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Categories: Lounges, Steakhouses, Italian [Edit]
Neighborhoods: Rittenhouse Square, Penn Center"Do you need a low-key place to watch a college football game without too many loud customers around? Then Smith's is the place to be. As…" read more »
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our wedding was held here just about a week ago. the ceremony took place in the director's room on the penthouse floor, and my husband and i were married in front of a giant marble fireplace under a huge chandelier. the room was filled with natural light provided by 15+ foot windows. the room comfortably held about 145 people plus a guitarist. phenomenal. this space is great for larger parties. there is also a smaller room off to the side, with fireplace. a balcony can be accessed off this room, with spectacular views of the city. i'm pretty sure they can hold very small events out there as well.
the reception was amazing. we had an open floor plan - meaning there weren't tables for everyone because we wanted to keep the cocktail party feeling going. the room was laid out perfectly to allow people to wander, mosey, and mingle while eating some of the best food they'd ever had. there was an antipasti station, pasta station, slider station (kobe beef burgers! crabcake! gourmet grilled cheese!), lamb and filet carving stations with two or three different sauces, and veggies. but who cares about veggies?
our dessert was awesome. we met with tom, the pastry chef, about two weeks or so before the wedding. we wanted a skull cake. i know, sounds weird. sugar skulls though. we told tom to have fun with it, and he did. we went from a simple fondant-covered two-tiered cake to a fondant-covered two-tiered cake with two sugar skulls on top! there was also a dessert station with petit fors, tiramisu, and assorted other italian cookies and treats.
the staff was also amazing. i can't thank them enough for all their help.
i wish i had something more than "amazing" to say. cheesesteak springrolls are fantastic - accept no… Read more »
Beautiful restaurant.
Went twice for restaurant week and once for SIPs. Very sophisticated vibe and was impressed the staff referred to me as "Miss D" during the entire meal. Definitely a suitable setting for a celebratory meal or special occasion.
If you get the chance, sneak up on the roofdeck for a breathtaking view of the city.
This is a 3.5 star place, but rounding up.
Davio's is a beautiful space in the Rittenhouse area. While the dining room is intimate (tables hidden behind pillars, walls, etc), it feels like a much bigger place because of the high ceilings. It's quite romantic, and a great first date place.
The food is solid--the pastas are hearty and come in half portions. My boyfriend got the orchiette and grilled shrimp in appetizer portion, which was perfect because the dish is very filling (+ maybe on the saltier side as well). I tried the crab and avocado salad (refreshing and light--could have been chilled a little more for crisper flavors) and the branzino with blue crab risotto (large portion, tasty). My boyfriend got the pan fried salmon, which was cooked to perfection: crispy on the outside, lovely texture on the inside.
We split the tiramisu and the limoncello tart for dessert.
Bottomline: Exceptional service, delicious and hearty fare (even the fish dishes), solid wine list with fair prices, but everything is just a little salty for my taste.
I cannot say enough good things about my experience at Davios! I came here just for drinks and apps with friends and we sat at the bar in the main dining room(which is gorgeous)! We came after a Drunken brunch that just turned into a sloppy but fun Sunday.
I was just drinking beer but I did get a chocolate martini while I was there which was superb. We got some apps as well and I wanted to make love to the steak and cheese spring rolls which are from what I gather a signature dish for the head chef! They where one of the most perfect apps I have ever had. The bartender was great, very fun and quick with a drink. gorgeous place and I would like to get gussied up and come here for dinner at some point. Thanks Erin for introducing me to this place.
I have been here for many many happy hours and it is really a beautiful place. fancy and caters to the working professional. I've never had the food there but heard its really really good.
The menu is very good. It is a nice meal. A little stiff for the atmosphere. Also the food took a while to come out. Everyone was satisfied with their meals.
Food was so-so and I felt like the sommelier kept making the most expensive recommendations. Also, the waiter was too flippant and airy - he'd stop in talking in mid sentence and walk away at times. Oh, and when people come for restaurant week and ask for their recommendation, don't only give recommendations that aren't actually on the restaurant week menu.
Still, food was decent and the wine was delicious.
Davio's "Sautéed Chicken Livers, Dried Cherries, Pignoli, Sweet Balsamic" ($9) is one of the best appetizers I've had in Philadelphia. The livers appear to be ground & formed into meatballs, which get crispy on the outside.
It's enormous, too. Get it at the bar for a meal.
