Restaurant Roots: Anne Burrell Opens Phil and Anne’s Good Time Lounge

Let's see. What makes up the DNA of a chef? Well, I mean, are you crazy? Are you masochistic? Are you passionate? Are you creative? Do you like to eat? Do you like to drink a lot? That's a cook. [LAUGH] [MUSIC] I've been in the kitchen for a long time. I started in restaurants in 1990. So, it's now 2017, you do the math because I don't want to. [LAUGH] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] There still is the time when I walk into the kitchen and where I'm like let's turn the music off, let's start cooking. I'm probably more emotional now than I was then because I know so much More, and so I have been doing the TV thing, and food and wine festival thing, appearance things for a long time, and it was a pretty fun life. But I missed it, I missed cooking, I missed the energy of a restaurant, I missed feeding people, I missed the hospitality. Hospitality. I miss the nutty waiters. So I met Phil at the bar he owns in the West Village, Daddio. It was my local. So I've been bartending about 27 years now. And making cocktails pretty much most of that time. Time in the whole 27 years. A couple of years ago, Phil came to me saying like, the dude who owns this building. There was a restaurant in it before. The restaurant closed. Maybe it could be turned to a good space for a neighborhood bar restaurant, where we could like be part of the neighborhood, the community. I was like, good bones, I see potential. Let's do this. And she was in. Phil and Anne's Good Time Lounge is a neighborhood joint. I mean, it's food that it's approachable and comfortable and we want to be everyone's local. This is a collection of my favorite dishes, of dishes that I really want to eat. Our cocktail menu is a mix of fun Original and classic cocktail. Easy to drink and promotes good time. Super popular dish that's here is the grilled piazzetta. So it's basically like a grilled flatbread. You get that little char flavor. And then we top it with taleggio cheese. So creamy, stink cheese with some italian sausage and pickled hot cherry peppers. [SLURP] It's spicy, sausagey. It's creamy. It's like a little burned tasting. It's crunchy. There's a lot going on. It's delicious. When you're opening a restaurant there's so many things that go wrong. Your projected opening date. Like, ha ha ha ha. That's always a joke. With all the trials and tribulations that we had to encounter, it took us a year and a half to. Open up the space, it was all worth it, you know, the hard work you put into it. It's just being creative is where the payoff is. I want people to, when they come to Phil & Anne's Good Time Lounge, I just want them to have a good time, that's it. Whatever that means to you, just come here and have a good time, and then come back. [MUSIC]