Eating Uptown: State & Allen Lounge

Synopsis	My never-ending quest for gastro-pub nirvana took me to Uptown and the well regarded State & Allen Lounge.
The Food	We ordered two entrees, the fish tacos and the steak and frites. The steak and frites topped with a generous amount of blue cheese was (were??) very good.  But lets be fair.  That’s a dish that’s hard to screw up.  Steak and just about anything is a home run. Steak and bird dong is at least a infield single.  The frites weren’t so much frites as they were bar fries – good, but not frites.  The accompanying mac & cheese -- which the waitress promised was “to die for” (could we stop using that phrase please.  the only food that I know of that is “to die for” is Fogo) -- was good, but I can make better and it isn’t even half as good as the mac & cheese at The Libertine.  In fact this whole dish was not nearly as good as the comparable dish at The Libertine. The fish tacos on the other hand were horrible.  Apparently S & A think that the flavor in fish is some kind of enclave of Chechen rebels that must be smoked out at all cost leaving only a dry rubbery barren schoolhouse in its wake.  I might need to start working a little harder on my metaphors.
What I Liked	The cleavage of the hostess was something you had to see to believe.  The beers on tap were not the usual beers on tap you see at a place like this.  They even had some I had not heard of or tried. The steak & frites were good, but not nearly as good as what you get at The Libertine.
What I Disliked	The fish tacos were terrible. The mac & cheese was average at best.
Conclusion	This is yet another Uptown “gastro-pub” that doesn’t live up to the hype.

C+

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