The Delux Cafe, 100 Chandler St in Boston's South End

Friday night my ManCrow and I went out to the South End in search of comfort food on a budget and we decided to try out the Delux Cafe- a location I had only previously used as a watering hole.  Although the menu was small, we were pleasantly surprised with the goodies placed before us and I am sure that there is no place else in the neighborhood we could have eaten so good on so little.

The place was crowded at 7:30 on a Friday, so we felt lucky to immediatly score two seats at the long wooden bar.  Trying to be mindful of my bank account, I sipped a Narragansett tall boy while my more affulent ManCrow chose a Long Trail bottle.  I was surprised to see that they only had 3 beers on tap, and was bummed that none were tempting or original choices.   Maybe Delux is more about the liquor and I just didn’t get the memo, but later in my meal when I asked to finish off with a dark and stormy the bartender informed me that they don’t carry ginger beer.  Fail.  But never the less, the beer they did have was cold and the bartender quick.

We started with an order of chips and salsa and were unsure what to think when the “chips” turned out to be warm, soft tortilla pieces.  For a six dollar chip and salsa I expected more than the meager serving of salsa and sour cream with plain tortilla, but fortunately this was defiantly the nadir of the meal. For my main course I ordered a bowl of tomato basil soup and the grill cheese with portabella mushroom.  The soup was chunky and delcious and came in an enormous portion.  If served with a piece of bread it would have been a meal in and of itself!  The grill cheese was a thick, buttery mass of provolone, marinated portabella and chewy sourdough bread.  It was rich and comforting and absolutely perfect when dunked into the soup.  ManCrow ordered the pork chop, which came stuffed with apple, bacon and rosemary and was served with sides of yukon mashed potatoes and roasted carrots. He barely spoke words beyond “this is so good” for the rest of the evening.

For all the food and two rounds of beers each, our check came to around $50 before tip.  It’s worth mentioning that it might be better to hit up the Delux on a weeknight as the crowd was (surprisingly for such a funky place) dominated by the Back Bay young corporate crowd.    Despite the lame choices in draft beer (beer in general really) and less than stellar chips and salsa, our entrees were delicious and  for the value and location I certainly would go back to the Delux Cafe again.

On a random side note, I have know I have given shout outs on this blog before to one of my all time favorite cookbooks, Vegetarian Planet.  Well, I was reading the inside of the book jacket yesterday while searching for dinner inspiration and it turns out that the author, Didi Emmons, used to be the chef at the Delux Cafe!  Crazyness!