e a t e r y R O W

LEMON HILL

747 North 25th Street

Philadelphia, PA 19130

(215) 232-2299

From the cocktail minds behind the Franklin Mortgage and Investment Company and the kitchen minds behind Supper, comes Lemon Hill, a gastropub/cocktail haunt that both looks and feels like it belongs in Brooklyn alongside Fort Defiance instead of a not-accessible-by-subway part of Philadelphia. But hell, Bro drove, so I was able to have an extra cocktail. 

Walking in, it's dark, lit by the orange glow of old bulbs, very much in the vein of the now-ultra-trendy turn of the (20th) century style. Dark woods, exposed brick, tin ceilings, New Orleans jazz, lotsa whiskey. No signage of any kind. These are the hallmarks of Lemon Hill. Bro and I showed up opening night to see what all the pre-opening night hype was about. We expected a long wait, so we showed up around 6pm, way earlier than I'd otherwise have any interest in having dinner, but it was a good idea. By 8 it was packed and the line was out the door.

The courses at Lemon Hill are small, though I won't say that it's a small plates restaurant. They have a "snack" menu, and starter menu and an entree menu. I recommend that you pick one of each. Naturally, you'd do well to have a cocktail too. I mean, when your bartender comes right out of Franklin Mortgage, why wouldn't you? Bro whet his whistle with a Rye Buck, a ginger-infused sweet whiskey drink. Very good. Stop arguing and get it. My choice was the Clover Club, a gin and egg white cocktail that I ordered out of nostalgia to the bar near home. But it was a wee bit thin. As a starter, we split the Dirty Rice Fritters, piping-hot deep fried rice balls with a cold crab? cream sauce. We both enjoyed it, but it was a bit dry and I'd have preferred an actual crab cake.

As an appetizer Bro ordered the Smoked Tomato Soup, with blue cheese popovers which was quite good. And quite smokey. My appetizer was the Pastrami Fried Chicken Wings, a salty breaded variant of the bar food fave with thousand island dressing and pickles that my buddy Dogz would drool over. While it was certainly a different, more haute version of that which emerged so famously from Buffalo, it was small and not so filling. I'd get two. After that, the entrees showed up. My dinny din din was the Hearth Baked Cavatappi, a creamy mac-and-cheese type dish with gruyere cheese, brussels sprouts and mushrooms with a dusting of breadcrumbs. I liked it a lot. Very good stuff. Bro ordered the Shrimp N Grits: grits, shrimp, okra and a whole prawn garnish (that Bro ate anyway). While I don't much care for okra, I couldn't find any faults here. If you were looking for a comfort food menu with flair, I think you've found it.

Dessert time came around, but Lemon Hill didn't have any coffee or tea on hand, so I skipped it and instead ordered another drink, the Blues Explosion, a grapefruit and whiskey combo. While I got myself nice and happy, Bro ordered a slice of pie. Specifically, he got a slice of Apple Cranberry Pie. I stole a bite and it was very good. Hopefully, one day, they'll have some coffee available.

Cocktails average $12 each. Expect to spend about another $30 on top of that for food, per person.

10 ARTS BISTRO & LOUNGE

The Ritz-Carlton

10 Avenue of the Arts

Philadelphia, PA 19102

(215) 523-8273

This rainy December afternoon Bro and I decided to make 10 Arts our rest stop while shopping in Philadelphia. Located inside of the Ritz-Carlton lobby, in what used to be an old bank, the 10 Arts is like drinking in a Roman temple. Perhaps to Bacchus? Anyway, it embodies everything that hotel bars are supposed to embody. It's fancy and expensive and you worry about the drinks later.

Eric Ripert, who was on an ex-girlfriend's I'd-cheat-on-you-with-this-guy-list (right behind Anthony Bourdain) is the brain behind the menu. Bro and I ordered some bites (the French Fries with a rosemary spice dusting and some Mini Burgers in a tangy mayo) and they were very good. As for our liquor, well, I ordered a Negroni and a Sazerac, both classic drinks, both made wrong but drinkable. Bro ordered a Godfather.

