You're just as likely to see Blake Morgan behind the line in the kitchen with his sous chef Ben Smith as you are in the dining room, roaming the floor and making sure you're happy with your meal. He and his staff really mean that—although not in the crass, bottom-line kind of way. No, it's more of a genuinely welcoming sentiment. “We're just happy you chose us, out of all the places you could have decided to spend your time,” he says. “We truly are happy you're here,” he says, flashing a smile that comes easily and often.
You're also equally likely to see Morgan outside cutting the grass around the property, or, like on the day I met with him, emerge from the upstairs office wearing chinos and a polo shirt, looking as though he's ready for the golf course. The 45-year-old Morgan is the kind of do-it-yourself, hands-on chef-owner who enjoys all the aspects of the business. He's been operating his namesake establishment since February 2005, when he took over for the previous owners of Appennino, where he'd worked for four years as the head chef. Its Italian approach and more formal feeling sharply distinguish it from the comfortable space Morgan has created with his staff.
Diners expect a certain level of graciousness with a dining experience, but Morgan's distinguishes itself, too, by its attentive but unobtrusive approach to your dining experience, which comes from well-trained servers who know what they're doing, know what they're serving and care about it. “That part has really gotten lost. Dining is not an anonymous exchange. To me, that's the more intriguing part of the business. We're really glad you're here. Let us nourish you,” he says.
The tagline to the restaurant is “local flavor,” and while it pertains to the food, it more clearly represents this spirit.
It is local, insofar as it's close to the traffic of Cedar Crest Boulevard South, but when you meander north, past the Target, the road snakes through rolling Lehigh County countryside and there's markedly less traffic. Morgan's is situated catty-cornered to Cedar Crest. You may not see it easily from the road—there's no big sign—but when you see the old stone farmhouse you'll know you're there. (Oh, Pennsylvania. You and your old stone inns-turned-restaurants, how I love you.)
Morgan's strong work ethic has undoubtedly played a tremendous role in where he is today. His restaurant career began at age 15, with sudsy hands, at the Harrow Inne in Ottsville. In the 1980s and '90s, before the surge of professionalization in the culinary world, these careers were born a bit differently: you worked your way up through the ranks. Morgan began as a dishwasher, then pot washer, then salad maker. “I did all those things—peeling carrots, cleaning shrimp,” he says. He ended up assisting the chef on the hot line, and then paused at age 18 to enroll in the Culinary Institute of America; he's in good company in the Lehigh Valley, with Dorothy Doyle, Michael Adams, Lee Chizmar, etc. His debut after culinary school? Head chef of the Manor House Inn, from 1987 to 1990.
Of course, he possesses the chef's eye for quality and detail. He's had a longstanding relationship with vendors, an asset that's intangible to most diners but means you are eating good food. For many years Morgan has been purchasing his produce from Berghold's (at the Allentown Fairgrounds Farmers Market), known for its abundance of seasonally grown, local food in the summertime especially. “They'll pick through everything by hand to make sure they're selling me the best,” Morgan says.
Although the menu is fairly static, his classic French training well equips him to do anything with those essential skills. And so the specials are where Morgan can show his ingenuity in the kitchen, and where the local, seasonal aspect of dining at Morgan's comes in—the tag line is “local flavor,” after all. It's summer, and so we talk about the abundance of the harvest and doing as little as possible to ingredients, because you don't necessarily need to. “Think about a peach. How am I going to make it any better?”
Morgan's Restaurant
1079 Willow Street
Allentown
610.769.4100
morgansrest.net
Inside Dish:
The menu's classics are popular; any of the waffles
Reservations:
Suggested for weekends and holidays
Hours:
Breakfast: 7-11 a.m. Monday-
Saturday; Lunch and Dinner: 11:30 a.m.-9 p.m. Monday-Saturday; closed Sunday
Dress code:
Casual
Parking:
Ample lot onsite
Specials:
Happy Hour Monday-Friday, 4-6 p.m., half-price drinks and appetizers
Payment:
Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Discover
Other details:
The private room at Morgan's, which seats about 40 people, is very popular with the networking breakfast crowd, and is a repeat choice for bridal and baby showers, along with anniversary dinners and small family parties. Wines by the glass and by the bottle. The main dining room seats 100.
