Dinner for 12 to 15 on a Friday night

[rae]

I need help. I have a dozen family members and friends coming in to celebrate my bat mitzvah (I'm 25, this is just something I skipped while 13). For the life of me I can't decide where to go for dinner. It going to be on a friday night in a couple of weeks at around 8:30 pm.

Osteria would be the perfect choice because it's right across the street from our temple, but I think it's a little too pricey (Grandma wants to pay for everyone).

Pif would also be great, but the whole family just went there during Penn graduation.

I've been thinking about Lee How Fook (good food, good price, but Grandma seemed less than enthusiastic about it).

What about the Standard Tap? Is the upstairs quiet enough for a party?

What am I missing?

[chowfun]

Mazel Tov Rae!

Standard Tap upstairs on a Friday night gets very loud and very crowded, it will be a madhouse at 8:30 and it will be packed to the gills.

What about the new restaurant on Walnut St. 707? It looks cool and I read a nice review somewhere recently. It is casual and moderately priced. Next door is Aqua, a little Malaysian and Thai place. The food is served beautifully and it is not particularly challenging even for the uninitiated and they have a very nice upstairs room that you may be able to reserve. Mixto has an upstairs room if you like Cuban and Colombian food and it is a very nice place.

If Pif is in your price range what about restaurant M? The food prices are similar to Pif and it is a really nice place to celebrate a special occasion.

These are all in Washington Square West, which tends to be a quieter option than Old City, South street or the east side of broad in Center City on a Friday night. Another thought would be some of the restaurants in Fairmount section, not too far from your temple (if it is Rodeph Shalom). There are many to choose from. I havent been to any of them in a long time.

Another thought is White Dog Cafe. They might be able to give you a private room.

[mrbigjas]

is the problem with lee how fook that it's chinese, or that it's a small byob?

because if the problem is the size and not the food, what about vietnam or vietnam palace or nam phuong or something? they could accommodate you.

hey doesn't marigold have several separate rooms upstairs? could you book one of them?

[KatieLoeb]

Mazel Tov to you Rae! I skipped my Bat Mitvah too, so I guess there's still hope for me as an adult. I got a big Sweet Sixteen party instead, to assuage my mother's guilt, more than my own. Good on 'ya for the follow through.

All excellent suggestions so far. I'd be one to lean toward the Asian suggestions just because most of them have a separate "banquet" room and are accustomed to handling groups. 15 people may seem like a small group, but is better serviced by a place that handles larger parties effectively. Places with smaller kitchens are hard pressed to get that many plates out at once.

[brucedelta]

Again Mazel Tov, hopefully you are all ready for your parsha!

I think Swanky Bubbles has a private room about the right size.

Also I seem to recall two of the large picnic type tables at Amada in the back, but it is probably late to book that.

Panorama has the wine cellar, but it may be too big for your group.

And I remember reading and making a mental note that the Mushulu has a capability to handle large parties of 10 - 20 in a private area.

-- Bruce

Edited to add:

I have not been to Victor Cafe in years, but I recall using the back upper room to handle a group semi privatly. Coupled with a Bat Mitzvah the singing could be fun.

Edited May 16, 2007 by brucedelta (log)

[rae]

because if the problem is the size and not the food, what about vietnam or vietnam palace or nam phuong or something?  they could accommodate you.

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Oooh I like this idea. One of my problems with Lee How is that the food can tend to be a little heavy, and some members in our party are on diets. Vietnamese is a good idea. How would you rank nam phuong in terms of goodness? I've been to vietnam and vietnam palace and think that vietnam is better than vietname palace. Where does nam phuong fit in? Also, is it clean enough for a Grandma? Places like Pho Ha get automatically eliminated because of the sheer amount of hoisin sauce that is stuck to the walls.

[mrbigjas]

for food goodness, i rank it on pretty much an equal footing with the other two. they're the three big players in town.

the menu is more extensive at nam phuong, though, and there is a little more variety in how they serve things. examples:

--if you get the duck and bamboo shoot soup, for instance, they're using these dried bamboo shoots which have a really funky flavor.

--they offer a great bitter melon soup, with the pieces of melon stuffed with pork and shrimp, which i haven't seen on the menu at the other two.

--on the herb plate they serve with the grilled beef in grape leaves, there are several herbs i haven't seen at the other two, including rau ram and fish mint, the latter of which tastes like an old fish soaked in used motor oil. nasty. i keep eating it hoping i'll develop a taste for it but it hasn't happened yet.

decor-wise, i still think vietnam wins the race, obviously. vietnam palace has done an upgrade but it's still not quite as nice. nam phuong comes in last. it has that banquet hall feel: two sections of dining room separated by a short wall topped with fake plants; an outsized service bar over on one side of the room, with the swinging kitchen doors next to it; a section of dimly lit and never full tables and chairs in case they need to serve 700 people some day.... it has a vague air of strip mall dinginess, although it's by no means dirty, probably in part due to its location.

i love nam phuong.

hey you know what else is good down there is cafe de laos. you might want to scout it out once or twice, but they have the space, it's nice and the people are nice, and the food has been really good every time i've been there.

