SouthWark
701 South 4th Street
Philadelphia, PA 19147
Philadelphia is quickly emerging as one of the premier beer cities in the United States.
They have all kinds of interesting beer events during the year, but obviously
the biggest is Philly beer week. I hadn’t gotten to experience it yet because I
had still been living at home and on the weekends during the summer, we
usually head down to LBI. Last year however, I had to go into the city for
something on a Thursday night during beer week, so I made a reservation for a
beer week event and took my fiancé out for a date.
The
event was a five course meal paired with Dogfish Head beers at a restaurant
called Southwark. I had heard some good things about it previously, but I had
never checked it out for myself. We were pretty excited to head in, but when we
got there and it was pretty much empty, we immediately became worried. The bar
was really cool. It definitely had an old time feel to it. I loved the woodwork
on the walls and the bar itself. We were seated immediately since there was
pretty much only two tables of people in the whole restaurant, and we were
brought out our menus to look over. It was a set menu, so there wasn’t anything
to choose from, but it was nice to see what we would be getting.
First
up, we were brought out a liver mousse éclair and a Dogfish Noble Rot. It
sounded like an interesting concept when we read over the menu, but in practice
it definitely was not. It was really cold, like it had been refrigerated all
day and put on the plate just minutes before serving. The mousse really was not
very creamy and I really didn’t understand the sliced grapes on top of it. We
were less than impressed with both the beer and the first plating. The beer was
good, but the pairing didn’t seem to go so well with each other.
Our
second course was a tuna crudo, watermelon radish, and mint and a Dogfish Red
and White. Again the beer was good, but the food missed the mark. The tuna was
cut much too thickly to work in the dish. It definitely needed to be pounded
out or served much more thinly sliced. The watermelon radishes had a really
bitter flavor to them. I wish they had been pickled first. The mint was a nice
touch, but definitely not enough to bring it all together or save the dish.
Our
waiter told us that the next two dishes were the stars of the meal, so we were
hoping them could make the meal swing upward from where it had begun. The third
course was a smoked veal breast, beets, and pickled raisins and Dogfish Raison
d'etre. This might have been the biggest miss yet. Since there was two of us
and they were clearly prepared at the same time, its hard to believe that a
professional chef could so badly misprepare a piece of meat. One was
overcooked and the other was raw. I don’t know how it was possible to get two
pieces of meat from two completely opposite sides of the temperature spectrum.
It was embarrassing. My fiance's was the one that was raw, so I took it from
her and gave her mine, but I couldn’t even chew the meat properly to swallow
it, so I had to stop trying to eat it.
We
were really disappointed in the food by this point and wanted nothing more than
to leave and not pay the fixed price of $75 per person, but we had to finish
up. The last savory course was a braised pork shoulder, Tuscan kale, white
anchovy and a Dogfish Sixty One. This was the only dish of the evening that was
even considered passable. The meat was pretty tender, and it was in a hearty
gravy. The Tuscan kale was really delicious as well. I didn’t have much
experience with kale previously, but it was a very welcoming addition to my
taste buds. The greens were very filling, and definitely packed a lot of flavor
and taste into their leaves. The white anchovy threw me for a loop though. It
was a completely unnecessary part of the dish and didn’t do anything to deserve
being on the plate.
We
were really dreading dessert at this point and it didn’t do anything to help
the restaurant out. The dessert course was Midas fruits, saffron cake and
ginger sorbet and Midas Touch. The cake was dry. The sorbet was over churned
and overpoweringly gingery and the fruits were just fruits. The whole thing
didn’t work for me as most of the rest of the meal also had gone that way.
Half
a pint for Southwark. The service was forgettable, the food was really bad and
there is no excuse for any of the mistakes they made considering the restaurant
was empty. It felt like a place that had no direction. Nothing was inventive
about the cuisine. Most of it was improperly prepared. The beer pairings had no
connections to the food at all. It was a terrible meal from start to finish and
it was ridiculously expensive considering the quality of the food that came out
of that kitchen. No need to check this one out, you wont miss anything! Cheers!
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