Jolly Green

St. Stephen's Green reminds us why gastropub fare is popular.

by Elisa Ludwig

Michael T. Regan LETTUCE ENJOY: Ben McNamara's Isabella's salad (goat cheese, pine nuts, roasted red peppers, portobello mushrooms) and steak frites. (CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

The beauty of gastropub food is that you almost feel like you're cheating the system. You're wearing Adidas; you can watch the game without having to suffer through any tediously long explanations of "how it works here." Yet, somehow, here you are, nibbling on wild mushroom gratin over brioche. Another Smuttynose, please.

Philly's got plenty of great places to spend your boozin' dollars, but St. Stephen's Green may just end up on your short list. For one thing, it's got atmosphere galore. The corner of 17th and Green, quiet for years since the Belgian restaurant Cuvee Notredame closed, is now glowing with one of the most effective restaurant rehab jobs in memory.

Both the proper dining room and bar area are painted in caramel tones accented with soft overhead lighting, the seating separated by the antique wood bar. (There's another, sportier bar downstairs where you can eat, too, if the rest of the space is filled.) Throughout, dark wood floors and tables, a working fireplace and stained-glass windows create an almost academically pubby atmosphere, as if it were a library built for beer scholarship — the long list of microbrew and import beers certainly calls for study.

Two better reasons: With almost all of the entrées going for about $10, it's an incredibly good value. And, the food, for the most part, is very, very good. The menu is divided, a bit confusingly, into entrées, soups, salads and "sharing plates," appetizer-like dishes in larger potions. But when you taste the hummus, smooth and garlicky with a hint of exotic sweetness, you might wish that sharing hadn't been a menu mandate.

Chef Ben McNamara, installed a few weeks ago, has brought some of his signature items, familiar to patrons of New Wave Café, where, several years back, he was one of the great innovators of beyond-burger bar cuisine in Philly.

There's Isabella's salad, with warm goat cheese nested in pine nuts, sweet roasted red peppers and thick portobello mushroom slices bursting with tangy marinade. His crab cakes are another signature item, wherein the lump crabmeat is bound with risotto before being fried. The texture — chewy, creamy and crunchy all at once — is so complex that the golden basil beurre blanc pooling on the plate around the crab cakes is almost overkill. Almost.

Of course, McNamara also delivers all the usual chestnuts of gastropub cuisine (except there are no actual chestnuts): Thick, hand-cut fries glinting with coarse salt crystals. Ultra-smooth leek potato soup gussied up with snipped chives, a jumble of shoestring potatoes and a smattering of lardons that swirl beneath the surface and add unexpected chewiness. A marvelous hanger steak, juicy, tender, yet assertively fleshy, with a shiitake bordelaise so rich it's almost a savory icing.

If you're going to go it Anglo-style, you might as well choose the cottage pie. Ground beef and peas, carrots and onions are baked in a casserole with a neat mantle of piped whipped potatoes, the whole lot of it oven-bronzed, heat-crusted and steaming.

The catfish BLT layers fish filets so well-coated in cornmeal that they can stand up to thick slices of bacon (not to mention the L, the T and the red-pepper aïoli) without getting the slightest bit greasy. Couple that with the crunch of evenly toasted sourdough and you've met your favorite new beer companion. (The La Chouffe Golden Ale on tap makes a nice match.)

Asian-style ribs, coated with a dense lacquer of soy, mirin and brown sugar, are cooked long and slow until they are practically self-shredding and no longer eatable by hand. They were delicious, but their side of shoestring sweet potatoes disappointed with an overly brittle texture and an unpleasant whiff of old oil.

I was also less than thrilled with the fried green tomatoes, which were, if we're being technical, not green at all, but ripe and yellow. As a result, the crisp cornmeal coating only barely contained the overcooked mush inside. Potato roesti were not the typical Swiss style — thin pancakes formed from crosshatched gratings — but more like the potato "pancakes" I've seen offered in some delis, fried balls of bland puréed potato. Kind of a bummer here, if only because the exquisite smoked salmon and chive crème fraîche served on top deserve a better vehicle for traveling from plate to mouth.

If you make it to dessert — and with so many beers to try, you might not — you'll find them tricked out with sauce décor, alternating squeezes of crème Anglaise and raspberry coulis, though none of them need such embellishment. Apple crumb pie is as it should be, fruit oozing out between a prim crust and its sweet, butter-lumped topping. Can you argue with a chocolate truffle cake? Not when it has this concentration of super-dark chocolate flavor or plush texture (think of a brownie massaged, as Wagyu beef is, to sublime softness). Our crème brülée was brüléed by a self-professed first-timer. Though it was a bit light on the sugar crust, the crème itself was smooth, fragrant with vanilla and duly satisfying — as good as any fine restaurant. And you didn't even need to make a reservation.

(e_ludwig@citypaper.net)

St. Stephen's Green

1701 Green St.215-769-5000

Hours: Mon.-Fri., 11:30 a.m.-mid; Sat., 11 a.m.-mid; Sun, 11 a.m.-11 p.m.

Appetizers, $7-$12; Entrées, $9-$15

Wheelchair accessible.