So yeah, if you’re alive in Philly right now, you know that summer has officially struck. Last week in this city was pretty tough for just about everyone, as temperatures flirted with a downright evil three digits for several days in a row.

With the onset of the heat comes the varying coping mechanisms of the citizens of our city: overweight men taking their shirts off in public, kids swimming in the Logan Circle fountain, freeze pop sales booming.

Many are a little more pedestrian in their flight from the humidity, preferring to escape to their favorite bar and cozy up to a beautifully perspiring beer. And this time of year, bitterly citric hoppy beers are about as refreshing as things can get.

Enter Double Jack.

Straight out of Paso Robles in sunny central California, Firestone Walker Brewing Company has been all about making good beer in a world defined by the crappy and cheap since brewing their first in 1996.

Funny enough, neither of the brothers-in-law (Adam Firestone and David Walker) had any experience brewing beer before they decided to make what they both considered good beer. But instead of giving up, they accidentally created a new style of brewing that makes damn good beer.

Now, let’s head back to Lemon Hill in the present, where Firestone Walker’s Double Jack is ready to hit your tongue hard. It’s a big Imperial IPA, and it’s got all the hop and alcohol it needs to live up to its billing. Not wanting to limit itself to the class of the hop bomb, Double Jack uses a hefty dose of nutty malt to help ease on the mind-melting bitter around mid-palate.

And let’s not forget about the aroma, an enticing cocktail of mixed, fresh citrus and robust earth that gets the nose to dive in head first before the mouth’s even made up its mind.

All said, this is a truly aggressive and delicious beer that will be calling your name the next time the weather outside borders on diabolical, which conveniently seems to be shaping up for this weekend. Don’t say we didn’t warn you. Now come get it in all 22 ounces of its glory.

It is not a series of books I ever intend to read or get to know or even marginally associate myself with beyond this post. But I do know that one of Lemon Hill’s sister restaurants is doing something particularly cool with it.

Over at Supper, Chef Mitch Prensky’s wife Jen has convinced her man to host a one-time dinner that aims to pay homage to a certain dinner party scene from the second book in the trilogy that seems to have every woman in the world all hot and bothered right now.

Be sure to leave Wednesday the 27^th of June open and your calendar, and head over to Foobooz for a full list of menu offerings for the evening.

You know, if that’s your sort of thing.

- Steve

The horror.

I don’t feel as though I need to get into the individual reasons as to why banning what I like to call “meat butter” is bad for anyone who appreciates food that tastes good, but if you’re tearing up while reading through the linked article, then you and I are in the same boat.

Sadly, it appears as though the California cause is lost. The ban is all but set in stone, while a few chefs will attempt an all but hopeless repeal from day one of the new era of flavorless monotony. For the liver-lovers here in Philadelphia, however, there is hope.

And solidarity.

Since rumors started to swirl regarding the ban of the delicacy in the Golden State, chefs all over our wonderful city have banded together in protest, dubbing all Fridays in the month of June Foie Fridays.

So far, our offerings have been spectacular. Week one featured a seared foie with a strawberry and black pepper gastrique. Week two was a seared foie sandwich on rye, because why the hell not. Last week, the foie went to its traditional mousse roots, topped in a mason jar with a Gewurtztraminer/black pepper gelée.

Lucky for us (and you, of course), June has 5 Fridays this year. While we’ve already run a pretty impressive fatty gamut up at Lemon Hill, we still have some time left to wow you and your impeccably tasteful tastebuds. Make sure you stop in for one of the last two, and show a little support for the finer things in life along the way.

- Steve

Our phone number should probably be accurate.

Our “Menu” tab should probably take you to an image of our menus when you click on it.

Our “About” tab probably shouldn’t redirect to an image of our barback Brian trying to shove a fork into an electrical socket…

So we gussied up a few little bits and bobs, rearranged a few pixels, and gave it all a fresh coat of paint. In the process, we thought of something else. Something awesome.