This is one of the nicest Italian locations I have visited in a VERY long time. I also send a 'shout out' to my server Riley who was perfect at making my wife and I very happy!
The food was presented in a great manner befitting Ceaser himself and if you walk out hungry it was your own fault.
I went to Davio's for restaurant week last year and was pretty disappointed. The food was ok (and maybe they toned it down for restaurant week) but certainly not worthy of the price tags on the regular menu. I liked the decor a lot and they have a beautiful fish tank once you exit the elevator upstairs. The server was incredibly knowledgeable but literally spoke and looked at my girlfriend the entire time without even glancing over my way.
Honestly, the food was pretty bland ASIDE from the AMAZING Cheesesteak spring rolls. By far the best I've ever had and highly recommended. We hung at the bar for a bit before dinner and really enjoyed that. I would recommend it for happy hours/drinks but don't think the food is worth the price.
I went to Davio's last night for restaurant week, and I absolutely love it!!!
We only waited about 5 minutes for our table, but we got to chit chat to a very cool and fun bartender and made me a very yummy drink!
Then we were ready to order! They first gave us hot fresh bread with eggplant dip, big peppers, and olives. I dont like peppers or olives, so yea I ate mostly the eggplant dip with the bread, it was very good!!
First up, I ordered the shrimp scampi which is sooo good!! I love food if it's very flavorable and this was oh so good! lol. It included 2 shrimps and little piece of bread at the bottom, which soaked up all the sauce and made it sooo good.lol. (yea my fave expression by my friends is that I tend to say "sooo goood" a lot lol)
Then I ordered the Chicken with mash potatoes and asparagus. LOVE IT! It was a pretty good size chicken and omg the mash potatoes was really flavorable with the sauce they had put on top, I did not leave a drop left on my plate lol. My friend had scallops with sliced potatoes and omg that was very flavorable as well! so goood! lol
And our dessert?! the best part!! They gave us dessert sampler which came with dark chocolate piece, and then a starwberry cheesecake piece, and a glazed cream puff which i love!!
Service was awesome! I drink lots of water, so I always have a hard time at a lot of restaurants just to get a waiter to refill water, but davio's waiters came by and check up on us all the time so I got my water refilled right away! lol love it!
Oh yea and they even put our coats away for us, that's the first for me! lol I would definitely recommend it and would go there again to try their other menu items! :) And the decor was very beautiful! I felt like i was in a mansion! Chairs were very comfy as well! I hate hard chairs! lol
This is a typical lunch place for me.
It doesn't get as crowded as typical downtown restaurants, and service is always quick and friendly.
Portions are large, I usually end up bringing half back with me.
I love this place for lunches with our consultants and visitors. They always want to go back once they 've been at Davios. All always order the cheese steak spring rolls - they are good.
Service is good, and I've been to lunch here at least 10 x and it's always excellent.
I've been to dinner twice and had just as positive of an experience.
I say give it a try!
There is nothing wrong with Davio's in fact I think it has one of the best staffs around. Everyone is polite and not overly stuffy. I have had the fillet and the top sirloin, and they were all pretty good. Just for the money I think you get a better steak at Old homestead, Barclay, Morton's or Osteria. Kobe meatballs were forgettable and spring rolls, calamari and crab cake were better than average but nothing mind blowing. I never tried the Italian food maybe that's what I'm missing or the fact that you have to walk thru a fight btwn a Glounge bouncer and a Glounge club goer when you leave Davio's -in my mind their is no point in them arguing- they both lost.
Took my wife for her birthday for dinner. The cocktails are great
and the service was good. They were crowded and I think a bit short-staffed but did a great job.
The food was simply amazing. My wife said the best food she has eaten.
The crowd is on the older side but not a very formal. Though most where
very well dressed.
We did a group dinner here and were happy we did! The private room is slightly awkward to get to, however, it is worth it! The 14th floor location has a balcony that provides great views of the city.
Various apps were passed around - all were a great way to start the night. I opted for the chicken entree which was good, thought I did look longingly at the steak dish that 90% of our group ordered. Big Hit! The dessert sampler provided great bites of their best. I wished we had the cheesesteak springrolls on our menu... those sound so wrong they must be good!
Old school style waiters reminded me of my Nonna - I did not entirely clear my place and he was slightly offended taking this as a sign I was not happy with my dinner. Au contraire! Service was great and perfect for a group dinner.
