Audrey Claire

I ate at Audrey Claire by myself tonight. I was feeling fancy and I thought their vegetables would be healthy. To pass the time, I sat at the bar, writing and gnawing pensively on my pen cap, like Hemingway. Or The Superficial. And meanwhile I sipped daintily on my water, until I realized that the faster I drink, the more often a cute white-t-shirt-wearing server comes over and chats. My server was Thomas. He had that clean Irish Spring look and a smile that said I’m not only a cute waiter, I’m also a cute musician, check me out at myspace.com/thomasdixon.

So I drank a lot of water.

I like that from the bar I can watch the chefs’ hands under the peek-a-boo shelf as they chop and mix things. They are very neat. Also by watching them I got to see every dish and figure out what looked good.

Yes: the salads with big architectural piles of chips

Yes: the fruit salsa and shrimp skewers

Yes: the mussels 

I had gotten distracted from my food voyeurism by then. I was deep in thought, thinking where do these waiters go after work? And then a saucy spicy scent wafted past my nose and knocked me back to reality. They probably go to Rosie’s and I am not going there. Oh yeah, also the scent belonged to the mussels and those mussels smelled damn good.

By that point I had already ordered the potato crusted tuna with crispy beets. The beets weren’t really “crispy” per se. They were more chewy. And I would have told the chef, seeing as how I was a mere 6 feet away, but my mouth was full of chewy beets and they were crazy delicious. So if they want to call chewy beets crispy I say potato potatoh.

Audrey Claire's is ok.  I think it's a bit over-hyped by most of the yuppie crowd in Philadelphia.  The food is fresh and the dishes are sometimes interesting, especially some of the pasta ones, but the food didn't blow me away, especially considering the price points.  A safe bet though if you're parents or old friend is in town visiting.