There are a few of you Lemon-Hill-lovers out there who got that reference to the one and only Brian up the page a little. But there are scores of you who don’t get it, and that’s because you haven’t gotten to know us yet. Sure, you may know Lemon Hill at this point. You may even come in once a week for dinner. But you don’t know the “who’s” of Lemon Hill, and we really want you to know us.

So – back to that “something awesome” – we have this page, right here. Call it a blog, call it a message board, call it whatever you’d like; if you keep a close eye on it, you’ll get to know who we are, what we do, and what’s really interesting us in today’s dining and drinking world, both in Philly and outside.

We – the entire Lemon Hill staff, from Keith our GM through Mike Jones the dishwasher/beatmaster extraordinnaire – will regularly post things here. Wonderful things. Places in the city we love. A cocktail in a little known bar you have to have. Our favorite sandwiches. Awesome upcoming events. Whole pages dedicated to making fun of Brian. And we’re hereby inviting you along for the ride.

So sit back, enjoy our nonsensical dribble, and get to know us a little. See you soon!

- Steve, server with big hair

It’s still summer, people, and that means hops are still key to any beer we’re going to fall in love with. Let’s introduce our newest romantic interest.

Those who know Oskar Blues Brewery will most certainly know the name Dale’s Pale Ale.  It’s been on the market for ten years now, and it is commonly seen as America’s first-ever hand-canned craft beer. You know all that canned craft beer you’ve been seeing from places like 21st Amendment and Sly Fox? You can thank Dale’s Pale Ale for that. The stuff is legendary. OG, even.

What better way is there to pay homage to one of the most recognizable beers in America today than to introduce the world to its evil cousin?

Enter the Deviant.

This brew is nasty. Its own creators call it the Devil Incarnate. The nose is all hop, as if the hop itself attained sentience and decided it was going to be angry all the time. The aroma is pure grapefruit and pine and hatred, and once you dive through its mirky haze into the foreboding copper liquid underneath, your palate is overtaken with hoppy and alcoholic malice. It’s got just enough sweet malt to throw you a life preserver and reel you back in before you lose yourself for good, but the finish is so preposterously pleasant that you’ll dive right back in without thinking about it.

Seriously, though, if you’re a hop head and you have yet to go on a date with the Deviant, do yourself a favor and order a tallboy at Lemon Hill today. Drink it out of a glass, drink it out of a can. It does not matter, so long as you love it the whole way down.

And speaking of Oskar Blues, you’ve heard about tomorrow, right?

Got those late summer blues weighing you down? Forget one last beach trip - everyone does that. Why don’t you stay in town on Tuesday the 21st of August (yes, that is indeed this coming Tuesday) and join us for a relaxing evening of great food and drink and some live entertainment?

On the ingestible side of things, we’ll be teaming up with the one and only Oskar Blues Brewery for a great barbecue-centric, beer-friendly prix fixe menu. For just $45 per person, you’ll enjoy three courses of delicious down-home barbecue feast favorites.

Your first course will be a big basket o’ biscuits (accompanied by some bacon jam, pickled okra, and green tomatoes) and gumbo. Sweet, sweet gumbo.

Moving on to the main course, this is where you’ll get to kind of choose your own adventure a bit. For proteins, you’ll have a choice of two of the following: smoked baby back ribs, charred beef short ribs, or smoked chicken. Accompanying your choice of meaty goodness, we’ll have a serious spread of some satisfying sides, including each of the following: barbecued baked beans, braised collard greens, corn with ancho chili barbecue butter, and hush puppies.

And finally, what good would a full-on, eat-til-you-explode barbecue feast be without a peach cobbler for dessert? Does it sound even better if we top it with our vanilla ice cream? (The answer is yes.)

‘But what if I really like beer?’, you ask. And we answer. We’ll be featuring all Oskar Blues, all night, with a full tap takeover as well as two specially-crafted firkins (!) made just for this event. Additionally, if you choose to enjoy our prix-fixe BBQ bonanza, you’ll have the option to add an all-you-can drink Oskar Blues beverage supplement for just $20. Twenty. Dollars. All the beers. Think about it.

