October 14-20, 2004

food

Hamming It Up

Pail fire: Special sauces spice up Mary's Hand Bag, which includes jalapeno poppers, popcorn shrimp and wings. Photo By: Michael T. Regan

Hamburger Mary's kitsch plays well among fun-loving diners.

by Helen i-lin Hwang

What's with the shoes? That's the first question that popped into my mind when I sat down at the newest restaurant franchise to hit Chestnut Street, Hamburger Mary's. The conspicuous cloth shoe bag, similar to the one in my closet, was hanging between the kitchen window and the drink station, begging for explanation. Stuffed in the organizer's multiple pouches were high-heeled shoes in seductive black, turquoise blue, canary yellow and flaming red.

As we were led to a table, we passed themed booths, each one unlike the others. They featured colonial washboards near framed Ansel Adams posters and "Elvis album covers beside museum posters featuring flowers," noted Carolyn Wyman. Most horrid to our self-confessed resident Spam expert was the "Spam-themed table at a restaurant that doesn't serve Spam." What one might call eclectic in style, others might call confused.

The location of the restaurant, where a Spain's card store used to be, is perfect for the corporate lunchtime crowd who might eschew Liberty Plaza's food court for something more colorful and fun. As Brian Howard put it, "Philadelphia -- especially Center City West -- is dying for a place like this. Philadelphia has got to be one of the most boring lunch towns in the world for those of us who can't or won't lunch on Rittenhouse Square." At night, the surrounding neighborhood is quickly becoming a destination, with nearby Continental Mid-town, Bar Noir and Tragos Lounge. Above Hamburger Mary's is a newly opened lounge, Dragonfly.

Back to the food. Arriving first was the appetizer quaintly named Mary's Hand Bag, consisting of chicken tenders, calamari (called "calamary"), jalapeno poppers, popcorn shrimp and wings (called "Mary's hot legs"). Patrick Rapa observed how it was all fried but "each item was fried a little differently." Brian thought that "each of the appetizers in the sampler tasted like it might have been plucked from a box out of the frozen food aisle at Supa'fresh. If you're gonna claim that your fried squid is distinctly yours -- Calamary -- then do something to distinguish it." As for the shrimp, Pat called it "an everlasting gobstopper of carbs with an indistinct prawn center." The meat on the "hot legs" was tender on the inside but light on the spice, suggesting the "hot" was meant to describe the chicken leg's shape rather than the taste on the tongue.

The chili-cheese fries elicited a completely different reaction. "Ethereal," described Carolyn. "They boast about their chili on the menu and this appetizer made me wish we had ordered it." Brian concurred wholeheartedly as a first-time chili-cheese-fry eater. "I'm a convert," he declared.

Pat ordered a chicken tender wrapper, where the chicken tender from the Hand Bag reappeared as the star attraction. The meat was "lightly laminated in a crisp cornmeal husk É but the green guaco-tortilla wrap was unpleasantly stiff, an hour away from stale," Pat said.

It's not called Hamburger Mary's for nothing, and Brian and Carolyn did their duties. Carolyn complimented the restaurant for "sharing my belief that a good burger is worth the risk of E. coli," when her half-pound of meat came exactly as she ordered it: medium rare. But in her Queen Mary, the "toppings dominated rather than complemented the meat"; they included cheddar and Monterey Jack cheeses, grilled onions, bacon and Mary's special sauce, which was "special" in almost exactly the same mayonnaisy way as the Big Mac's. Brian ordered a Philly Cheesesteak Burger, a half-pound beef patty topped with shredded beef, fried onions and cheese sauce. Though the burger wasn't as greasy as he thought it might be, Brian had an interesting bike ride back to the office when he succumbed to a "suffocating skin-level oiliness É [that] no napkin can counter because this is an oiliness that comes from within."

I, on the other hand, tried the gargantuan crispy caramel chicken salad. The caramel chicken was as addictive as caramel popcorn. I snubbed the fresh crispy greens for no other reason except for my love of a style of chicken I've had nowhere else. An "innovative sweet flavoring" is what Carolyn called it, proclaiming it the "best fried item by far."

At the end of our meal, a bright yellow heel arrived with our check stuffed in it, a Frederick's of Hollywood imprint on its black innards. Owners Tom Rigg and Anthony Ivers-Read claim that the waitstaff has a color code for determining which customers get which color shoe. What was the meaning of the yellow, and why did I get a black shoe on a previous visit? The ambiguous nature of the shoe was as unclear as the gender-bending fishnet-wearing hostess on

www.hamburgermarys.net. Vampy throwback to the port romances of WWII GIs or over-the-top trannie? Touting itself as a gay-friendly restaurant --"open-air dining for open-minded people" with its front windows sometimes flung wide open to the sidewalk -- Hamburger Mary's seems to possess several identities, but the most dominant is that it's a spanking new, playful midpriced option for Center City.

Hamburger Mary’s,

1716 Chestnut St., 215-568-6969

Daily, 11 a.m. - 11 p.m.; bar open 11 a.m.- 2 a.m.

Appetizers, $2.95-$12.95; entrees, $6.49-12.95

Reservations not required.

Wheelchair accessible. All major credit cards except Discover. Smoking permitted in the bar area.