GOAT HOLLOW |
||||
300 West Mount Pleasant Avenue
This is an upscale blue collar neighbors’ shebang with an eclectic crowd of artists, weavers, stocking knitters, hatters, furriers, factory workers, printers, bakers and candle-stick-makers. And most importantly to lawyers, who are transfixed by fabulous bivalve mollusks, fries and extraordinary hops: other like-minded attorneys. The atmosphere is “neoteric-tappy-with-soundless-overhead-sports-T.V.” To your left as you enter, a “standard” brick faux-façade and a low mid-room iron Vermont fireplace ruminate as garnish. Every table is butcher block and without linen; chairs mahogany. The ceilings and many walls are black and industrial. There are brighter rooms to occupy, including one thinner rectangle behind the brick wall, but the barroom is made the most interesting with its parade of wonderful, unadorned Mount Airy-headed personalities. Goat Hollows’ well-seasoned chef, Adam Glickman, is an alumnus of the forces behind the kitchen at Monk’s Café, the center city haven for friendly comfort food. The carry-over of comfort classics and pleased patronage is unmistakable, and Chef Glickman has remained a prescient beacon for accompanying his accomplishments amidst novel, richly flavored brews.
But save most of your energy for the “race for the mussels.” “Moules Et Frites” ($10/lb.): #1(“Goat Hollow”) are blatantly beer-bathed and battered by caramelized onions and house-cured tasso. The steaming bouncy succulents are viewed by a crowd of spec“tators,” thin, perfectly dried fries. They seem to be cheering you toward a favored mollusk. A well-padded roll straddles the edge of the bowl like an overseer. It sits solely to sop up the underlying broth as you progress with reigning in and devouring the sweating morsels. Throwing their pearly black shells into an auxiliary large bowl is an afterthought. The fare is sublimely fresh.
Variations occur with other varieties on the same theme: #2(“Lincoln Drive”), adorned with leeks, immersed in white wine and frequented by chile de arbol; #3(“Sedgwick”), an herbal moules-mass in red wine, upon which scurry tomato bits; and #4(“Durham”), perfumed by basil, white wine and mozzarella. If you order all four, you may share and play as if the table were a “Lazy Susan.” Flex your mussels. Just remember to hold onto that puffy roll you rode in on.
Have at elbow’s length a draft of Sly Fox O’Reilly’s Stout ($5.50), Pam Belgian Amber ($6), Old Dominion Cherry Blossom Lager ($6), Weyerbacher Heresy ($6); or Dock Street West of Center Pale Ale from a cask. I’m one who grew up with Schmidts, Ballantine, Blatz, Piels, Pabst Blue Ribbon and Miller High Life in quart bottles. They tasted, to me, like thirst-quenching liquids redolent of malts, alcohol and hopped-up ambrosia. The newest prideful brewing creates aftertastes of chocolate, coffee, cherries, oranges, pine, grapefruit, grass, birch, chamomile and/or wet hay. Bert and Harry are so far away.
|
||||
|
||||
Copyright 2013 Richard Max Bockol, Esq. | Back |