Sahm's Place

 Tim and I knew we wanted to go to one or two of the Chow Down Midtown restaurants, but we like to be sure we're getting a good deal.  A lot of the restaurants on the list you could easily eat at for $30 a person under normal circumstances, so you're really not saving any money, and that misses the point of the event.  Luckily, several of the restaurants were offering 2-for-$30.  That's much more our speed.  Sahm's Place was one of those, so we decided to give it a try.

Peppy Naners

 Sahm's was actually a pretty great deal.  For $30 we got one flight of Bier beers to share, a starter to share, two salads, two entrees, and a dessert.  Not too shabby.  The beer was great--Bier is by far our favorite local brewery, and to be honest it was one of the factors in our decision to eat at Sahm's.  There were tasters (from right to left in the picture) of Special K Kolsch (a German style lager), Weizengoot (a Hefeweizen), Smoked Brown (an American style Brown), and CLA (an American pale ale).  I liked all except the CLA, and that's because I don't care for the hoppiness of pale ales; Tim loved it because he does love hoppy beers.  The Weizengoot is one of our all-time favorite Bier beers (we've had it many times before), and the Special K is a solid and very drinkable lager.  Brown was good, too, with a definite smokiness to it (guess they named it well).

Hoggmann salad

On to the food...we got the Peppy Naners to start:  banana peppers stuffed with Smoking Goose garlic sausage and cream cheese, then wrapped in crisped bacon and topped with melty Muenster cheese.  These were pretty insanely rich, but delicious.  Think of a jalapeno popper on steroids.  There was some ranch dressing to dip them in, in case they weren't already enough to give you a heart attack.  The portion was one pepper per person, but it was enough, and was a great way to start the meal.

Pickled Belly

We both opted for the Hoggmann salad:  mixed greens with roasted tomatoes, small slices of capacolla, chopped cucumber and radishes, basil, and a parmesan vinaigrette. I would never have thought to put those items together (well, most of them), but it made sense and turned out to be a tasty and coherent salad!  Room Four often puts basil in their salads, and I liked it here, too.  Just adds an extra something.  The radishes were nice and crunchy, the tomatoes a bit sweet, and the capacolla a touch spicy.  The vinaigrette was also very good.  Thumbs up.

London Broil

 I got the "Pickled Belly" as my main--pork belly that was crispy on the outside but tender inside sitting atop pickled veggies (cauliflower, cucumber, and carrots) and a soy-sauce based broth, and topped with wontons that were stuffed with a spinach-cream cheese sort of thing.  Overall, it was really pretty good, although the pickled veg were cold--they clearly hadn't been warmed through--which was a bit jarring.  The broth was good but borderline salty if you got too much.  They had a good start on creating this dish, it just didn't come together completely.  Tim, on the other hand, loved his London Broil with fingerling potato hash, Swiss Chard, asparagus, and parsley butter.  He gave me a bite, and it was truly delicious.

Fortune Cake

  For dessert, we got the "Fortune Cake."  It consisted of a fried wonton that was stuffed with a sweet cream cheese mixture, and the whole thing was topped with chocolate sauce, whipped cream, and strawberries.  It was a nice combo of sweet and creamy and fried things.  My only complaint was that it was a bit tough to cut because wonton skins tend to be a little tough, and so all of the insides squished out.  But it still tasted great, and wasn't a deal breaker by any means.

It looks like Sahm's has some good weeknight deals, and they do a Tap Takeover with Bier Brewery every once in awhile.  Tim and I agreed that we'd have to give this Sahm's location another try sometime!

Website:  Sahm's Place