Sammy's

[Scoats]

With seemingly no fanfare, Maui is morphed into Sammy's BBQ after brief existence as Philly Rock on the River.

The menu is amazingly deep and to me Sammys seemed at first to be part of a national chain with years of experience creating "experiences". This place is not an "experience" but a nice real organic place.

Appearantly it is owned by the same Ricky Blattstein who owned Maui and Philly Rock. The 40 taps at the bar are a legacy of its brief Philly Rock incarnation. Beerwise there is something to please everyone.

The decor is a mix of old Maui and Philly Rock relics with newly added BBQ look stuff. Oddly enough it all works together wonderfully.

Now about the food. I've eaten there about 4 times now and the food ranges from good to great. Service has ranged from good to great as well. Never less than good.

The Ribs, Ribs, Ribs Platter, a fine value for about $15, features a 1/2 rack of baby back, a 1/2 rack of beef, a buffalo rib, cornbread, and two side dishes. A salad is $1 extra. Refills on sodas are free.

Ribs, Ribs, Ribs was a winner and I have ordered everything I was there. They also have steaks and more. The food is really good and this place is amazingly well put together for something so new and built from scratch.

Parking is free and ample (at least on weeknights). There is both indoor and outdoor seating as well as a hybrid area where a huge wall of windows can open up onto Penn Treaty Park.

They seem to do a good take out business as well.

[gbredben]

My friend went there shortly after they opened. While he said service was a bit rough (standard for a new restaurant), he thought the food was pretty good. Was waiting to post until I got there and tried it myself. I'm ecstatic to see a lot of great BBQ places appear on the Philly scene.

[Andrew Fenton]

The menu is amazingly deep and to me Sammys seemed at first to be part of a national chain with years of experience creating "experiences". This place is not an "experience" but a nice real organic place.

Thanks for checking them out, Scoats. They sent us a menu a while back: it's very slickly produced, which also made me assume that it's a chain. Interesting to see that it's not. I'll give them a try sometime soon.

Question, to help a nouveau-Philadelphian out: what were Maui and Philly Rock? Restaurants? Clubs?

[Andrew Fenton]

Inspired by Scoats's post, I managed to make it over to Sammy's for an early dinner tonight. Interesting decor: the restaurant is divided roughly into thirds. The first part is a restaurant with booths and kind of a neat maze-like layout. There's also an outdoor bar area, and in the back, facing the river, a beach, complete with umbrellas, outdoor tables, a sand volleyball court (!) and a fiberglass waterfall; all presumably left over from Maui.

We sat on the beach. It's the first time I've been able to sit outside and look out on a body of water in Philly. Very nice. We took our shoes off, let the sand get between our toes, and stared off into the distance at Camden. Also very nice.

Service was okay: somehow we didn't get assigned a server, so had to flag down a waitress and convince her to serve us. After that it was fine.

The barbecue was average. The Memphis ribs were the best, with a decent smoky flavor (according to the menu, they use pecan wood), but the rub was extremely salty. The brisket was all right, but I really didn't like the pulled pork: it's mixed together with the sauce, which I found actively bad (in Beth's description, "tastes like Bullseye"). As Scoats said, the food is reasonably priced: around $10-15 for a BBQ platter. Beer is relatively expensive, though.

I'd go back, mostly to sit outside at the bar. They have a happy hour on weeknights (5-7 PM) with half-priced drinks. That's the way to go; sit outside, watch New Jersey painted by the rays of the setting sun, drink a beer and maybe eat a little 'cue.

[herbacidal]

Question, to help a nouveau-Philadelphian out: what were Maui and Philly Rock? Restaurants? Clubs?

Maui was the largest Delaware Ave. club.

Philly Rock was a bar and grill in the UA Riverview complex.

[stephenc]

Maui was the cheesiest Delaware ave. club.

[herbacidal]

Maui was the cheesiest Delaware ave. club.

I would'nt say that.

I'd just say they were and are all equally cheesy.

[Scoats]

After Maui was shut down over a shooting or three, it became Philly Rock on the River. After that got shut down, or shot down, they became Sammys.

If you stick with the Ribs, Ribs, Ribs platter you won't go wrong, though the quality does vary a bit from night to night.

Overall I am quite impressed with the place and have been back repeatedly.

[Andrew Fenton]

So I went back to Sammy's last Thursday. Had a similar experience to last time: the ribs were okay to pretty good. The rest of the food was so-so; ditto the service (lots of staff standing around, and apparently only one hard-working guy actually waiting tables). Turns out the happy hour is only at the bar, but we really wanted to sit outside, so we bagged on the cheap drinks. That was okay; the view of the river is terrific. And on Thursday nights, the women's beach volleyball league has its games: also a great view.

Then I read Craig LaBan's review, from Sunday:

When we informed our waiter that a slice of our smoked bologna appetizer appeared to have been bitten into (yes, there were teeth marks) before it was brought to our table, he blanched and threw up his hands: "I didn't do it!"

A manager generously offered to remove half of the $6 charge from our check, all the while denying the bite existed despite the physical evidence. Classy.

