Category Archives: Beer

One Year of Being in Philly Part 2

Leave a reply

It has been quite a wonderful year of discovering and enjoying all our neighborhood has to offer. We started this blog about 3 months after moving here as a way to share our eating and drinking adventures. So far, it has skewed a bit more to the fun stuff we have cooked at home, but we’re thinking that we want to include more of our eating out adventures in the future. And there’s no reason not to. We have so much to celebrate in our neighborhood and beyond.

Here’s a list of some of our favorite places in what we consider “our neighborhood.”

Within 1/3 of a mile:

As I mentioned in part one, the last place I lived had very little within walking distance, so the fact that every place I’m about to name is within 3/4 of a mile gives me great pleasure. And the fact that there are so many places within that range that I feel compelled to subdivide the list into smaller sections speaks to the great wealth and variety of places. This list is by no means exhaustive. There are still many places we are looking forward to trying.

I mentioned Pub & Kitchen and Jet Wine Bar in my last post. The owner of Jet opened another place right across the street, Rex 1516, which very quickly became a weekly go to spot. Rex 1516 is the type of neighborhood bar I always wanted to have. Very friendly staff, excellent selections of beers and wine, and an adventurous cocktail list, as well as an adventurous bartender.

On that same block, there’s a good Thai restaurant, Sawatdee. A block closer is a new pie place, Magpie, and one of our favorite special occasion restaurants, Pumpkin BYOB. Quite a couple of blocks!

Also close by, are a few places we like for breakfasts and brunches: Marathon Grill, La Va Café, Spread Bagelry and Parc Restaurant, Bistro & Cafe.

Parc Restaurant, Bistro & Cafe

Also within 1/3 of a mile is another favorite spot, C19. They specialize in Venetian-inspired cuisine but also focus on fresh local ingredients. They have a great wine list and super friendly staff. Another good Italian restaurant nearby is Roberto Café, a BYOB the features Italian comfort food.

Finally, Twenty Manning Grill has been a convenient spot for us when we’re in the mood for cocktails and bar food.

We usually go to 2 farmers’ markets on Saturdays. One is at Rittenhouse Square, which is just a few blocks away. The other is at Fitler Square, which is about 1/2 a mile away.

Summertime Farmers’ Markets Goodies

Within 1/2 of a mile:

A little farther away are a few excellent places for wine and food: a.kitchen, Tria, and Tinto, and a couple of places for beer and food, the neighborhoody Grace Tavern and the legendary Monk’s Café. But let’s not forget cocktails: Franklin Mortgage & Investment Co., which specializes in upscale and classic cocktails in a speakeasy setting, and Village Whiskey, which has one of the best bourbon lists in town.

Dandelion Pub is a British Pub that has great food (rabbit pot pie!),  nice selection of beers, and interesting cocktails. D’mitri’s is a Greek restaurant we’ve been to only once but really enjoyed.

After moving in and before stocking up, we needed breakfast and discovered Ants Pants Café, a small, cozy restaurant with Australian inspired coffees. This has become our go-to breakfast place, and I usually can’t resist their Bacon Stack.

Bacon Stack at Ants Pants Cafe

Also within 1/2 a mile is the place that was awarded the Best Gelato in the World by National Geographic, Capogiro Gelato.

Capogiro Gelato

The Outer Reaches (within 3/4 of a mile):

If we’re in the mood for beer and feel like wandering, we’ll find four excellent beer bars: Good Dog Bar and Restaurant, Nodding Head Brewery and Restaurant, The Sidecar Bar and Grille and Resurrection Ale House. We haven’t yet had any food at Nodding Head, but enjoy their house brewed beers. The food at Good Dog provides interesting twists of pub fare. We often head to The Sidecar or Resurrection for brunch, but the food has been great whenever we go.

The Sidecar Bar & Grille

That’s 30 wonderful places all within 3/4 of a mile! We’re lucky to have so many great places nearby but it’s difficult getting back to some of them. While writing this, I kept thinking “we don’t go there often enough” for most of these. Both Holly and I enjoy walking, so this radius is by no means the extent of our adventures.

Staycation Day 5

Leave a reply

Our first four days of staycation were plenty busy, so for the last day before heading back to work, we decided to take it pretty easy and focus on relaxing rather than doing a lot of running around. The day started with breakfast at home and a leisurely morning hanging out at our place.

We didn’t venture out until lunch and decided to break from our plan of trying new places to go somewhere we like that’s often crazy crowded.We figured a Tuesday afternoon was the perfect time to hit up Good Dog Bar & Restaurant. Good Dog features an impressive beer list and high-end pub food. Holly had a lamb belly sandwich. The lamb was brined in red wine and then roasted. It was topped with roasted tomatoes, pickled red onions, arugula and lemon aioli served on a rosemary focaccia.

Lamb Belly Sandwich at Good Dog

I had a shrimp po’ boy, Buffalo style. The shrimp was crusted with panko, then fried and tossed with a homemade Buffalo sauce. It was topped with a blue cheese sauce and celery leaves and served on a French baguette.