Of course, such consternations completely miss the point of a place like 10 Arts, which is entirely to feel important and wealthy. Doormen open the door for you and warmly say hello as though you live there and paid for their kid's college with your Christmas tip. It's marble and granite from floor to ceiling and being an old bank, that ceiling happens to be fifty feet high. The seats are plush and the liquor is top-shelf. Need I remind you that Eric Ripert made the bar food? Sure, there's a guy drinking Miller Lite watching a muted ESPN on a flat screen next to you, and some businessmen from a Cincinnati suburb you wouldn't remember the name of even if you were paid to are doing shots of tequila, but you barely notice them. You're too busy relaxing away from the grind of the city outside. You're too busy trying not to smile at the cute tourist girls. You're too busy letting go of the day. You're too busy not being busy, eating a mini-burger.

JG MELON

1291 Third Avenue

New York, NY 10021

(212) 650-1310

New York is a pizza city. It's a bagel city. It's a hot dog city. But, by and large, it's becoming a hamburger city. JG Melon, on the Upper East Side, has long been ahead of this particular curve. They've been on the best-of lists for burgers for as long as I can remember so, when Bro was in town and we found ourselves in the Lenox Hill area, we decided to go check it out.

JG Melon reeks of old New York. It's dark inside but not because it's trendy (they were a gastropub long before the word existed). It's because the lights are 25 watts to keep the electrical bills down. It's tight. Tables are practically on top of each other. It's loud and even the little old ladies are raising their voices. The waitresses are so busy that they barely look at you when you're ordering and only grunt at you when you tell them what you want. If you grew up in a small town where things move a little more slowly, then you might mistake this as rude. But it's not. We're just busier here in New York. Having to literally tug on a waitress' shirt to get her to see you is part of the charm. Cash only, no free refills on soda, and a meat-centric menu of old-school bar food. It's like going back in time.

Anyway, as I said, I came for a burger. And so that's what I got. The Cheeseburger, served with pickles and red onion and a square of Kraft American on top. Nuthin' else. Nothing else is even offered. But hell, it doesn't need it. It was everything they said. When you just want a perfectly made patty on a toasted bun, without forty different sauces that just end up hiding the taste of the meat, now you know where to go. I also ordered a side of Cottage Fried Potatoes, JG Melon's version of french fries. They were okay, but too thin. I would have preferred big honkin' steak fries. Bro ordered the Grilled Breast of Chicken Sandwich. It's exactly like what it sounds like. A butterflied chicken breast on a hero roll with lettuce, tomato, onion, and pickle. There's a choice of salsa or barbecue sauce which comes in a cup on the side. Bro went with the salsa. I'd have gone with barbecue. Either way, it's an all around yawn-inducing dish. This sandwich is one that cries out for one of those forty sauces I mentioned. It couldn't have less taste if it tried. On the other hand, if you want a traditional sandwich, it doesn't get more traditional than this.

THE GREEN TABLE

Chelsea Market

75 Ninth Avenue

New York, NY 10011

(212) 741-6623

Upscale food malls are de regueur in Manhattan lately as Eataly and the Limelight Marketplace can attest. Chelsea Market beat them to it though. L'Arte del Gelato is here, along with Amy's Bread, Fat Witch Bakery, and a host of other restaurants and specialty food shops. The Green Table is the restaurant wing of The Cleaver Company, a catering business which wholly embraces the mantra of the organic, small-farm, locavore lifestyle. Everything here is either organic or local or both. Guilt free food for reasons finally having nothing to do with being on a fad diet.

The inside it's small and cozy and warm. It's dimly lit but not to the point of being romantic. I've heard Green Table called a wine bar (actually, it says so on the business card) and it certainly has that atmosphere, but it's not one. It  is similar to the kinds of places I'd expect to find in Brooklyn. 

