Review: York Street Cafe

I have been to York Street more times than I can count. For one particular group of my friends, it's the default drinks-and-apps location either for happy hour or after a show, since it's convenient to the theater we all perform at on a regular basis. Friday night, we celebrated my friend Tracy's birthday there and actually managed to have dinner.

York Street is an old drugstore that now houses a restaurant, an art gallery and a third floor club that often has swing bands and local indie bands. It has really eclectic decor-- from an old bridesmaid's dress, to Hudy delight ads (featuring the owner), to the owner's Elvis collection. I had initially written off York Street a few years ago after a 3.5 hour wait on a Valentine's that they didn't take reservations, but they've since worked the kinks out-- I've never had a bad meal or bad service.

I was rushing around Friday evening-- I got caught up picking up my bi-weekly organic co-op package (I should write a post about that!) and by a car that had parked in front of my garage door (Thank you, CPD, for responding so quickly for what, the third time in three weeks?). This lead me to forgetting my camera. Ack! Thankfully, my lovely friend Dave had his iPhone and saved the day.
I was hungry, so I got the Amish roasted chicken, which is stuffed with onions, gorgonzola and bacon. Very good, though you only got a hint of the cheese/bacon/onion stuffing-- there was none plated with the chicken. I'd have loved to have gotten a few bites of that. The gravy was great-- Terry's fork kept finding its way to my plate-- and you tasted the gorgonzola a bit more in the drippings. Yum.

Terry apparently had a huge lunch, so he ordered a salad:

This is the smoked chicken spinach salad. He said it was good, but that the chunks of cheese cut into the same size cubes as the chicken made it a bit hard to eat, and didn't disperse the gouda flavor evenly. That little pretzel is made out of puff pastry! Cute.

We had skipped appetizers to get a couple of the homemade desserts. The bar in the second dining room hosts all of the desserts, and it's fun to walk by and drool a little.

Dave decided to play cute and put a little cheesecake in the picture

More like cheesy. Not sure what my hair is doing in that picture. The cake was raspberry buttercream, and the raspberry was incorporated into the buttercream frosting. The cake was a white cake that was just a bit dry, but very flavorful. I'd have preferred a straight buttercream with a layer of raspberry preserves instead. Ted finished my cake (when we all go out, he usually gets my abandoned cake), and declared it good (but again, dry).

Terry (who did not pose for a beefcake picture--I kill me sometimes.) got a chocolate mocha cake.
Okay, so the plating wasn't that pretty, but damn, was that good cake. Dense chocolate cake with mocha frosting and whipped cream. Before I could get a second bite, it was gone!

A few of us proceeded to Havana Martini Club for a drink after dinner. Wow, has that place changed since it was on 6th street! It's not all suits now-- it's a mix of drunk college kids, hipsters, and ballroom dancers in their 50s. The music was mostly hip-hop with a little Latin mixed in-- all in all, very disappointing and I'm not sure I'll go back. But York Street? I'll be back sooner rather than later.