Good Eats: Good Dog Bar |

If you know me, you know I love finding new restaurants for good food and good drinks and I hope you enjoy my resurrection of my “Good Eats” series. Of course most of the places I’ll feature will be in the Philadelphia/New Jersey area but, if life treats me well, I’ll bring you some food from the road. I may also bring you some of my own homemade good eats as I am becoming quite a skilled home chef, if I do say so myself.

Now on the good stuff: on a very cold and crisp evening, after a lazy afternoon visiting the Philly Auto Show, Nick and I were searching for a good meal within a decent walk from the Convention Hall. There’s not too many places to eat around there unless you want to eat Chinese since it’s located in the Chinatown section. As always, we picked up our trusty Zagat’s and flipped through to find our next great discovery. We decided on Good Dog Bar, owned and operated by the same people at one of our favorite South Philly places, The Industry. It’s right off of Walnut Street and it was a breezy walk over.

Being in the Rittenhouse area of the city, you’d expect Good Dog Bar to be where stuffy yuppies go to rub elbows. Thankfully, Good Dog Bar is the perfect center city dive bar where nearly every type of person goes to rub elbows in this cramped and cozy space. The design aesthetic is pretty simple: dogs. There are adorable portraits of every type of dog framed along the walls. The two story space has bars on both floors but the downstairs bar has the dark, old mahogany, mirrors-and-good-drinks vibe going on (if that’s even a thing haha).

We were told there was a wait so we settled into two seats at the bar, grabbed some delish craft beers, and, while it was pretty noisy, talked about all the cars we are going to by, inspiration coming courtesy of the auto show. It was only about 10 minutes or so before a table upstairs was available and we ended up sitting in the bay window. I ordered the most delicious burger ever that had cheese in the middle. That’s right, in the middle, and it was perfect. And the fries? I could live off fries and these were pretty good ones.

Good Dog Bar was quickly added to my “Favorite Places for a Bite” list (the list that only exists in my head). It’s got a great laid back vibe with great food, something that can be hard to come by in this part of Center City. I loved checking out all the dog pictures and I forgot to mention the fact that there are tvs at the bars, which is perfect when there is a game on. The only thing I could think of that would make me hesitate to recommend it would be that it’s very tight and loud but what do you want from a bar/restaurant in what’s essentially a row home? I like to think it gives it a party atmosphere. Go to Good Dog Bar, you won’t be disappointed.