If you read this blog at all regularly, you know that, outside of cocktails, my favorite kind of restaurant are upscale casual new-Americans like Quaint in Queens and Fort Defiance in Brooklyn. So while the atmosphere here was spot on and the service was great, I can't lie and say that I was blown away by what we got on the plate.

The menu is a seasonal one and we ordered off of the current "Autumn" menu. Although it may feel like spring out there, it's almost winter so I expect that this menu won't last much longer. 

While looking at the menu, Speeds and I shared a small bowl of Olives, which were curiously served piping hot. I certainly wasn't expecting to get a mouthful of searing hot olive oil, but I there it was. I think I can safely say that I prefer olives at a nice room-temperature temperature.

I started the meal with the Market Soup, which is a sort of trendier way of saying the soup of the day. On this particular day the soup was creamy parsnip. I finished the bowl feeling far more healthy than when I started it, which is a nice feeling to have. But the soup itself was disappointingly tame. It just didn't have, to use a technical term, much oomph. I would have added some salt or some pepper if there had been any to add at the table, but as there was not, I made due (I don't usually ask for things that aren't provided). Speeds ordered the small-sized Harvest Salad, which was actually rather large. She loved the dressing and raved about the walnuts, but was let down by the sliced apple, complaining that they were completely tasteless. "It's like I'm eating a raw potato," she told me.

As an entree, Speeds got the Gnocchi, served with chanterelles, sage, butter and an assortment of "autumn vegetables" (potatoes and the like). She liked it and ate as much of it as she could, but it was a heavy dish. My opinion, having stolen a few bites, was that it wasn't more than just okay. I found the plate overall dry and bland. I'm was very pleased that I ordered the Organic Chicken Breast, a roasted, skin-on chicken breast with local greens and thyme au jus on a bed of lightly toasted spaetzle. Though the chef went a little overboard on the spaetzle, the chicken had tons of flavor and was as moist as anyone could hope for. I highly recommend this dish.

So the chicken and the salad (save the apple) was great, Speeds and I had differing opinions on the gnocchi, the soup was squarely in the middle and the olives... well, I think you should just skip those altogether.

PEANUT BUTTER & CO.

240 Sullivan Street

New York, NY 10012

(212) 617-3995

There have been a spate of restaurants opening in recent years that focus on a single dish served in a variety of ways. Meatball Shop is a perfect example of this, and so too Peanut Butter & Co. in the West Village. Peanut butter sandwiches naturally make up the majority of their menu. There are other items for sure, like salad, but ordering one of those seems to defeat the whole point. 

So, the other day, a buddy of mine, Pike, was reading the New York Magazine food blog Grub Street, and came across an article from the past summer listing the best 101 sandwiches in New York City. Peanut Butter & Co. was in the list, cheap ,and was right next to the subway. Plus, one of the top 101 sandwiches in a city of a billion sandwiches? How could we not go?  Long Story short, Grub Street was wrong.

The staff was very friendly, it's absolutely a place that kids will love, the food came quickly, we got a table right away, you can't beat the nostalgia value, and while they're not giving anything away, it's not terribly pricey either. It's a comfortable place to sit and enjoy what amounts to jazzed up comfort food. But the bottom line is that we were pretty let unimpressed. I think that, deep down, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich is already so close to perfection that improving upon it is a thankless task (I say this despite the fact that there are at least a dozen other blogs and food critics who get paid who disagree with me and have been thanking these guys for two years). There are a few, additions to be sure, that are good, like adding cream cheese, but you can do that at home any time you want with virtually no effort. So it makes sense to order something that would be time consuming. But Pike and I just felt that they don't work very well.

Pike ordered the Grub Street fave, The Elvis. Peanut butter, bacon, banana and honey on toast.  Was it decent? Yeah. Was it worthy of being in NYMag's top 100 list? No. My choice was The Heat Is On. Peanut butter, cold grilled chicken, and pineapple marmalade on white bread. The chicken was so heavily spiced that I could barely taste anything except it. I like things hot, but I also have this thing about flavor, and there simply wasn't any here.

