So by trial and error and culinary predilection, McDavid has formulated a mental list of personal favorites. Places he can count on for the freshest ingredients, the freshest ideas, the freshest service. (No, strike that last one: the most efficient, gracious service.) In short, where he likes to eat.
There's an army of restaurant owners and chefs out there (many are both: owner-chef hyphenates), and these brave souls crave a good meal as much as the next person. But they know a little more than the average next-person when it comes to eating: the hottest haute kitchens, the only bakery to go to for a pear tartine, the best chicken wings, the heartiest eggs and hash browns, the sublimest sweetbreads (our motto: "Be tough, eat guts"), the ultimate pastas, the otherworldly hot-and-sour soup.
Which is why we've sought out the opinions of some of the city's most established, successful skillet-wielders - toiling in tony Center City bistros, in bustling Reading Terminal Market lunch stands - to find out where they go for a meal.
While a number of specific restaurants recur on a number of the following lists, individual restaurateurs - like the rest of us - have their own tastes and inclinations. Some seek out establishments entirely dissimilar to their own. Others find comfort in familiar fare, of the same school and tradition. Some are thirtysomething ypes who've been forced to redefine "eating out" now that there's a third member in their party - and said member insists on a Sassy Seat (or, at the very least, a hefty phone book).
