Hi all, long-time lurker and first time poster...my keyboard is trembling... I have been assigned to Phila for one year for work, and am living in Center City but also commuting back and forth to NC. I am having a blast eating my way through the city; however, it looks as though I will run out of time before I run out of restaurants! Thanks for your great advice and discussions. My SO and I went to Osteria last Thursday evening. We got off to a somewhat shaky start after being seated under a stereo speaker, with music blasting. Even after they turned it down, it was too loud (why do restaurants insist on ruining a great atmosphere with loud, inappropriate music?). So we moved to a table right next to the prosciutto slicer -- what an excellent location! We were the recipients of two plates of light, tender "ham" (samples from the slicers) and probably could have gotten more. The waiters had no problems throwing us a few scraps as they sliced for others. We weren't starving (a mistake on our part!) so we decided to focus on first and second courses, our first was the Lombardo pizza. I had to have it -- have never had an egg on a pie. Sausage and egg is always good, and it really worked for us, we enjoyed wiping up the egg yolk with the crusts. Instead of mains, we shared two appetizers, the octopus with potato and chive and the robiolo francobolli. Of the two, we liked the pasta best. The octopus was just <okay.> A little too chewy for me (sidenote: had octopus at Matyson a few weeks ago, it was the best I've ever had, so so tender) but tasty. The pasta was good, but a very small plate, and by then we were wishing we'd ordered more food! So we both had dessert. The polenta budino was to die for. Wish I had some now for breakfast. The polenta is cooked with cream and sugar until it's super smooth, there's no grittiness to it at all. Yum. We also shared the chocolate flan, it was good but not as good as the polenta. For drinks, I had a glass of Trebbiano d'Abruzzo. I would have had a second glass of wine had somebody come to the table to ask me if I wanted one. Service was very average -- once the place got busy we were pretty much ignored, with one exception -- the service folks were way too fast in trying to take our plates. A couple of times we had to tell them not to remove plates, which still had very tasty bits of this and that to finish. Overall, we enjoyed the evening, the restaurant has a very "buzzy" feel to it, lots of energy, and next time we'll definitely arrive with a better appetite so we can do the menu justice.