Date Night: Streetcar Taps, Hathorne and Bobbie’s Dairy Dip

Date Night is a multipart road map for everyone who wants a nice evening out, but has no time to plan it. It’s for people who want to do more than just go to one restaurant and call it a night. It’s for overwhelmed parents who don’t get out often; for friends who visit the same three restaurants because they’re too afraid to try someplace new; and for busy folks who keep forgetting all the places they’ve driven past, heard about, seen on social and said, “Let’s remember that place next time we go out.”

Though I’ve dismissed it for years as just another way to get from here to there, I’ve grown to love the funky bones of Charlotte Avenue. These days we say it has “grit,” which is just another way to convey its combination of historic charm, growing number of places to get a $15 cocktail and lingering randomness of an area in transition. 

The five-block stretch between 46th and 51st alone is a choose-your-own-adventure paradise. Get a tattoo, a hairdo and legal advice; comb through overstuffed racks of clothes at two thrift shops; breathe the deliciously musty air of an old used bookstore; eat a burger made of ground pork and soy meal near a statue of a pig wearing overalls; get takeout pizza or Chinese from establishments I’ve never seen a living soul enter or exit; and watch a young man show off serious skateboard moves most afternoons in the always-empty Truist bank parking lot. 

You can also park your car once — easily! for free! — and have a triple-patio date night.

Stop 1: Streetcar Taps and Garden

I first visited Streetcar when it opened in late February — not to review, just to support. A few people braved the back patio then, but I have a silly quirk about not shivering while I eat, so we snagged the last high-top inside and watched the crowd come and go. Six months later, they’re settled in, humming and packing out the patio, which, as one of the owners said on my recent visit, “kinda does the work for us.” It’s a true Goldilocks spot: Not too big, not too small, not a scene and featuring plenty of seating options (round iron tables on gravel in the way back; picnic tables on turf and lots of umbrellas). The salvaged Sylvan Park Antiques sign on the wall at the bottom of the stairs is a nice touch, and ironic as it’s now an antique itself.

Despite the name, Streetcar Taps excels at much more than beer. Their drink list is an even balance of drafts, bottles and cans, wine and cocktails that don’t require furtive Googling to figure out what the ingredients are. I loved my Garden Maggie (Arette reposado, fruit, lime agave): It’s one of those sneaky drinks where the fruitiness masks the alcohol, so you have a few then wonder why your face feels weird. The Tomato Joe (Del Maguey Mezcal, bloody mary mix, Hach’t Sauce, Good People Muchacho Lager) is a very Husband Dom drink, but not for everyone. Not sure that a mash-up of a spicy bloody mary and michelada needs mezcal.

We had a pound of wings (six), half Joelton (dry, hot) and half Carolina (wet, mustard), along with the Vegan Cowboy, an upscale Frito pie loaded with kidney and pinto beans. Chef Carter Hach (pronounced Ha, as in the aforementioned Hach’t Sauce) and staff do a lot in a little kitchen, and they do it for everyone. It’s rare for a place that serves speckwurfel, currywurst, chicken skins on salad, six kinds of wings and Wagyu beef sliders on a small-ish menu to even consider a meatless dish beyond the obligatory Caesar, but Hach understands that veg-heads deserve just as much protein as everyone else. Give me his Vegan Cowboy over gloppy bar nachos any day. And give me a side of Woo Girl Ranch to drizzle on top, just because I’m in love with the name.

Stop 2: Hathorne

It’s a three-minute walk between Streetcar’s back patio and the iconic front patio of Hathorne. I drive by often at night, see diners talking and laughing under the golden glow of strung lights and think, I want to be those people. But that will likely never happen, because I love the interior too much. 

Restaurants are my church in the sense that I go there in search of connection and communion. I’ve always felt this on some level, but never fully understood how similar churches and restaurants are until I visited Hathorne, which is a renovated Methodist church fellowship hall. Instead of banquettes they kept the pews. A hymn board hangs above the bar, telling people to “love the guest; share the food” instead of which verses to read and songs to sing. It’s not overt: There are no cloud-surfing portraits of Jesus. More of a nod than a theme.

That said, the menu has some fire and brimstone. Of the six small plates we tried, four had such strong flavors I could only have a few bites — and I am no delicate flower. The yuzu-compressed-watermelon salad was beautiful, but overworked with a thick layer of hoja santa (a peppery herb) granita on top that left me confused instead of refreshed. The balance of pasta to eggplant was off in the charred eggplant caramelle — was there any eggplant at all? I couldn’t swear to it — and the fermented pepper butter, which dominated everything, would’ve been better served with a thimble, not a ladle. More enjoyable dishes included the red snapper crudo, with its light tomatillo broth and super fresh cucamelon, and the frites, round whole-potato cuts with the perfect mush-to-crisp ratio. Hathorne’s current menu has twice as many small plates as entrées, so clearly the purpose is to share, but even so it’s a lot of loud flavors to mix together in one belly.

Stop 3: Bobbie’s Dairy Dip

If you’re up for a stroll after Streetcar and Hathorne, Bobbie’s is always there for you — unless it’s closed, which happens earlier than you think. If you roll up for your dipped cone — I’m a hot fudge sundae girl myself — and see someone wearing an apron and holding a hobby horse in the back of the line, there will be no cream for you, my friend. The staff at Bobbie’s used to give the hobby horse to the last person in line right at closing time, but everyone hated being the bearer of bad news so they just kept passing the hobby horse back, and the line never stopped. Now an employee holds the hobby horse and nicely lays down the law. There’s nothing special about Bobbie’s, and everything is special about Bobbie’s, and if there’s a finer way to end a date night than beating out the hobby horse and sucking on a shake while the cars whip by on Charlotte, I can’t imagine what it is.