Blue Belly BBQ in Queen Village

Well folks, the great Philadelphia barbecue race has some new additions. Michael Klein of the Philadelphia Inquirer has the details on the two newest spots, Fette Sau and Bubba's Texas BBQ. Even my suburban work town, Ardmore, has jumped on the wagon with Barbacoa.

If any of the above places can match or surpass Blue Belly BBQ in Queen Village it's going to be a delicious race to eat up.

Blue Belly, an entrant from the Giuffi brothers of Cochon fame, opened late this summer. According to its website, Blue Belly brings a Northern approach to barbecue that includes multi-regional styles.

Sounds good to us since we are not barbecue aficionados who argue over preferences and intricacies of the four main types of barbecue. We love all types of barbecue. And Kristy did win a Zokos pot luck contest for her BBQ chicken sliders so we've got some cred.

Inside Blue Belly BBQ

The Atmosphere

Blue Belly is a tiny corner spot at 6th & Catherine with a cool atmosphere. You can choose to sit at the counter, one of a few picnic tables or get takeout (a popular choice according to the host).

We love counter seating so we jumped on the open spots one Sunday afternoon. The chance to chat with the chef and watch our food being made always enhances the entire food experience.

Winner of our CityEats $100 Giveaway

Congrats to Lindsey LaBella, winner of our $100 giveaway to Ulivo! Thanks to the 100+ readers who entered. We put all your email addresses into a spreadsheet and used Random.org to generate a random number. Lucky row #32 belonged to Lindsey and now she gets to enjoy an awesome Italian dinner at Ulivo in Queen Village (psst... Lindsey, order the pumpkin angilotti!).

Lindsey is also one of our Facebook followers. You can keep up with all our posts, plus a lot more local food photos and links to interesting food news/events by following us on Facebook, Google + and Twitter, too.

Thanks again to CityEats for offering to include us and our readers in their Dream Dinner giveaway!

Part of the entry list and our winner...

Win $100 to Ulivo from CityEats.com! Contest ends 10/21

Last weekend, we revealed a new series that will review Italian BYOBs in the Philadelphia area according to the "Nana Test." We already wrote about Ulivo in Queen Village as part of that series and now, thanks to CityEats, our loyal and hungry readers have the chance to win $100 towards your own delicious "Dream Dinner" at Ulivo, too.

It's SO easy. There are 3 ways to win:

1. All existing email subscribers to 22nd & Philly are automatically entered. Yay for you!

2. Anyone else who registers for email updates from 22nd & Philly between now and October 21 will also be entered to win. Sign up right here or at the top right column of your screen.

3. Go to the 22nd & Philly page on Facebook and share this post with all your friends so they can enter, too.

If you sign up for the email AND share this post on Facebook, you'll be in the running twice. Entry deadline is October 21, 2012 at midnight. We'll put all entries into a hat and pick a winner to be announced October 22.

Why is this worthwhile? $100 is a big deal people, and at a BYOB like Ulivo it will go a long way. You'll see in our review that Ulivo is worth the visit. Don't believe us? Our friends at Two Eat Philly loved Ulivo, too. Here is the current seasonal menu on CityEats.com.

A few rules:
1. The $100 has to be spent in one sitting so we recommend going in a party of 3 or more people in order to spend that much. That's the beauty of a BYOB. Your friends will thank you.

2. The winner must make his/her reservation through CityEats.com, a website created in partnership with the Food Network to book reservations and get a sense for the restaurant experience before you even go.

Who wants in?? Start signing up and sharing on Facebook today!

Ulivo is Up First in "The Nana Test"

Bucatini all'Amatriciana

Our recent visit to Italian BYOB Ulivo was good timing, as we just launched a series of reviews according to "The Nana Test" - a set of criteria that compares local Italian restaurant experiences to traditional Italian dinners with the family at grandma's house. Each item is rated on a 5-point scale, with 5 being the best.

Keep in mind that Ulivo's menu changes seasonally, so we had the Fall 2012 menu. If you go another time of year, some things may be different.

Here is how Ulivo fared in The Nana Test:

Introducing The Nana Test: A New Way to Review Italian Restaurants

Some of my all-time favorite meals were at my grandmother’s for home-cooked Italian food. She sets the standard for any Italian meal I eat. Her sauce is just incredible and it is the reason I started licking my plate clean at a young age. Don’t even get me started on her pasta aioli.

Even more important than the actual meal, though, was the environment. Her cooking brought the family together and embedded in us the importance food has in creating positive memories and traditions. They are the foundation of our blog and the prism through which we look at the Philadelphia food scene.

This city and its suburbs are lucky enough to have a long list of cultural restaurants that could remind any of us of our grandmothers' cooking. It’s one reason why a series of posts on Italian restaurants has long been a goal of ours.

The struggle has been to come up with the right way to evaluate them. The perfect idea hit me like a rolling pin to my head while cooking my own pasta the other week: The Nana Test.

The Nana Test consists of five elements that best describe meals my family shared at my Nana's house. We will focus primarily on BYOBs, each graded according to these five criteria and given an overall score between 1 and 5 (5 being the best).