Now, before you go thinking I'm all negative, we did not order any desserts, all of which looked pretty good. So maybe I'll come back for one of them. But the sandwiches were damn heavy and there was no way we could fit anything else in. In an ideal world, I'd also return and try one of the many other sandwiches that we obviously couldn't get to. But this time, I won't be quite as giddy as a kid in a peanut butter store.

BLUEPRINT

196 Fifth Avenue

Brooklyn, NY 11217

(718) 622-6644

Cocktail-centric gastropubs have become a force to be reckoned with in Brooklyn. Blueprint, one of the latest to emerge in the borough borrows heavily from the formula. Dark woods, good drinks, rich grubs. So it's not original by any stretch, but it is good. Indeed, it does just about everything right. Though I'd lose the gangsta rap soundtrack, which almost seems to be played in irony, the vibe is spot-on comfortable. The staff was super nice, the food was good, the beer was fantastic and the well liquor is top shelf.

Seth is planning on planting his flag in Brooklyn, as any good follower of this blog is well aware. And after bouncing from a walk-up in Prospect Heights to another in Sunset Park, we decided to split meet up, grab some dinner and get our shit-face on here in the Slope. Okay, so I may have mentioned that Blueprint is much like Rye is much like Char No. 4 is much like Fort Defiance. But I liked it. A lot."Come on," Seth said after I commented about this trend. "You know that if they opened up in your neighborhood, you'd stick a cot in the corner and move right on in." It's true. I would.

Half of the menu a Blueprint is meats and cheese, like a wine bar would have. The other half is a kinda-sorta small plates menu. Some are truly small plates which I will term an "appetizer". The larger plates I will give the random description of "entree". Seth didn't bother with the "appetizer" but I couldn't help myself. I ordered the Baby Octopus, a salad of cold potatoes and salsa verde with little whole grilled baby octopi. Fantastic. I don't care if you don't think you'd like octopus, you'd like this. Everything came at once, so while I was having a good ol' time with my app, Seth was enjoying his Blueprint Rabbit Pot Pie. Pot pie is an underrated food group. My dad makes the world's best pot pie and he stole his recipe from a Betty Crocker cookbook from 1965. While this didn't live up to the Dad Standard set my a corporate giant during the McCarthy era, it was still pretty good. Rabbit is more tender than your average meat (largely due to the muscle tissue being continuously massaged/petted by second graders on field trips) and it's also much sweeter (from those same field trip kisses that the rabbits get so many of). As a result, you're left with a meat that reminiscent of the dark meat of a chicken that's been glazed in maple syrup. If this sounds appetizing, I suggest you order some rabbit. My only complaint was that the crust was one of those annoying puff pastry crusts that looks good in photos but tastes like bread-flavored air. It added almost nothing except a soggy copy-paper texture after a few bites. My dinner was the Grass-Fed Beef Bourguignon served with a side of au gratin potatoes. Blueprint prides itself on using locally grown vegetables and locally raised meat. Their website even lists the farms that they order from. I happen to think that organic food is a scam perpetrated on the dumb by the crafty, but I am very much in favor of locally-obtained non-factory-made food. If I want that mass market stuff, I'll eat at Cracker Barrel. But I digress. The beef was great. Super tender, super sweet, super why didn't they give me four times as much? And maybe it's because I've cut so much starch from my diet that you could throw a potato in manure and I'd still love it, but damn was that au gratin good!

PAINKILLER

49 Essex Street

New York, NY 10002

(212) 777-8454

Usually, you crave warm weather cocktails (mai-tais, diaquiris, pina coladas, etc.) in the summer, or maybe when you're on vacation someplace where the summer never goes away, like the Caribbean. But sometimes, you want the illusion of summer. The illusion of a vacation. Lina and I decided to go see The Rum Diaries, a movie about a guy in the 1960s drinking booze like it was water and breathing cigarette smoke like it was the fresh country air, all in the Caribbean. Painkiller, a tiki bar with a classic tropical cocktail menu, seemed appropriate. And, in hindsight, it was far, far better than the movie, which was pretty awful.

