Everyone is happy at The Post. On a Friday afternoon, three cooks are laughing behind the bakery counter. When I return a week later, three new cooks — or who knows — are laughing again.
The waiters, too, are all happy. Not the giddy, storemandated affability that drives you nuts. Just the calm joy of a person who’s happy to be at work.
Happiness inhabits the place, an old VFW that was chicly remodeled and restored into a post-industrial lodge. It keeps smiles on the faces of the folks who have to wait tables and the folks who have to wait for tables.
Luckily, the lunch and dinner I ate at The Post came with no wait, though a waiter did say it’s downright impossible nowadays to get a table without at least having to take a walk around the block on weekend nights.
The Post has two specialties: beer and chicken. We’ll get to both of those in a bit, but there’s a lot of other food worth talking about.
Like the baked ceramic bowl of warm pimento goat cheese. The cheese is pulsed together with cherry red peppers, eggplant and a few other vegetables and herbs. It’s served with grilled garlic breadsticks cut from a focaccia roll, and cauliflower that is lightly pickled in red and green chilies and onion. It’s gooey and warm, and if people are eating this once a week, no wonder they’re so happy here.
For meals, The Post serves both individual dishes and family style buckets. Sides come in two sizes and are often shared at the table. Many of these were great.
A seasonal side was roasted butternut squash with mushrooms, pickled red cabbage, green onion and lots of garlic. It was robust, and the texture of all the parts in the dish was well designed.
Collard greens are cooked down with butter and bits of slow-roasted pork shoulder. There’s a tanginess in there too that is probably vinegar. Mashed potatoes are whipped with a lot of butter and cream and served with brown gravy. Green chili mac and cheese was a favorite: shell pasta baked with green chilies, breadcrumbs and a sweet, light cheese mixture.
But the sides are all second fiddle to the chicken. The Post does offer barbecue, catfish, roast beef and daily entrée specials, but the menu highlights the chicken, extolling The Post’s humanely raised birds that are brined for hours to retain succulence. You can get chicken in three forms: fried, rotisserie or chicken fried.
The rotisserie chicken is by far the best. It is juicy, expertly cooked, seasoned well and pieces are meaty. The fried chicken, I think, suffered a little bit by association. It was, compared to the rotisserie bird, cooked askew of perfect, a little less meaty and certainly less flavorful. The chicken fried chicken, which comes on feather light waffles (and which would compete for ‘Best Waffle’ at the Waffle Fair on their own), was a bit tough. The meat was cut for scaloppini, and although I wolfed down the whole plate, I just always had that rotisserie chicken on my mind.
And, of course, there’s the beer. The Post has about two dozen regular brews that rotate through the menu. I had the Big Rosie, a dry and drinkable porter; the Right Side Amber, which was loaded with American hops; and the Ol’ Zippy, a light and tasty throwdown. Then there was the special cocktail — called something about Reykjavik (I’m in a chicken and beer coma at this point) — with vodka, crème de cassis and ginger beer. It was pink and it was delicious.
You can’t guarantee happiness in life, but it seems like The Post is onto something. Like all Big Red F restaurants (Zolo, Jax, Centro), every detail is planned. The Post does casual dining and chicken and beer right, and if that doesn’t make you happy, then who knows what will.
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