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November 20, 2009

Dock Street Brewing Company

Ah, Dock Street!  You were one of the first “real” restaurants I visited in my college days, so how fitting that you have now moved out to West Philly.  After your many ups and downs, my favorite parts of the menu of my youth have been restored.

dock street

I ordered the sampler, so I can tell it to you straight… their beers just don’t do it for me.  On tap that evening was their Royal Bohemian Pilsner, Centennial IPA, Hop Garden Double IPA, Man Full of Trouble Porter, Rye IPA and Sudan Grass (a naturally gluten-free beer.)  My favorite: the Sudan Grass.  If you’re into hoppy, Dock Street has some great choices.  I am not.  Their beer is, and always has been, secondary in my book.

dock st. beer flight

Their trio fries, on the other hand, were spot-on.  I have always considered the basket of white potatoes, sweet potatoes and leeks the signature dish at Dock Street.  When they pulled it from the menu way back in the day (chasing a more “upscale” menu, as I recall), I would still request it back every time I went in.  Today, they are just as good as I remembered.  Nobody does a fried leek like Dock Street.

Dock Street’s menu has salads, sandwiches, appetizers and entrees, but  everyone seemed to be ordering pizzas made in their wood-fired oven.  In honor of the old days, I ordered one found on their classic menu, the flammenkuche (caramelized onions, guryere, creme fraiche and bacon.)  bda got pepperoni, which was a good pairing.  The sweetness of the onions was a nice contrast for the spicy, meaty pepperoni.  They have a classic American thin crust, pleasantly doughy, and tasty enough that I ate the ends…. at least until I realized that we had way too much food on the table.

flammenkuche

If you haven’t been to Dock Street since the days when it was in the now-Public House location, the atmosphere is totally different.  It’s a much more relaxed, noisy place, with concrete floors and wooden chairs.  When they served my water in a plastic cup, it was perfectly in keeping with their new style.   You can still buy a pint glass to take home, and the pillars are plastered with their old bottle labels (a tiny walk down memory lane unto themselves), but the mammoth, plush operation of 18th St. has been stripped away.  The focus here is food and beer, and, given the crowd on a drizzly Wednesday night, that seems to be suiting them just fine.

Dock Street Brewery
701 S 50th St
Philadelphia, PA 19143-1689
(215) 726-2337

Comments (View) so far. Add your comment!   |   Filed under Helen review dine at 11:34am  
URL: http://phillyfoodie.com/post/250924106/dock-street-brewing-company
October 29, 2009

Every night is frite night at European Republic

european republic sign

Are french fries my favorite food?  Perhaps.  Are friteries my favorite specialty food shop?  Yes.  My heart jumps when I see a sign for one.  I will make special trips for them. So I was very, very excited when I heard European Republic was opening in Old City.

Paper cones of twice-fried belgian-style fries…. need I say more?  Well then, how about this  — they’re open late!  They’re open until at least 10 every night of the week, and until 2 AM on Friday and Saturday nights.

european republic fries

They sell other stuff.  I didn’t try any of it.  I was there for one thing, and one thing only — a big heap of fries.  And they did not disappoint.  They put the fries in for their second fry when you order them, so you always get a hot, crispy batch.  They had a good mix of the smaller, crispier bits, and the longer, more potato-y fries.

fry sizes

You get one dipping sauce with a regular, two with a large, and three with a triple.  We tried the roasted garlic, european and peanut sauces, though we actually ended up with a large order, not a triple.

When you get 3 sauces, you want some flavor variety.  Both the roasted garlic and european were mayonnaise-based, and they were very tasty (though fairly similar.)  I really wanted to like the peanut sauce.  Alas, I did not.  It was too vinegary, and I was looking for a classic satay sauce.  They have 20 flavors of dipping sauce, though, so get out there and find your own dream combination for lunch, dinner, or a late night snack!

