Where We’re Eating: Taproom on 19th

There are plenty of gastropub restaurants in South Philadelphia, but this is the first for this particular area, known as Girard Estate. The staff is as warm as the comfortable, low-lit room, and it’s the kind of place where you could hang out for a long while, sipping on good bourbons and beers. It’s a neighborhood bar, but one with better food than most. The fried spaghetti sandwich special was an abject failure, but the pork-crazy Pig Destroyer sandwich, bangers and mash, and the choice of LaFreida meat for the skirt steak and burger made up for it. In a nod to how South Philly has changed, there’s even a vegan cheesesteak. Which I guess some people would call progress.

Tap Room on 19th [Foobooz]

First appeared in the February, 2014 issue of Philadelphia magazine.