Black Lab Bistro & Bakery

Wasn’t aware of the new ownership. Food and service was terrible! Such a shame as I use to love this place!

The Black Lab Bistro is a great spot for brunch or dinner, just mind your timing as it gets crowded. The food is fantastic, and their New Years Eve pre fixe was expertly prepared, I’d give this restaurant 5 stars if it wasn’t BYOB. Still, if you need a solid spot for a meal on Bridge St., the Black Lab Bistro will certainly fit the bill.

(4) ~ very good overall food & service and yes they take reservations now on Opentable:)
DRINKS:
** Cappuccino = (4.25) Very good… my favorite, comes with Rock Candy too;)
* Water (tap) = (3.5) good
* Coffee = (3.5) good… might try the cappuccino next time
APPETIZERS:
** Flat Bread = (4.25) Very good… fresh mozzarella too;)
* Bread & Sage Butter (FREE) = (4) very good
* Cream Asparagus Soup = (3.5) good
* Beef, Mushroom & Lentil Soup = (3.5) good
PASTA:
* Butternut Squash Ravioli = (4) very good & big enough for an entrée!;)
ENTREE:
** Jumbo Lump «Maryland Style» Crab Cakes w. Malt Vinegar French Fries = (4) very good & for PA these are very good crab cakes (having lived in Baltimore for 3 years:) The Fries are very good too… kinda like the French Fries down at the Beach!;)
* Cheeseburger & French Fries = (3.25) pretty good
DESSERTS:
** Pumpkin Cheesecake w. Brulee Marshmallow & Ginger Snap Crust = (4.25) Very good & light.
** Cinnamon Roll Ice ream Sandwich = (4) very good
NOTE: Two «** «mean favorites:)

After coming to Pheonixville for years and never being able to get available seating at Black Lab, my expectations were very high for the experience.
They don’t have a gluten free menu or many items marked as such on the menu. However, our server was well versed in what items on the menu contained wheat and what could be done to make specific dishes gluten free. Generally, they have very few gluten free options.
For appetizers, the wife and I settled on the Blue Point Oysters that came in a small serving of 3 oysters, priced right at $ 8. For entrees, I had the filet without demi-​glacé and the goat cheese crostini. The steak was cooked past the warm red center of medium rare and was on the far end of medium, which is far more noticeable given the lack of accompaniment to the dish. My wife’s opinion of the duck breast and scallops was much better, getting a big thumbs up from her.
The experience was good, not great. The business is nice, small and contemporary in their presentation. Service is friendly and accommodating. It’s worth a stop, but isn’t among my best dining experiences.

We’ve been to Black Lab a few times over the past couple years and overall it’s very good. I recommend going for the specials. This weekend that was a sausage veggie soup, halibut entrée, and ribeye entrée. We had the pumpkin cheesecake for desert. It’s BYOB and you can now make reservations on OpenTable which is nice because in the past we would end up waiting a long time to get a table.

I’ve been going to black lab for a few years now and have never had a bad meal. I would absolutely recommend this to anyone who has not been yet.

You customarily expect less when dining outside of a metropolitan area. Black Lab is an excellent outlier to this presumption.
The food was phenomenal and priced equal to or less than that of a similar venue located in Philadelphia. I highly recommend the burger with the maytag cheese. I also recommend the duck dish. However, I do believe they rotate dishes so the menu items may inevitably change.

I love this place BYOB awesome! The owner is very sweet & very friendly & her daughter is so helpful & adorable! I’m very picky with my food but every time I came here for dinner NEVER disappoint me! I love there food, everything is delicious!

Wow! Our server was amazing! She basically ran the show. She had ten 2 to 5 tops and covered them all!
Food was outstanding! $$$, however I give it five stars based on service, food presented well and top notch service.
No rush to turn tables, relaxed and tasty.

I have been to this place two times now and it is excellent. When in area look forward to going again. Love the duck. The service is good.

Dropped in for Restaurant Week with a friend — it was definitely a great deal. The portions were generous and the selections were great. There was absolutely something for everyone. I have to admit — they knocked it out of the park with the desserts. Delish!

The food is fantastic and the staff perfect.

This used to be my favorite place to eat in Phoenixville. After it was sold the customer service went to crap. The hostess is rude and tried to not honor a gift certificate from the business in violation of pa gift certificate law. Upon citing said law and threatening to contact the attorney generals office of consumer affairs they decided to honor it all of the sudden. Food went from awesome to mediocre. It’s deeply upsetting to me. :-(. I wish the old owners would come back.

Reviewing dinner here this evening.
Service: ⁵⁄₅
polite and helpful while being unobtrusive but not overly friendly. It was a slow night so no hostess — the woman that greeted us at the door was also our server.
Ambiance: ⁵⁄₅
again, slow night, so we pretty much had the place to ourselves but I can see how other reviewers may have felt crammed. If the tables were all filled it could definitely be noisy and crowded feeling. Tonight the ambiance was wonderful, though.
Food: ³⁄₅
The dishes we tried were: Maine mussels in vodka sauce, pear/​prosciutto/​goat cheese crepes, and we each ordered the Bronzino special. The Bronzino was incredible, perfectly cooked and full of flavor — definitely the highlight of the meal. It was accompanied by crisp snow peas and a Parmesan risotto, also wonderful. Mussels were wayyyyy too salty. The crepes were okay, small portion, not a whole lot of flavor (surprising for the tasty ingredients they were made with). Not too memorable.
Overall, a solid ⁴⁄₅. I would return and recommend.

