Located in the FringeArts building in Old City, La Peg is the kind of place that makes you want to date people.
With hanging lanterns and 45–foot windows overlooking the Benjamin Franklin Bridge, the French brasserie does the wooing for you. As an added perk, Chef Peter Woolsey creates small plates perfect for sharing.
Our waiter Dan, who’s been with the restaurant since it opened in August, introduces La Peg as “really good French–style food at a really good price.”
He recommends the French beer Kronenbourg Blanc ($7), which we order along with a glass of Cartlidge and Brown Cabernet Sauvignon ($12). Although the Cabernet Sauvignon is a solid staircase above what we normally drink, the French beer is like an orgasm on top of the Eiffel Tower (Ed. note: we’re assuming). Think Blue Moon–citrus but smoother and more refreshing.
Before we can finish our drinks, Dan brings us a thinly sliced, crusty–on–the–outside, warm–on–the–inside baguette with salty butter. Definitely not recommended by Weight Watchers, but recommended by us.
Dan then presents us with the pho consumme ($10), a faux Vietnamese noodle soup with “reinterpreted” steak, paired with oxtail ravioli and sriracha. The only upsetting thing about this soup is figuring out how to eat it. Pro tip: ask for a knife and cut the noodles in half.
With stray noodles accenting the table, another server delivers the remainder of our meal: lamb shoulder ($12), the Parisian sandwich ($7) and macaroni gratin ($8).
The lamb is a slow–roasted bit of shoulder drowning in a bacon and cheese panade braised reduction. Don’t get us wrong, there’s nothing we like more than bacon and cheese, but this dish is Dead Sea–salty, making the flavors hard to distinguish.
The Parisian sandwich ($7), a butter–coated baguette stuffed with ham and cornichons (glorified pickles), is the only dull dish of the night. We suggest skipping this sandwich and ordering a Jimmy John’s “numero un” instead. It’s cheaper, faster and answering the door with pants on is preferred but not required.
If the Kronenbourg beer was an orgasm on top of the Eiffel Tower, the macaroni gratin (aka “too fancy to call it mac ’n’ cheese”) is ten orgasms in a cheese jacuzzi. The Fusilli noodles covered in creamy, cheesy splendor shut us up for the first time all night.
On second thought, who needs a date when you’ve got mac ’n’ cheese like this?
