On a fairly lovely yet early Sunday evening, we ended up at Jamaican Jerk Hut because it was one of the first places that we walked by. The huge outdoor patio area was fairly empty since it was really early, like early bird early. The tables have umbrellas, which is a nice touch. It was strange being there so early, there were tons of people around, not eating, which may have meant that they worked there, but we weren’t so sure. It seemed like there were just people hanging out there, but not as a diner or a worker.

Onto the food! Jerk chicken platter. Strange, I know, but I’ve never personally ordered the jerk chicken here. Haha. But I have tasted it and it’s pretty good. But I’ve always loved their rice and especially the cabbage that comes as a side. It’s also a lot of food. You won’t go hungry here.
I’d gotten the ox tail stew before, so I decided to go with the mango chicken. I really enjoyed this, sweet, but not too sweet. The chicken was mostly dark meat, so it wasn’t dry at all, and had tons of flavor. And I totally shovelled in this cabbage, along with the rice which was soaking in the sauce.

Service here is weird. We got our food but hadn’t even gotten silverware yet. It was hilarious. Um, can we get some forks? And then when I paid with a credit card, she lingered and watched while I completed and signed the receipt. It was very unnerving. But as far as the food, I’ve had good experiences here. But I may had just gotten lucky those two times.

Jamaican Jerk Hut
1436 South St
Philadelphia, PA 19146
(215) 545-8644

So the Ants Pants Cafe. Cute as a button. Tiny as a button. So easily missed if you’re not paying attention for it on the street. They even have a button-sized patio out back, but really, it’s muy petite, yo. We got seated inside right quick, in one of these two tops with totally not enough personal space in between tables. And they had all these pillows on the bench side, between the benches, so I felt like a prisoner in some sort of pillowed restaurant cave. I got rid of them and then felt much better. I think the people who run the place are Aussies. There’s Aussie paintings everywhere, and some Aussie inspired items on the menu (like vegemite).

The spinach, bacon, feta salad with grilled chicken. I kind of liked the banged up plate it came on. I was completely uninspired, because yes, sometimes, I can eat straight up boring food. I got the brekkie platter (so boring that it did not warrant a picture), which was 3 eggs, toast, and bacon. Whoo hoo! I got eggs over hard, and they came out lovely. I also got country white toast (yes, again, boring!) and this toast was great. It was a very thick and dense cut of bread. All I really wanted was some plain ol grape jelly, but they had raspberry and apricot preserves., which were awesome. I asked for a little bit of both, and doh, they charged me 85 cents for each of those. Gah! That ticked me off a little bit, but then I got over it.

The service was great. The food took an awful long time to come out though, but I can tell that’s just from each order being made to order and the food being made with love. I didn’t mind it at all. The bespectacled waiter with the bun in his hair was super nice and polite. He can feed me a boring ass egg, toast, and bacon breakfast any day of the week.

Stopped by for a late dinner at the Abbaye on Friday night. It wasn’t planned. We ended up driving around and I just decided Northern Liberties was it. It was late and the place was full. We put our names in with the giant amazonian woman wearing the black dress, clearly without a bra, who clearly needed a bra. It was excruciating having to wait. And it started raining, so we couldn’t take a table outside. Eventually, some slow hipsters left, and we sat down, just as a coupla more hipsters tried to snag the table. I had to tell em to step off. Or rather, tell them that sorry, but we were on the list.

They have a menu, but also a bunch of specials on the chalkboard. We ended up getting two of the specials: pulled pork sandwich and the spinach, mango, avocado salad with shrimp. The pulled pork sandwich was surprisingly spicy. I enjoyed their skinny shoe string fries. As for the salad? Spinach, good. Mango, good. Shrimp, good. Avocado, not so good. They were clearly not ripe, and biting into a crunch avocado is not my idea of a good time.

We also had a problem with the beers. The hoegaarden on draft? Not cold. The tall boy to follow it up? Also not cold. It seems like that as a bar, the least you could do is service some ice cold beers. The food wasn’t great, the service wasn’t great, the beers were warm, and I wasn’t inspired to take any pictures. And the place is loud. I think it’s much more of a have a beer or two kind of place… if you don’t mind warm beers.

The Abbaye
637 N 3rd St
Philadelphia, PA 19123
(215) 627-6711