Drink Wine With Dinosaurs at This After-Hours Museum Tour

News Drink Wine With Dinosaurs at This After-Hours Museum Tour Plus: Tex-Mex comes to University City, Philly gets legit po'boys, and Zitner's eggs are back in production. By Jason Sheehan · 11/10/2026, 2:01 p.m. Prehistoric Pours pairs wine with an after-hours tour of Edelman Fossil Park & Museum of Rowan University / Photograph courtesy of Edelman Fossil Park & Museum of Rowan University Howdy, buckaroos! And welcome back to The Special weekly food news round-up. We’re coming up fast on Thanksgiving now, so after a couple weeks overloaded with news, things are now starting to get a little quieter as the industry starts digging in for the long holiday season ahead. We’ve just got a few quick things to get through this week, including (but not limited to) some Tex-Mex and po’boy news, a couple new coffee shops opening, the return of a classic Philadelphia candy, and drinking wine with dinosaurs. Let’s get right into it, shall we? We’ll kick things off this week with … Wine and Dinos Jill Weber from Jet Wine Bar is super excited to let everyone know that she’s teaming up with the crew at New Jersey’s Edelman Fossil Park & Museum of Rowan University for an extra-special, one-night-only event this Friday that combines her two favorite things: wine and dinosaurs. In addition to being the owner of Jet, Weber is an archaeologist, a wine expert, and the host of a Best of Philly-winning wine-tasting series that invites nerdy gourmands to explore unique vintages from even more unique perspectives. (Later this month she’s got an event called “Murder on the Orient Express: Tasting Killer Terroir,” where guests will be sampling wines from the “Thracian plains, snowbound Danubia valleys, and the Alpine slopes.”). This Friday, she’s hosting what is essentially an after-hours, private tour of the museum paired with a wine tasting, plus snacks. The tour includes five food and wine pairings, each reflecting the regions of the world where the dinosaurs on display were discovered. We’re talking a wine from Puglia (the Ora Collective Primitivus Primitivo) and beef tenderloin with wild mushroom crostini at the Dryptosaurus display (which was discovered in Italy), bottles of William Heritage Unoaked Chardonnay, which comes from a vineyard close to Haddonfield where the Hadrosaur was found, paired with a lemon-Parmesan gougère, and a sparkling rosé from Baja, Mexico, poured alongside chicken tinga tostadas, while you learn about the shark-heavy El Gallo formation and the bones of a dozen different dinosaur species that have been found there. Jill Weber sipping wine at the Hadrosaurus exhibit / Photograph courtesy of Jill Weber So, dinosaurs and wine together? That is one nerd-tacular way to spend an evening — learning about cool shit from people who’ve made it their life’s work to know cool shit. The whole point of this evening (beyond the wine, food, and cool dinosaur facts) is to show how “the soil, climate, and environmental conditions that shaped these ancient worlds continue to influence the wines produced in those regions today” — all of which are areas in which Weber and the Edelman team are experts. Tickets to the event will run you $175 per person and include after-hours access to the museum, a tour guided by Weber, and the EFM crew with stops at five displays, each with their own wine and food pairing, plus one complimentary ticket to return to the Edelman Fossil Park on your own to check out anything you might’ve missed. “Prehistoric Pours” is happening on Friday, November 13th. Tickets are available now . You can get yours right here. Now what else is happening this week? Mi Casa Opens in University City Mi Casa’s Korean fried chicken tacos / Photograph by Daivette Castillo The team from Washington D.C.-based Knead Hospitality + Design (who already opened Mi Vida on Ludlow Street earlier this year) are back again with a second Philly restaurant, Mi Casa , which opened last week in University City with Top Chef alum Jonathan Dearden running the kitchen. While Mi Vida positioned itself as a contemporary Mexican restaurant, complete with birria tacos and smoked cauliflower in a pumpkin seed salsa, Mi Casa is leaning Tex-Mex. And seriously, how long has it been since you saw a self-avowed Tex-Mex restaurant opening … well, anywhere, really? Way back in the early days of the second American restaurant renaissance, Tex-Mex restaurants were everywhere. They had margaritas the size of buckets and sizzling fajita platters walked through the dining room, and everybody loved them because they presented a version of Mexican food that came grounded in American culture. I mean Tex(as) was right there in the name, so mobs of suburbanites (my folks included) flocked to these places for what was sometimes their first taste of sur de la Frontera cuisine that didn’t come in a Taco Bell bag. And that was all fine. Everything has to start somewhere, and I will argue long and loudly that places like this — fast-food joints and suburban strip mall chain restaurants — represent the tip of the spear when it comes to the introduction of foreign food to American palates. Without them, you do not get the wild profusion of Amás and La Jefas that follow decades later. But Tex-Mex is one of those styles that had its moment and then seemed to just flame out. Maybe it was overexposure. Maybe it was just that I wasn’t seeing them once I’d moved on to more interesting things. But now, Mi Casa is bringing it all back again with its fajita combos, Texas-style burritos, chile relleno, rolled enchiladas, and nacho platters topped with fried pork skin chicharrones. Granted, because it is 2026, not 1986, the menu also includes Korean fried chicken tacos, black bean hummus, an adobo lasagna with whipped queso fresco, and cheesesteak empanadas with long hot salsa verde. But that’s all as it should be because Tex-Mex was always about fusion: It was born in the place where two culinary cultures met, so adding a few more influences to the mix feels almost modern by comparison. Anyway, the new spot is open now at 3151 Market Street (right next to the Starbucks) for dinner seven nights a week, weekday lunches, and brunch on the weekends. Check them out if you’re in the neighborhood. Meanwhile, in Fishtown … A Tale of Three Brothers The Lynch brothers open Philly Po’Boy Co. / Photograph courtesy of Philly Po’Boy Co. The Lynch brothers were born in Philadelphia. Raised here. But they didn’t all stay here. Chris Lynch, the oldest brother, left home and spent the past three decades working his way through the New Orleans restaurant scene, including time at Emeril’s, Commander’s Palace, and Atchafalaya. Greg Lynch, the youngest, followed in his older brother’s footsteps but stayed close to home. He started in the industry at 15, did 25 years in Philadelphia kitchens, a dozen of them with Starr Restaurants, and most recently in the galley at LMNO. Mike Lynch, the middle brother, isn’t a chef at all. He’s an artist. A designer. A professor. And together, the three of them just opened Philly Po’Boy Company , a brand-new sandwich operation that (in case you didn’t get it from the name) is trying to bring a little bit of New Orleans-style sandwich culture to our already sandwich-obsessed city. Under the El, in a small space at 102 West Berks Street next to the Berks station on the Market-Frankford Line, they’re doing beignet and cafe au lait for the morning commuters from a kiosk and walk-up window on the street, serving po’boys and gumbo inside the restaurant and in a courtyard decorated with murals and artwork done by Mike. It took Greg more than a year of test batches to get the New Orleans-style French baguette for the po’boys right. The gumbo is Chris’s recipe. What’s important to them here is that nothing at Philly Po’Boy is reimagined. Nothing is inspired by. “New Orleans food carries generations of technique, history, and tradition, so bringing it to Philad