I thought they offered quite a bit for Center City Sips. The first caipirinha didn't have much alcohol but the next few did. The appetizers they offered were great. The place was quite busy and the bartender didn't seem to be that accomodating or willing to serve the people standing beside the bar. Finally we got a place to sit on the couches and the waitress was then very attentive to us and got us what we ordered. We then had dinner since it was 15% after sips. The waiter we had completely ignored us and the dinner portion took almost 2 hours for the food to come out. I had the osteria which was a pretty good deal with salad and pasta for $21. The waiter failed to get us any bread so the other two guests just sat there with only water for like more than an hour. The waiter at the next table got his table bread immediately when they sat down. We told the busboy many times but never got any bread. It took them a while to get us water as well and my friend never got the lemons that she requested with her water. The dining area wasn't even that busy compared to happy hour so there was really no excuse. For all of us just ordering pretty much entrees we sat there for 2 hours with glasses of water and no bread. The service could be better. Otherwise the food was pretty good.
Food here is excellent & the staqff is very professional. It's nice because its sort of an Italian restaurant & a steak house all in one. Nice wine list too.
Davio's is one of my favorite places for a business lunch. The waitstaff is absolutely fantastic. They remember the name of the person who made the reservation, they are polite, and they provide top-notch service. The food is very well presented. They also cater to food restrictions (e.g., take that pancetta out of my warm spinach salad). Make sure you look at the desert truck before eating lunch or dinner so you know how to plan. Definitely go for the chocolate souffl. This is absolutely worth every single drop of molten chocolate and vanilla ice cream on the side. Forget about your diet - just enjoy.
For lunch, the salads, pizza, fish, and anything I have had has been very good. They usually have a vegetarian soup on the menu as well, which is important to me and my non-meat eating ways. Don't plan on a 1 hour lunch. If you like sparkling water, they make their own with some machine and bottling system. The water is actually very good, but very pricey. I have always had a great experience for lunch here.
I was here for a group dinner recently, and that is a similarly excellent experience. The wine list is tremendous, and just like lunch, the waitstaff caters to whatever the guests need.
If you have kids, I just got an email from them that caters to families. They have a monthly contest to award the best drawing or coloring with a $100 Davio's gift certificate. Davio's supplies the crayons/paper/coloring pages, and the guests supply the kids. Perhaps that is a way to enjoy some fine dining WITH, yes with your kids while keeping them occupied (at least for a short while), during which you can enjoy a fantastic glass (or bottle) of red wine.
3 1/4 Stars. Nice place for lunch, GREAT service. Food is pretty good, though a little oily. What I love (because I am a sucker) is that they always call me by name! (Genius marketing technique.) I guess that's what keeps me coming back... LOL.
Fun place for dinner, especially when nice weather permits sitting outside.
As a poor grad student, I can't afford to eat dinner here, although I have looked longingly at their menu. However, Davio's is one of my favorite places for happy hour. I can't even tell you how many times I've gone here. Of all of the places that had the Wed. night Center City Sips happy hour last summer, Davio's by far had the most delicious free appetizers. They had mini pizza, sliders, cheese steak spring rolls with spicy ketchup, tortilla chips with crabmeat and avocado, cheese, etc. etc. Oh, it was wonderful. I used to park myself at the bar end closest to where the appetizers came out so that I would get one of each before they ran out. The drink specials were also great, and the bartenders were friendly (the big guy with the mustache and Jasmine, who reminded me of Sandra Oh).
Davio's is participating in City Sips this summer, too, but the program citywide now is $1 appetizers instead of free ones, so I'm not sure what Davio's is serving now. I haven't made it there yet on a Wed. this summer. I have gone on other days for their regular Monday-Friday 5-7 p.m. happy hour with $5 martinis, beer and wine specials, and free mini pizzas. Good stuff.
The place is very high-end, with vaulted ceilings, beautiful decor (including fish tank), and comfy bar area. I can't wait until I'm out of grad school and can afford to eat an actual meal here because, if the free appetizers last summer were any indication, the food here is fantabulous.
I recently went here for a Center City Sips happy hour. The food options were plentiful (which is rare for Sips participants) and absolutely delicious. The general manager approached us in the crowded bar and offered to seat us at a table which is rare for Sips. The servers were pleasant and very accommodating. I will definitely return to Davios for dinner on the regular menu because of how wonderful the service is and how delicious the food was .