That seems like the sort of anecdote that can kill a restaurant...

[KatieLoeb]

That seems like the sort of anecdote that can kill a restaurant...

With all due respect, if that story is factually correct and without any exaggeration then it would be considered a mercy killing. They might as well have put a dead mouse under his salad greens and sprinkled it with cockroaches masquerading as bacon bits and then offered to take off half the cost of the entree. Sheesh.

A management team that doesn't respond to a truly disgusting lapse in service like that needs to GO. What a bunch of Philistines.

[mrbigjas]

I was wondering about that as well. That's nasty.

[Rich Pawlak]

Classic Rick Blatstein operation, at least it sounds like it. When the Philly Rock Cafe in the United Artsists theater complex further south on Delaware Ave. was open, it had a reputation for stale beer, and bugs running across your table as you ate. Went there once, and yes, both legends were proven true. Truly disgusting. same stupid, careless and inept management and staff, too.

[Andrew Fenton]

That seems like the sort of anecdote that can kill a restaurant...

With all due respect, if that story is factually correct and without any exaggeration then it would be considered a mercy killing.

Oh, I quite agree on the "mercy killing": certainly I won't be back. What I'm wondering about (and I guess I wasn't very clear) is: how much effect will this anecdote, in the context of this review, have on their business?

At a guess, most of the people I saw at Sammy's don't base their dining decisions on LaBan's reviews. I'd imagine that if he'd been served a nibbled bologna at, say, Django, that review would destroy them. But Sammy's? I just don't know.

[Greg Salisbury]

You'd be surprised. While it may take a while, extremely damaging reviews from extremely reputable sources have a way of seeping through most strata of the popular dining consciousness, ultimately revealing which emperors have no clothes on. I'm thinking most relevantly of Old Original Bookbinders, a Teflon restaurant if ever there was one. No one you or I knew would ever eat there more than once, but yet it stayed open and thrived. Not sure, but I believe you can count the number of months it stayed open after LaBan's review on one hand and have a finger left over.

That is really, really too bad about Sammy's. As a former resident of North Carolina and Texas, I have searched in vain for decent cue, to (mostly) no avail. Zeke's on Lancaster does a pretty good job with the ribs, but there is nothing here that compares wth the butt-kickin' zing of an Allen Bros. pulled pork sammich in Durham.

[KatieLoeb]

You'd be surprised. While it may take a while, extremely damaging reviews from extremely reputable sources have a way of seeping through most strata of the popular dining consciousness, ultimately revealing which emperors have no clothes on. I'm thinking most relevantly of Old Original Bookbinders, a Teflon restaurant if ever there was one. No one you or I knew would ever eat there more than once, but yet it stayed open and thrived. Not sure, but I believe you can count the number of months it stayed open after LaBan's review on one hand and have a finger left over.

That is really, really too bad about Sammy's. As a former resident of North Carolina and Texas, I have searched in vain for decent cue, to (mostly) no avail. Zeke's on Lancaster does a pretty good job with the ribs, but there is nothing here that compares wth the butt-kickin' zing of an Allen Bros. pulled pork sammich in Durham.

Yeah but -

Bookbinder's survived on tour buses full of senior citizens pulling up every day and filling it up. Or conventioneers. Bookbinder's was coasting on a reputation it had earned during the Truman administration. It was the one Philadelphia restaurant that anyone that came to town had ever heard of because it was always mentioned in films or whatever. Kind of like everyone knows the Empire State building. It was an institution amongst those who'd go once and never go back.

I don't think Sammy's has any chance of turing into a (misguided) tourist destination. And hopefully Mr. Laban's review will accomplish what Dr. Kevorkian can't from his current address in the penitentiary.

[mrbigjas]

so at a coworker's request, we went to sammy's for lunch yesterday. i had the brisket plate, another coworker had the pulled pork plate, and the other had the baked potato stuffed with bbq chicken.

it was all good, if served kinda lukewarm. i'm convinced it's not that hard to make decent bbq--it just takes some time. it's much harder to take it to that next level past 'decent' or 'good', but in general it's a pretty forgiving medium. for instance, while the brisket had a pleasant smoke flavor, it wasn't real strong and it didn't have the pink smoke ring. it was nice and tender, and not bad, although the pulled pork was better.

the three sauces they made were real tasty, and we didn't have the service problems that the reviews talked about. the one weird service thing is that they don't have those little folders for your check. so they put your check on the table as is, which made us think, ok, like a diner or something we must pay up front. but you don't.

i think if i went back, it would be to watch ten different football games at once and eat pretty good bbq, rather than going somewhere where you watch ten different football games and eat, like, fried mozz sticks or something.

i still definitely prefer tommy gunn's for everything from the ambience to the food.

[KatieLoeb]

According to Michael Klein's Table Talk column today, Sammy's has closed.

No big surprise here. You?

[mrbigjas]

nope. the food was pretty good, as i mentioned. but it seemed too big to survive. if they were serving the same stuff in a converted gas station with a few picnic tables, like tommy gunn's, that would be one thing. but to fill a space the size of maui... i didn't see it happening, especially considering the institutional issues everyone mentioned.