after dinner sneeze

t says: When we originally heard that Garces’s new Village Whiskey was “the” place to get a burger in Philadelphia (supposedly trumping Grace Tavern, which is well-known for their burgers), we were excited to try it.  Unfortunately, on one of our earlier attempts, we were dissuaded by the hour wait.  So we put our name on their list and started looking around for ‘other’ burgers and ended up at Devil’s Alley.  Neither of us could remember who it was that told us that they had great food despite being a bar, but if “we heard good things”, then surely it’d be a safe place to order some burgers.  We were mistaken.

11/2009, Friday Dinner, Party of 2.  We were seated without a wait, so we figured that it wasn’t that busy.  However, in retrospect, maybe it was a ridiculously busy (is there ever a Friday night that’s not busy?), because the service was nearly non-existant and abysmal when present (e.g. messed up order, a long wait to get her attention to correct the problem, a longer wait for the correction to occur, and another party of 2 was brought over to our table even before we had finished standing up to put on our coats to leave).

The food was either mediocre (g’s burger was “fine, but a little dry”; it reminded me of the standard overcooked burgers I ate at home bbq’s in my youth) or bad (turkey burger was dry and insipid – I’ve honestly had better in a hospital cafeteria – seriously – no hyperbole).  At least the fries were crispy.

After I told others of my experience at Devil’s Alley, they informed me that I didn’t order any of the “creative dishes” (?something about a PB&J?).  Well, now here’s the quandry – do we risk going back for a second try?  Maybe we should try out non-Friday, non-dinner time?  But at these times, it’d also be easier to get into all of those “other” restaurants we want to try (or at least the ones we’ve had good experiences at).  I guess maybe if some of our friends wanted to go, we’d give it a whirl – good company makes up for bad food/service any time …

Sadly, after we had already returned to our apartment, some 2+ hours after we had originally tried our luck at Village Whiskey, they called to tell us that they had a table ready.  Unfortunately, we were full on not delicious food …