The Experience Is Yours: Lacroix Built a Weekend Brunch Around Moments That Happen at Your Table
Weekend brunch at Lacroix in The Rittenhouse now unfolds at your table: frosting until you say when, a smoke-domed Old Fashioned, and a sundae built your way.
Lacroix has drawn Philadelphians up the stairs at The Rittenhouse for twenty-four years, and the room has always dressed for the occasion.
This fall, brunch arrives as a sequence of moments at your table, and for the first time it runs on Saturdays as well as Sundays, from 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. A cart rolls up alongside you. A glass dome lifts off a cocktail. A sundae comes together one topping at a time while a guitarist or violinist plays across the room. Each table’s brunch becomes its own experience, shaped by the people sitting at it.
The Backdrop
Lacroix opened on September 23, 2002, in the second-floor space that had been the hotel’s TreeTops restaurant, built as a showcase for chef Jean-Marie Lacroix. Over the years the kitchen has sent cooks out across the city, among them Townsend Wentz, the opening executive sous chef, and Matt Levin, who followed Lacroix in 2006.
Through every chef change, brunch has been a focal point for both guests AND the neighborhood. For years, the Sunday brunch spread was a ritual for a lot of neighbors (holidays included), the standing reservation that marked birthdays, visits from family, and Sundays that just called for it. That tradition now carries into two full days of brunch, one table at a time.
Chef de Cuisine Joshua Quintana runs the kitchen, and his team sources from farms and vendors the chefs know personally. Because brunch runs two days a week, food and beverage director Aman Gopinath told us, everything is prepped the day before or that morning.
The Walk Up
The experience starts in the lobby. A pale stone staircase with a polished brass balustrade climbs past potted plants on the steps and a painting of a costumed party scene at the landing, up to a sage-green hallway lit by a single copper drum pendant set into a domed ceiling, with dried arrangements and white planters of greenery to either side.
Then the archway opens onto the dining room: a terrazzo floor, pale green columns, a wall of white cubbies each holding a plant, a curved stone console under the windows, and a dark-wood cabinet with its own library ladder. The greens are deliberate; the palette is pulled from the park outside. There’s no direct sun up here, so the room stays evenly bright off the windows whether the Square is lit up or soaked.
Dressed for It
Lacroix calls the idea “Sunday’s Best,” after the tradition of dressing up for Sunday, and the invitation is to wear the outfit you’ve been saving. Chef Joshua Quintana put it this way in the launch announcement: “reach for that favorite outfit, come ready to have fun, and expect the unexpected.” The staff set the tone. The manager is in a suit, the hosts in full dresses, the servers in slacks, white shirts, and vests, and the cart attendants in white kitchen uniforms with blue aprons.
Live music runs through the whole service, spanning piano and an electric violinist, and on some days a guitarist has the floor. A tower of champagne coupes by the window, in line with the entrance, is filled fresh each day — the first glimpse of Lacroix’s Bottomless Bubbles.
The Reveal
The A.M. Old Fashioned comes to the table under a glass dome. When it lifts, applewood smoke rolls off a cut-crystal tumbler holding a single clear ice sphere and a twist of orange, and what reaches you is the smell of a wood-burning fireplace. Under the smoke, the menu lists bacon-fat-washed Rittenhouse rye, Laphroaig, maple syrup, coffee bitters, and orange zest, so there are two kinds of smoke in the glass: the peat in the scotch and the applewood in the air.
Coffee gets its own moment, too. Pick from two roasts, and the French press is brought out and steeped right at your table, so the first pour happens in front of you.
The cocktail list comes from Danny Childs, whose cookbook Slow Drinks earned him a James Beard Award, and who has worked with Lacroix for close to two years. Syrups are made in-house, and local ingredients go in wherever the bar can use them. Among the brunch pours: an Espresso du Mondé with cognac, chicory coffee syrup, and fresh espresso; a Philly Fish House Punch with Laird’s applejack, Jamaican rum, and English breakfast tea; and a Square Steps with tequila, cucumber, mint, and green Chartreuse. Bottomless Bubbles come as mimosa or Bellini.
The bar also builds a set of spritzes on Juliette, a French liqueur made from pêche de vigne, an heirloom peach, with notes of honeysuckle and vanilla, topped with cava bottled for the hotel by Barcino under The Rittenhouse label. The card lists a Juliette Bellini with peach purée and mint, a Peach 75 with Bluecoat gin and lemon, a Hugo & Jules with St. Germain elderflower, and a Sunrise Mimosa with orange juice.
The Cart Arrives
The cart is black metal with a dark wood top and bottle rails along its sides, and a kitchen staff member rolls it up alongside the table. The Giant Browned-Butter Cinnamon Roll arrives in a cast-iron skillet set on a round white marble board, piping hot. The frosting, pale tan from the brown butter, sits in a white lion’s-head tureen beside it. The attendant talks through the roll while spooning frosting over the top, and keeps going until you say when. It melts into the spiral almost as soon as it lands. Then the roll is cut at the table, usually into four, adjusted to however many people are sharing, and anything left is boxed up for you at the end.
The roll is listed as serving two to four. Lacroix makes ten of them per brunch: the dough proofs overnight and again for a few hours in the morning, and it shares oven time with everything else the pastry team has going, so there’s no mid-service batch. Gopinath’s guidance is to arrive near 11:30 or ask about it when you book because they generally sell out fast.
From the Kitchen
The menu is à la carte and printed by season (the current one reads Fall across the top), so check the brunch menu before you go. It opens with plates For the Table, like spicy shrimp toast, escargot, and moules frites, and a Raw Bar that includes the Grande Plateau, which gathers oysters, caviar, tuna crudo, king crab, prawns, and lobster tail.
The entrées range from The Traditional and a French Omelette with raclette to Crab Cake Benedict with brown butter hollandaise, Lobster Hashbrowns on a crispy potato pavé, and French Toast Suzette, brioche soaked in crème anglaise and finished with blood orange and Grand Marnier. An ounce of Regalis caviar can be added to any dish, and the full lineup lives on Lacroix’s brunch menu.
A rotating off-menu Pastry of the Month stays on until it sells out; ask what this month’s is. Bringing kids? The children’s menu has a Pancake Skewer with marshmallow and strawberries, Le Petit-Déj, and Toad in the Hole.
Built in Front of You
The same cart returns at dessert as the Build Your Own Sundae. Eight white lion’s-head crocks ride on a mirrored tray on its lower shelf: chocolate chips, rainbow sprinkles, M&M’s, white chocolate curls, toasted coconut, a red fruit sauce, caramel, and chocolate. The sundae itself is vanilla ice cream in an art deco coupe. The attendant names each topping, pauses for your picks, then asks how much of each as it goes on: little, medium, or heavy. The tables nearby tend to watch.
A Restaurant for the City
“We just happen to be in a hotel,” Gopinath told us, “but we are very much a restaurant for the city.” The brunch crowd is nearly all neighbors, and the à la carte menu means hotel guests can drop in for the cinnamon roll and a coupe of bubbles, too. “We all love this menu,” Gopinath said. “It’s brought a new energy to us.”
The service moves at your table’s pace: the carts come between courses, and someone is always close by when you’re ready for what’s next.
Twenty-four years after Lacroix took over TreeTops’ second-floor perch, we love that it has given the neighborhood a new reason to dress up for brunch, now on Saturdays too.
Reserve through OpenTable or call 215-790-2533, and arrive close to 11:30 if the cinnamon roll is on your list. We’d love to hear about your visit at rittenhouseramblings@gmail.com.