Shrimp Po’ Boy at Good Dog

Beer and Fries at Good Dog

And, of course, we washed those down with a couple of beers. I had a Port Brewing Company Summer Pale Ale and a Perpetual IPA from Tröegs Brewing Company, which became a go-to beer for me during the summer. Holly had a  Farmhouse Summer Ale by Flying Fish Brewing Company and a Hennepin Farmhouse Saison by Brewery Ommegang. 

After lunch, we walked over to the Rodin Museum hoping to end our staycation the way we began it by going to a museum. Alas, we thought the Rodin was closed only on Mondays, but as it turned out, it also was closed on Tuesdays. We then decided to see if we could go to the top of City Hall, but there was a 2 hour wait until the next available trip up, so we opted to just go home.

For dinner, we followed suit from lunch and just went somewhere close by and familiar. Twenty Manning Grill is only a few blocks away and had been a place we had gone to somewhat regularly when we first moved to Philly but hadn’t been to in a while. We weren’t all that hungry, stuffed from lunch and from 4 days of staycation, so we had a couple of drinks and some snacks at the bar.

The bar was fairly crowded while we were there, so we didn’t take any pictures, but here’s one a my favorite pics I took from outside back in the fall.

We didn’t stay there long and headed home early to rest up from 5 great days of hanging out in the city that we are happy to call home. We love our immediate neighborhood and love all that Philadelphia has to offer and enjoyed being able to really engage with it. As much as we got to do on staycation, our lists of places we want to get to seems endless. What a city!

Tom’s Clam Recipe

1 Reply

I don’t really have A recipe for my clams, just a general method. Basically, I try to balance some spicy things with some sweeter things. This time around, I used garlic, shallots and black and crushed red pepper, and dried chorizo to provide some spice and peas, carrots and fennel for a little sweetness.

I began by frying up the garlic and shallots. I don’t really measure anything but for something like this, I was rather generous, using about 7-8 cloves of garlic and 1 rather large shallot.

I next threw in one chopped carrot, followed by about half a head of chopped fennel. I fried them until they just started to become soft.

Then I added the chopped chorizo, the black and crushed red pepper and some herbs. I usually use basil, thyme and oregano. Again, I tend to be generous with everything for this dish, but it’s all a matter of taste.

Since the chorizo didn’t need to really cook, I just fried everything enough to blend the flavors. Since the clams need to steam in this mixture, I needed to add liquid. I added some clam juice (maybe about 1/4 cup–again, I don’t measure) and about 1/3 a bottle of beer. I used Saison Dupont, which is also quite fine for drinking with the clams.

I let this come to a simmer and then add some frozen peas. I bring it back up to a healthy simmer and then add the clams and cook until they open.

That’s it! Simple and delicious. Pairs very well with lighter beers. We also had a nice multigrain sourdough bagette to dip in the juices.

Adventures in Cheese Steak Making

1 Reply

Despite being a native Philadelphian, or perhaps because of, I don’t have a strong opinion about what a Philadelphia cheese steak is. I know many people have a very strict idea about what ingredients go into a cheese steak, but I have encountered so many variations over the years that I know that variety is a good thing.

I’ve made cheese steaks at home in the past but have not done so in many years. Last week at the Fitler Square Farmers’ Market, we saw that one of the vendors had steak sandwich meat. We already had our cooking plans for last weekend, but we decided that this weekend we would make cheese steaks.

Luckily, that vendor was there and had the meat. We decided to keep things simple this time, with the thought that we’d get the basics down this first time and be more daring in the future. We already had onions on hand from our CSA and mushrooms from last week’s visit to the Rittenhouse Square Farmers’ Market. After getting our meat at the Farmer’s Market, we went to Di Bruno Bros. to get good Provolone. They also carry excellent bread baked at Sarcone’s Bakery.

Making the sandwich is pretty straight-forward. We started by frying the onions and adding the mushrooms after a few minutes.

The chip steak was pretty thin, so we waited until we felt the onions and mushrooms were close to being done before adding the steak. We didn’t season it with anything more than salt and pepper.

There was more meat than we had anticipated and the balance between the onions and mushrooms and the steak wasn’t quite what we had planned for.

We cut the bread into sandwich sized portions and then layered the cheese.

Since the meat was thin, it didn’t take long for it to be done. We quickly transferred the mixture to the rolls. Our hope was that the heat from cooking would melt the cheese, but it didn’t. In the future, we might want to pop the bread and cheese into the oven for a couple of minutes to get the melting started.

We had it with a salad and paired it with The Lost Abbey Serpent’s Stout.

Overall, the sandwiches were quite good if slightly bland. A better balance of onions and mushrooms certainly would have helped as would having the cheese melted. Garlic, of course, never hurts anything. Even thought the meat was nicely done, it might have been a bit on the cold side when we added it to the pan and the initial sizzle died quickly. A hotter pan and/or more room temperature meat could also help. We also talked about marinating the meat in, perhaps, beer.

We had some of the meat, onion and mushroom mixture leftover, so the next morning, we made cheese steak omelets. We jazzed it up by frying up more onions, adding red bell pepper, garlic, and spinach. We pan toasted some of the leftover Sarcone’s bread and had some locally roasted Green Street Organic French Roast coffee.