Monday, June 5, 7:00 pm
Members $90, guests $120

For over 70 years, Marigold Tea Room was a Philadelphia favorite, offering University City residents a taste of home with dishes like meatloaf and other blue plate specials. In 2004 Jonathan Makar and Steve Cook took over the space and transformed it into Marigold Kitchen, a neighborhood restaurant in the same eclectic spirit as the original Marigold, but with a decidedly more modern and ambitious take on American cuisine. When Makar and Cook brought executive chef Michael Solomonov into the fold in 2005, Marigold Kitchen—and Solomonov’s career—blossomed.

“The stunning contemporary cuisine at West Philly’s BYO darling, Marigold Kitchen, has taken on some distinct new Mediterranean flavors since the arrival of chef Michael Solomonov,” wrote the Philadelphia Inquirer’s Craig LaBan, who likened the chef’s pink lentil soup with kofte sausage to “ Jerusalem in a bowl.” Born in Israel and raised in Pittsburgh, Solomonov comes by his Middle Eastern–inflected New American cooking style quite naturally. After graduating from the Florida Culinary Institute, he moved to Philadelphia to pursue his cooking career, working at Avenue B and Striped Bass before taking on a career-defining sous-chef role at Marc Vetri’s award-winning Italian eatery, Vetri.

Solomonov brings his myriad influences together at Marigold, most notably in a five-course seasonal tasting menu that City Paper deemed their “top pick for discriminating taste buds.” The menu is peppered with dishes—like foie gras with apples and honey, and Israeli couscous with escargots, pine nuts, and mushrooms—that evoke an upscale hominess which hints at the restaurant’s history while firmly establishing Solomonov as a culinary force to be reckoned with. “You may not know him yet,” Maria Gallagher of Philadelphia magazine wrote of Solomonov, “but his work at Marigold is the best possible introduction, affirming him as one of Philadelphia’s most promising young culinary talents.”