The Babe
If there's two things I think Phantom Gourmet fans love, it's craft cocktails and craft sandwiches and you can get them both at The Babe in the witch city of Salem.
The Babe is a neighborhood bar and sandwich shop. It's named after my first son who's Abraham or a the babe, but meant to be kind of this embodiment of a person that you're always excited to see that you feel very comfortable with. And that's what we are as a neighborhood restaurant.
Seth Gerber owns a bunch of great places in the Boston area and now he's headed up to Salem where he has completely revamped this concept that used to be an Irish pub for the last few decades.
The menu is inspired by Northeastern sandwich culture. And it's kind of a nod to adults being kids. It's all the fun things that I had growing up. We just took things from New York things from Philadelphia, things from Boston, and kind of give her a little personal touch on each one.
I think this place has a great fun neighborhood and feel. The staff is really welcoming. Bartenders love to ask you what you like so they can make you the craft cocktail that's going to work for you. It's all just a really fun theatrical cool feel.
This location has been a restaurant going all the way back to the early 60s and 50s. There's the old tin ceiling. There's the original back bar. We're super lucky to have a little outdoor patio kind of hang spot. It's just a perfect place to have a couple bite bites to eat and hang out.
They call this the mozzarella pocket. It's kind of like a mozzarella stick but it's got the buffalo mozzarella surrounded by bread. Then they fry it add some panko bread crumbs serve it with a big side of marinara sauce.
You get that crispy bite, you get that cheese pull. You just get that delicious kind of saltiness and if you want we serve it with some spicy marinara if you want that tangy spicy this as well.
I will now attempt the cheese pull! I can’t go any higher!
If you're not getting at least a couple feet in front of your face with mozzarella, then please let us know there's probably something wrong with them.
I've been to Pat's and Geno's in Philadelphia. This is one of the best steak and cheeses that I have had. It's got a big mess of fresh steak, onions, provolone cheese, mushrooms, a fresh roll from Virgilio’s in Gloucester. This you will not see very often. That mozzarella pocket we talked about before it goes in inside the sandwich just to give an extra cheese flavor.
We throw a mozzarella stick on there, one of those mozzarella pockets and it just adds this crunch but also this cheese pull. Supposed to be a little bit of a surprise. It's kind of like a steak bomb taken to the next level.
I love when a restaurant takes a childhood favorite and makes it into an adult gourmet great item like the peanut butter and jelly that they do here, with brioche toast homemade peanut butter and jelly that they change seasonally. Right now they're doing blackberry and blueberry jelly. I mean, I just think it's cool you can get a peanut butter and jelly sandwich at a bar.
Peanut butter and jelly is my favorite all time sandwich. And we just wanted to celebrate the simplicity of it. It's it's sticky. It's sweet. It's a little salty from the peanut butter. It's just the perfect combination. And as a underrated bar snack, it's up there.
I grew up around this area trust me we do not full round when it comes to Italian sandwiches. This is a gigantic delicious Italian sub. We do ours with genoa salami. We use prosciutto cotto and then we finish it with capicola as a spicy little kick in there. And it's just topped with a ton of goodies and it's served on a beautiful braided seated roll, and it comes together as that perfect balance of richness, fat, acidity, all the things that you want to kind of make your mouth water.
The meatball sub is delicious. It's homemade meatballs, marinara sauce that fresh roll. But what makes this one unusual is they make it with burrata….it really melts into the meatballs and the bread and the marinara sauce. It's really tasty.
Burrata is an unbelievable style of mozzarella and it just gets broken over the top of the meatballs. It adds this really silky rich texture to a really good meatball sub just takes it over the top.
The Reuben seems to be making a comeback and I love it. It's made with that high quality corned beef on marble rye. It's got Dijon mustard, Swiss cheese, coleslaw and 1000 Island dressing. It's just this huge monstrous Reuben. It’s a perfect balance of that crunch from the coleslaw, and then the tangy cheese and the spicy mustard. It's just the ultimate nod to New York style Reuben.
For those of you that have been torturing the Phantom Gourmet staff about covering more vegetarian items, this one's for you. We do both chickpea and fava bean. And then we blend that with a ton of fresh herbs and spices, onion, garlic, all the good stuff. Those get rolled up and fried to order and just served with so many sauces and different accompaniments. It's really really yummy.
The lemon ricotta doughnuts are great for dessert you can share them that really tasty made with a lot of cinnamon sugar over a seasonal jam. It's just a sort of a play on Zeppoli. We do ours with some ricotta, a ton of lemon zest, they get coated in cinnamon sugar, and then served with that seasonal jelly. They're just little crispy. They're lemony, they're bright, they're delicious.
Babe is a term of affection and I gotta tell you, I love this place. I mean craft cocktails craft sandwiches in a really fun feel with a great staff and customers that are here to have a good time. Check out the babe in Salem.
