Restaurant Review: Fork

First Impressions:
The restaurant was beautiful and gorgeously decorated for the holidays.  It was warm, cozy, inviting, and comfortable.  We sat along the side in the quasi-booth, and I have never wanted to sit back and melt into a padded wall at a restaurant before.  I wish I was still there in that booth.  My dream kitchen will have one of these padded walls in a breakfast nook or something suburban like that.

Food:
The rolls were not warm.  They would have been better if they had been super fresh, or at least warm so I could pretend like they were super fresh.  Maybe I am being picky.

I started with the roasted maitake and chanterelle mushrooms.  It came with an amazing porcini mushroom mousse.  I loved it.  I tried the beets appetizer, which was what you would expect from a beets appetizer (beets and goat cheese - hard to do this incorrectly).  I also sampled the chicken livers. Oily but tasty.

For my main course I had the duck, which was super salty.  It was so salty that I couldn't really taste any other dishes at the table.  So, I can't tell you how the scallops were because they could have been excellent, but my bite was seared with salt.

Redemption song came at dessert.  I don't usually order creme brulee, but I did, and I am not sorry.  It was frickin' fantastic.  The desserts are huge, fyi, so you could definitely share.

Service:
The service was very good.  I appreciate small things at nice restaurants, like crumb-scraping before dessert, which they do here.  If you appreciate napkin refolding when you go to the bathroom, then don't look for it here.  However, crumb-scraping and napkin refolding don't make or break a nice restaurant experience, especially at a place that isn't trying to be pretentious - Fork is a casual bistro where you can go to comfortably eat good food.

I recommend you go, but don't order the duck.  Unless you have a sweet tooth for salt.

Food     mmm

Service     mmmm

Decor     mmmmm

Je ne sais quoi     mmmm

Overall     mmm

http://www.forkrestaurant.com/
306 Market Street
Philadelphia, PA

About the ratings:

mmmmm        would eat there again tomorrow

mmmm           looking forward to eating there again

mmm              not in a hurry to eat there again

mm                 likely not going to eat there again

m                    would try my best never to eat there again. ever.

I reserve the right to grade on a curve for the overall score, despite the average.