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Table 6 Restaurant
3210 Denali St., Suite 8
$5-$16 per plate
11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Sunday through Thursday, 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Friday through Saturday
907-562-6000
http://www.table6.net
After close to a year of Lunchbox reviews, Midtown pickings are becoming fewer and farther between -- but every now and then I drive by a place that’s hiding in plain sight, and turn in to eat for a long-delayed review.
Table 6 is a trendy spot in Midtown, the brownstone strip mall in which it’s ensconced lending the restaurant a fairly classy façade. It’s fairly accessible from east-west arteries in the area, just a quick drive along Denali Street from Benson Boulevard or 36th Avenue. Parking in front of the restaurant itself is somewhat limited, but other stores in the mall offer more available spaces, which didn’t seem to be overwhelmed during my visit.
The place is dominated by a well-stocked U-shaped bar with plenty of stools, but a number of waist-high walls break up the dining room into alcoves with degrees of intimacy ranging from tables near the bar to traditional booths. A quirky aesthetic guides the décor, which includes everything from Dr. Seuss quotes on the walls ("You have brains in your head and feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose!") to cartoons featuring pigs eating pork chops.
The menu is slightly upscale American food, with soups and salads alongside burgers, sandwiches and wraps; entrees tend toward pasta dishes, with a few inspired exceptions. There’s also a selection of appetizers on hand for those ordering at the bar, offering some versatile options for the evening social crowd. I was feeling fairly traditional so I went for a meatball sandwich ($12.95), spending an additional $2 to substitute onion rings for the large but bland-looking piles of fries I saw accompanying other diners’ meals out of the kitchen. The food took about 10 to 15 minutes to show up, although the place was already bustling at 11:30 a.m, half an hour after opening for the day.
The meatball sandwich arrived as an unconventional but inspired preparation, its filling sitting not in a split bun but a hollowed-out baguette more akin to a bread bowl for soup. While it looked weird at first and I thought it might not hold much, it eventually yielded four decent-sized meatballs while keeping my hands remarkably clean for holding such a messy dish. Melted cheese and a fairly spicy sauce held the sandwich together, with tomatoes, onions and hints of chili-pepper flakes lending it a warm zing that made it a memorable choice.
A generous pile of onion rings alongside the sandwich were no less surprising, with relatively sparse amounts of beer batter applied to rings which had large sections of onion still visible after cooking -- the kind of preparation other restaurants bill as “onion strings” and hide inside sandwiches or hamburgers. As a standalone dish they were perhaps a bit greasier than fully battered rings but had the dual advantages of feeling lighter and conveying more actual onion flavor, virtues which I appreciated.
I found Table 6 to be an interesting stop, one that I’m not likely to soon forget: while the menu is relatively limited, even fairly standard items come in for a degree of attention and tweaking that lends them new appeal. It’s not the kind of place you’d want to eat every week lest its cuisine get old, but its innovative choices are certainly worth sampling when you’re in the mood for something different.