SWMBO and I will be in Philly the weekend of May 1st in the Historic District. I get to pick the place to eat one night. If you could pick one place , walking distance form the Liberty Bell, to go where would it be. Not sure if there are any brewpubs around there that would be worth going to, or should I just find a good historic place with good food and beer.
Depends on what you consider to be walking distance really.
The Liberty Bell is on Market St (runs east/west) between 5th and 6th st (run north/south).
On 16th and Spruce St (11 blocks west and 4 blocks south) is Monk's Belgian Cafe. Really, if you're willing to make the walk, this is THE place to go. Bit of warning though - it's a fairly small place and they don't take reservations so if you try to go there for dinner, it can be a bit of wait.
Continuing with the Belgian theme, there's Eulogy, which is on Chestnut St just East of second street. So you're looking at about 1 block south and 4 blocks east.
Across the street from Eulogy is Triumph Brewery, which is a fairly good brew pub.
Continuing the brew pub theme, there's Nodding Head, which on Sansom St between 15th and 16th. So that's 1.5 blocks south and about 10 blocks west.
Those are the choice restaurant & beer combination places I can think of off the top of my head in that area.
Personally, I say be adventurous and head out of Old City and go to Northern Liberties (the 600-1100 blocks of north second st) for dinner. Lots of good restaurants and bars up there. But then again, I'm a bit biased about that. Honestly I'd suggest hitting up a BYO like Modo Mio or KooZeeDoo for something really different. Modo Mio would be more of bring your own wine sort of thing, but it's by far the best modern Italian food in the city. Beer would pair just as well as wine with the food at KooZeeDoo, so you could hit up the Foodery, which is a couple blocks away from it and choose from hundreds of bottles of beers to go.
