Surv is the kind of place that offers so many choices, it may be hard to decide exactly what to order. (We tend to enjoy this kind of problem.)
That’s not because the restaurant is unfocused; nor does it have to do with the fact that Surv essentially offers two personalities within one multifaceted menu. The indecision that a diner may face has little to do with any of these facts. It is, instead, the fact that both of those personalities are so strong and compelling that they have so much to offer. And therein lies the intelligence of the restaurant’s approach. You want to come back, because you can’t decide what to eat in one go. You have to come back, in order to eat what you couldn’t the first time.
This is the perfect approach for a restaurant that very easily becomes your neighborhood place—if this is your neighborhood. (And if it’s not, you might wish it were.) Seeing a serious dearth of dining options in Forks Township, Tim and Karen Widrick decided long before COVID-19 surfaced that their next venture would be in Forks. It’s a great and somewhat surprising choice; despite the township’s proximity to Downtown Easton’s great dining scene, it doesn’t really have much to offer for dinner beyond pizza, bar food and pan-Asian fare. Surv did some pop-up dining events within the strip mall complex where they’re located before the restaurant opened—it built up a lot of anticipation. “They’ve welcomed us with open arms,” says Karen. “People here really want their own place, right in the community.”
Karen and Tim Widrick
You might recognize the names Tim and Karen Widrick; Surv is brainchild of the team behind Edge Restaurant in Bethlehem, Lotus Restaurant Group, which also includes Spencer and Carissa Cobb. So you know a few things right off the bat: Surv, which opened just this past November, is well run and well designed, the food is well plated, imaginative and above average. It’s the execution of the restaurant’s m.o. that’s intriguing.
To wit: You have the casual, vibrant side, with its mural-covered wall and orange chairs, long bar and wide-open, wood-fired pizza oven. If you use your imagination and pretend we’re not in a pandemic for a minute, it becomes easy to see that this is the place where you’d walk in without a care in the world, order a few pizzas with some friends or extended family, and hang out for a bit. (Sounds dreamy, right?)
At the very back of the restaurant (it has a side and a back entrance), you walk into a more sedate, subdued space: one with high-backed booths and a very very long (35-foot) resin-poured wooden bar and a wall full of succulent plants. This side feels slightly more formal, but it’s not stuffy. And regardless of which side you favor, you can order pizza here or a steak up there on the other side. It’s two vibes, one menu.
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You might think with such a concept that the menu would be sprawling and uncontained, but there’s a recurring theme in restaurants that have opened during the pandemic. The conditions have necessitated an extreme level of focus on every detail, whether it’s how a restaurant packages food to go so that it still looks good and stays hot, or what’s on the menu in the first place. And there are also crucial matters, such as how many people you can afford to keep in the kitchen and/or on staff to execute the demands that are bound to change even by the time I finish writing this sentence. There’s some beauty to the situation, even if it is less than ideal for everyone involved. “We could really control as much as we could and make it the best we possibly could, based on what we could do,” Karen says. To put it another way: the pandemic has completely turned what’s typically a big flashy deal—a restaurant opening—upside down and inside out. “We got to open it slow. We didn’t get our teeth kicked in like we normally would,” she says, laughing.
OK, no more pandemic talk—let’s discuss the food. The pizza here is a definite. As of this writing, you’re usually likely to encounter a few choices, but things will definitely expand as time passes. For the Johnson & Wales graduate who’s known around these parts for his classical techniques and fusion style, pizza was something to explore.
“We’d never done pizza before,” says Tim. But when you put a chef who understands how to really build flavors in the kitchen, the pizza is bound to be superior. Surv does a slow ferment of the dough, which is made from tipo 00 flour imported from Italy and baked in a wood-fired oven. (It, too, is Italian, and the same one they use at Scratch at the Easton Public Market. Odds?!) Start with Margherita to get the baseline, then move on to Rick’s Pomodoro, which is a sweeter sauce (the pizza is named for the building’s owner). Don’t pass up Fungi Amongi—the mushroom pizza—because it’s the most interesting of the three that were available at the time of this writing. One of the keys to restaurant cooking versus home cooking is that chefs are constantly seeking opportunities to optimize the flavor experience. To that end, the mushroom pizza has porcini powder, porcini along with other mushrooms, and the whole thing is drizzled with a fig balsamic glaze and then sprinkled with lemon zest. (Yes, lemon zest. Trust.)