The cocktails at Painkiller hearken to that pre and post-WWII era when Hawaiian shirts weren't just for pensioners on a golf course. The interior is wrapped in bamboo like a Tahitian hut and the walls are covered in tiki masks (and inner-city graffiti?). The soundtrack is all either oldies or the kind of reggae white people like (Bob Marley, Chaka Demus, etc.). The first time I tried to go here was a year ago and it was like trying to squeeze into a sardine can, but this time, it was calm. We got a table right away and it never really crowded up. Clearly, winter's the time to go.

I got to Painkiller slightly ahead of Lina so I nursed a Missionary's Downfall in a small booth. Rum, pineapple juice, lime juice, mint, honey, peach, and topped off with a garnish so thick you need a machete just to get your straw in. The drink was so physically tall that I needed to take it off the table and stick it in my lap just to drink it. It was effectively a mojito with pineapple juice. By the time Lina arrived, I was left with a big glass filled with what had become green ice. While I thought about my next cocktail, Lina ordered a Dying Bastard. Painkiller has a few cocktails that they consider signatures of the establishment, each with a wacky history described on the menu. It also has a few pages with a huge range of daiquiris, punches, frozen drinks, fizzes, and "strong" drinks (they'll only give you one per sitting) that have names, but no ingredient list that I can regurgitate for you. The Dying Bastard was a fizz that was very ginger heavy. I ended up with the 1934 Zombie Punch, the drink you see below served in Charlie Chan's head. This is Painkiller's signature strong drink. Three different rums, lime juice, grapefruit juice, grenadine, falernum, and absinthe. And damn was it strong. I didn't notice it at first, but then, about a half hour later, I suddenly realized I had gotten loud and thought I was way funnier than I normally do. It was probably a good thing I stopped there. I hate looking back and realizing that I was "that guy" on the subway. Okay okay. It just about knocked me on my ass.

Drinks here average about $14 each except for the higher octane ones, which will run you $16.

BAKED BY MELISSA

2325 Broadway

New York, NY 10024

(212) 842-0220

"How," thought Melissa, one lazy Sunday, "can I tap into NYC's already saturated cupcake scene? What can I do that hasn't been done?" Inspiration hit her like a sugar rush. "Bite size!"

Yes, cute little baby cupcakes. You just want to eat them right up. Yes you do. Yes you do.

There are about a half dozen Baked By Melissas in Manhattan. I went with Emma to the one near her on the Upper West Side. Emma likes cute little things. She has a cute little studio and a cute little puppy, works with cute little children, wears cute little dresses and, when I first met her, drove a cute little Honda Civic del Sol. It was only natural that she'd  make a bee-line to a bakery churning out cute little cupcakes.

The cupcakes are an inch and a half wide and a half inch deep. So when I say bite size, I'm not just implying small. They're the exact opposite of the ones that are sold at crumbs which can feed a family of four. Baked By Melissa sells them in boxes of up to 100. We ordered a box of six. The standard vanilla-vanilla cupcake is made pretty as the Tie-Dye, a rainbow cupcake with frosting that tastes like any other cupcake would. The Peanut Butter and Jelly is literally a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. It tastes just like what you'd make for your kid before the run off to camp. But I can get that at home before I go to camp. So... Emma's favorite was the Cookies and Cream, which was the best we tried. A chocolate cupcake with an Oreo cookie chunk on top and Oreo frosting. Very very good. The runner up was the Cookie Dough, which was a yellow cake cupcake with chocolate frosting and a piece of soft cookie dough baked into the middle. Yum.

There wasn't much of a line when we went in the late afternoon, but when we went out around 8ish, there was a line out the door.

