helm Rittenhouse

Like its first location in Kensington, Helm serves a menu that’s entirely small plates and they’re pretty much all great. Unlike the original location, they have a liquor license. The new space is a small room on the second floor of a corner building in Rittenhouse that already feels lived-in even though it hasn’t been around long. There are framed pictures on the wall of the owners’ favorite musicians (Chance The Rapper makes the cut), and a library wall that’s organized by color, which really appeals to our OCD tendencies. The most expensive thing on the menu here is only $18, so it’s a pretty reasonably priced date spot, and you should be ordering the beet polenta and the sweet potato gnudi.

While we like a lot of things on the menu, it’s certainly not perfect, and there are a few things here you should avoid. The burrata tortellini, for one, is far too salty and the filling isn’t super creamy. And the broccoli rabe isn’t super memorable either. Fortunately, the menu here changes so often that the dishes we don’t love tend to filter out pretty quickly, and for every dish that’s a miss, there are at least five that are hits.