Prepare for Swift-Off

The owners of the Good Dog create good craic in NoLibs.

by David Snyder

Jessica Kourkounis ON THE LAMB: The Swift Half dresses a quarter-rack of lamb "lollichops" in a mint chimichurri sauce for a playful take on a classic accompaniment.

[ review ]

Good french fries are insanely addictive. But when David Garry told me in an interview that he wanted his new NoLibs bar, the Swift Half, to be the kind of pub that encourages "a bit of craic" (pronounced "crack"), I began to question whether that was really just salt sprinkled on his spuds. "I guess that's another expression that doesn't translate well over here," he laughed.

Craic, of course, is slang from Garry's native Ireland — sharing a few chuckles with good friends. What he and Heather Gleason hope to capture with the Swift Half is the camaraderie of a true neighborhood pub (like the Good Dog, which they also own), where the faces at the bar are as welcoming and familiar as the brews on tap.

At first blush, the barely scuffed Piazza at Schmidts seems like an unlikely setting for a brand of fraternization you'd expect only at a seasoned address. The ultra-modern office/apartment complex, a high-gloss marvel of concrete block and reflective glass, does nothing to transport me to the home of the world's most spectacular Baroque sculptures (it's said to be modeled after Rome's Piazza Navona). But thanks to draws like a 40-foot LED TV and a weekly bingo night, this Piazza's got something tourist-packed Navona doesn't: a sense of community.

Unlike "craic," the phrase "swift half" translates well in the U.S. — it refers to the drink one intends to have after work that invariably evolves into a night of debauchery. And Garry is practically daring us to exercise restraint with his latest beer selection. The Swift Half offers 10 brews on tap (five of which rotate regularly) with a focus on local offerings, from PBC's Fleur de Lehigh to Tröegs' Sunshine Pils.

Though exec chef Jessica O'Donnell and chef de cuisine Jeff Kozolowski both hail from the Good Dog, the Swift Half is attempting to form its own identity, banking on Euro-influenced pub grub. So far, it's off to a good start. Both the rich bacon-wrapped chicken liver/pistachio pâté (served with bright, tangy house-pickled beets) and the gamey duck prosciutto made me wish all of the bar's charcuterie items were cured in-house. My favorite upscale dish was the lamb "lollichops." The quarter-rack of chops were cooked to a perfect tenderness, but it was the mint chimichurri sauce — a playful take on the traditional mint/lamb combo — that gave this dish its smartest upgrade. Balancing the mint's herbaceousness with a gentle warmth created depth and sophistication.

Other upscale offerings, though, fell short for me. I love the idea of slathering tender baby back pork ribs in mole, but the deep flavors one expects from the Mexican sauce (bitter dark chocolate, cumin, chipotle) never quite emerged. PEI mussels were steamed just right, but there was too much butter overwhelming the Sly Fox Royal Weisse-based sauce. Shrimp was too subtle of a protein to stand up to the kitchen's layered buffalo sauce. A ratatouille of roasted peppers, artichokes and eggplant added depth to the muffaletta, but the canvas was all wrong: Thin-sliced kalamata olive sourdough (sourced from Wild Flour) was tasty, but by design this hearty N'awlins specialty felt naked without the thick Italian bread that gives the sandwich its name.

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The Swift Half deserves props for offering plenty of vegetarian options. Leaving the crusts on cucumber sandwiches was a cheeky way of giving the high tea treat a bit of attitude, and I liked the texture that chopped and grilled asparagus added to a pickled beet and goat cheese sandwich. But not all meatless dishes were winners: Despite smoky green lentils and melted rinds from the Moliterno (a semi-hard sheep's milk cheese from Sardinia), the flavor of vegetarian shepherd's pie was stuck somewhere between a seven-layer bean dip and a bland veggie chili.

For now, more traditional pub fare is where the Swift Half truly excels. The Swift Half's exceptionally juicy burger is worth seeking out — O'Donnell uses the same 80-20 sirloin mix that made her cheese-stuffed Good Dog rendition so legendary. I wish I had been told that all of Swift Half's high-end cheeses were available for meltage, but I was certainly not complaining about the tangy bite of Keen's English cheddar that graced mine.

Cod coated with a precise Guinness beer batter and a tarragon-infused tartar sauce put the fish and chips on solid ground. Though my steak was slightly misfired on one side, you really can't go wrong with 10 ounces of New York strip dripping with jalapeño butter.

And now that I know they're prepared without street narcotics, I can legally announce that the Swift Half's fries are some of the best around. These shoestring Idahos, fried in canola oil just long enough to render them the color of sun-kissed hay, have a delicately crisped outside that gives way to a tender center. They have that potato-y backbone that's lacking in many of the charred renditions common in this town.

Desserts were disappointing. All three cupcakes I tried — German chocolate, red velvet and passion fruit — were terribly dry. The house-made fudge was not much better.

There's room for fine-tuning, but all told the Swift Half's debut menu is not half bad. Thanks to solid pub fare served in a hip, sprouting scene, good craic is that much easier to find.

(d_snyder@citypaper.net)

Swift Half Pub | The Piazza at Schmidts, 1001 N. Second St., 215-923-4600, swifthalfpub.com. Open daily, 11:30 a.m.-2 a.m. Soups and salads, $6.50-$10; small plates and sandwiches, $7-$14; large plates, $12-$24. Wheelchair accessible.