Damn, I am really on a mediocre restaurant trend these days. Sorry about that everyone! I actually had high hopes that The Butterfly would change that trend because it was a work dinner and usually with a bigger budget there is the possibility of a slightly better meal. We also chose The Butterfly because it was within walking distance to work and because it's a Michael White restaurant - he's got a line up of some pretty good places around the city. It's not quite diner food but similar to Empire Diner, it's high end casual food. They had fried chicken, patty melt, fish and chips, chili dog as well as Arctic Char and steak. So a real mish-mosh of food. The good news is that they also have a fun line-up of classic kitchy cocktails like whiskey sours, mai tais, and palomas to help pass the time. We ordered a bunch of cocktails as we tried to figure out how to order. At first we thought of doing family style but besides the fried chicken basket, the rest of the dishes were hard to really share, so we opted to order the spinach and artichoke dip ($11), the reuben croquettes ($9) and the maple bacon skewers ($11) to start and I ordered the fish and chips ($20) for my main. While the waitress was putting in our orders I asked her if she liked the fish and chip dish and she immediately shook her head. WHAT?! So I asked about the patty melt and she said that was her favorite, so I switched to that instead ($18). While I usually appreciate a waiter/waitress' desire to let people order what they want, I trust them to tell me if something is not worth ordering.
To be honest, I wasn't super excited by the appetizers, but the one that I liked the most was the reuben croquette - it was made with house made corned beef sauerkraut, rye and thousand island and then fried like a croquette on the outside. For some reason I love corned beef (must be from my childhood) and this was a different take on a reuben that I've never had before. The rest of the apps were just ok. The spinach and artichoke dip is what you would expect of cheese, spinach and artichoke. Nothing bad but nothing mind blowing either. Same for the maple bacon skewers - they came with bacon, brussels sprouts and pecans - you can't go wrong with bacon in any form but it wasn't anything that I craved later on. I was actually intrigued by my patty melt because it's been a long time since I've had one. It's essentially a burger but on rye bread instead of a bun and then toasted in a press. This one also had onions and gruyere and cheddar cheese. It was a pretty good sandwich and the mix of cheese was a nice touch - although I will say that I felt a bit greasy afterwards as sandwich bread doesn't really hold in the grease of a burger as much as a regular bun. While I did enjoy my meal, I wouldn't say that it's worth $18 though. Even though I was pretty full, I managed to save room for dessert mostly because well, I wasn't paying for dinner and felt like I should always try dessert at a place if possible. We ordered the banana cream pudding ($7), brownie sundae ($9) and the apple crisp ($9). They were all pretty damn good especially the banana cream pudding - it was a nice palate cleanser to having eaten all the greasy food before.
All in all, it was a fine dinner but definitely not worthy of a corporate card dinner. Not that I necessarily want to take advantage on my company dime but usually those are the type of dinners that you wouldn't necessarily have on your own - and well this was almost like my dinner at Empire Diner. It also didn't seem like a typical Michael White place, although I've only been to a few of his places but I've loved the ones I've been to before. It's a cute enough place for fun cocktails and some snacks and dessert if you're in the hood.
Photo Credit: Yelp
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