For me it's Meteor for the last five years with the Mongo database subscribed in real time and Blaze as the default html template engine.
Some people think it's a broken solution, but I love to code with it ^_^
I use to be a PHP lover, but in the end you'll write javascript.
Writing JS all the way from database to server to clients just rocks IMHO.
I think your comparison with Meteor is not fair. You are not obliged to use Meteor in back and front, you can have a meteor backend and load a DDP client in about any language.
And as I'm doing one right now you can have a only front application talking to a rest server. So it's more flexible than what you tell in your comparison. Also I might not be fair because I'm a Meteor addict :D