Broccoli rabe on North Broad

Were it located in the genteel wilds of Birchrunville, Chester County, say, or Malvern, even, green farmlands lapping at the doorstep, Osteria's poignant gesture to fresh and local might not be that much worth the noting.

But for those who haven't had occasion to visit, let us set the scene: The casual sister to Marc Vetri's eponymous Vetri is just a handful of blocks north on Broad Street from Vine, though still south of Temple University, which is to say in a stretch of faded urbanity to which the noun revival cannot (yet) be honestly appended.

Approach it from the south and you are greeted by auto showrooms, vacant now, glass houses signifying nothing. Across North Broad? The hollow "Houseplant Warehouse," long-shuttered, wilted, and dark.

But if you are on foot, and peek though the fencing immediately beyond the heavy, stone flanks of Old Zion Lutheran Church (est. 1742), you spot an anomalous tableau - a jumble of trowels, claws, and watering apparatus visible through a lacy screen of peeling white birches.

This is the Osteria kitchen garden, Season II. And it is physical proof that, yes, broccoli rabe grows on North Broad; and that in raised beds in a graveled alley between the stained glass of Old Zion and the glassed-in extension of the restaurant's dining room so do boxes of reedy leeks and spring onions, and in planters, pine-scented lavender, dark Tuscan kale, and mint, accents and supplements to the kitchen's regular daily deliveries of herbs and produce.

The garden is not, on the other hand, very visible from the tables inside Osteria itself. So you may finish a meal of wood-grilled halibut with pale-green, fava bean crema, ramps, and house-made culatello, a Parma-style cold cut, and never know what lurks outside. Or have the slow-roasted lamb shoulder with artichokes, or Osteria's Margherita pizza, crisp and smoky, and be on your way oblivious that from the pavement itself, a garden has been coaxed.

But one evening, you may be informed of a special - the rich veal liver and pork terrine, for example, with pickled ramps, slivered radish, and house-grown spinach. And the words house-grown will trigger a question and perhaps an invitation out the back door to visit the unlikely, hidden spread - a skinny, 10-by-60-foot bonsai Ponderosa.