Every time I passed Ladder 15 during the day, I’d say to myself “oh, that’s where Ladder 15 is”. Every time I passed Ladder 15 during the night on a weekend, I’d shudder and run past it as quickly as possible. It’s as if it has dual personalities. I wanted to go and check out their burgers, which have been raved about. So on an early evening on a sunday night, we ventured in. It’s fairly quiet on such a day.
K got the classic burger with bacon. It’s made of prime sirloin, comes on a tall brioche bun, and is served with delicious fries.
I came for the Burger 15. In addition to said prime sirloin and the same brioche bun, it’s topped with a ragu of short rib, mushrooms, onions, marrow, and a truffle sauce. Man alive, this thing was tasty. But not necessarily tasty in a burger way. To me, it was more akin to a hot roast beef sandwich or something. It was just so darn wet, with all the dripping short rib and everything. The juices essentially disintgrated the bottom bun, so I was really left with a whole bunch of innards and a half soggy top half. I don’t like mushrooms, but I barely tasted any here. I really didn’t taste much onion either, now that I think about it. But I certainly tasted lots of wet, shredded short rib, along with the actual burger bit. It was really great, but I can’t compare it to a regular burger. Point is, I liked it! And their fries are darn good too.
But the real mystery at Ladder 15 is why do they put water ice cones on top of all the bottles of booze? Service was ok. The food took quite awhile to come out. But I blame that on us both wanting our burgers medium well. I know, it’s sacrilegious, but I just can’t do bloody burgers! With these burgers being good, I really want to try the tuesday night prix fixe now!

I  hope y’all know that Philly Fringe is going on right now. In case you don’t, give it a go! After checking out a fringe event, we mosied, and we actually mosied, over to Standard Tap. I’d been here for drinks, but never food. I guess it’s been a long time coming. Their menu changes frequently and is written on chalkboards. Man, I have terrible eyesight. I always have to walk over and stand right in front of it. They had a wide range of options available, but in the end, we both went for the burger. People rave about it, so I had to check it out.
The burger! It’s served with cheese and a thick slice of seared onion, mushrooms, lettuce and tomato on ciabatta bread. You also get a heap of fries and some pickles. The burger is really good! It was juicy and cooked to what I asked for, and the toppings were good. The giant slice of tomato was incredibly flavorful! The fries are great too. My only problem was with the bread. The outside of the bread is so hard and inflexible that when I was trying to bite into the burger, the inflexibility of the bread made all of the innards be pushed out. So it often ended up being a mess. M just ignored the bread completely and just stuck to the innards. I also would have preferred that the onions were cooked more, but that wasn’t a big deal. All in all, a very solid burger.

We stopped by Frankford Hall to celebrate Indy Hall’s 4th birthday. The crowd wasn’t the Rittenhouse crowd that K and I had witnessed during our last quick visit. It was also a beautiful night, so being outside was beyond awesome. You order your food at the window and get a number. Then one of the servers will bring everything out to you. As far as beer goes, there are several bars to choose from with a variety of beers.
I asked M how her burger was and she loved it. And they have a large condiment table and she raved about the curry ketchup. I also asked for her pickle, since she didn’t eat it, and damn, this pickle was awesome! I’m not sure if they make these there or if they buy them, but they were super fresh and only lightly pickled and I loved it.
K’s hot bauernwurst was good, but not spicy at all. You get a choice of sauerkraut or cabbage when you order a sausage. He went with the cabbage because I suggested it. It’s good!
And here’s my giant pretzel! It’s big, it’s warm, it’s good. It really does go well with beer. We really had fun. I love the whole picnic tables everywhere and casual outdoor atmosphere. The beer and food treated us all well.