Sometimes, Craig LaBan writes in The Philadelphia Inquirer, dinner at 1906 stops feeling like a meal and starts feeling like the main event.
The restaurant, named for the year Pierre S. du Pont acquired the land that would become Longwood Gardens, has emerged from a sweeping transformation as part of the gardens’ ambitious Longwood Reimagined expansion.
It has become a dining room that earns its view.
Vaulted ceilings soar above tables set against floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the iconic Main Fountain Garden, making 1906 one of the most visually stunning restaurant settings anywhere in the Philadelphia suburbs.
Yet Executive Chef George Murkowicz isn’t content to let the scenery do all the work.
His menus are built around Longwood’s own Ornamental Kitchen Garden, a working half-acre plot where more than 350 crops rotate through each year.
The kitchen is rooted in Kennett Square’s identity as the self-styled Mushroom Capital of the World, and the dishes show it: mushroom-forward plates, vivid garden vegetables, and refined, precise presentations that feel like a natural extension of the landscape just beyond the windows.
The standout dishes reward attention. A grilled celery root roulade arrives yakitori-style, glossed with ponzu sauce spiked with kumquats and grapefruit grown in Longwood’s own conservatory.
Tender fava beans and edible flowers complete the plate for a seasonal bridge, delicate and deliberate, between winter’s end and the first green notes of spring. Even the bread course signals where you are as warm brioche comes with whipped butter dusted in dehydrated marigolds and bachelor’s buttons, edible remnants of the gardens just outside.
Reservations at 1906 have become genuinely hard to come by, particularly on evenings when the Main Fountain Garden’s performances and the gardens’ seasonal spectacles draw crowds.
1906 has become not just a restaurant, but a centerpiece of the Longwood experience, a place where fine dining, horticulture, and something close to wonder all arrive at the same table.
Read the full review of the 1906 dining experience at Kennett’s most popular destination in The Philadelphia Inquirer.
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