First look: Standard Fare, Phila Street's newest treat
Daily Dispatch: Camp Abilities returns and 2 tourist faves win high marks for accessibility.
Welcome to the Daily Dispatch!
Today’s headlines:
Camp Abilities returns with new activities, and ILoveNY makes accessibility a major priority, beginning with two local top picks for guests with limited mobility. Can you guess the Lake George crowdpleaser and Saratoga hotspot that won high marks?
Scroll down to find these stories and more..
But first, the afternoon’s top story…
From Instagram-worthy milkshakes with emotional pull, to Mom’s meatloaf: Standard Fare is anything but.
By Steve Thurston
Standard Fare, the second creation — and first restaurant — by partners Zac Denham and Clark Gale on Phila Street, will offer exactly what the name suggests: standard fare.
But not.
Because let’s be honest, no one meets these two and thinks “standard.”
As Gale explains, he has family members who shrink away from food on a restaurant’s menu if it has unfamiliar ingredients, so the menu at 21 Phila — which is just about exactly across the street from their first venue, Bocage Champagne Bar — will focus on classic diner dishes, such as meatloaf and pork chops.
The pair are also keeping many menu options under $20, with entrées starting at $18 and salads at $15. The 40-seat Standard Fare is even running a classic “blue plate special,” so people know they can return every Wednesday and get that special.
All of this is done with one thing in mind: being the sort of restaurant customers can return to a couple times a week, they said. And this includes industry folks and hospital workers, as Standard Fare is serving its full menu until midnight during the week and 2 a.m. on weekends for those who need a regular place to go for an after-shift meal.
On the not-so-standard side is the couple themselves, who both have that special something that makes regulars say stopping by Bocage feels like you’re in someone’s home. Together, they have a solid pedigree of high-end hospitality in places such as New York, Los Angeles, Detroit and London, work that included prestigious Michelin-starred restaurants.
“There's a way to do food that is approachable and recognizable and comfortable and still do it great, still do it gourmet,” Gale said in an interview with the Dispatch. “I want to give you the best version of a classic preparation.”
So for these two, the menu might appear standard, but the experience is not.
Take for instance the planned menu; the names are familiar, though the preparation might not be. It includes Mom’s Meatloaf with homemade tomato relish, green beans, and herbed mash; Smoked Pork Chop with apple chutney, squash-potato rosi and chive sour cream; Roast Half Chicken with wilted greens and heirloom tomato; Lil’ Oinkers starters; Pork and Beef Swedish Meatballs starters with lingonberry and shroom au poirve; Zucchini “Lasagna” for the vegan and gluten-free crowd.
“I love the concept of elevated comfort food so much,” Standard Fare’s Executive Chef, Connor DeMarco, said in a prepared statement. He highlighted the Cajun shrimp and grits item. With manchego cheese, it’s just a little better, he said.
The restaurateurs are also having some fun, starting with their dessert menu that boasts milkshakes, old-fashioned cookies and milk, and enormous slices of homemade cake.
Of course, there’s a story behind the milkshakes. Denham and Gale are now married, but when they were both working in NYC restaurants and dating, they often noshed together late night, just as they are hoping others in Saratoga’s hospitality industry will, too.
“We would often meet up somewhere very similar to [Standard Fare],” Gale said, a place “open a little bit later in Astoria, called Mom’s. And they always had these over-the-top milkshakes. It became a ritual of ours to meet up after work and grab a snack — and we’d always share a milkshake.”
He said that no one in Saratoga Springs is concocting the decadent, deluxe milkshakes that add color to foodie Instagram accounts in many cities, so they have four varieties on the menu as part of their dessert offerings, including one with Fruity Pebbles breakfast cereal that’s topped with a mini-cupcake.
Even before Gale and Denham became owners of not one, but two venues on Phila Street, they were huge supports of Downtown. (They even married at the Adelphi in 2021.) They recently reached out to Whitman’s Brewing Company on Lake Avenue, and have collaborated on a new brew: Phila Street Low Life, a hazy IPA.
The name is not a put-down of the street where Gale and Denham have now opened two locations, but a play on some fun they have across the street at their “bubble bar. At Bocage, the couple serve all styles and types of sparkling wines along with one beer: Miller High Life.
“You know, ‘The Champagne of Beers’,” Denham joked, referring to the beer’s tag line that dates back to the early 1900s.
It was a joke when they put the beer on the menu, and then people liked it. Not everyone who enters Bocage is a wine drinker; some gamely try a glass or two of bubbly and then turn to the beer, Denham said, so they came up with another option for the opening of Standard Fare: Phila Street Low Life, the complement to the High Life. Standard Fare will carry both, plus a couple of other options.
The brewers got to work at Whitman’s and came up with the IPA that comes in at 6.1% alcohol by volume, or ABV. It uses El Dorado and Citrahops, said Sam VanDemark, the head of sales at Whitman’s Brewing Company.
“Our El Dorado hops give us this really nice candy cherry note, and the citra gives really nice citrusy notes,” VanDemark said. “So the idea of this hazy IPA is just to be obviously a very soft body, hop forward, easy drinking, like citrusy IPA.”
Reservations for the 40-seat Standard Fare go live on Rest on Aug. 1, and the restaurant will celebrate its grand opening on Aug. 15.
Editor’s Note: Abby Tegnelia, a co-owner of the Saratoga Dispatch, has handled public relations for Denham and Gale but did not write this story.
Earlier stories from the Dispatch writers and editors…
Click the picture or the “Read full story” link to see what we have been working on today.
