people next to you."
Aside from creating that togetherness there's a retro vibe here too with kitchey salt and pepper shakers and an old time radio.
There's a reason for all the retro decor.
Back in the 1950's Rachel's grandparents owned a place call The Pantry. It was a luncheonette on Samson Street in Philadelphia.
While that lucheonette wasn't vegan, Rachel did grow up vegetarian and went vegan eight years ago.
And now she's spreading the word.
"I want you to know that you can get some great vegan food here even if you're not a vegan person," she says. "We use really good ingredients and we're just working hard to foster really nice relationships and make good food."
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