Talula’s Table owner Aimee Olexy shares how to care for guests in Philadelphia and Kennett Square

In the Kitchen with Bret Thorn

Since the pandemic started, restaurateurs have been adjusting and rejiggering operations, turning fine dining restaurants into takeout comfort food operations, selling groceries and otherwise providing whatever their customers said they needed. Aimee Olexy has been doing that for 14 years at Talula’s Table in Kennett Square, Pa., about 30 miles outside of Philadelphia. The place is a gourmet market and bakery by day and an extraordinarily exclusive tasting-menu restaurant by night. Before the pandemic, the two tables in the restaurant — one seating 10-12 people and the other 4-8 — were booked as soon as reservations were allowed, at 7 a.m. a year to the day in advance. When the pandemic hit, people stopped making reservations, and it’s now possible to get in a month or two in advance on weekdays, but business is still strong there, and Olexy is busy with restaurants in Philadelphia that she has opened in partnership with restaurant impresario Stephen Starr: Talula’s Daily, which is the urban equivalent of Talula’s Table, Talula’s Garden next door, and The Love, an oasis on Rittenhouse Square. During the pandemic she also has launched a high-end catering option, Talula’s Table at Home. In this podcast Olexy discusses the finer points of romancing food for customers and, of course, how she has adjusted during the pandemic.