This Week at the Herdic House
Cue the deluge as well, it appears, as the rains that have eluded us throughout September arrive with a vengeance now that October approaches. With so much water afoot, it’s only fitting that the Blue Plate involve a water-dwelling animal this week: Deb Allison’s organic fettuccine tossed with house-smoked salmon, roasted sweet peppers and sungold tomatoes in a very light lemon, dill and tarragon cream. The Blue Plate, as always, is $15 at our House and $17 to go (but our number of to-go orders is always very limited). We’ll hope to see you out tonight! PS: Look for a Blue Plate price increase coming at the beginning of October. Oh inflation, we loathe you, but we must bend to your whims!
And note: the deluge at the Herdic isn’t just one of rain—beginning this weekend, we’re also swamped with bus tours over the next few weeks (leaf peepers, what?) That bus-fueled deluge means that we’ll be shifting our Blue Plate Specials to Thursday nights for the first three weeks in October. So we’ll see you for a delicious Blue Plate Special on October 3, 10 and 17—then back to Wednesdays we go!
Don’t miss our Thursday happy hours at the bar, from 5-7 pm, with $1 off all beers and $2 off wines by the glass. Plus our Thursday night feature that pretends to be healthy, all while loaded with the tangy umami of ranch dressing: house favorite Herdic Pittsburgh salad, this week served with grilled Open Prairie strip steak tagliata, fresh-cut fries, grated cheddar and Liz’s parmesan ranch…plus Hannah will be mixing up plum manhattans at the bar!
Dining on lobster is such a curious pleasure—one of many meals nearly as much about the process as it is about the food itself. There aren’t too many dinners you can enjoy in the US in which much of the work on the plate is performed by the diner, but lobster remains a dish excitingly entire in its presentation, and therefore totally fresh in its taste. Here it comes to your plate as a (mostly) whole animal, plucked from an herbed and boiling pot, and it falls to you, the gourmand, to wiggle the delicate, snowy meat out from the cracked shell, to suck the essence from the many legs. There’s a remarkable delectation to the process, and a definite excitement to being master of your plate. (Though no one masters a lobster quite like Connecticut native Bob Elion, who leaves no shell unturned and no innard unsampled in his ravishment of the lobster.)
That’s why we’re excited to celebrate summer’s last hurrah with one last Lobster Boil for the season this Friday evening! On Friday morning, our friend (and frequent savior) Bob Esposito will make the trek to Harrisburg to pick up our lively crustacean friends from Kepler’s Seafood, and return them to their certain doom in the Herdic kitchen. There Liz will boil and prepare them for your plates in our basement dungeon/kitchen, and they’ll be presented to you in all their lobsterly deliciousness, perched atop sweet corn, beside a pool of drawn butter, with crackers to extract every sweet morsel. And from there, your dinner is under your command…but please, let us know by this evening (September 25!) if you’d like a lobster for dinner on Friday evening—we’re serving lobsters on September 27 by preorder only!
- Lemon Meringue Pie martini—deceptively sweet-sounding, but actually oddly tart and delicious, this lemon flip cocktail is an excellent pairing with this crustacean-driven menu
- New England clam chowder with Misty Mountain bacon and Tebbs corn
- Standish Shore oysters charbroiled with chili butter, scallion and parmesan (a staff favorite)
- Live pound and a half Maine hardshell lobsters, served with Tebbs sweet corn, herbed au rosa potatoes and drawn butter—please preorder by 9/25!
- Fresh peach cobbler with a scoop of housemade lemon-lavender ice cream
And a quick mention that ticket sales are now open for our November 16 anniversary gala! Tickets are $85, and include a champagne tasting, caviar, ample and delectable hors d’oeuvres stations and live music. Call 570.322.0165 or email or, you know, stop on in to the bar to purchase tickets…