IRWIN'S

A lofty love letter to the island of Sicily

The first step to finding the best pasta in the country right now: Get yourself to South Philly and look up. Scan the horizon for the BOK Building. You can't miss it-at eight stories, the striking 1930s Art Deco vocational school turned creative hub towers over the sleepy blocks of row houses that surround it. Walk toward it. Go through the double doors, down an echoey hallway past the former girl's gymnasium, and up the elevator to the top floor. There, in an old nursing classroom warmed up with vintage lamps and multihued midcentury furniture, you'll find Irwin's, chef Michael Vincent Ferreri's ode to the food of Sicily.

A plate of chewy hand-rolled twists of trofie pasta; a cold glass of fizzy biodynamic Montepulciano; a seat on the rooftop terrace watching the sun set over Center City. Heaven. The view alone sets Irwin's apart from Res Ipsa Cafe, Ferreri's previous restaurant, a beloved, very terrestrial 26-seat BYOB pasta parlor also in Philly. But the altitude suits him with a loftier kitchen comes loftier ambitions, and a level of execution to match. Every single plate that hits the table, be it a seasonal vegetable caponata, a crackling pile of fritto misto, a sticky agrodolce chicken, or a crisp swordfish milanese, positively sings, dancing on the razor's edge between rusticity and precision that makes good Southern Italian cooking so thrilling.