I was hoping to wrap up our Restaurant Week posts within the week after the end of the celebration, but as sometimes happens, life got in the way. Two more posts to come, and first up, another great spot for late-night dining: Hambone’s!
I’ll be the first to admit: when I thought of Hambone’s, I never thought of fine dining. I thought, ‘nice dive bar with friendly bartenders and amazingly no smoking!’ But after trying their mac n’ cheese at the Kick-Off Party? Well, let’s just say I was more than a little excited that we’d won a Hambone’s gift certificate.
And since Hambone’s serves food until midnight on the weekends, it was the perfect place to go after the end of my fourteen-hour-shift on Saturday of Restaurant Week.
The Restaurant Week special was simple: $20.13 for a two-dish-mix-and-match of appetizers and/or desserts, plus your entree of their mac n cheese. The Restaurant Week special was also ginormous.
We started out with salad and chili as our first appetizers. Look at that hearty pile of onions on the salad – is it any wonder I was in love with Hambone’s from the first bite? Michael loved the meaty chili and even I (a not-chili-fan) tried a few bites.
For our second round of appetizers, Michael went with the provolone sticks. Bar food done perfectly.
Sadly, they were out of pierogies by the time we rolled in at 11pm, but I settled on a second-round pick of chicken fingers. Their chicken fingers are served tossed in any of their wing sauces, so I got mine in the garlic Parmesan sauce. These were incredible – meaty and crispy and saturated with yummy garlicky, buttery sauce.
But the real star of the show was definitely the mac and cheese. Not your standard-from-a-box mac n cheese, mac n cheese with smoked gouda and bacon intermixed all throughout. For an additional $2, you could add more meat to your dish (BBQ pulled pork, chicken, or ham).
So you know I had to add ham to mine. No, that’s correct, it wasn’t enough to just have bacon in my mac n cheese, I needed ham ham. I mean, you can’t go to Hambone’s and not get ham, right? And not just any ham, ham that drops a HAM ELBOW on all hams that ever came before it. It was so tempting to eat this all in one serving, but being that the plate was like twice the size of my face, I had half of it wrapped up to become my delicious lunch the following day. The cheese is gooey and creamy and perfect, the little pasta twisties are magnificent, the ham is ham-azing (yes whatever I just said ham-azing because it’s ACCURATE).
Michael got the BBQ pulled pork on his mac n cheese, and I think he took one for the team and finished the whole plate in one really freaking satisfying sitting. Hot damn.
So our advice to you is this: don’t count Hambone’s out because it looks like a dive bar in the hipsterton of Lawrenceville. It’s a non-smoking dive bar that serves excellent bar food AND gourmet mac n cheese that will make your head spin for a very reasonable price. The bartenders are great – Claire took good care of us and kept the food and drink coming at excellent intervals. And with a kitchen that serves until midnight on the weekends? Well, what’s not to love? We’ll be back to tear up some of those pierogies very, very soon.
Check back tomorrow for our final Restaurant Week post of 2013!