FOOD .

Fit for a Sit

A whole lotta latkes.


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Published: Sep 12, 2007

Can there be too much of a good thing when it comes to latkes? Though Honey's Sit 'n Eat has made a name on its early-in-the-day fare, the homey NoLibs joint has been offering dinner since last spring. This is good news for those who spend their Saturday and Sunday mornings lined up outside. You can now order breakfast — platters of eggs and buttered challah, biscuits and sausage gravy, tofu scrambles and the like — until 10 p.m.

Yet there's much more to sample, including a full page of dinner items and a full page of daily specials. Sides alone number into the dozens. (One tip: Skip over the cauliflower mash, which is oddly sour, and opt for the mac and cheese, a flavorful honeycomb of noodles and sharp cheddar with a light oven-browned crust, or the fresh and creamy green bean casserole with lacy golden onion rings.)

The dinners themselves, while hearty and ambitious in their own home-style way, lack the gusto of the brunches. There's the Southwestern gnocchi, in which the potato dumplings are swirled to soddenness in a cheddar cream sauce along with ribbons of bell peppers and a stuffed jalapeño. Tacos filled with cubed mahi mahi, lettuce and guacamole are delicately seasoned, but after a couple of bites, the flour tortillas are soaked through with creamy chipotle sauce. Corn tortillas would be a better vessel for these ingredients.

Yet there's plenty to dig into, including the aforementioned mac. Turkey meatloaf is flavorful and moist enough to give ground turkey a good name. Saltine-crusted red snapper (though it wasn't particularly crusted with anything on a recent visit) is a tasty filet of fish. Cake, especially the double-layered carrot cake, is another good bet. It's fluffy, subtly spiced and with a sparingly applied layer of icing, much more than just a vehicle for cream cheese and butter.

After my visits, I've come to the conclusion — and this is not a conclusion you can make about many places — that if something is deep-fried at Honey's, you should order it. Though I haven't seen it firsthand, I'm pretty sure there's magic bubbling out of that fryer. Like the appetizer plate of fried green tomatoes, tart little discs of fruit with a stunningly light coating of cornmeal popping with pepper. Hush puppies, moist balls of cornmeal embedded with jalapeño, are very likely the best in the city. And, of course, the signature potato latke, available all day. By all means, go for it.

(e_ludwig@citypaper.net)

Honey's Sit 'n Eat

800 N. Fourth St.

215-925-1150

Hours: Mon.-Fri., 8 a.m.-10 p.m.; Sat.-Sun., 8 a.m.-4 p.m.

Cash only.