Here's the rub though. While I literally spent almost nothing at Baked By Melissa, it's a terrible terrible terrible value. It would take at least a box of twelve micro-cupcakes to add up to one normal cupcake at Billy's (my fave). That's a $10 cupcake. No one in their right mind would pay ten bucks for a cupcake.

OKTOBERFEST SPECIAL 2011!!!

Beekman Beer Garden

Der Schwartz Kolner

Loreley

Spritzenhaus Bierhalle

Zum Stammtisch

Last year, I traveled the city for my first Oktoberfest Special. This year, the beer garden wars return with a little more of a showing from the indoor beer halls instead, thanks in no small part to the abysmally crappy weather we've been having this month.

In addition to last year's five, Berry Park (Williamsburg/Greenpoint), Bohemian Hall (Astoria), Radegast Hall (Williamsburg), Standard Biergarten (Meatpacking), and Studio Square (Astoria), there are a few other notables that I have visited that were not all lumped together in the Special, but which would be great additions to anyone's Oktoberfest bar crawl: Beer Table (Park Slope), Manor Oktoberfest (Forest Hills), and Wechsler's Currywurst and Bratwurst (East Village).

Although Queens is what most people think of when they think of beer gardens, Brooklyn has taken center stage as the place to be for beer people. Brooklyn Brewery is there and has grown lots in the past few years. It's New York's answer to Boston's Sam Adams. Brooklyn probably has as many beer gardens/halls as the other boroughs put together. Hence, for the five I looked at this year, Brooklyn took three spots.

BEEKMAN BEER GARDEN BEACH CLUB

89 South Street

New York, NY 10038

(212) 896-4600

The Beekman, at South Street Seaport, takes over from the recently gone Water Taxi Beach and the sand is still there. The outdoor space is vast. Dozens of long tables, a pool table and some fooseball sit beside bright white easy chairs and benches that look like soft pleather but are actually all-weather hard plastic. 

The Beekman was dead when I went around lunchtime. Shockingly dead. The beer menu is paltry at best, and as much as I like Magic Hat #9, it didn't really inspire that Oktoberfest biergarten mood. Plus the food I ordered, a tasteless sausage, generic fries, and a pretzel that was probably made out of cardboard didn't add much to the experience. Still, one can't get past the simple truth that of every beer garden in the city, it has the far and away best views of all of them. I was content with my book and the solitude but I imagine that come nightfall throngs of tourists and recent MBA grads swarm this place like their life depended on it, huddled together by the outdoor fire pits, pints of Witte in hand.

DER SCHWARTZ KOLNER

710 Fulton Street

Brooklyn, NY 11217

(347) 841-4495

Smack in Fort Greene, Der Schwartz Kolner is gentrification incarnate. Once upon a time, if someone compared Fort Greene to a toilet, the toilet would get offended. These days, based on the number of babies, smartphones, and yuppie 30 year olds high fiving each other, you're looking at Park Slope 2. Communal tables with folding chairs aside, that's where Der Schwartz Kolner falls short. It's a (small) beer hall with good beer and better currywurst, but it lacks a certain soul. The white and black checkered tiles say that much.

I met Seth here after he finished roaming the nabe for an apartment. I grabbed one of the tall tables near the door and plopped down. I ordered a beer from a waitress in jeggings and was left pretty much completely alone. The customers, from the business-type dudes in the photo to the community-garden hippies with the strollers behind me, everyone was having a loud ball. One thing's for sure, I may not score it high in the traditional sense, but if you're here, the odds are you've got a big smile on your face. Like you probably would at a normal bar.

LORELEY

64 Frost Street

Brooklyn, NY 11211

(718) 599-0025

Loreley (shouldn't it be Lorelei?) is the place everyone has been talking about (recently with a short blurb in the Oktoberfest pullout in the Daily News). Located in what looks like a widget factory, half indoors and half outdoors, half restaurant and half beer garden, half eating space and half music venue, Loreley is the closest I came this year to a traditional beer garden. It's maybe a fifth the size of Bohemian Hall in Astoria, but with some trees, communal tables and more Radeberger than you can shake a stick out, it sure does try to live up to the standard.

