Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Cocktails, Tomatoes and Burger c/o Village Whiskey

The same weekend as Bar Ferdinand found me getting a hair cut in Center City. I knew this in advance, of course, and thought it might be nice to meet up with some peeps and have a burger at Village Whiskey. BC and LW were in it to win it and so a plan was born. I had thought that around 3 would be a good time to go, and that there wouldn't be quite as much of a wait on a Sunday afternoon. This didn't turn out to be entirely true; we ended up having to wait about 45 minutes. This wasn't so terrible because the weather was amazing and the establishment is kind enough to have a bench outside for those waiting to enter their magical beef wonderland. When we were seated we first ordered drinks. The cocktail menu is different that in times past, and for a minute I was confused about how to proceed. I was not deterred for long, finally deciding on the Chinook, a cocktail consisting of rye whiskey, cynar, punt e mes, maraschino and muddled grapefruit. Delicious and oh-so-pretty. LW and I split the pickled cherry tomatoes, which remained revelatory in their simplicity.
How a skinned tomato in a light pickling concoction can be so mouthwateringly awesome is beyond me. Or perhaps not. I think this may be the summer I FINALLY get around to fiddling with pickling.
BC ordered a side of duck fat fries with beer cheese dipping sauce. I hadn't tried their fries or the sauce before, and must say that I was not surprised to find them both to my satisfaction. I love melty cheese in pretty much any form, but this was definitely a step above the wiz. LW and I both ordered burgers with medium rare while BC went with medium. BC's burger was perfectly cooked from the look of it, but LW and I were a little disappointed with our own burgers, as they didn't have that oozy pink juice center that one expects with medium rare. We quickly debated the pros and cons of sending them back. I worried that the kitchen would judge us, even though I knew that the burgers really weren't cooked to our specifications. LW pointed out the disappointment she (and I) would inevitably feel if we ate burgers that weren't exactly what we had been looking for. So we sucked it up and asked our server if we could have a re-do. She warned us that it would take extra time, and we relayed our willingness to wait. Meanwhile, BC ate her burger and the server gave us a complimentary second set of fries to tide us over. The wait, which wasn't too long, was 100% worth it. Our new burgers were nice and pink and juicy and wonderful.
A fine afternoon meal with friendly faces.

1 comment:

LW said...

The burger done medium rare was just as good as the first time. Heh.