The Search for America's Best Food City: Philadelphia
Never mind that grazing at the Reading Terminal Market is the equivalent of shad swimming upstream. The Philadelphia tourist attraction, an expanse of 80 or so vendors below a former train shed, is where Rick Nichols says we should meet for lunch, and if the city’s unofficial food ambassador says to eat it, you’d best bite.
Easy to spot in the mass of shoppers and noshers with his tuft of white hair, quick smile and eyes often set at amazed, Nichols has agreed to give me a curated tour of one of the best-known food halls in the country. Our rendezvous location: the Rick Nichols Room, an event space in the rear of the market that was named in honor of the longtime Philadelphia Inquirer columnist after his retirement. But first, my host wants to make sure the British strangers he befriended on the train from the near suburbs find their way to the market’s best attributes. The museums, he tells them, can wait.
