A Place for Friends

Update: A Place for Friends is closed.

In a word: Why don'tcha sit yourself down and take a seat.

The specs: #0394
Address, hours & details via Isthmus.

JM ate the Cheeseburger and a lemonade.
Nichole ate the Carolina Curly Burger with fries and a Spotted Cow.
The bill was about $15, or $7.50/person, plus tip.
JM and Nichole both gave A Place for Friends an A- (see our grading rubric).

Latest A Place for Friends news and reviews

A Place for Friends is a local in the house on North Sherman where Gaston's used to be. As we entered at 6 on a Friday, body-bumping (but not conversation-blanketing) bass speakers played hip hop and soul hits behind pics of MLK Jr. and the president-elect. There was free (Ohana, not Obama) lemonade and iced tea with food purchase, and a few folks sat at the bar.

The menu on the wall proudly proclaimed "No Pork!" and included catfish, fish and spaghetti, burgers, a chicken sandwich, chef salad, and sides of blackeyed peas, collard greens, baked macaroni and cheese, and banana pudding. Sad for us, there was another sign up about "Soul Food Sunday" and our server said the kitchen was only serving burgers at the moment. So we beefed it up.

JM trounced Nichole at Dominoes (she contends the bones were marked) while we waited. And waited. Delicious flame-broiling smells emanated from the small kitchen; "Most head-wound inflicting" car chase noises screeched from the TV in the corner. JM had a longer wait than Nichole, and apologies accompanied her Carolina Curly Burger to the table. Apparently the first attempt at JM's burger didn't work out.

Despite the slightly unappetizing name, the Curly Burger was awesome. Even the ladies at the bar noticed. Preliminary research into what makes a Carolina burger points to a possible difference in interpretation, as A Place for Friends' version has no chili or slaw, but it's still good. This is the kind of burger you can't put down, both because it's dang good and because you'd never lift it back up in one piece.

• Bun: toasted, buttered and squished white.
• Meat: two solidly hand-packed patties.
• Bun/meat ratio: perfect.
• Cheese: Swiss and plenty of it.
• Misc.: served with fresh, cool Romaine, a slice of tomato, pickle chips, ketchup, mustard, a dash of hot sauce, no shortage of mayo, and fried onions (the eponymous curlies?) An 8.5 of 10.

JM's cheeseburger was similarly good. The ingredients were fresh, crispy when called for and well-selected. These burgers were cooked medium-perfect (medium rare, health code be damned). If the soul food is as good as the burgers, that's very good news indeed.

A Place for Friends may not be for everyone, but to us everyone in the place was friendly. On the other hand, close readers of the local news might want to try it out before January 8, 2008 2009.

Postscript: After we ate at A Place for Friends, we went to video store but couldn't find "A Night at the Opera" in the A's, though we did find "The Animal." Which leads us to the following question: Really? A Place for Friends as an A? Would you, the reader at home, look for A Place for Friends under A or P? Let us know, eh?

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Comments

[Kyle]

You mean, I'm sure, 2009.

[Leanna]

as a freaky-neurotic person about these kinds of things, i deliberated for a while and then decided i'd put it under p. what makes "the" so much less significant than "a," anyway? anyway! happy (almost) 2009, folks :)

[ken]

Personally I would put it under whichever letter "The List" has it under. Hope everyone had/is having a Happy Holiday!!! :-)

[Bonnie]

Probably a librarian works at the video store. What if all the books in the library whose titles started with "a" or "the" were cataloged under the initial letter in the title. You'd have to look through a jillion titles starting with "a" or "the" to find what you wanted :) happy holidaze!!

[Kyle]

Semi-topical mindboggler: Both Microsoft and Google use absolute first-letter alphabetizing. MS's screwiness is most visible in the iTunes song library directory. Google's, in their iGoogle Bookmarks gadget. Ugh!

[Barb]

"P," of course.

[Delicious]

Under P, but glad you got there now.