As for the live entertainment, one of Lemon Hill’s best friends will be bringing his act – the Johnny Quartet – in for the evening to sling some blues while you’re drinking your Blues.

At this point, there will still be some among you that need further convincing. How about this: Were you aware that Oskar Blues – when not brewing some great stuff – also has its own cattle farm? Furthermore, did you know that we’ll be using said beef for this event?

Why haven’t you reserved a table yet?

Why yes, I took this with my cell phone.

The East Passyunk corridor is pretty much right between my apartment and my girlfriend’s, so if we’re bored and hungry and thirsty, we’re more often than not going to find ourselves occupying a stool somewhere along that particular strip.

Our go-to has become the Cantina over time, and I have seriously fallen in love with one of their cocktails. Allow me to gush.

The Verano Adentro (that’s “Endless Summer” for those playing at home) is one of those obviously refreshing but sneakily weird drinks that I tend to prey on, and it’s pretty much been my lifeblood since springtime.

You’ve got your blanco tequila, your Combier (pretty dang good orange liqueur), and lime juice, so you’re well on your way to a pretty okay margarita. But then, from some mad scientist’s own bar, a little bit of cucumber and jalapeño find their way into your drink.

The first sip is purely refreshing, all full of lime and cucumber. But then, just before you dive into the limitless bowl of nachos in front of you, you get that little bit of heat on your tongue, and you find yourself needing another sip. And another. And another. Before you know it, you’re on your third Verano Adentro, you’ve got a nasty five o’ clock shadow, and all your friends have left, but you don’t mind: your palate’s in heaven.

Get down to the Cantina soon, and join me in finding the perfect complementary beverage to that endless summer we’ve all been experiencing.

How could I say no on a boring Tuesday night when my phone rang and a friend told me he had an extra ticket to the inaugural Hop Chef Philadelphia competition? I enjoy food, I enjoy beer, and I particularly love any contest centered around the artful combination of each. Needless to say, I was there before I even hung up the phone.

This summer, Brewery Ommegang is putting on a sort of touring competition called Hop Chef, where big cities around America will see a handful of their favorite chefs go head to head in a crowd-and-judge pleasing cook-off. Last night, the tour hit Philly at the World Cafe Live, and there was no way I was missing it.

Jason Miller of Bella Vista Beer Distributor and Ben Fileccia of Sbraga waiting in line at Hop Chef Philly.

The 6 chefs competing were a veritable who’s who of the new Philly dining scene: Scott Schroeder of the South Philadelphia Taproom and American Sardine Bar, George Sabatino of Stateside, Jason Cichonski of Ela, Jon Cichon of Lacroix, Nick Elmi of the Rittenhouse Tavern, and Joe Cicala of Le Virtu.

Look at all of those links. These guys must be kind of a big deal or something.

A view of each chef’s station as they get mobbed by very hungry and thirsty people.

Each chef had to prepare 2 unique dishes using one of a handful of Ommegang’s brews: the BPA (a dry-hopped Belgian-style pale ale), the Witte (a spiced wheat ale), the Rare Vos (a fruity and spicy amber ale), the Hennepin (a traditional saison-style farmhouse ale), the Abbey Ale (a complex Dubbel-style ale brewed with licorice root and star anise), and the Three Philosophers (a blend of Ommegang’s Quadrupel Ale and Liefmans Kriek). Ommegang also provided a nice rarity in the form of its Biere d’ Hougoumont, a super limited release biere de garde that literally just hit the market. It’s delicious.

Chef Nicholas Elmi of the Rittenhouse Tavern plates hamachi and sea urchin with wheatgrass, citrus, and coriander to be paired with the Witte.

I won’t get into what each chef made with each beer, because, well, I was too distracted by the limitless tasting portions of delicious, life-giving beer to get to taste everything. I will say that – on the savory side of things – I was blown away by both Chef Schroeder’s hot roast beef sandwich (named after Chef Elmi, oddly enough) and Chef Sabatino’s smoked beef cheek with watermelon rind pickle and beer-boiled peanuts. For dessert, Chef Cichonski’s cheddar cheese panna cotta hit me right where I like savory sweets.

