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Bruce Cooper Creates Happiness With a Farm-to-Bar Menu

Photo: Jason Varney

Bruce Cooper, chef and owner of Jake’s Restaurant and Cooper’s Brick Oven Wine Bar in Manayunk is introducing a new Farm to Bar Happiness Menu. The menu, which is available at the bar at Cooper’s daily from 5 to 7 p.m., features a selection of dishes - some new and some simply scaled down versions of the restaurant’s dinner menu items - crafted from ingredients harvested from nearby farms in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. “I guess summer was probably the biggest inspiration for these menus,” Cooper told Grub Street. “We thought we would focus on a much more seasonal approach to what we’re serving at the bar.”

The goal was to develop a range of dishes that offered something more than simply smaller versions of menu items, according to Cooper. Rather he wanted to offer new items and others that presented tastes of the existing menu in different contexts. “The most important thing though is whether you’re drinking it or eating it, it’s something that’s coming from a farm close by.

The Farm to Bar Happiness Menu includes:

Tasting of Two Soups - $5
Jersey cucumber; smoked salmon
Lancaster tomato gazpacho; crab

Grilled Fish Taco - $4
farm fresh summer vegetable, verde sauce

Lancaster Corn & Crab Mac & Cheese - $8
Mancuso’s ricotta, Claudio’s mozzarella

Shrimp Salad - $6
Lancaster tomato, basil & baby arugula salad,
ripe avocado, lemon dressing

Jake’s “baby” Burger - $4
VT sharp cheddar, Lancaster tomato

New summer-fresh drinks made with the ripest and juiciest local fruits include, Blue Farm Fizz $5, a concoction of Lancaster cucumber, organic Philadelphia Bluecoat Gin, garden basil and lime syrup and Fresh Watermelon-Ginger Smash $5, made with locally harvested watermelon and Canton natural ginger.

Bruce Cooper Creates Happiness With a Farm-to-Bar Menu