Tattooed Mom: Pierogi Thursday
530 South St.
Philadelphia
July 25, 2024
Mint lemonade, mango boba, peach brandy, and pineapple juice all scream summer — but a steaming hot pierogi beats a maraschino cherry any day when it comes to topping off even the most humid of happy hours.
I unexpectedly adopted such culinary logic this week during rounds of drinks and discounted Polish dumplings inside Tattooed Mom, the South Street bar known for its hipster sensibilities but otherwise overlooked for its openness to selling shticks that actually serve the common good.
That long introduction goes to say that while I wasn’t so moved by the beloved bar’s interior design (read: dizzily overindulgent vintage wall art that recalls Pee Wee’s Playhouse), I was definitely down with their Thursday night, 75-cent pierogi special.
My three friends — Gigi, M and Shin — and I had pulled up to Tattooed Mom at 5:54 with a strict agenda: Order as many discounted drinks as possible before the clock strikes 6.
We were there to sip and sample summery mixed drinks typically categorized as outside our budget — except for during that special moment conveniently scheduled on weekdays between rush hour traffic jams and early p.m. bedtimes.
We learned upon arrival that such drinks are not included in Tattooed Mom’s happy hour, although their current cocktail menu packs a plethora of punches appropriately capped at $12 per drink. The deal for 4 to 6 p.m. is actually just $4 on draft beer. That deal sounds better when paired with daily specials — like free Monday night pool or $6 smash burger Wednesdays, the two most compelling examples of weeknight traditions offered at Tattooed Mom.
Three of us still went ahead and ordered the tropical bevs we’d been anticipating: One “Mom’s Mule,” a “Mandalorian Punch,” and the “Lemon Bourbon Smash.”
The fourth, Shin, who had discerned that there were four rotating drafts, requested all four without even noting their names. I — thinking that the pierogi were a happy hour affair and not an all-night celebration — also pushed our server to get in our food order, safely requesting just six pieces in case the cheap fare happened to suck. We skipped the selection of 75 cent sauces and fixings.
Sure enough, our criticisms flowed with the first bite. The dough tasted either overcooked or made of rice flour or some other gluten free starch substitute. The edges of the pastry were too thick, M — a baker — said. Some chives or greens as garnishes, they reflected, would go a long way in spicing up the plain mashed potatoes and their fried coating.
But mix in a few sips of our beverages, and our tune totally changed.
“Wait … I kind of forgot how much I love potatoes and butter,” Gigi, who had sworn she wasn’t hungry beforehand, said as she downed a double dose of pierogi.
“I mean, it’s cheaper than MacDonald’s, so why am I even complaining?” M reasoned.
“My Ukrainian grandmother used to make a batch of like 500 pierogies for holidays and send them to friends and family,” Gigi said. “I wanna take up the mantle.”
“Guys,” Shin interrupted, “the pierogi are vegan. That’s why they taste like that.”
“Ooooh,” we all responded. The dough was decent — for vegan pastry. And the buttery puree filling the pierogi was remarkable — for vegan mashed potatoes.
The pierogi, oddly enough, paired perfectly with our host of fruit-drenched drinks, none of which particularly stood out save for the Mandalorian Punch. Though I’m wary of mixing alcohol with too much sugar, I started to think that more boba shops should start spiking their stuff after tasting Tattooed Mom’s take on mango boba pearls buried in rum, raspberry liqueur, plus peach, pineapple, cranberry and lemon.
When the server came back around, we ordered ten more pierogies — plus some of those 75-cent sides, like sour cream, applesauce, cheese whiz, fried onions and chili crisp.
Only when the pierogi arrived did we remember we wanted to order Tequila shots. The pierogies had taken priority.
The more we ate, the more absurd it seemed that we had ever complained about the dough’s texture. These morsels of glucose were utterly terrific.
Only the cheese whiz remained out of our culinary reach. “Maybe I’ll like that too, once I’m even drunker,” Gigi suggested generously.
No longer were we just in and out as in get-drunk-and-go. While the pierogies remained on the table, and stayed only 75 cents per piece, we were able to touch base on some important points of conversation, including Charli XCX’s dubbing of Kamala Harris as “brat,” the potential of using Twitch to indoctrinate apolitical youth in the military, and whether or not Tattooed Mom was indeed playing Ariel Pink and Part Time as we ate.
At the end of the night, we’d still managed to spend at least $75 on drinks. But the pierogies and their sides clocked in at only $12.
Of course, we were eating little more than watered-down starches. But I felt strangely self-righteous about spending $1.50 on a three-pierogi dinner when $18 gourmet pierogi have starred on my social feed since the highly buzzed-about Polish restaurant Little Walter’s opened in East Kensington this summer.
But don’t worry — my unjustified moment of supposed superiority was shattered mere moments later. While my friends went off to another bar, I took advantage of the bar’s adjacency to Whole Foods in order to get some long-procrastinated grocery shopping done.
Looking at my $90 grocery receipt, I was ready to throw up my pierogi on the self-check-out counter. Then I realized: Better to keep the food down. And after spending so much on drinks and overpriced eggs, it was probably time to start stocking up on more 75-cent pierogi.
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Find out more about Tattooed Mom — including their calendar of events and food and drink specials — on their website here.