When all was said and done, Chef Schroeder walked out with the popular vote and Chef Sabatino got the judges’ approval by a narrow margin, earning him the right to compete for the ultimate Hop Chef spot later this year at Ommegang’s brewery in Cooperstown, New York.

I had a great time, and I got much more intoxicated than a human should be able to with a four-ounce glass in hand. I’ll call that a win any day. Cheers!

If you’ve been to Lemon Hill and paid attention to more than just the food and drink in front of you, you’ve probably noticed we’re a bunch of weird people.

Dan owns a scooter. Keith often forgets to shower before service. I don’t like Pearl Jam. Brian is from the Northeast. Kanaan deserves a blog post in weirdness all to himself.

Some of you may enjoy our weirdness and label it kindly as “quirkiness.” Others may just write us off as weird and ignore us while devouring a delicious soft-shell crab or two. Either way, we know who we are, and as weirdos, freaks, geeks, and nerds, we like surrounding ourselves with strange things, including the things we eat and drink. We’re much more apt to love something like a fermented black garlic puree than some simple mashed potatoes. We drink things that taste exactly like boozy onion powder and swear by their superior taste and place in great cocktails.

So naturally, our beer selections will lean just as much toward the weird and style-bending varieties available. For this edition of Booze We Love, we’re going to explore my new favorite in a style that not many east-coasters have experience with: the Black IPA.

As a newer brew, the Black IPA has been the center of stylistic controversy since it first hit the scene. Where’s it from? What should we call it? What should it taste, smell, and look like? You can find any number of opinion articles on beer blogs ballyhooing the style, with each probably calling it something different. Seriously, check out the name poll at the end of this nicely detailed write-up.

But whatever you want to call it, the style has certainly found a home amongst the exploratory drinkers (read: weirdos) of the world. Other than a pure sour, what could be weirder than mixing the bodily tenets of a bold, roasty, and spicy porter with the bright bite of some big and bad Pacific Northwestern hops?

In particular, the wonderful madmen up at Clown Shoes Brewing in Ipswich, Massachusetts, have created a beauty of a Black IPA. Their Hoppy Feet 1.5 is a revision of sorts. Not a revision of an inferior recipe, mind you, but more of a revision out of celebration, a revision of an already-great beer that makes it only better still.

A young brewery, Clown Shoes celebrated their one-year anniversary in December of 2010. As a tribute to all of the wonderful inebriates who helped put his offerings on the craft beer map in America, head brewer Gregg Berman revisited his recipe for Hoppy Feet, itself a wonderful Black IPA full of bright hops and delicious chocolate. The celebratory revisit beefed up all aspects of the brew, including two post-brew dry-hopping sessions, resulting in a deep, dark, complex, and hoppy monster of a Black IPA that – in my opinion – is rivaled only by Stone’s15th Anniversary Escondidian Imperial Black IPA. That’s some seriously good company, and the comparison is well-earned. The stuff is dope.

Come into Lemon Hill now and sweet-talk your server or bartender enough and you may just find yourself drinking a full 22 ounces of this incredibly rare beer for the remarkable price of only $18. Get a bottle, get a few glasses for a few friends, and come get weird with us. You won’t regret it.

The giant picture doesn’t lie: we’re preposterously excited to host a summer wine dinner on Monday July 30th.

We’ll be teaming up with our good buddy Ryan Fonash of Vintage Imports to present a mildly insane 4-course menu that you can read along with on the flyer above. Seriously guys, look at that. That’s 8 plates of food and 4 glasses of wine for $48 per person. And you can see the individual items, right? Snails in blankets? Cured foie? Smoked pork loin? White port?!

While we go evaluate our current mental state, we encourage you to make your reservations for this dinner. Space is limited, and we’ll only be hosting two seatings for the entire night, at 6pm and 8pm. Give us a call at (215) 232-2299 or email us at info@lemonhillphilly.com and we’ll be happy to save you a seat. See you there!