The food here is ok, nothing special but not bad by any means. I stopped here for brunch and the price was right but the food was average at best, there was no «wow» factor to it. The décor is beautiful so I think that also feeds into the expectation the food will be great. The coffee was terrible though, only real down side. Nice place to check out if you want a quick and easy brunch

This is a BYOB and one of the only non chain restaurants on the strip. The food is good but not worth the price. I think they charge that much knowing they are the only/​few non chain restaurants.
The ambiance is very nice. The restaurant is very open space and the décor very nice.
I would really be into this place if it was not for the price.

My dad got terrible food poisoning from this location. When he called to inform the that there was an issue, the person on the phone called him a liar.
Not. Okay.
Be responsible for your actions and live up to the fact that you did this. He wasn’t asking for anything form you, but was just telling you so that you can monitor the situation in the future. Jeee. Zuz.

If your accustomed to nicer restaurants, you won’t find BLB anything out of the ordinary, but nothing about the food or service is the least bit bad. You’ll always get a dependably good meal; but never really great.
I found the dinner prices a bit high for what they serve, and thus I’d be more apt to hit it for lunch rather than dinner.
But the BYOB aspect is a plus!

Their reservation policy is weird, and annoying. They «don’t take reservations,» but they take your name and number of people and hold a table for you. It seems like they don’t keep track of their «reservations» very well, and over book the restaurant. This leads to people waiting long periods of time for their «reservation.»
There are too many tables cramped into the restaurant, the half wall needs to be removed or take out a table or two. Servers were practically climbing over diners to get food to the tables. People were knocking into my chair throughout the entire meal.
That being said, the food was very good. I ordered the braise short ribs with stewed carrots and mashed potatoes. The meat was well cooked and could be pulled apart with a fork. The carrots soaked up the meaty flavoring and were well accompanied by the potato mash.
I also tried the shrimp and grits. The flavor was terrific, good heat, well cooked sausage and shrimp. Very good. My only complaint with this dish was that the grits were a bit too watery for my taste.
There was also a bit of wilted lettuce in the salad. If attention can be paid to these little things that are overlooked, this could be an excellent restaurant. A bit over priced as it is now.
BYOB

Perhaps it’s because I don’t live around these parts, but I was thoroughly unimpressed with the Black Lab. This was one of the worst dinners I’ve had in a while, and after my second meal at this restaurant, I have no desire to come back. Perhaps this place was happening in Phoenixville in 2009, but it has definitely lost any charm that previous reviews ascribe to it. If you like well-​executed and thoughtful cuisine, don’t bother trying this place.
The menu is, in a word, ambitious. The dishes attempt to span several genres and cuisines, and they fall short. Black Lab, you need to pick a niche and stick with it. The menu attempts to do New American bistro, French meat/​sauce prep, Spanish tapas, and some «misc Asian» but doesn’t quite succeed with any of them. E.g. scallop shu mai sounds incredibly gluey, and calling every sauce a demi-​glacé doesn’t make it French.
We’ve had a selection of dishes here, and some have been less disappointing than others. The octopus with andouille sausage and chickpeas is in a smoked paprika and vinegar sauce that manages to lack any complexity, and the octopus is in slices that taste like Chinese fish cake. Tuna tartare is awful… I’ve had better tuna/​rice combos in supermarket sushi. I did feel fairly positively about the calamari in crispy Chinese five-​spice batter but the mango aioli (or whatever it purported to be) was a huge misstep. I think the calamari is the only dish on the menu I can reasonably recommend, but ask for sauce on the side. A dining companion had the lobster bisque and remarked it was notable for its lack of lobster and gluey consistency.
The duck breast with scallops was okay, but the sauce was overly sweet. I ordered the rosemary-​dijon crusted lamb chops with potato cake, asparagus, and the ubiquitous demi-​glacé. Lamb is supposed to be tender. This was chewy, lacked any of the claimed herb-​mustard flavor, and was not really aided by the sauce. The potato cake was savory, and they didn’t mess up the asparagus. The steak frites: essentially inedible, with meat like «airplane food,» as my dining companion described it. The frites were fine and very heavily seasoned with 2 – 4 dithiapentane… but I like the fake taste of «truffle» oil, so these seemed fine to me. Generally, all the sauces are pretty seasoned but still lacking in real flavor.
To add insult to all this gastronomic injury, the food is incredibly overpriced. It is nice that they’re BYOB, and the service is much warmer and attentive now than in the past. Ambiance is also fine — I can’t really say anything bad about the setup, though it doesn’t seem conducive to an intimate date. Seating can be tight in some areas. The art prints on the wall didn’t offend me and the layout is basically okay.
I gather, from the reviews, that there are better restaurants on this block. If you have any kind of discerning palate, seriously, do not come here. You can find better food at the Cheesecake Factory or Red Lobster.