Worden Hall

           I recently tried one of Southie's newest restaurants - the latest concept from the owners of Five Horses Tavern in Somerville and the South End. Worden Hall is a modern American restaurant known for its craft beers, extensive whiskey list and Chicago style deep dish pizza. Knowing this, I tried a few things I wouldn't normally order to get the full experience and I had a great meal!

          I started with the blood and sand cocktail made with scotch, cherry, and orange juice. It was so good that I ended up drinking these throughout my meal instead of switching to wine like I would typically do.

          The fiance and I shared a couple of appetizers including the fluke crudo with candied fennel, radish, and meyer lemon emulsion. This was delicious; I loved the candied fennel paired with the fluke - it was a perfect complement to the lemon and neither overpowered the fish.

           We also had to try the housemade coconut crusted chicken nuggets with spicy banana ketchup, and these were executed perfectly. The chicken was incredibly tender, almost like a confit, and the coconut crust gave it just the right amount of crispiness.

           The deep dish margarita pizza with rustico tomato sauce, fresh picked basil, and Maplebrook Farms handmade mozzarella was definitely enough to share, but the fiance wanted to try one of the sandwiches and so we each took half of our meal to go. I ended up getting two more meals out of mine, and they tasted almost as good reheated. This is definitely the best deep dish pizza I've had in New England.

          The fiance enjoyed his house smoked ham and brie panini with arugula and peach butter on Iggy's ciabatta served with salad and curly fries (and I enjoyed his curly fries).

          Part of our motivation for taking our meals to go was so we could try dessert, and we opted for the double chocolate stout cake with single malt ganache, Irish butter cream, toffee, and walnut praline. It was amazing; gooey inside almost like a molten chocolate cake and it came with some delicious caramel whiskey sauce which I tried to make sure I included in every bite.

 

          Worden Hall is a great addition to the Southie dining scene, and with its location so close to the red line I could definitely see it as a destination spot for whiskey and craft beer lovers, or anyone craving deep dish pizza!