Sesame Seared tuna with Siracusa cream cheese potato latkas
Dining Out Sampling some of the borough’s best meals in West Chester’s premier dinner destinations. My friend Amy and I rolled into Side Bar for dinner and drinks on a drizzly evening in late February. It was Fat Tuesday, so we sampled some Side Bar standards as well as a few specials and a brand new menu addition. The Vibe Our host led us to a high-top table in the downstairs dining room right in front of a crackling fire in the brick fireplace, lending an especially cozy touch to our damp winter outing. The crowd was eclectic: a solo guy with tattoos hunched over a beer at one end of the bar, while local business types mingled at the other end. By 6:30pm, the room was humming with millennial couples and small groups of friends. Page, our server, cheerfully indulged our barrage of questions. While I love spicy,
bold flavors and novelty, Amy has a tamer palate, and Page skillfully used our preferences to recommend a winning roundup of both drinks and dishes. The Drinks Side Bar prides itself on the selection of its continually rotating beer list that no one else in town has—or can even get—such as several from Tired Hands Brewery in Ardmore. After a fairly lengthy consultation with Page about our likes and dislikes in flavors and textures, we settled on a four-item flight that included Tired Hands’ Alien Church, a cloudy, grapefruity NEIPA whose 7.0% ABV gave it a balance of both levity and gravitas. The other beer in our flight was a sour, the Rodenbach Grand Cru 2017. If one could drink a Sherlock Holmes mystery, it would taste like this beer: tart and dark, with a lovely amber hue and caramel, balsamic fragrance. Rounding out our flight were two hard ciders: the effervescent, lightweight Original Sin and its counterpoint, the surprisingly hearty, full-bodied Downeast White wit cider.
Since it was Fat Tuesday, we threw in a cocktail, too—perpetual Side Bar favorite Bright Days, a citrusy blend of champagne, elderflower liqueur, lemon juice, and Ketel One’s grapefruit and rose botanical vodka. The Apps In the spirit of King Cake, we focused on foods that were filled with surprises, like new-menu-addition potato and ham croquettes, which arrived atop a bed of wilted spinach and garlicky mashed potato puree. Inside their crispy fried coating was a blend of ham and more garlic mashed potatoes. The surprising note of sage popped out immediately and made me lament the dearth of dishes that feature this pungent herb. (Full disclosure: I’m not a particular fan of ham, but these were delicious, and when we packed up our leftovers after dinner, this plate was the only one with nothing left on it.) We couldn’t resist a flight of the trio of mac and cheese offerings on the specials menu. With their creamy house-recipe mac and cheese as a base, Side Bar offers a constant assortment of creative takes on this beloved comfort food. Tonight’s spe-
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