European Republic
213 Chestnut St.
Philadelphia, PA 19103
(215) 627-5500

Comments (View) so far. Add your comment!   |   Filed under Helen fries review dine at 8:00am  
URL: http://phillyfoodie.com/post/226867552/every-night-is-frite-night-at-european-republic
October 27, 2009

Burgertime at Union Trust

What a difference 22 cents makes!  When I had the $6.95 burger special at Butcher and Singer, they were practically beating people away from the door.  Union Trust’s $7.17 lunch special has a tasty, tasty burger, plus two other options for your non-red-meat-loving friends, and there were plenty of seats available today when Niki and I walked in.

burger

To me, this was a better burger than Butcher and Singer.  It was juicy, without getting to the point where I could no longer put it down on the plate for fear of completely soaking the bun.  It was thick, to the point that I looked at it to see if it was a double patty.  And it was really good meat!  When it was a little redder in the center than I usually like a burger, I was savoring the flavor and texture, instead of being put off by the mushiness that I usually find in a thick, rare patty.

It’s served with onion jam and a tomato compote (and a pickle, which I removed), so you get all the flavors of tomatoes and onions, without adding all their inconvenient slideyness.  Even with a tall patty, reducing those items to spreads meant the burger was still manageable enough to fit in my mouth without unhinging my jaw.  It’s served with American cheese, but you can upgrade to provolone or cheddar for a little more.

(Am I whetting your appetite for burgers? Then come with me Tuesday, November 3rd on the First Person Arts Burger Cruise!  We’ll be tasting burgers and beers at 4 of Philadelphia Magazine’s best burger spots - Pub and Kitchen, Barclay Prime, Noble Cookery and Good Dog - led by Foobooz mastermind Art Etchells.   My pal Marc over at Burgatory has even negotiated you a $5 discount, so hop aboard!)

fish and chips

The other lunch specials are fish and chips, and a crispy duck salad.  And they serve cute little pretzel sticks as one of their bread options.  We didn’t have the duck salad, but I would definitely go back to try it.

Union Trust is also a beautiful space, with a soaring ceiling, and walls rimmed with cozy velvet-lined booths.   So splurge that 22 cents, give Five Guys the day off, and sink your teeth into a superior burger experience.

Union Trust Steakhouse
717 Chestnut St
Philadelphia, PA 19106
(215) 925-6000

Comments (View) so far. Add your comment!   |   Filed under Helen burgers review dine at 10:06pm  
URL: http://phillyfoodie.com/post/225453726/burgertime-at-union-trust
(No. OF NOTES: 1)
  
October 23, 2009

Tackling Tacconelli’s

There are some Philadelphia traditions that, after not taking part in for many years, start to seem like you will never experience.  (Jenn, for instance, has never seen the Mummers Parade live.)  For me, that was Tacconelli’s Pizza.

(pizza and pitchers of soda, aka everything you need for pizza happiness)

For the uninitiated, Tacconelli’s is a Port Richmond pizzeria that frequently shows up on local Best Pizza lists and bested Osteria in a national list from GQ (Tacconelli’s, #9; Osteria, #22.)  But, there’s a catch.  They only make a certain number of pies every day, so you have to call at the beginning of the day to reserve the dough balls you want to eat.

And that, it seems, was enough to put off most people I know.  No one ever wanted to go!  Or the people who said they wanted to go never wanted to say ahead of time when they wanted to go, and that just won’t work at Tacconelli’s.

But, I was showing Niki my places to try map, and she got very excited when she saw Tacconelli’s, because she had also been looking for someone to go with her for ages.  (This basically made my day.)  So, a date was selected, folks were rounded up, and a pizza outing was born.

We ordered a regular pie with pepperoni and mushrooms, a white pie with spinach, and a margherita, then tucked into a delicious salad that Niki brought while we waited.  Three pies later, the verdict was in….

It is all about the white pizza at Tacconelli’s.

I don’t generally go for white pizza.  They are loaded down with too much cheese (especially ricotta), and I just find them heavy and bland.  Not this pie.  It was lightly cheesy, very garlicky, and the spinach on top was just excellent.  I even ate the leftover slices, which I almost never do, and they were still good 3 days later!

