Bellefonte, Delaware is the small suburb of Wilmington where I grew up.About half a square mile, Bellefonte is a neighborhood of Wilmington most Delawareans would recognize if mentioned.A blue- and white-collar town, my stomping grounds tends to be middle- to lower-middle class families.Sounds so sterile when statics are included, but I wanted to give everyone an idea of the area. Brandywine Boulevard (Bellefonte’s major road) is littered with consignment stores, antique shops, and kids playing.Most stores are converted homes. The Bellefonte Cafe is no different. Located on the corner of Brandywine Boulevard and Marion Avenue, my local cafe is certainly an institution among Bellefontians (or Bellefontites?).I wrote a features story about the Cafe and its proprietor!CLICK HERE.
A few weekends ago, I visited a good friend of mine at Lehigh University. He lives off campus with his frat brothers...ten of them, and there was no mistake that ten guys lived in this particular house.
But let’s not dwell on the house; my intent here is to comment on my experience dining with these guys.
After the Saturday night festivities, the house awoke around 1 p.m., groggy and starving. Sunday brunch, which seemed to be a regular event among the residents, today would be hosted by Alexandra’s Bistro in Bethlehem. The small establishment was quite the opposite of a bistro. In fact, it was a diner. Brunch all day, gyros on special - sounds like a standard Greek diner to me.
The seven boys arrived in two waves, giving the waitress time to fill up my coffee twice before taking any breakfast orders.
They all ordered breakfast - eggs, pancakes, bacon, sausage, a hot dog? It was hard to say no to the dollar fifty hot dogs.
Anyway, each plate that arrived was pilled high with breakfast. Ketchup was been passed around, milkshakes were being downed, and amongst all the chaos of breakfast, each indulgent twenty-something frat boy used both his fork and his knife, and dared not touch his food with his fingers. It was absolutely remarkable. Because I ordered mozzarella sticks, I was the only one at the table using my hands!
Each boy politely moved his eggs around his plate with his silverware, using his knife to delicately push the eggs onto his fork. Toast was buttered in a royal fashion; no shoving the bread into the butter packets or dumping jelly into a glob on the toast.
Mouths were shut while chewing, but as soon as they opened some profane comment about the girls of last night escaped.
It seemed as though I was sitting in the middle of some epic paradox.
They looked like frat boys, they sounded like frat boys....they smelled like frat boys, but they ate like princes.
Go figure.
For me, Easter has always been a gluttonous holiday. Traveling all over creation to see everyone possible and collect all the candy and presents from each of my aunts and uncles! Then my parents would have a basket for me filled with bullshit - like movies, coloring books, markers, toys, clothes.
Well - eventually we grow up.
This Easter was a real dose of reality for me.
As you all know, I work in a restaurant - if you didn’t know that, now you do. And you don’t realize, until days like Easter, that these people you work with are definitely the family of everyday life. Christ, I think I see my managers more than I see my mother. And my girlfriends always want to listen to the sinfulness that happened the one night this weekend that we didn’t go out together.
Aside from the fact that it was Easter, it was Sunday morning. And if you’ve ever worked in a restaurant, you know that this is the worst shift ever...BRUNCH!
Five of us on the floor, twelve pots of coffee (just for the servers!), eight parties, and the usual Sunday morning hangover; religious pamphlets instead of tips, five kids with one adult, and EGGS - ugh.
I was finally out of tables by 5:30 p.m., with thirty five dollars in my pocket. I decided that it was time for a few beers. I smashed two Blue Moons over a game of Asshole, seeing as Blue Moons were on special this holy Sunday ($3!!), left with twenty six buck and a new outlook on Easter family.
The REAL family we find are the ones that sympathize with the pain of a Sunday morning; they get you the Imodium at 7/11 when you desperately need it half way through the shift, they make you a cheese steak for breakfast (on the house), and most importantly they make good company for you while you suffer together horribly at work on a Sunday morning - but then again, not everyone can have off on Easter.
The half whiskey bar half absinthe lounge caught my personal attention when I read a small article about the new Time restaurant opening up on Samson street.
Located just west of 13th, it’s shadowed by the looming (but fabulous) Elvez. From the front, the exterior feels like standing at someone’s house. A big thick wooden door with a wrought iron handle is delicately accented by a small window placed oddly in its upper right corner. But the feeling disappears when you glance immediately left where the windows show off the large bar room and the huge illuminated sign reads “TIME.”
When we let ourselves in, we made a beeline into a small (packed) side bar that was very busy and a little uncomfortable. The sea of tables hid the small back bar - and the poor waitresses were wading through the mass of people attempting to take orders at the booths set against the front window.
The atmosphere was off.
We moved to the large (more pristine) bar in the left wing of the restaurant: the “whiskey” side of things. The bar itself was roomy and filled a good half of the room. Tables were against the windows facing the street placed next to the live band set up in the corner of the room.
Feeling safer in this room, we made ourselves comfortable at the end of the bar.
An impressive list of tap beers was offered, Domestic included: Dogfish 90 minute, Victory Prima Pils, Rogue Dead Guy Ale (among others).
And of course at a Whiskey bar I naturally ordered a beer...
My companions order an appetizer: a beer battered vegetable sampler. Quite frankly, it was very unimaginative: some horseradish sauce, some deep fried onions and green beans, not particularly tasty.
