Ladder 15

[lfabio2007]

http://www.philly.com/philly/restaurants/20100318_Ladder_15_s_lamb_empanadas.html has anyone been?

[mrbigjas]

i went after the flower show a couple of weeks ago. the cooking is indeed bar food with david ansill's twist. what can you say, the guy has a pretty recognizable style of cooking, and is good at translating it to different contexts.

the burger is very good -- although what exactly you're supposed to do with the bone marrow is a little confusing, because there's no other bread to put it on or anything. i ended up just smearing it on my burger to make it even fattier, because why not.

the fries are pretty good, although unlike apparently everyone else in the world i'm not a huge fan of truffle everything. the burgers come with plenty of fries, so unless you really love them don't get a separate order.

the lamb empanadas are as laban described.

the korean tacos are good, but kinda small for $11.

fried cauliflower allows you to pretend to be healthy (hey, it's cauliflower!) while in reality allowing you to eat fried deliciousness.

grilled romaine is .... i always want it to be more interesting than it is, and i've had it a couple of places. this is the same thing he had at ansill, and i always want it to taste like more of what it is. more grill flavor, more anchovy in the dressing, more everything. i think that's why i've ordered it a few times.

the beer list is now pretty good, as you can see from the menu they have online, and the one cocktail we had off the new menu (the dr. strangelove) was very good and not overly sweet, although i didn't taste the vanilla bean.

the space is still pretty nice -- but it always was; that wasn't the problem before. and although we were there for an early dinner, it still had plenty of curved-brim-baseball-hat-wearing dudes yelling YEAH BRO at each other every time whatever hockey team they were rooting for scored.

the only issue we had was that we ended up waiting like 25+ minutes for our food after we ordered. i mean it was a long time, and the place wasn't very full, and i saw david ansill wandering through the dining room on his cell phone a couple of times while we were waiting. however, slow service was never a problem i had at my numerous visits to ansill (quite the opposite actually--sometimes i felt food came out sooner than i wanted it to), so i assume he'll iron that out.

either way, the place is now a viable bar dinner option -- actually i'll go further and say for me, a desirable one. if they introduce the aforementioned 'foodie' nights, i'll probably be there, despite the use of a term i hate.

[KatieLoeb]

Sign outside of Ladder 15 today was advertising some tasty munchies and cheap drinks for Happy Hour. I'm still dying to try the burger with bone marrow on top. :drool:

[percyn]

The burger with the short ribs and marrow is good, but not excellent and quite honestly I enjoyed dipping the fries in marrow or eating it plain rather than letting the flavors get lost in the burger.

[Tim Dolan]

I had the burger about two weeks ago. I agree with Percy that it was good, not great. It's a pricey burger too, so I won't be running back for it any time soon.