Karl A.
Yelp
My fiancé and I were there over the weekend and found it generally a bit disappointing. The space was fairly nice - good looking from the outside and spacious inside, but the lighting, as good as it looked to outside viewers, wasn't really ideal for looking at food under.
We started off sharing an order of sesame-hoisin jumbo wings, and they were pretty good. They lived up to the "jumbo" part of their billing, and in addition to the sauce were covered in black & white sesame seeds. If it were up to me, they'd have been cooked a little crisper, but the flavor was satisfying and the meat ample.
We kept it casual with our entrees; she got a French Dip and I ordered a Bacon Jam Burger. I'd been unsure if I should go with that, which sounded like a sure thing, or roll the dice on their Kimchi Burger, so I started to ask our server. He didn't even wait to hear that my second option was the Kimchi Burger - as soon as I said one of my options was the Bacon Jam, he stopped me and said to go with that because it was his favorite item. With such emphatic support for something that already seemed like a safe choice, I decided to follow his advice.
My fiancé's french dip, from what she told me, was fine. She didn't love her first bite or two, but it seemed to win her over from there, leaving her content if not wowed. I didn't taste any "bacon jam" on my burger when I took the first bite, but it was a good bite of burger all the same. After a second bite also provided no hint of bacon, I asked the server about it. He said it should be there and was under the gruyere, but I didn't find that to be the case. It wasn't long before he brought out a side ramekin of the "jam", which wasn't exactly what I was expecting. It was soft, floppy chunks of bacon with a thin liquid at the bottom and no discernible flavor beyond bacon - no pepper or berry or tomato element; just underflavored, limp drippy bits of bacon. Still, I thought, the server had been a fan, the dish was designed with the "jam" in mind, and it WAS bacon, so I slapped it on my burger. That turned out to be a bad move - the burger was better on its own. It wasn't so much that the jam was rancid or awful, just that it wasn't very good and spoiled what, like I said earlier, had been an enjoyable cheeseburger (thankfully since it wasn't a real jam of any kind, it was easy enough to wipe right back off after two bites with it made clear that I wasn't a fan).
Beyond all that, the beer menu was decent but definitely nothing to write home about. This is one of those places that defaults your sandwich to coming with house-made chips and charges +$4 for fries, bringing my burger to $25 and the french dip to $22 - New Hope is generally a bit overpriced, which I say as a longtime Philadelphia resident, but my plate that night was not worth $25, plain and simple (the fries were fine, but nothing special - they're the quality of fries that definitely should come as a standard default accompaniment to a sandwich or burger, not something good enough to pay extra for).
All in all, the 3 stars I gave them are a bit on the generous side since we only went once, as walk-ins, on a Friday night. But none of that changes that the bacon jam was a joke, the fries were mediocre, the wings - a highlight - could have been cooked a little better, and none of these middling items justified their costs. There are too many other options on Main St to be bothered.
