The Gang Gets Reviewed

This article about Mac's Tavern does not contain a single milksteak reference.

by Adam Erace

Neal Santos HOW MUCH CHEESE HAVE YOU EATEN TODAY? A stoner's fantasy, Mac's Macs features four-cheese corkscrew pasta topped with honey-barbecue corn chip crumbs.

[ review ]

If you've ever seen It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, watched the goings-on at Paddy's Pub — site of underage teen drinking parties, turd-related detective work, model searches and restaurant critic kidnappings (!) — and thought, "Man, I'd sacrifice my first-born dumpster baby to hang out there" (and who among us hasn't?), you might be disappointed in Mac's Tavern.

It's true that Sunny hunnies Rob McElhenney and Kaitlin Olson — pictures of the couple and their castmates pepper the wainscoting-wrapped walls — are partial owners of this Old City watering hole, but Mac's doesn't rest on their Hollywood laurels. Which is not to say it's without celebrity swagger; while you won't spy Danny DeVito here, you might see Danny Bonaduce making an earnest go for high score on the MegaTouch.

Mac's is its own bar, and a good one at that, with down-to-earth bartenders, 17 taps, 99 bottles and cans (many of them local, plus American crafts like Six Point and Left Hand) and happy hour dealage aplenty. McElhenney's St. Joe's Prep posse handles the day-to-day, among them managing partner Eric Vesotsky (friends with McElhenney since first grade) and Dennis Hart, SJP's current dean of students. (As if you needed another reason to hate Prep kids' lucky guts.) Food falls under the direction of former Ortlieb's chef Michael Suminski, and though his menu is definitely more pub than gastropub, it's mostly tasty and always inexpensive — stuff I want to eat at lunch when I skipped breakfast or late at night when I'm really drunk.

French fries? Yes. Regular and sweet potato. Thick and thin. Five kinds flooded with brown gravy. In the "Pot Pie" version, peas twinkled, a farce of health among the thicket of steak-cut fries piled with grilled chicken. "Mac's House" gravy fries sagged beneath the weight of red wine vinegar-braised short rib, horseradish and provolone, like the sloppy cousin of Village Whiskey's duck-fat fries who always gets wrecked at holiday dinners. Fish tacos were proper fresh, crisp tempura fingers of tilapia in corn tortilla cradles, and the buffalo shrimp weren't bad, either, though not as spicy as their "WTF" sauce suggested.

Requisite Sunny nods include Mac's Macs, a stoner fantasy involving corkscrew four-cheese mac-'n'-cheese under Herr's honey-barbecue corn-chip crumbs; It's Always Sunnyside Up eggs; and Sweet D's Sausage & P's, a sandwich that could at least spell Olson's character's name right. (It's Sweet Dee.) Snappy split links of Maglio's sausage peeked out of their Baker Street ciabatta covers, nice with sautéed peppers, onions and a swipe of noticeably sweet marinara.

The sausage fared better than the roast pork, a dry example of what you can't get away with in Roast Pork, USA. Ditto for the chicken cutlet sliders. Available five ways — I got the chicken parm "Red & White" version, cloaked in cold marinara — they're less sliders, more a sandwich cut into three pieces. At least they weren't made with 'coon meat.

(adam.erace@citypaper.net)