after dinner sneeze

t says: My dad is is quite tough to please when it comes to food.  Well … kinda.  He’s actually quite easy to satisfy with foods of all kinds (there are notable exceptions – but I won’t share them – they’re like his kryptonite), but in terms of going to foodie-approved restaurants, it’s hard to find a place that he’d actually want to go to.  The first difficulty is that he doesn’t need glitz and glamour in his food; he’s a manly man with manly man tastes.  Shmears of sauces on plates with intricate layering of shrimp and gold leaf so they perfectly resemble the Mona Lisa don’t really matter … well … maybe if the food somehow resembled a Philadelphia Eagles logo or something like that, it might.  He’d be just as happy with a pile of buffalo wings as some truffle-infused-this or foie-gras-that (actually, I’m sure he’d prefer the wings).  Second, he’s a manly man with a manly man appetite.  For places like Melograno, while we’re sure he’d enjoy the food, we know that he would definitely require two entrees just to get rid of his hunger, much less get full.  This leads us to a corollary of the second reason: getting two entrees costs double the money.  Our grandfather cut down our money tree (inside joke), so getting two entrees (or suggesting that he eat a pre-dinner burger from McDonald’s) is a bit much.

g and I have been racking our brains for a while to find an sr-worthy eatery in Philly.  First – it had to have good-tasting food.  Sure, Tony Luke’s is great for cheesesteaks, but we wanted a real sit-down place to eat.  We also kind of wanted it to be somewhat “cool” or “hip” – not just a dive hidden somwhere in South Philly.  We wanted a sizable portion of food for under $25, which is what we often deem as the max we’re willing to pay for food unless we’re celebrating something.  And if there was some way that he could use his fingers (without anyone minding that he’d be using his fingers), that’d be icing on the cake.  Well – one such restaurant does exist: Percy Street BBQ.

The short version (because we’ve already been there once) …

5/2010, Saturday 6:30pm, Party of 4. g, j, sr, and I all went to Percy Street for dinner.  After scrutinizing the menu, and doing some fancy calculations (i.e. counting on our fingers), we decided that the wisest decision was to do the Lockhart.  We went all in.  It.  Was.  Awesome.  Each of the meats had its own shtick.  The sausage and chicken had smokey flavors unlike I had ever tasted in sausage or chicken.  The pork belly was spot on [again].  j liked the brisket.  And there’s not a person alive who can resist ribs – it almost doesn’t matter what they taste like.  At the very least, the sides were “good” or “solid” (e.g. cole slaw, black-eyed peas) – but the baked beans and chilis showed the most flavor.  Somehow, we still managed to forget to get the cornbread – darn.  Percy Street also debuted a new bbq sauce – it was their sweet version.  I think we all felt it was too sweet, but it was much better when you mixed it with the Louisiana hot sauce.  The regular bbq sauce was pretty good (although we realize that bbq sauce tastes vary widely among people), but we know we have to go back when they get their spicy bbq sauce going (apparently they’re still figuring it out).

The desserts were completely new to us, as the last time we went, we didn’t have room.  While two of us had the root beer floats, g ventured the red velvet cake, and I went for the ice cream sandwich.  The red velvet cake was pretty good – not as moist as Isgro’s, but very nice; the “homemade” cream cheese icing was the star of that dish.  The ice cream sandwich was awesome.  It had crunchy chocolate cookies with a raspberry ice cream – very nice (although g was looking for the classic soft cookie-esque thing that is on normal ice cream sandwiches).  Nothing like ice cream to wash down some bbq – I wish it had a bit more ice cream, however.

In the end, we think sr liked it quite a bit.  He liked how open the restaurant was.  He liked glass vessels that you could order beer in.  And the price wasn’t too bad, either – considering that all of us were most definitely full … even him.

Good job Percy Street.  Now if only you had something for mom, too …