Hangin out in NoLibs

Azure bills themselves as a "Vacation" style restaurant. I'm not sure what that means, but I suppose it means island-ish food. Azure is a fairly small place, but not tiny. Basically two long narrow rooms, the first being more bar, and the second being tables. There were ten of us and they put us in a spot right in front in the non-bar room. It was fairly secluded and nice so we were able to talk to each other. It is a nice place to get a group together.

I got a big margarita, which came in a pint glass. It wasn't great (I've lived in Texas and been to Mexico a bunch of times, so I know what a great margarita tastes like), but for a non-Mexican restaurant in Philly, it was great. On the rocks with no salt. Not quite sour enough, but nice and strong. I ordered the soup of the day, which was a New England clam and oyster chowder. It was surprisingly good. There were alot of carrots in there, and I don't like cooked carrots, but I even ate those. There were big chunks of clams and oysters and it was thick and creamy.

For an entree I got the grilled filet mignon tips. I don't like my meat raw so I ordered it almost well done. It came out great, cooked, but still tender. They served it with a bunch of greens, flour tortillas, a "refried roasted corn risotto cake", and a chipotle aioli. The aioli I didn't really use at all, and the greens were plain. But I ate up the filet and corn cake. A few others got the same meal, but in the seitan meat-free option. We all weren't sure what to do with the tortillas. Were we supposed to make a little fajita or taco? The meat comes out more in chunks, and not in strips, so we all improvised.

A few others ordred the scallops, which now that I look at the picture, look absolutely delicious. Don't you love the rosemary garnish sticking out of the middle? The jerk chicken sandwich looks great too. I'm getting hungry just looking at it! HA! I was too stuffed for any dessert, but we had a birthday girl amongst us and she got a brownie type cake which looked great. I just couldn't take another bite! Azure also has a special running Monday and Tuesday nights where you get two entrees and a pitcher of beer or a bottle of wine for $30. That's a great deal!

Azure is right in the heart of Northern Liberties on 2nd street. It's literally next to North Bowl, the still fairly new hipster bowling joint. Being Friday night, we knew it was going to be packed, and even if we wanted to bowl, we would have had to wait at least 30 minutes, so we passed on that. The Standard Tap is also a few steps down the street too, but being a small place that was obviously crowded, we also passed on that.

That's how we ended up at the Foodery. The original Foodery being in Center City, this is the Northern Liberties arm that opened last summer. It stocks hundreds, if not thousands of different beers from all over the world. I'm a big lambic fan, so I was pleasantly surprised to find out that they had my favorite Lindeman's Peche, but also an apple flavored lambic that I never knew even existed. For those of you new to lambic, it's basically a fruit based ale from Belgium (there are others, but these are the most popular and well known) historically made from spontaneous fermentation. Meaning that they don't add yeast, there's just natural yeast in the area where they brew the lambic that causes the magic to happen.

My apple lambic was light, sweet, and very smooth going down. It can get you in trouble because it tastes like juice but has alcohol, so sometimes you don't even realize how f'd up you get. Some others in the group tried Taj Mahal beer, which had a picture of the Taj Mahal on it. It was hilarious. There was also Tiger Beer from Singapore, Big Daddy, and the Blithering Idiot. All in all, it was a great night of good food, good drink, and good company.