Adam Erace sits down across the street from Termini’s to have an old fashioned Italian meal at the Termini family’s restaurant Mr. Joe’s. And of course he has a cannoli.

Tossed in crushed marinara, feathery ricotta gnocchi are no bigger than gumdrops, while hunks of spicy pork sausage cling to the ridges and hollows of tubular rigatoni. In nests slicked with green extra-virgin olive oil, toothsome pappardelle ribbons tangle with sauteed button, shiitake and portabella mushrooms.

Pasta fagioli satisfies with chickpeas and creamy cannellini beans. String beans and potatoes are simmered in marinara until almost falling apart, creating a robust, nourishing stew.

Mr. Joe’s Cafe [Philadelphia Weekly]

Rick Nichols can really paint a picture with words. In Sunday’s Inquirer he stepped inside Mr. Joe’s Cafe on South 8th Street.

Mr. Joe’s is a cafe, but maybe more so it is a shrine to Joseph Termini, the founder of Termini’s Bakery.

The cafe’s tabletops are polished granite. The counter has a stylish coffee-bar cast. But it is not long at Mr. Joe’s before clarity gives way to the misty past: A dented torrone pot hangs against one wall, a mobile of relics dangling above it – an old spumoni scoop, a serrated wheel once used to seal ravioli pockets. In glass-fronted cases, after a while, you make out the lines of two varnished-wood radios that once played for Mr. Joe, and his maroon-rimmed coffee mug and two-pronged cherry pitter and balloon whisk and, its yellowed sweat line visible, the paper baker’s cap that 5-foot, 2-inch Joe Termini wore so devotedly that it was propped next to the casket at his funeral.

Respects to Mr. Joe [Philadelphia Inquirer]

City Paper’s Feeding Frenzy notes Flying Monkey Patisserie is now open in the Terminal. And Mr. Joe’s, Vince Termini Sr.’s lunch and coffee spot has opened across from the Termini’s Bakery on S 8th St.