This Week at the Herdic House
Yet another perfect spring day has been gifted to us, as we careen speedily toward the beginning of summer! Please be sure to get out in the lovely weather this afternoon or evening, but, when you’re done out in the wild blue yonder (or in your own backyard), join us on the patio for another unusual Blue Plate: a pork belly rice bowl, with seared ginger-tamari glazed pork belly, pickled radish, cucumber and wakame salad. As always, it’s $12 at our House, folks, and $15 to go. But a word of warning: come next week—the first Wednesday in June—we’ll need to increase the price of our Wednesday Blue Plates to cover our rising food and labor costs. Starting June 1, the Blue Plate cost will increase to $15 per plate…
And tomorrow, our Happy Hours continue! Join us from 5-7 pm on Thursday evenings at the bar for some cocktail specials—$2 off wines by the glass, $1 off beers by the bottle and a rotating $9 craft cocktail, plus we’ll be making classic Herdic tenderloin sandwiches with gruyere, caramelized onions and crispy french fries all night. And this week’s cocktail will be a fresh rhubarb sidecar, with rhubarb from Hannah’s garden…
And this week, ladies and gents, we’re hosting the event that needs no introduction. But we get such a kick out of introducing it every year (and Sid gets such a kick out of our introductions) that we’re going to go ahead and tell you about our annual Shad Smoke anyway…
Sid has been dropping by weekly for the last month or two, checking on this or that element of shad smoke readiness at the Herdic—confirming a supply of fresh applewood, testing the condition of the metal screen in the smoker, hassling Bob Helmrich about an adequate supply of shad for all of our shad-hungry customers—and now the week of the shad smoke has finally come!
It’s a week we look forward to all spring, not just because it marks the official opening of our patio, and gives us a reason to spruce our plantings up a little bit, and not just because it’s also a cue that summer is finally, finally here. The Shad Smoke is the wild, the chaotic, the most utterly unusual guest chef event that we host all year, in which our kitchen gets invaded by a horde of shad smoking boys in overalls, ferrying tray upon tray of smoked fish, and drinking cases of beer while they’re at it. (The picture above, from 2020, captures a bit of the aura of the Smoke, though this year’s cast of shad-smoking boys will have changed, as it always does—and Liz is (obviously) no longer as big as a house, now that the twins are nearly 2 years old…)
Usually, the Herdic kitchen keeps to itself (we love visitors, but don’t get many, tucked away in the back of the house as we are), and the Shad Smoke marks the breakdown of the front and back of house divide for one glorious evening—our parking lot becomes a makeshift party, full of smoke and good times, and we, the few, the proud, the kitchen staff, get to enjoy the scenery. (And did we mention that Sid and his bevy of boys do a bunch of the work for us?) The Shad Smoke is a night of hazy revelry, of drinking and carousing in a blur of applewood smoke and bourbon, and everyone, from our customers, to our staff, to the foot traffic up and down Center Place, gets to check out the party. So we’re excited to see y’all when you make your way to the Herdic on Friday—but be sure to reserve a table, because Glory has been spreading the word about our fast-dwindling stash of reservations for the evening. And the features will be…
- New England clam chowder with Tebbs’ sweet corn
- Smoked artic char rillettes, with capers and scallion, garnished with a Walnut Run Farm arugula salad and served with cucumber and toast for spreading
- Sid Furst’s famous smoked shad filet, served with herbed new potatoes and buttered asparagus and a dish of the Herdic’s horseradish dill mayonnaise
- Abby’s delicious key lime pie, with housemade graham crust and a local black raspberry coulis (Sid’s granddaughter Abby helps us out with dessert every year!)
And don’t forget to stop in next Friday, June 3, to check out the wonderful works of Paul Bozzo in our lounge!