That straightforward, unfussy approach is all over the menu, which means Morgan's is truly one of those reliably straightforward restaurants that you can take the entire family to and everyone will find something delicious to eat. The main menu does not change regularly, so you're always going to encounter steak, salmon, lamb and those types of dishes. “We sell a ton of filet, salmon and crab cakes,” he says. Sans details, he diminishes the dishes—the salmon for example, is a sesame orange salmon served over coconut rice. The filet is treated as you might expect (mushrooms, caramelized onions, or brandy sauce—your choice); ditto for the jumbo lump crab cakes (roasted red pepper sauce). But those seasonal specials are worth checking out, and they allow Morgan to stretch as a chef and surprise the customer. When I was there, in July, he was brainstorming a buffalo chicken salad special served with watermelon and Gorgonzola—all on one plate.
An interesting option about Morgan's is the fact that you can order a dinner entrée for lunch, and a salad or sandwich for dinner; the versatility of the menu means you're not restricted. Put it another way—lunch and dinner are available all day, so if you want your biggest meal of the day to be the herb marinated rack of lamb with a mint and basil pesto for lunch, then Morgan's is your place. You have to admire a place that is going to appreciate your appetite—and respect it.
Although the menu is extensive, with soups (French onion, naturally), sandwiches, salads and nearly a dozen pasta offerings, breakfast is the secret of Morgan's: it's good, it's inexpensive and everything is made from scratch. You'll find two eggs your way with toast and cottage fries, which are cooked raw (rather than frozen) with onions and seasonings. You'll encounter the usual range of omelets, but also the chicken fajita omelet, a Cajun omelet with Andouille sausage and several frittatas.
Of course, there's the dessert-as-breakfast gamut: French toast (using sourdough, brioche or cinnamon raisin bread), crêpes, pancakes and waffles. “We make separate batters; lots of places will just make one and add stuff to it,” he says. When you see that the menu includes cornmeal pancakes and pumpkin waffles and apple pancakes and other offerings, it quickly becomes apparent why that's important. You wouldn't want cornmeal in your pumpkin waffle—or wait, would you?
Nevertheless, a fellow food writer friend aptly described breakfast at Morgan's as a great place “to drink coffee, eat breakfast and kill an hour or two reading the paper, just hanging out.” The pumpkin waffle is crisp, light and tastes as though it can't have more than a tablespoon or two of sugar in the batter. A gentle dollop of house-made whipped cinnamon butter rests on top, and seasonal fresh fruit adorns the side of the plate. You know how sometimes when you go out for breakfast and you're so stuffed and sickened you swear you can actually feel your insulin levels rising? Yeah, that's not likely the experience you'll have here. Don't believe me? I ate breakfast and then an hour or so later ate lunch.
The signature salad—the Morgan's salad—was a suitable follow-up to my breakfast, with grilled chicken served atop Romaine lettuce, candied spiced pecans, dried cranberries, roasted peppers and Gorgonzola cheese, with a lemon vinaigrette. It was prefaced by a sizable chunk of chewy rye bread, generously studded with caraway seeds—thank you, Morgan's, for remembering rye bread (a nod to the German heritage?). At first I removed the roasted peppers—Morgan even caught me doing this—because I was initially skeptical and because the salad was so enormous, I needed to literally wrangle it in. I had to remove some items to cut the whole thing up and toss it. Before he could chide me for my move, I added the peppers
in and found that the sweet-smoky taste worked well to bring out the sweet smoky taste of the pecans. I only wish I'd had room for dessert.
I'm warning you now: Morgan's is the kind of place with a dessert tray. If it's presented to you in person rather than on a printed menu, it's really hard to say no. Pastry chef Jillian Chevalier creates beautiful treats substantial enough for you to easily split with two or three people, and selections change seasonally except for choices such as the double chocolate cake and the peanut butter silk mousse pie. “We always have that,” explains one of the managers, Bill Delgado. “It's so popular we're out of it.” In autumn, expect pies that showcase the fall harvest, and comforting choices such as bread pudding.
The building's exterior is suggestive of its former life as an inn. In fact, Morgan says, the old stone structure dates back to before the Revolutionary war, and was always an inn. Those enormous stones that make up the interior walls—yeah, that's not a veneered surface. That's real. As for the décor? Well, let's talk about that. It's very 1980s and grandmotherly: think brass, dark mauve and teal, lace doilies. However, don't let that put you off. You're supposed to feel comfortable here. “When you own something you want people to be happy,” he explains. Of course, that's not always easy. “Some people walk in unhappy and will leave happy, with other people we try but no filet will fix that,” he says, laughing.
It's clear that Morgan's is a place that has no pretense of doing anything other than serving you tasty food at a fair price. “We just want you to have a comfortable, well-prepared and well-executed meal. We'll serve you a good meal at a fair price, and we'll thank you for it.” How's that for a switch?