I met Lina here after she got herself a tattoo nearby (this is Williamsburg). We grabbed a table outside, a round of half liters, and proceeded to fill up on pretzels. Warm and soft, the way they should be, though perhaps with more salt than necessary. She then ordered the a weisswurst plate. It came the way they do in Germany: with a mountain of sauerkraut next to another mountain of mashed potatoes. I ordered another beer and a schnitzel sandwich (the schnitzelsandwich, in German).

The crowd here was young, but this is Brooklyn, where they get rid of you Logan's Run style once you hit 40. It was also chilly and overcast, as it was all week. So much so that we wondered if we'd be forced inside by rain. But the rain never came, leaving Loreley relatively calm and relaxing. The walls and hedges muffled the sound of the few cars that drove by, but at a cost of making one feel somewhat claustrophobic. Still. If I lived around here, I'd be a regular.

SPRITZENHAUS BIERHALLE

33 Nassau Avenue

Brooklyn, NY 11222

(347) 987-4632

Spritzenhaus wins. Spritzenhaus manages to be literally everything anyone could want in a drinkatorium. First, they're huge. Just massive. Bench tables, bistro tables, group tables, plus outdoor sidewalk seating. They have a vast arrays of beer on tap and, for those who aren't into beer, a vast array of whiskey to boot. The staff is friendly. They let you sample the beer first and those "samples" are big. I had a whole pint in samples alone before I ordered anything. Not only that, but the food was spectacular.

I met Seth here for a few bites and a few brews and it was deserted. "It's the weather," the bartender told me. "Usually we're packed." Still, I wasn't complaining. Better service for me. We ordered the blood sausage, which was fantastic, along with a bratwurst. That was followed up by some more wursts and some fries and plenty of dipping sauce. All of which was washed down with copious liters of malty hoppy goodness.

But no place is perfect and I won't go anywhere without making one negative comment, so here it is. The music. God awful. Please, no more heavy metal. Or at least, no more bad heavy metal. I beg of thee.

ZUM STAMMTISCH

69-46 Myrtle Avenue

Glendale, NY

(718) 386-3014

Yeah, that's right. There's a guy playing an accordion in that pic. That's how real Zum Stammtisch is. No bullshit games about trying to incorporate ways to get free-range organic veal on the menu. This place is old school. Do the waitresses wear those St.Pauli Girl get-ups? Yep. Does the bartender wear green overalls and hand you your beer in an off-white porcelain mug? Damn right he does. Is escargot served in a baked potato here? Ummm... apparently that's a tradition. Who knew? Anyway.

Granted, Zum Stammtisch isn't a great big beer hall and granted, it doesn't have quite the outdoor space to be a beer garden either (or any outdoor space, for that matter). But there's something to be said for adding an honest-to-God, NYU student-free, tourist-free, blasting-live-polka-loud-as-all-shit place to the Oktoberfest mix. If Bohemian Hall and Zum Stammtisch prove nothing else, it's that if authenticity's what you want, Queens is where to be.

Pike and I arrived here midweek and killed a half hour at the bar before getting food. If the other places I looked at were young or hip, this ain't them. The average age here was 60 and the average weight was 200 pounds. These were fat, aged, happy people. And I emphasize happy. People were tapping on the windows and waving when they looked in to see their friend inside. Middle aged women were dancing with each other between the tables. People you didn't even see five seconds ago were striking up conversations about... well, nothing. You know how people complain about New Yorkers saying that we're cold, that we're not outgoing, that we don't smile at each other. They need to come here.

So Pike and I found a seat, ordered more food between us than a third world village saw in a week, drank from our steins and vegged out for who knows how long while the oompah band played loudly on. Sadly, the sauerbraten was not more than just okay. But the potato soup was something you'd kick cute little puppies to get at.

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