But the rest of the menu seemed palatable.
This is a total digression:
We had been drinking and dining for about an hour when three professors from U Penn decided to join our little party (note: these men could be our fathers).
Well, we humored their company for a while - when one offered to buy some champagne. Not just any champagne, the most expensive bottle at the bar - like 100 dollars worth, though the name escapes me.
Not to sound too pedestrian, but I am not much of a champagne drinker - I couldn’t have cared less about this purchase. To me, it tasted like moderately good champagne (just like most expensive champagne tastes to me.)
We drank it. Thanked him. And left them.
Another successful night of drinking in Philly.
It’s in the corner of a shopping center, but I’m not sure I’d call it a bistro!It’s rather upscale (which is a cliche term: upscale - I feel a little typical using that to refer to a restaurant with delicious food and moderately high prices). Though, it seems more like a wine bar than a bistro. With upwards of fifteen wines to choose from, the list stands out on the wall written in chalk.
The menu is rather witty. Each salad is called: “this salad,” “that salad,” or “the other salad,” and the food is wonderful. The brie filled loaf of bread was a phenomenal appetizer. Toasty and delicious - of course, my bias is that cheese may very well be my favorite food. The table enjoyed two salmon dishes and a filet mignon. The one salmon that I preferred over the other was a salmon encrusted in floured corn bread. It was baked just perfectly and the combination of salmon and sweet corn bread was incredible.Because I like this place, I felt obligated to say a few nice words before I get down to the dirty business I have ahead of me. I primarily wrote this piece to address one enormous flaw in the Corner Bistro’s world: a flaw that could, in fact, completely ruin my chances of return. (It sounds dramatic, but this is such an offensive problem, it must be rectified immediately).At the bottom of the menu I saw a small note that read something to the extent that the Corner Bistro was proud to support local beer producers; so the only beer they offered was Dogfish Head.Now, this was too good to be true. Of course, when I read that my excitement level rose about fifty percent. Dogfish Head, being my favorite beer brewer, was the PERFECT choice to offer on a single beer menu. The variety of Dogfish Head beers is extensive and with the diversity of food offered at the Corner Bistro, a complementary (and equally as delicious) list of beers was an excellent idea.I proceed to ask the waiter about my choices on Dogfish Head. I would have loved a glass of Palo Santo Marron with my steak - but I wasn’t holding on too tightly to that idea. Being one of Dogfish’s more elusive beers, it would be truly impressive if they had Palo.I would have settled for a Chicory Stout (the Dogfish winter beer) or even something more typical - a 90-minute IPA. I was just looking for a tasty beer - no fruit - and a little substance.Warning: This is the sad part of my story.I ask the waiter what Dogfish I could indulge in this evening. He said, “Shelter Pale Ale and Raison D’Etre.”My heart dropped. How could you possible advertise the fact that you support the local brew pub and only offer two of their beers?! The notion is blasphemous.I was so disappointed. Here is a joint that offers fifteen different wines - from all over the world! - and two beers. Talk about marginalizing...
I know this is a little late to be discussing New Years (twelve days to be precise) but I wanted to comment briefly on my experience.
Chris’s Jazz Cafe in Philly found itself hosting my own personal New Years’ delight - sort of a last minute decision - but the decided destination none the less.
Conveniently located next to a parking garage on Samson, it looked more like a strip club than jazz club from the exterior. Not such a bad thing, but a little uninviting.
Walking through the door into a dark room immediately gave me the feeling of suffocation - with the first attraction being a wooden bar area (already a flutter with drunken festivity) and a rather unintuitive path to a makeshift host stand.
The restaurant is shaped like an L: the entrance at the top.
Set back in the far left hand corner (the corner of the L) was the wooden stage - protruding into the dining area (the long line of the L).
And we (I mean our party of nine) were placed at the end base of the L facing left to the stage.
A bit secluded, but the sound of the Hoppin John Orchestra could probably be heard at Rittenhouse Square. To say the least, it was very difficult to hold polite conversation (not that much of our conversation was polite).
Our incredibly flamboyant waiter appeared - offering the ladies some incredibly flamboyant cosmo which ended up being way too flamboyant for me. The name escapes me, but it was some combination of pineapple juice, every other juice at the bar, sugar, and WAY TO LITTLE vodka. After one I switched to a regular extra tart (extra lime), belvedere cosmos. And had about six. Which makes me think there was hardly any belvedere....
The menu was a special menu for New Years. CJC did it in four primary courses; the first course offered a couple soups and salads. Next course was pastas followed by third (main) course. There was a surf and turf, a chicken, a pork...pretty creative, huh? Obviously the final course was desert.
Well, though their fair was pretty standard (a lobster bisque soup, a fried mushroom garden salad, pasta with red sauce and mozzarella....), the food was excellent.
The lobster soup was creamy and a beautiful shade of pinkish orange. Not overwhelmingly fishy but subtle. The surf and turf (lobster and filet) was delicious - not too rubbery, not too mushy! And it was served with a fried potato dumpling that tasted heavenly.
So yes. The atmosphere was dark - a little creepy. The food was great. I’m hoping the bar was training a newbie, because it was bush league. But, to the bar’s credit, the mojito that ended up at our table was incredible - blood orange juice always makes everything better though.
