August 12, 2008
St Stephen’s Green in Fairmount
The Fairmount neighborhood has plenty of so-called gastropubs, where hip servers deliver craft beers and reinvented pub food to young professionals and neighborhood regulars. But who said that’s a bad thing?
One of Fairmount’s most recent pub-additions is St. Stephen’s Green at 17th and Green streets. Named after St. Stephen’s Green park in Ireland, the multi-level pub has an Irish feel, along with a separate bar, dining room and plenty of outdoor seating.
When we stopped by for dinner at around 6:00 on Saturday night, the place wasn’t in full swing for the night quite yet. This made the service fast and friendly, though it doesn’t look like there is ever a big problem with that. Our server took our orders quickly and even tried to give some beer advice (she said Bell’s Brewery was in Colorado”"it’s in Michigan). Regardless, the Bell’s Two-Hearted Ale 20 oz. draft was delicious. We also ordered the pear cider, which was a bit weak and too sweet, but still nice on a hot summer afternoon, especially if we had been eating outside.
Chef Ben McNamara’s pub offerings are creative and delicious. The shredded lamb tacos looked great on the plate and were done to perfection. Two hard-shell tacos wrapped in soft shells and refried beans, with manchego cheese, tomatoes, onions and lettuce waiting to be heaped on to the tacos. The dish also came with tamatillo relish and cilantro cream. The lamb was tender and pot-roasty, but could have had a bit more flavor on its own. There also wasn’t a lot of spice to the dish, which could have been easily fixed by adding another spicier salsa to the DIY presentation. Overall, though, the tacos were delicious and creative.
The same can be said for the seared wild mushroom salad with pears and feta cheese. It was creative enough to be exciting, but still mixed flavors that complemented each other and tasted good.
St. Stephen’s Green has many unique dinner offerings and a varied enough beer list that it would take several trips to this local haunt to experience everything the bar has to offer. That’s fine with us.
St. Stephen’s Green
1701 Green St., Philadelphia, PA
(215) 769-5000
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August 12, 2008, 9:22 am
Charlie says:
Thanks for the tip on where to get Bell’s Two-Hearted Ale–it’s great and has nice Hemingway reference built in for all you lit geeks.
August 12, 2008, 9:22 am
shelby says:
Brought a few out of town friends here for dinner and couple of drinks. They had decent beers to choose from but so does every bar these days. The food was pretty good but basic- anybody could find it anywhere. The real problem was with the guy behind the bar! For some guy that’s short, overweight, and has bad teeth, he shouldn’t be making racist comments about well educated African Americans which don’t come from “Canada”.
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