Reivew - Philly's Café

725 Walnut Street
215.625.3666
Facebook, Google Maps
M - F: 7 am - 5 pm, Sat: 9 am - 3 pm, Sun: Closed
Free Wifi, Lots of Outlets, Lots of Tables

Philly's Café

Philly's Café's, located in the Washington Square District, is only 4 months old and a relatively new establishment.  For those of you who are interested, this place was formerly Danny's Cafe and before that, it was Tuscany Cafe.  I must admit, it was a difficult to research this café.  I couldn't find it on Yelp, Google Maps, or anywhere really.  I was able to finally find their Facebook page however, which is actually quite detailed (and you gotta love the long name of the Facebook page: "Philly's Cafe, previously Tuscany Cafe & Danny's Cafe).  I hadn't heard of anything about Philly's Cafe before I visited the place, so I was able to review the café tabula rasa.


Let me first start with the positives.  First, the staff is extremely friendly and definitely has a family atmosphere.  You can just see their genuineness and congeniality just by the way they interact with each other.  The owner, Kim, is very gregarious and you can see her frequently chatting with the customers.  Second, the diversity of their food menu is simply staggering.  They boast 29 distinct food options including breakfast foods, sandwiches (incluiding Asian sandwiches), wraps, paninis, salads and soups.  I didn't try any of them and instead elected to try their homemade bread pudding, which was baked fresh on the premise by one of the friendly staff, who actually used to own her own bakery.  It was quite delicious, even though they nuked it in a microwave prior to serving it to me.  In terms of drinks, they boast the usual selection: coffees, espressos, smoothies, teas, and a few specialty teas.  They serve La Colombe coffee, which in my opinion is the best coffee I've tasted in Philadelphia, so they made a good choice there!  It's very reasonably priced at $1.50!  And finally a café who's pricing scheme FINALLY makes sense.  Their espresso costs $1.60 and their Café Americano costs the same price.  I never understood WHY most cafés will charge double for their Americano as compared to their espresso.  If someone knows the answer, I'd love to hear it in the comments, but isn't an Americano simply an espresso diluted with hot water?  The one problem with their coffee, however, is that it tasted like it was brewed several hours ago.... I also had the chance to taste their Vietnamese Coffee, which costs $3.25.  I'm a sucker for condensed milk, so I thought it was delicious.  But then again, I think it's somewhat hard to mess up Vietnamese Coffee because the sweetness of the condensed milk just overpowers every other taste.


Next, Philly's Café makes a great study spot!  I count 13 tables, and probably more than half of them have a readily available outlet.  There's free wi-fi, with pretty good speed: 4.98 Mbps download speed (according to speedtest.net).  The wireless network is unprotected however, which makes me a bit more weary though...  It's fairly well-lit, good climate control, and soft background music...great place to study.  Just take note of their hours.  They close fairly early....


Now we can move on to what I think definitely needs improvement.  You walk in and the atmosphere, culture, and ambiance you'd expect from a café in Center City just isn't there.  The walls are more or less bare, except for 2 flat-screen TV's.  You walk in and it feels more like a corner deli or perhaps a quick to-go café you'd find in the basement of a college library (e.g., Mark's Café in the basement of Van Pelt Library).  Overall, the café has a drab and dreary feel to it... It's a great studying location, and probably a suitable place to chat with a friend, but don't expect the ambiance of a true gourmet café.  This may sound super harsh, but the Starbucks just don't the corner offers a more coffeeshop-like atmosphere.  But who knows?  This establishment is fairly new and the owner definitely looks like she's willing to improve the place.  They have a good start with coffee and food.  They just need to build upon the culture.


Bottom line: very friendly staff, descent and reasonably priced coffee, good place to study (minus the hours), but absolutely no coffeeshop culture.  3/5 "beans."  I'd love to hear what you guys think.  Please share your feedback in the comments section!