Do You Serve Espresso?

I've been wanting to check-out Audrey Claire for a while.  Living in Philly for over 7 years now, and being the big foodie that I am, it's almost sacrilege that it took me this long to visit!  As we know, I am such a big fan of Twenty Manning, that my expectations for Audrey Claire were already set pretty high; perhaps they were set a little too high...

The restaurant is your classic Philadelphia rowhome with a long/narrow/open floor plan converted into a dining area filled with two-tops and a small open kitchen.  Like most smaller restaurants in the city, Audrey Claire is a BYOB, and like a lot of BYOBs the menu had many diverse offerings created for sharing.  My comrade for the evening and I tried our fair share of the menu starting with the Pumpkin Risotto, which was highly recommended by our waiter but fell very flat and lacked the richness I was desiring.  Next up was the Bosc Pear and Goat Cheese Flatbread, which was far better than the Risotto but still not the delightful treat I had hoped for.  For the entrees, the rack of lamb certainly pleased my taste buds; it was quite delicious.  However, the Paparelle with mushrooms was completely boring and tasteless.  And, lastly in the hopes of ending things well, for dessert we shared the lavender creme brulee which was so rich in lavender it tasted like I was literally eating a  bar of soap or a candle.  Tres mauvais!

Overall, the food was a big disappointment, but we made up for it by poking fun at our waiter (he deserved it) and amusing ourselves one way or another as best we could since our taste buds certainly were not.  Oh, and one more point of negativity to note were the wine glasses, which were actually shot glasses and had no shape whatsoever.  We spent more time refilling our glasses than we did lifting our forks.  Oh, one more, hence the title...they do not serve espresso.  Not my favorite Audrey of all time.