Red Sky treats diners to ambience and a great meal

By Carrie Caine
Collegian Staff
September 20, 2006

Showing up for a reservation a full hour late is usually not the way to secure a delicious $30-per-person meal on a Friday night, but getting to know your friendly restaurant host while waiting for some tardy companions to arrive can help save your table and your dinner. The Red Sky Lounge was more than accommodating when it came to our Philadelphia traffic blues.

After fighting our way through Friday afternoon rush hour traffic and dealing with the joys of traveling the Broad Street subway line, Old City was a welcome, but crowded, respite from the stress of commuting. The streets were bustling with diners and shoppers taking advantage of the good weather and the final night of Restaurant Week discounts.

Restaurant Week provides a great way to get a feel for the pricey joints in town without dropping too much cash, and Red Sky, located at Second and Market Streets, has a stylish atmosphere with velvet cushions and scarlet lighting that provides a sultry escape from the hectic life of the average La Salle student.

The first course was an exercise in decision-making, with a menu of delicious choices including tuna tartare (that’s raw tuna over seasoned raw cabbage, which tastes a lot better than it sounds), crispy coconut shrimp skewers, thai chicken bites, French fries served with five different gourmet dipping sauces and—my personal favorite—lobster quesadillas.

The Caesar salad, a bonus course for Restaurant Week, didn’t make me sick, but was otherwise unimpressive. Whether it was the too-sharp dressing, the slightly wilted lettuce or the stale pita topping the whole affair, something in that salad was not working.

The entrée menu was as excitingly varied as the appetizers. Meals included sesame-crusted tuna, pear sake salmon in rice paper, crab cakes, pomegranate-glazed ribs and sesame-orange chicken served with mashed potatoes.

The meals were served with delicious al dente green beans that provided some extra snap to the night. The entrees were all delicious, but the sesame tuna was a particularly good choice. The mashed potatoes were also a surprising hit, with exactly the right amount of potato and exactly the right amount of mashed.

The dessert came not with a menu, but on an enormous plate that dwarfed the three tartlets they served. Though all tasty, I have no idea what they were because the waitress didn’t tell us what was coming and the server didn’t tell us what we were being served. Such are the woes of the $30 diner.

For the over-21 readers, the bar and lounge offer a host of inventive and delicious drinks at exorbitant Center City prices. The La Salle student population might be more interested in Red Sky as an alumni hot spot five years from now rather than a Friday-night hangout.

The regular menu includes a broader range of options, including spring rolls, lo mein and fried rices of different varieties, as well as dim sum appetizers. Red Sky also offers a number of different salads as alternatives to their unfortunately weak Caesar.

Diners can typically expect to pay between $15 and $25 for entrees and around $10 for appetizers and salads. Drinks cost between $5 and $10, and come in carafes for those planning on settling in for the evening.

Red Sky is accessible to non-driving La Salle students (good luck finding parking, by the way) from the Market Street subway line and (for those of us who love to walk) from the Ridge-Spur line that ends at Eighth and Market Streets.

Although my experience was somewhat harrowing due to traffic obstacles, the meal was delicious and the atmosphere was enjoyable. Red Sky offers a night of ambience and merriment for the culinary adventurous and the monetarily established.

cainec1@lasalle.edu