The crust is Tacconelli’s claim to fame, and it was definitely my preferred style — thin, crisp, brick oven baked.  But it didn’t quite reach that level of transcendence that would have made the pepperoni pie worth writing home about.

Skip the margherita pie.  Its sauce was just too smooth and sweet to have so little cheese.

For 5 people, we had 3 pies, and took home almost a whole pie.  (We did have an excellent salad, though, so your mileage may vary.)  If you go, skip the margherita, and find delight in the white — you won’t regret it.

Tacconelli’s Pizza
2604 E Somerset St
Philadelphia, PA 19134
(215) 425-4983 (call the morning you want to go to reserve your dough balls)

Comments (View) so far. Add your comment!   |   Filed under Helen review at 8:47pm  
URL: http://phillyfoodie.com/post/221373812/tackling-tacconellis
October 8, 2009

The Next Iron Bartender: Village Whiskey

I’ve seen reports of 2 hour waits to eat at Village Whiskey, so let me just put this out there.  Village Whiskey is a bar, and a somewhat small one at that.  It’s a bar with a very good bar menu, but it is a bar menu, with bar snacks and sandwiches (including the oft-mentioned foie gras-topped Whiskey King), not meals.

There are indoor tables for about 12 (bar height, of course.)  And all the other seats in the house are at the bar, or standing.  But what a bar it is!  I’ve already fallen hard for the Ginger Rogers.  Gin, ginger and sparkling rosé — so cute!

Now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s talk about those snacks.

I went in with a lot of skepticism over the short rib fries.  They were the first thing on the menu to turn my head, but the pictures I saw clearly showed them swimming in cheese, and I hate a soggy fry.  Jose, you have shown me the reason why you will be the next Iron Chef, and I am not the next Ruth Reichl.  They weren’t crisp, but they were heavenly.  One of my dining companions said that he had a huge hunk of short rib, and found it a little dry, but by the time the meat was broken up, and well incorporated with the cheese sauce…. I’ll admit it.  I gobbled down the whole thing, without offering anyone else the last bite.

We had the pretzels and the cheese puffs from the snack menu.  The puffs didn’t do it for me, but everyone else liked them.  The pretzels I could have easily solo.  Great mustard!

We only had one pickle, the pickled tomatoes.  They were excellent.  And the toasts that they served them with made me very happy - warm, freshly toasted, thick-cut enough that you didn’t feel like you were eating a cracker (which is appropriate for some uses, but not this one.)  Those are the kinds of details that make a good dish great.  Next time, I’d like to try the artichokes, too.

In Burgers and More section…. stick to the burgers.  The BBQ pork sammy had an overly tomatoey barbeque sauce that ruined it for me.  The Kentucky Fried Quail was just disappointing all around.  The crust was too heavy, its flavors totally dominated the quail, and just wasn’t very tasty.  And I’m a girl who will pick a piece of fried chicken down to the bone to get every last morsel of fried crust.

The burgers were a big hit, except for…. the Whiskey King!  I’ve read this complaint elsewhere, and it was the same one I had about the Butcher and Singer burger…. it’s just too messy.  There’s a juicy burger, and then there’s so juicy that your bun disintegrates.

And call me fussy, but the idea of topping a burger with foie gras just seems like an insult to good foie gras.  I’m hoping for a spot on that menu for a Whiskey Queen — foie gras appetizer, followed by a burger.  Or, even better, the foie, then a dainty little trio of sliders.  Hm, maybe the Whiskey Princess would be more appropriate.

We went at 2:30, and there were 5 other people there.  The menu is the same all day long.  So, if you’re hot to sample the latest and greatest Jose Garces has to offer, save yourself a long wait and buy yourself a little elbow room with a late lunch.  Then head back for cocktails and pretzel sticks with the evening crowds.

Village Whiskey
118 South 20th Street
Philadelphia,  PA  19103
215-665-1088
No reservations accepted.

Comments (View) so far. Add your comment!   |   Filed under Helen review at 12:17am  
URL: http://phillyfoodie.com/post/207279358/the-next-iron-bartender-village-whiskey
(No. OF NOTES: 2)