[philadining]

I'm not sure if it's an issue for any of your family, but whenever I hear "grandma" I think of stairs... For what it's worth, Vietnam is pretty vertical, you're likely to need to go up some stairs, unless they can set aside most of the ground floor for you. Nam Phoung is horizontal, big and flat and one-level.

As mrbig indicated, Vietnam's food and service is a little more polished, Nam Phoung a little more funky. But both are tasty.. Nam Phuoung has a parking lot, but it's likely to be jammed on a friday night, so that's no guarantee of convenience.

I'd lean toward Vietnam if stairs aren't a big deal.

[mattohara]

of course i recommend the private room at Pif (i work there ) but it only seats up to 12.

i also thought of Effie's. the upstairs room (i know, stairs again) has a really cool huge table upstairs and the atmosphere is really cool. they also have the great courtyard and carraige house out back. very good greek food, family-run, great atmosphere.

[savethedeli]

Deli baby. Deli.

You're a Jewish woman now, so what could be more appropriate than Jewish food. If you can't cook it, or don't want to, why not let someone else? Nu?

Mazel tov bubuleh.

[philadining]

he's got a point: put 12 people in the Famous Deli, tell them it's your Bat Mitzvah, you'll definitely score an extra cookie or two...

[johnb102]

I need help. I have a dozen family members and friends coming in to celebrate my bat mitzvah (I'm 25, this is just something I skipped while 13). For the life of me I can't decide where to go for dinner. It going to be on a friday night in a couple of weeks at around 8:30 pm.

Osteria would be the perfect choice because it's right across the street from our temple, but I think it's a little too pricey (Grandma wants to pay for everyone).

Pif would also be great, but the whole family just went there during Penn graduation.

I've been thinking about Lee How Fook (good food, good price, but Grandma seemed less than enthusiastic about it).

What about the Standard Tap? Is the upstairs quiet enough for a party?

What am I missing?

←

How about Fork? It is close by and they have a great private room that would be the perfect size. We just looked at it for a Bat Mizvah party following services as RS.

[rae]

Thanks everyone for all of the suggestions. We liked the Vietnam suggestion, but unfortunately they wouldn't take a reservation. We resigned ourselves to going to Osteria because it was just too convenient, but after several unreturned phone calls, and an ridiculous minimum ($1500 just for food, for 15 people to be in the back room, and set menus where the cost was extremely inflated over what the food would cost if you ordered it in the regular dining room), we ended up at Estia.

Estia did an amazing job for our party. First of all, Hillary, Estia's banquet coordinator, was fantastic. She returned every call when she said she would, she answered ever email within the day, and brought us in for a wine tasting when we didn't recognize any of the wines on the list (they were mostly Greek). After trying to deal with Osteria, we were sold on Estia just because of Hillary's friendliness and competence.

They seated the 15 of us in their wine room downstairs. (Estia has several rooms that can accommodate parties of different sizes.) We chose the $80pp set menu which we modified slightly from what they originally offered. It included (served family style) the spreads and pita to start (which I love), followed by the octopus (so good!), calamari (possibly the best I ever had, light, not greasy, delicious), and crab cakes (also fantastic). I almost changed the menu to replace the calamari and crab cakes with other apps, because I usually don't love either due to greasiness and excess mayonaisse, respectively. I'm so glad I left it, they were both fantastic!

When they brought out the octopus the server originally brought out two dishes of it, and my boyfriend and I were concerned that was all they would be bringing. But sure enough, just as we were saying this to each other, 2 more plates of the octopus were brought in.

The apps were followed by salads - the romaine salad and the traditional greek salad. Both were great.

Everyone got a choice of the lavarki, wild salmon (this was one of our changes, the original menu offered swordfish kebobs), filet mignon, or lamb chops. My boyfriend and I split the lavarki (always excellent) and the lamb (very very good). We heard that the other dishes were also delicious.

Dessert was served family style and we got greek yogurt for half the portions and gelato/sorbet for the other half. (This was changed from baklava on the original menu.) And coffee and tea.

The service in the private room was perfect, as was the amount of food they brought. We gorged ourselves. There was hardly anything left over (except some dessert), and we couldn't have eaten any more.

Everyone in our party (age range 20 - 85) loved the food and had a wonderful time. The food was just as good as the meals my boyfriend and I have had there, just the two of us in the regular dining room, which is sometimes a concern when you have larger parties.

If I ever need to have another party, everyone agreed we would go back to Estia. I couldn't have been happier, it was a perfect night.

(And for those of you that are interested, I nailed my Torah portion, despite the fact that someone's cell phone rang twice during it!)

