Booker’s Restaurant & Bar
5021 Baltimore Ave.
Philadelphia
May 17, 2024
We didn’t make reservations before showing up to Booker’s Restaurant on a Friday night — but somehow there was room between the bustle of diners eating blackened catfish, cioppino and short ribs for two happy hour seekers in need of a drink or two.
I had wanted to try the family-focused, Southern style, West Philly eatery because of its so-called “City Wide Special,” a $7 post-work trilogy including one beer, one shot and fried pickles.
Upon arriving, and while staring at plates of fried chicken and mashed potatoes making their way to other tables, and then after seeing the happy hour specials, my friend and I were ready to eat the whole menu.
According to their website, Booker’s is the largest restaurant on Baltimore Avenue, with a capacity to seat over 100 people alongside its adjoining lounge known as “the Bayou,” which hosts live music and DJ nights. The place is often packed, unsurprising considering its succulent comfort food and famed community spirit. Bookers also boasts a legacy as a Black- and family-owned restaurant whose name pays tribute to the waiter Booker Wright, a Black restaurant owner who also served at a whites-only restaurant and spoke openly and publicly about racism in 1960s Mississippi. (Read in the Inquirer here about couple Tracey and Cheri Syphax, who took over the restaurant last year.)
Booker’s facilitates a boisterously feel-good environment, where a draft beer and well shot each easily turned into a spread of deep fried food and ample alcohol. There were all under $10 hot chicken sliders, Wisconsin cheese curds and hand-cut fries. Six-dollar strawberry daiquiris and whiskey gingers completed the procession. I started to get nervous about putting our hoard of discount dishes on my boss’ tab.
Starting off with two bright IPAs — including the aptly-titled “Evil Genius Adulting” draft with hints of citrus and a guava-infused “Cloudy and Cumbersome” — and a shot of Well whiskey and tequila each, we were content when our meal replacement bar snacks arrived.
The tangy cheese curds dipped in lightly spiced arrabiata sauce and a side of soft-skinned french fries would have sufficed. But it was the sliders that starred. A faintly sticky, red-honied breast on brioche with pickled cucumber and sriracha aioli, the typically heavy meal was transformed into a strangely delicate but satiating finger sandwich with a tzatziki-tasting edge.
The daiquiri was, I admit, a bit watered down for my taste. Maybe I was just too busy chewing on hot, crispy chicken to notice the ice melting in my drink. But both cocktails seemed secondary, in my opinion, to the real deal: The food.
Probably two hours in, we realized the pickle chips had never arrived. We requested their addition, blushingly aware of how much fried food and free radicals we were already downing without mentioning battered and oil shocked pickles.
That’s why we couldn’t help but laugh — OK, the hard alcohol helped — when four plated pickle chips, perhaps a little pale to serve as showstoppers, were rushed to our table with a lemon and arugula garnish in the middle. It was the pickles that I’d been most curious to try as a tequila side. But they were the antithesis of everything else we’d tasted and gawked at that night. They were still tasty, with an unavoidably delicious genetic makeup of salt, fat and acid, but a little sloppily soft and cold despite the fine-dining presentation.
I’m bookmarking Bookers as a great happy hour option. But the next time I go back, I’m staying for the unpretentious but boldly delectably dinners — and probably skipping the pickle.
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Booker’s is open for daily brunch between 10 and 2:30 and dinner between 5 and 9:30 as well as happy hours from 5 to 7 Monday through Friday. Check out their calendar for live music and other events here.
