Dandelion

The Dandelion Pub
18th and Sansom St
Philadelphia, PA 19103
Neighborhoods: Rittenhouse Square, Penn Center

A Stephen Starr restaurant, Dandelion is a cozy, three-story gastropub serving, well, bland English food.  We arrived for brunch starving because of the hour fallback, and so we both ended up ordering the everything English Breakfast.  The dish is a mash up of "two eggs any style, cumberland sausage, black pudding, tomato, mushroom, smoked bacon, fried bread, and baked beans."  When I first read this, I almost drooled.

Unfortunately, the dish was rather anti-climatic.  Given my recent run with a string of unhealthy foods, I had asked my eggs to be substituted with egg whites.  However, it didn't seem like the chef adjusted his seasoning to the new ingredient - the salt stood out against the tasteless egg whites like an Asian in Moscow (trust me, I know from personal experience!).  The baked beans was nothing extraodinary, and certainly something that can be bought out of a can. The tomato (only one small slice!), mushroom (only one piece), smoked bacon, and fried bread were the best parts of the dish.  But, those things are really, really hard to mess up - especially for anyone working in a Starr restaurant.

Things took a turn for the better with the Orange-Scented Madeleines (oops, ate these before realizing I hadn't taken a picture).  These are freshly made to order, and are paired with melted chocolate (over 50% cocoa).  This was good (anything with chocolate is at a minimum good in my book), but nothing awesome.

So, would I go back?  Oddly enough, yes.  There were a lot of other things on the menu that sounded enticing, and I'd hate to write off an entire restaurant simply because of one or two dishes.  Plus, the service was very friendly and prompt.