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Posted by foodzings | 15 Mar 2009 | appetizers, beer, byob, philadelphia, seafood | 0 Comments

J has wanted to go to Audrey Claire for a long time. He’d actually been talking about it since last summer. For whatever reason, it just never happened. When we got together with P and E for dinner on Saturday, I suggested it as a nice and local option. They agreed! Off we went. We ate super early, so it wasn’t too tough getting a table.

The grilled octopus salad. I’ve gotten this a few times here before, and I love it.

Grilled artichokes. Now I’m not into artichokes at all, but they all started raving about it, so I had to at least taste it. I liked it! It had a lovely grilled flavor, and so the sourness of the artichokes was diminished quite a bit, and was probably why I ended up liking it. If all artichokes tasted like this, I could start eating them regularly.

The mediterranean spread with hummus, roasted eggplant and fontina, and sun-dried tomato and garlic spreads. The hummus? Good, but the least exciting of the 3. The sun-dried tomato and garlic spread was delicious. Strong tomato flavor, garlicky, slightly spicy. But the best of the lot, by far, was the eggplant spread. Oh my word, so damn good. I could have just eaten this with a spoon.

E got the pork chops as her entree. A giant chop with grilled apples, served with asparagus and mashed potatoes. She liked it, and she couldn’t finish it. Lightweight.

J got the special, which was barramundi, or a type of australian seabass. A giant heaping portion of this fish, cooked well, and quite delicious. This was served on top of israeli couscous along with some haricots vert and a cucumber sauce. Oh man, I traded my asparagus for these green beans, and they were delish.

P and I both got the other special, which was a hanger steak. It was also quite a large piece of meat, served with oven roasted potatoes and asparagus. We both enjoyed our meals. It’s a byob, so be sure to bring your booze along. Everything is cooked to order, so don’t expect your food to come out very quickly. You can see the open kitchen in the back, and it’s tiny, so just give it some time. Service was good, nothing great. Even when the place started filling up and there were people waiting for tables, we just sat around for awhile and they didn’t rush us out, which we appreciated.

E couldn’t help noticing some nearby diners who were clearly on a horribly uncomfortable first date. It makes me cringe just thinking about it now. We all came to the superficial conclusion that the dude was definitely the better catch of the two, and that he should go do better. Girl, could you crack a smile or two? No. So sad. We really wanted to go over there and fill their glasses with booze, to ease the tension.

One more note… after dinner, we took a little walk to Black Sheep on this pre-St. Patty’s day weekend. It was crazy because there were leftover drunk erin express people there, along with some barely dressed guinness chicks getting people to sign a petition. P & E introduced me to the Dirty Hoe, which is a hoegaarden with some framboise poured in. Now I like hoegaarden tons on its own, and I’m a fan of lambic as well. Framboise is a bit too sweet for me, but you know I love me some peche lambic. Well, when you put the framboise and the hoegaarden together, what you’ve got there is now my favorite beer drink in the world. Delicious.

Posted by foodzings | 28 Feb 2009 | beer, gastropub, philadelphia | 0 Comments

I’d been to Ludwig’s a couple times. Once on the inside to have some beers and some of their delicious pretzel rods, and another time outside for Oktoberfest. Then it went away. And then the spot was reinvented as Time. We stopped by there the other night to have a few drinks.

We were on the bar side, or at least the side without the live music, and I was pleased to find that it pretty much looked like Ludwig’s used to. It didn’t have the busty fraus wearing dirndls, but the space was still like the old spot. They’ve got a good number of beers on draft, and then some more in bottles. It’s also an absinthe bar. Weird. There was a wall between the two main areas that was covered completely by jar bottoms. It was pretty impressive.

We had already eaten so we didn’t order food, but J wanted some grub so he ordered up some mussels and fries. The mussels are cooked up in a tomato base, along with some beans, spices, and sausage. B & K also got some kind of chicken on a stick appetizer, but I didn’t get a chance to get photographic evidence of that. They liked em though.

I couldn’t resist tasting some of the fries. And I do have to say that they were awesome. I really liked these! These are some of the better fries I’ve had in Philadelphia. They are a bit on the thicker side, but were nice and crunchy on the outside. I’m not a fan of the soggy thick fry. Service was ok, nothing to rave about.

Posted by foodzings | 17 Feb 2009 | beer, belgian, gastropub, philadelphia | 3 Comments

It seems like I’ve been visiting a lot of places lately that I haven’t been to in a gazillion years. It happened again when I went to Monk’s. I think I’ve been to Monk’s a couple of times. Once was awhile ago and I remember eating something perhaps rabbit-y, trying fois gras for the first time, and also trying the frites. I also remember coming here and trying hoegaarden for the first time. Come to think of it, I’ve had a bit of firsts here!

We looked at the menu beforehand and both agreed that we wanted stew. They have a belgian beef and beer stew made with local grass fed beef, slow cooked in Chimay Grand Reserve with local root vegetables. How can you not love the sound of that? We told them we were going to share it, so they brought it out in separate bowls and gave us strange but tasty rolls each. I can’t really describe the roll, it seemed to have raisins in it, but it wasn’t sweet enough to be raisin. Does anyone know? In any case, the stew was delicious! I wish we’d had a giant vat of it, it was so good.
We also got an order of the pommes frites. You have to! The waiter forgot about them, so we didn’t end up getting them until after the stew, but that was ok. We didn’t mind, we just ate them along with the additional beers. I love these fries, but I just wish they were longer pieces of fry, instead of little tiny stubs. Otherwise, I still love these. It comes with their famous bourbon mayo. Monk’s is definitely a beer place, so get ready to drink. Since I was still sick, I didn’t really drink much, but the little sips I had were certainly tasty.

We had a great server. He was almost overly friendly and helpful? We started talking about JJ Abrams for some reason and he started going off about Lost and the Star Trek movie and whether we’d seen the trailer. Then later on, he brought over his iPhone and made us watch the trailer on his iPhone. It was bizarre, yet it amused us. We appreciated his enthusiasm!