Food Bloggers and Brunch c/o National Mechanics

On Sunday I was committed to going to to brunch at National Mechanics to see what a panel of food bloggers had to say for themselves. Philly food bloggers, that is, with the exception of the Girl Who Ate Everything, who lives in New York (but I've been following her eating exploits with envy for at least two years now). I asked A. if she'd like to join me last minute and, bless her heart, she said yes. So I walked on into Center City, passing the Love Fountain (not the official name, I don't think) that was dyed pink in honor of the Phillies doing something great.
A. biked, so even though she left her house about 20 minutes after I did, we arrived within five minutes of each other, which was great because I really wouldn't have wanted to sit at a booth and eat and listen alone. That, and A. is great company. There was a make your own bloody Mary bar (should one just capitalize 'bloody' because Mary is capitalized, this is something I wonder each and every time I have one and write about it). A. and I both took advantage of this option. I used half their existing mix, half regular tomato juice, but added a fair amount of horseradish (I like my Bloody Marys cloudy with the stuff) and put a few dashes and tickles of different hot sauces in for good measure. I enjoyed their offering of capers and olives, though I would have overloaded on olives if their supply hadn't seemed so low.
Old bay around the rim. It was delicious. I liked how the capers were some weird version of tapioca in my straw. In other words, I considered this Bloody Mary (I've decided, capitalize both) like a savory and alcholic version of a bubble tea...only totally different.
A. had the skillet with queso fresca eggs and myriad other tasty looking treats.
I agonized over having a proper breakfast brunch of eggs benedict but found the allure of a burger with a fried egg too tempting to pass up, so I didn't pass the burger up.
It was a good burger, one of the better I've had in Philly, actually. They season their meat, which I appreciate, and in a way that I can get behind. I would have enjoyed a runnier egg, but you can't always get what you want, especially when you don't really need it.
The panel itself was pretty informal, but certainly featured a few bloggers with whom I was familiar. There wasn't a lot of structure to the event, but hey, that's not so bad. It was certainly interesting to see the faces of Drew Lazor, who is the food beat writer/editor for the Philadelphia City Paper and, shoot, I've forgotten his name but he is the co-founder of Unbreaded, which is definitely a site for sandwich lovers.
On the walk back we passed an art gallery with a giant dinosaur made of pink bottles.
And a sand sculpture in honor of the Phillies doing something great.
I'd never actually seen this park, complete with mini-golf course and mini-carousel. The carousel made me remember Glen Echo's carousel nostalgically. Anyone?
In all it was a five mile walk, made me feel good about myself, though all the heel bopping from the musical show the night before, and the Saturday three mile walk, and the fact that I hadn't walked such distances in about three weeks (oh work, can you be an excuse for my laziness?) led to my right leg kind of giving out about a half mile from home. Some sort of hip muscle seized so that if I walked with a proper stride I would yelp with unbearable pain. Thankfully this went away after a day. What a great weekend, a nice mix of people and events. If only my life was this interesting and varied all the time. Ha. Ha. No, really.