Today is June 05, 2020 and in the world of navigating through COVID-19 the area we live in is finally starting to slowly open up.
As this is the first day for restaurants to begin to open their doors, Gary and I were looking forward to venturing out. Deciding what restaurant to go to was our first consideration. Especially since we have a few of our local favorites to choose from.
We decided on Four Dogs Tavern.
Their food is always excellent. We have dined indoors, but we had never previously dined out in their outdoor seating. This would be a new experience for us this time at Four Dogs. Not to mention having to work through all the new regulations set up by the government.
The Reservation Process
Our first step, call for reservations.
Believe us.
This process cannot be ignored. Not only is it required by the new regulations, we knew we would be competing with many other people who were also looking forward to dining out. For now, there is no showing up without reservations.
We were told that protocol requires reservations so that even if there is an open table, you’ll be politely told to go to your car, call in for reservations, then return and let the hostess station know you have reservations. We heard from someone else the government may require this for tracking reasons.
UPDATE 06.09.2020: They can now accept walk-ins!
There is a limited time that you will have to enjoy your experience. For this time, it was 75 minutes.
So, as not always predicted, the weather decided not to be sunny. In fact, similar to the last couple of days, severe thunderstorms were predicted.
Here Gary and I are ready to go, but with the possibility of storms we weren’t sure if our reservations would be canceled. It was raining off and on and there could be pop up storms. So we waited and called to confirm that are reservations were still on. We finally got the thumbs up about an hour before our reservation time.
At this point, we discovered that there were 2 sections to Four Dog’s outdoor seating. One section has a canopy and another part that has tables more open with just umbrellas for protection.
Our reservations were with the table with the umbrellas. Therefore, a little more probable of getting wet. We fared really well. I did bring my poncho rain jacket. Which I ended up needing towards the end.
Our food stayed very well protected under the umbrella.
Getting Seated
Our reservations were at 5:00pm and we pretty much got there right on time. We found a place to park right up front, and noticed right away that the usual door entrance into the tavern has a sign that says “staff entrance only”.
We ended up following some people towards the back of the building where there was a hostess station set up. There was a couple ahead of us who were picking up their food to go. So the hostess station serves as both seating and “to go food”.
While we were waiting, Gary being Gary, recognized the owner and executive chef, David Cox, (who himself was wearing a face mask) from the Four Dogs Tavern website and introduced himself.
We got the opportunity to talk to David a little later and learned more about how Four Dogs was negotiating through the temporary shutdown and new yellow phase protocol.
As we were seated, we were quickly introduced to Summer, our server.
Personally I feel her name reflects her personality. She was happy and pleasant and worked to make our meal as enjoyable as possible. She introduced us to the “Menu Scan Me”or if we preferred a paper menu. Their paper menu is a one time use that gets thrown away. Being environmentally friendly and relatively tech savvy, we opted for the scan me menu. Not surprisingly, it was pretty easy to use. Give it a try below yourself, you’ll see it works quite well!
If you check the menu before you go, it will allow you to take less time when you’re there.
What We Came For, Eating!
We started off with drinks. I went for the Cosmopolitan and Gary went for the Bourbon Peach Lemonade Punch. We were both happy with our choices. The Cosmo was pleasingly drier than I expected and just as delicious. At the same time that we ordered our drinks we ordered the rest of our meal. Which was really important to do since our time was limited.
For our appetizer we decided to share the Pear Salad, which was garnished with bacon, bleu cheese, and caramelized pecans. For a small up charge of only $1.50, we decided to have it officially split instead of doing it ourselves. We opted for that and were very pleased at the outcome.
Next came the main meal. Which for those of you who know me, know that it isn’t always a easy decision and comes with a lot of questions. For me, I had it narrowed down to one of Four Dog’s featured specials of the day (Halibut) or their Fish Taco. David Cox had mentioned the Halibut as being very good so that was swaying my decision. He also told us how they altered the menu to fit the new protocol.
Gary quickly knew his choice, Chicken Franchaise. The Chicken Franchaise was new for this outing, but is now on their regular menu.
I finally landed with the Halibut which was excellently prepared. It was nicely sautéed, topped with a sherry gasterique and included a Mediterranean humus and Mediterranean salsa.
Gary’s Chicken Franchaise was equally amazing. The chicken had a lemon supreme sauce, along with wilted Spinach.
We enjoyed our meal with a glass of smooth Petite Syrah, with hint of blackberries and dark plum.
Even though all the food came out in a timely manner, when it came time to order a dessert, our time was up. Yep, and we didn’t want to overstay our welcome.
That meant that we had to decide if we were going to skip the dessert or bring it home. One of the dessert choices was Rice Pudding. Gary was not going to let that go. He was sold. So I figured why not, and joined him with ordering one of my own.
However, I still had a hankering for another Cosmo. It was that good. So we checked with Summer to see if they could do cocktails to go and the answer was YES! I was very pleased to hear that. Cosmo to go!
So how was the rest of our overall dining experience?
Well as we mentioned earlier, it was wet out. When we arrived, there was just a little mist. However, as our time progressed, it did start to rain a little harder. We had an large umbrella covering our table. It did its job and kept our food dry. We pretty much stayed dried, except at one point I realized that my back side was getting a little wet, so I put my rain poncho on my back side. Maybe I should have had my chair pushed in a little more?
Our table was a little further out so the food had to work its way to us through the rain. We just kind of laughed about it to ourselves. It wasn’t like there was a major downpour, so it really did not affect the way it tasted or looked. It added more to the adventure!
The Wrap Up
While we were eating there were several things that we observed.
Four Dogs is a tavern that also caters to the Marshalton Inn next door. David Cox owns both, so they work in conjunction with each other. They both have kitchens and we were fascinated to watch from our table’s vantage point as food was being brought over from one building to the next. The servers did hold umbrellas to cover the food as they walked over.
Everyone was working really hard to follow all the guidelines.
We watched as one table would be finished of service and the staff was there to spray and disinfect the table before the next service.
People were wearing masks. Staff wore their masks constantly and patrons donned their masked if they moved from their table for any reason.
The tables were well spaced out from each other. There was no question as to whether there was enough space between them.
It was an adventure that we’re glad to share with everyone. It turned out really well, and everything went smoothly.