Eben's Hearth

Mother's Day! Julie's sister and father went to grandma's house for the afternoon and evening and I had already been waiting the opportunity to go to Eben's Hearth for the Julie/Mom Project. I spied their Mother's Day Special advertisement in the North Country This Week that offered half off mom's dinner with a family member. I also planned that Julie and I should ride our bikes, as the restaurant at 115 Maple Street, is only about a mile away from our home in Potsdam, NY. I figured this would be our way of "paying off" the caloric price of what was certian to be a great meal. Since it is uphill to the restaurant and downhill back, we paid most off in advance.

Eben's Hearth used to be my favorite place to order chicken wings back in the old college days when they delivered and I have revisited several times over the past couple decades since then when I was visiting. My kid Julie doesn't remember, but I have brought her here at least once before when she was a little younger. They have a couple of fish tanks and one of them has just two BIG fish in them. I took a picture, but regular readers of this blog will know why there is none to post with this. The fish are Pacu, related to Piranha and they are older than my daughter!

Julie likes chicken wings and so we ordered an appetizer of 6 to split between us. Though she can handle a certain amount of spice, we got them mild. I generally order wings as hot as possible, but I do draw the line at certain sauces that require use of capsaicin extract. The heat is certainly unbearable but the worst part of such sauces is the taste is terrible. A whole pepper flavor from a super spicy habanero is wonderful, but the extract stuff is just yucky medicinal. Bleu cheese and celery with the wings were perfect traditional yumminess and we enjoyed them very much.

Julie got the half rack of BBQ pork ribs with her choice side of rice pilaf and salad. I got the locally raised, black angus filet mignon, medium well with burgundy mushrooms and my choice of thick french fries and salad. Vegetable side with our entrees was cooked baby carrots and yellow and green string beans. The salad was unexceptional with too much head lettuce, but we picked around and ate most of it, consuming all the darker greens as well as the cucumber, bell pepper, and red onion chunks. Julie drank ice tea and I drank Yeungling lager on tap. Julie and I traded a few bites of our entrees. Both were excellently done. Happy Mom's Day to me!

As a footnote to this since I wrote it so late after the fact, I want to mention how cool Eben's Hearth has been as a place for me to catch certain sporting events when I am without a television at home. I have used it to watch football games while visiting years ago. So, this past weekend when I realized the French Open women's tennis final was on at 9 am before any bars were open, I called them to ask if they would put it on for me. Even though the bar area wasn't officially "open" with a bartender on duty, they let me sit there and watch the match on their nice tv. Breakfast muffin egg sandwich with very crispy home fries of small potato chunks were quite good. The bloody mary needed more worcestershire sauce. And no, Julie was not with me. This part was just a Mom Project :)