Settling In Wilmington

Wilmington. As my mother would say,"God love him, but..." Sometimes you make it just so hard brag about you, dear little city. The Brandywine river and parks surrounding downtown certainly get a good word from me, but the downtown area does not.

I moved to downtown Wilmington specifically so I could walk to restaurants, drug stores, etc., but dang it if the downtown isn't dead after 5, or just doesn't have much going on of interest. A soon-to-come Qdoba on Market St. is actually exiting news. And I can't wait to see what comes to the LOMA revitalization project. Anything that doesn't close after lunch would be good.

What I love about Philly is its walkability. I park my car at the beginning of the weekend, and never use it until it's time to drive back to Wilmington. There's not much to walk to in downtown Wilmington in the evening, and when you do like I did this past weekend, you run up against not one, but two restaurants that are out of food. Seriously. Two.

That all was a longwinded way of explaining how we ended up at Washington Street Ale House, one of Cherry Tree Hospitality Group's three restaurants lined up in a row on Washington St. in downtown Wilmington. Not really great, but at least it was open and serving food. We were quite hungry at this point, so settled.$20 for shrimp scampi pasta with a fried Parmesan hat and dull, rubbery garlic bread stick is a bit expensive for the Red Lobster quality of the dish. (Not my dish, or remarks.)This Cali Reuben Burger with coleslaw, thousand island dressing, and Swiss cheese had a black bean burger subbed at my request. I'm not upset with the store bought puck of black bean burger (expected), but at how dry the burger was. With coleslaw and dressing, this thing should have dripped juices when I picked it up. Instead it was so dry I resorted to dipping my burger into ketchup. The bland, lightly dressed coleslaw added nothing to the burger, and I peeled back the lid to find all the sauce soaked into the bun. My burger was dead cold, too. Probably sat on the line while they were getting the pasta dish ready; it was piping hot.

Beer list is decent at Washington Street Ale House. It's an ale house!

They did a mushroom veggie cheese steak the last time I was there almost two years ago, but not no mo'. Apparently, I had to dip my sandwich in ketchup back then, too.

Wahington Street Ale House
1206 Washington St., Wilmington, DE 19801
302-658-2755