I do not usually do a la carte dining establishments as it tends to get rather pricey. For a fancy dinner or special occasion when you are looking to spend a bit more, I would look no further than Davio's. The staff is very friendly and knowledgeable about the food and wine and pairing things together. They respect your wallet and decisions as well. It is a very nice setting and easily accessible by car, speedline, or subway. The dining room is gorgeous and they have a giant fish tank, which is always fun.
We enjoyed dinner at Davio's on Saturday February 24th. The restaurant was located just two blocks down from our hotel, and was perfectly located for us. The dining room of the restaurant is located in a former bank, and the second-floor location revealed a huge open area with high ceilings yet was somehow still quite cozy.
We had a wonderful, knowledgeable sommelier and our server was terrific. Attentive, but not hovering. Instead of the usual bred prior to dinner, we were presented with a lovely array of fresh ricotta cheese, marinated mushrooms and olives. That in itself would have been a lovely feast! We started with salad; I enjoyed a Caesar presented with full romaine leaves intact and fresh anchovy. It was quite good, but nothing extraordinary.
Davio's is known for their beef, so I went with a filet mignon. It was seared perfectly crisp on the outside and yet was warm, flavorful, and melt-in-your-mouth on the inside. I ate the entire thing with relish.
Dessert was tiramisu; it was better-than-average but I LOVE tiramisu and have tried it almost everywhere so I am a bit spoiled. It was good, but not worth sacrificing my first-born for.
Overall, I would highly recommend Davio's to anyone looking for a great steak in the Philadelphia area. I will be back next year!
Davio's is a super high end steakhouse. TK and I went here with our respective parents for their first meeting, always a nervewracking venture. We felt very catered-to. The servers brought out table appetizers that meshed with our respective eating restrictions. I ordered the Surf and Turf for the first time ever (back in my former life I used to order the least expensive thing on the menu...don't do that anymore). The filet was perfectly rare, nice and seared on the outside...the lobster was exquisite. They had a really great wine list, too.
Overall, the decor is very upscale if a little bit bland. The food was definitely good, although extremely pricey. Be prepared to spend at least 100 a head with wine.
Granted, I went here on a night when I wasn't feeling great. In fact, little did I know that I was about to enter into a cold/flu hell from which it would be painful to return....but that's a different story. This story is about the OK food at Davio's. Reading all the reviews on here gave me high hopes for this place. However, I found it to be more about atmosphere than about substance. Big heavy furniture, imposing space, beautiful hostesses putting their boobs on a plate...the typical trappings of a steak house. But when we got the steaks, mine seemed a bit overdone, with just a sliver of pink in the middle. I'd ordered a medium done 10oz strip, which was a nice size. But I'd expected a bit more red. My friend who'd ordered a 10oz filet done rare thought his meat was a bit too rare, but enjoyed it all the same. And my other friend who ordered prime rib initially thought it was overcooked, but after a bit of eating also agreed that it was good steak. Me, I thought the outside cooked too much, and the steak really couldn't recover from there. All in all, an OK place. But not the best steaks in Philly, despite assurances from our waiters.
Since I'm not a big-spender, I wanted to go during Center City Sips to check it out. The front entrance area can feel somewhat unwelcoming, like you're entering an office building, but once you get off the elevator, it opens up. We got there at 4:45, so we were able to snag a seat on the couch. I had the pasta chips (sounds strange, but quite delicious!) with bolognese sauce and the crostini platter. I wouldn't have thought to combine artichokes and mangoes, but they did a pretty good job. My friend also got the crostini platter, which she wasn't as excited about and pizze, yep, pizze, not pizza...I guess because they are small slices? All the same, very tasty. I'm a BIG fan of thin crust and they do a great job, there wasn't too much sauce and there was plenty of cheese. We split dessert - the warm chocolate molten cake with vanilla ice cream, SO good. The cake came out scalding hot and I got a little overzealous and burnt my tongue, but that's price I paid! We were mostly served by the hostess, but every now and then, a waitress came by to check in, which was comforting, but we didn't feel rushed.
18" Tomato Pizza $3.99
Philadelphia, PA
1/2 Prices at Happy Hour
Neighborhood: Rittenhouse Square
Neighborhood: Rittenhouse Square
Category: Italian
Neighborhood: Rittenhouse Square
Category: Steakhouses
Neighborhood: Market East
Category: Seafood
Neighborhood: Rittenhouse Square
Category: American (Traditional)
Neighborhood: Rittenhouse Square
Category: Steakhouses
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