[dagordon]

As the aforementioned boyfriend (well, fiancee, but we avoid the word because it always reminds us of that woman in that Seinfeld episode...), I'd like to register my agreement with everything that rae said.

I'd also like to stress how different the experiences of dealing with Osteria and dealing with Estia were. It was difficult just to get a phone call back from Osteria about the private room. In fact, we inquired about the private room shortly after Osteria opened, and to this day we have not gotten the phone call back that we were supposed to. When we called Osteria to ask about the private room, the guy who answered was very vague about the details and about the process of reserving it; he told us that we'd get a call back by Monday from the woman who handles things, who is actually at Vetri.

This may have been part of the problem -- that the woman who handles private bookings for Osteria isn't easily reachable at Osteria.

I'll spare you the details of trying to get in touch with this woman; suffice it to say that it was aggravating. At one point we had just spoken to the woman, and were attempting to call her back to ask her a question. We called Vetri and were told that she wasn't there. "But we just finished a conversation with her twenty seconds ago", we said. They promptly connected us. What's the deal with this?

As rae said, Osteria would have required a $1500 food minimum -- that is, this doesn't include wine, drinks, tax, tip -- for the private room. For 15 people this is $100/person. Unless some kind of special tasting menu is involved (which it would not have been), it seems almost impossible to spend $100/person at Osteria just on food. You wouldn't spend nearly this much ordering off the menu.

We would have had the option of ordering off of (some limited version of) the regular Osteria menu, but there were special banquet menus also available. The prices of these menus seemed quite high for the food involved -- ordering the food off of the regular menu would not cost as much as the banquet menus were asking. When we asked the woman we were dealing with why the menus were so expensive, she was evasive and mentioned the $1500 food minimum.

Of course, this is ridiculous. The room minimum and the cost, per person, of the banquet menus are two distinct concepts. You can't just inflate the price of the food to meet some arbitrary room minimum. Moreover, say you had 30 people in the private room, ordering from the $75/person banquet menu. The $75/person banquet menu includes:

Antipasti OR Pizza

Meat OR fish

Dessert

keep in mind that the first course is family style. What's the cost here, if you were ordering off the menu, splitting antipasti and pizza to start? $45-50/person max, probably. But if you charged people $50/person and had 30 people, you'd meet the $1500 room minimum. So meeting the minimum doesn't provide a reason to charge people $75/person for this food.

Anyway...

The point is that comparing this to our experience with Estia was like night and day. Hilary was completely on top of things, and a pleasure to deal with. She promptly returned phone calls and emails, and, as rae said, she arranged a little wine tasting for us (and even had printed out forms for us to write down tasting notes). The general vibe you got from the restaurant was just really pleasant.

And generous. There was a lot of food. And it was all very good. Everyone had a great time.

I highly recommend the private room at Estia.

[KatieLoeb]

Mazel Tov! Sounds like a success on all fronts. Thanks for the wonderful report and my congrats again on your Bat Mitzvah.

[Jeff L]

You made a great choice with Estia. We love this place and a large part of that has to do with how the entire staff makes you feel welcome, almost at home. I've been 3 times and each time was really a great meal. It's too bad that the whole fish (which seems to be their specialty) wasn't part of your menu but it sounds like you did just fine without it. I agree with Rae about the calamari, best I've had anywhere.

Too bad also about Osteria's poor handling of your party. It sounds like it all worked out for you and I'll add my Mazel Tov too!

[rae]

It's too bad that the whole fish (which seems to be their specialty) wasn't part of your menu but it sounds like you did just fine without it.

←

The lavraki is actually a whole fish, and one of the ones we usually order when we go there. It was served fileted with the head on on the plate. Grandma did not like the appearance of the head so much, poor Grandma.

I actually was thinking of adding another whole fish to our list, but several members of our group insisted upon the filet, the lamb, and the salmon. One of our favorite whole fish is the barbouni, which is a small fish (one person could eat 4) and is served whole (i.e. not fileted) but I figured it would be too much work for the group to filet them all at the table. Plus, I'm the one that usually ends up doing all the fileting...

Edited to fix a typo.

Edited June 4, 2007 by rae (log)

[mrbigjas]

oo, we had barbouni at a wedding we went to on paros many years ago. kinda like a red mullet, aren't they? like this?

[rae]

oo, we had barbouni at a wedding we went to on paros many years ago.  kinda like a red mullet, aren't they?  like this?

←

I think barbouni = red mullet. And yes, exactly like that. In fact, dagordon picked us up 4 red mullets at Citerella in nyc when he was there this afternoon. I am looking forward to dinner.

[Jeff L]

The lavraki is actually a whole fish, and one of the ones we usually order when we go there. It was served fileted with the head on on the plate. Grandma did not like the appearance of the head so much, poor Grandma.

←

Oops, I didn't know that but I think I ate that fish last time I was there.