Classic Margherita with tomato purée, fresh mozzarella, fresh basil and EVOO
Pizza is such a widespread, beloved food item—one whose ability to unite humans is perhaps unrivaled by few other foods—that you should go here just to try the pizza. But that would be doing a disservice to everything else on the menu. (Besides, remember, we told you you’d have to come back anyway, so…) But pizza is a smart strategy for a restaurant for so many reasons, one of them economic: the classic Margherita, with its tomato purée, fresh mozzarella and basil, is just $11.
“We wanted to keep it at a lesser price point [than Edge] to have a more diverse clientele, but still offer a fine-dining feel that’s casual,” says Karen. “Pretty much all of our entrées are under $30.” And people are ordering full-on entrées for takeout, a fact that shows how desperate we are for a restaurant-quality experience even if we aren’t actually always eating said food in the establishment it came from. Surv’s menu consists of salads, medium plates and large plates.
The menu really does offer a lot of welcome twists. There’s a Caesar salad, but how many of them do you know that come with crunchy and slightly nutty hearts of palm? Theirs does. The beet salad is always a must for a fusion place like this, but instead of going the goat cheese route, its centerpiece is a gorgeous bulb of burrata cheese, along with arugula, pickled golden raisins, Greek yogurt and, of course, extra virgin olive oil.
Boursin Mushroom Spring Rolls, featuring herb Boursin cheese, assorted wild mushrooms, whisky barrel-aged fish sauce and ramp pistou.
Even something simple such as a polenta fry (or, if you’re Surv, you spell it “fryz”) cuts to the chase of using tomato as the dipping sauce and putting tomato right into the polenta fry itself, and then mixes it all up with flavors you aren’t really expecting—a chickpea yellow curry purée, charred green onion drizzle—and then, of course, because we’re talking polenta, Chef Tim brings it all back to where he started with shaved Parm. (If you order their “fryz” trio, the accompaniments are curry ketchup, charred jalapeño tamarind sauce and a truffle aioli.) Other pops of surprise come in the spring rolls, which veer sharply off any exclusively Asian course and instead go mostly French, with herb Boursin cheese and assorted wild mushrooms, which, come to think of it, also feels very much Pennsylvanian.
If you’re hedging your bets on the entrées, people are also loving the crab cakes (no filler, naturally, from this all-scratch kitchen), and the chicken and waffles is a hit, too—the waffle is made out of mac and cheese. You can, of course, order a classic burger ground in-house, and the salmon goes in what you might call a humorous direction: crusted with everything seasoning, served over couscous studded with apricots, along with fried cauliflower cumin yogurt and a curry mustard. It works way more than you think it might, proving that everything seasoning perhaps has far surpassed the imagination of the humblest bagel maker.
Surv’s menu is ready for whatever you could possibly want, whether it’s a humble but delicious slice of pizza, a filet mignon or anything in between. The culinary team has thought of it all—dessert, too! “We just really want to offer good food for anyone and everybody,” Karen says. Mission accomplished.
Surv Restaurant
1800 Sullivan Trl., Easton | 484.544.0624 | surveaston.com
*Please check their website and/or social media for current operating hours and procedures.
Hours
Tues.–Thurs.: 4–8:30 p.m.; Fri.: 4–9:30 p.m.; Sat.: noon–9:30 p.m.
Parking
Very large lot on the premises.
Reservations
Given the fluctuating conditions because of the pandemic, it’s wise to call ahead if you want to reserve and dine in. Curbside pick-up is always possible.
What to Order
Pizza! We’ve covered this already! Try one of the beautifully presented salads (Asian pear or beet and burrata, for example). Main plates also include pasta, and an Asian veggie and rice bowl to which you can add tofu, chicken, shrimp or salmon; and, of course, those Chicken and Waffles where the waffles are made from mac and cheese. (You have to see it to believe it.)
Things to Know:
Surv has a full bar program, offering crafted cocktails, 16 beers on draft and “a wine book to fit any palate,” says Karen (12 to 14 wines by the glass). There is a ton of potential for exterior dining space when the weather breaks, and plans for an outdoor bar. There’s a circular covered patio with a bar (this had not been complete as of this writing because it was cold) that will also be home to some live music. There’s also plenty of space right along the exterior of the restaurant that will be dedicated to outdoor dining.
