brescd01

Sorry, I should have said, the winner on Earth where we don't apend more than $20 for a steak. I checked the D'Artagnon site: no luck, they do not even list those steaks. When I called the market in Maine Wolfe Neck recommends, they did not offer a dry-aged product. How did the contest get the meats?

Okay, a little help here. I read the excellent thread on the steak tasting. The overall winner seemed to be Wolfe Neck. I have to have those shipped from Maine. Does anyone know of a local source? These are not dry-aged steaks, are they worth the trouble?

So where do I get the Wolfe Neck meat? And how do I get the Bryans steaks?

Okay, with barbecue season here, I would like to know, where does a Philly gourmet get his steak from?

I tried Fogo de Chao yesterday with my wife and a friend from NYC and we found it spectacular. It was much more expensive than Picanha ($57 dollars per person versus ~30 at Picanha) but I have to say it was wonderful. Fogo had a better variety of meats that were slightly better than Picanha's, the dining room is much more elegant and the service better, and the buffet table (a big deal in Brazilian barbeque, not an afterthought) was stunning and much better than Picanha's, which to my mind falls short in this area. I love Picanha and I love their staff and owners and I am a cheap avaricious person who hates chains, but nevertheless I thought Fogo de Chao is a welcome addition to the Philadelphia scene, one of the few chain representatives that has a place here aand we will return, as soon as we digest this meal in a few months...

I don't know, I do not think this has to do with insider etiquette so much as it has to do with the difficulty and unpleasantness of discussing money. Restaurant people are not the only ones to get meals "comp-ed." I was invited to the opening of a restaurant and the owner told us all food (but not wine) would be comp-ed. This was clear before we arrived. And there are lots of instances where prices are unlear, for example "specials," when the waiter does not volunteer the info. I would have been vexed also (probably more so, since I am miserly to a fault), but in the end the fault is your own because you didn't ask. And I do not mean that as a criticism, I have found myself in similar situations, but the fault was always my own for not making the implicit, explicit. Nothing changes the fact that you were dissatisfied, which is not less significant that the restaurant's having disappointed any other paying customer. By charging you as much as they did, (in my view), they essentially declared "open-season" on criticism. Had the meal been free, THEN I would recall that "beggars can't be choosers."

I got take-out from Aqua and I found it disappointing. Either I just ordered the wrong dishes, they were on an off night, or they just "dumb" the menu down for American taste. I cannot remember whether I got Malaysian, Thai or both styles. I contend that there is no decent Thai in Philadelphia except Erawan, and then only if you specially request authentic Thai food, some of which you have to order in advance.

Herbacidal is so right...this is my favorite restaurant in Philly but what is with the glasses!

In Minneapolis, Oceanaire is (was?) the fanciest, best seafood restaurant in that city. I enjoyed being taken there by drug reps, but I thought that it represented one of the things I did not like about Twin Cities. Its location was also very unattractive, in a hotel downtown. Striped Bass, by contrast, is Philadelphia's most famous and prestigious seafood joint, and it is a local non-chain creation. Plus, Philadelphia has plenty of other luxurious special occasion or expense account places. So Oceanaire augments the scene, it does not take it over or replace it. In that light, I am not terribly concerned. I still think the economic argument is weak. A successful restaurant enhances the local economy whether it is a mom/pop or staffed by robots controlled in Anchorage, and I am not even sure which contributes more. Now, my Internet shopping habits, those probably don't do much for the local economy, but I cannot help myself....unlike food, retail in Philadelphia has no redeeming qualities.

I am anti-chain, I think they are evil. Olive Garden is PURE evil. There weren't WMD's in Iraq? I thought Santorum found them? I digress... Now that you know whose side I am on (of the restaurant thing I mean), the economic arguments against chains are balderdash. Whether someone is paid by a corporation or by Mom and Pop, they still spend their salary locally. Objecting to corporate profits presupposes that a mom/pop restaurant would make similar profits and spend them locally, which I think is a tough argument to make. No one criticized Toyota for building plants in America, for example. The problem I see with chains is cultural, it homogenizes downtowns, the USAToday-ification of America, if you will. I do not know what the turnover is in Philadelphia, but the restaurant business is tough (in NYC where I grew up I think more than 1000 restaurants open and close every year). Its major problem is that each restaurant needs to be adequately capitalized from the start, something that is more likely to be the case for some part of a chain. All restaurants hold the seeds for their own destruction on opening night, they have to tough it out. And while I am no insider, my wife and I tried Smoke Joint and we enjoyed it, but BBQ is a tough cuisine to eat more than a few times a year. Smoke Joint's competitors are all low rent. Smoke Joint was a big and expensive plant that had to be nourished by an awful lot of diners, which I think is tough for that kind of cuisine, when a lot of BBQ is ordered for take-out.

Just to be clear, I wil go to Oceanaire. But it is the sort of place that I would get someone else to take me to, rather than spend my own money at. So I would have a sales rep treat me to Capital Grille, but I would spring for Barclay Prime or Saloon. Isn't Devon part of a very small chain? That makes it better doesn't it? But no one does decadence better than the chains.

Olive Garden is evil. Are there other chains that are evil? Which chains are good? I am torn on this . I lived for a year in a town (Twin Cities) slowly being eaten by chains, not pretty for its downtown.

I have mixed feelings about this place: is it evil because it is part of a chain?

I appreciate the insights on this thread, and I will be definitely checking many of the recommended places out. So far as Chinese, I am happy to say that the Chinese situation is better than the Japanese one. There are plenty of good Chinese places with Cantonese, Szechuan, Fujianese, Chiu Chow, and Taiwanese (I'm pushing it to make a point) dishes. Shanghainese is missing, but perfectly good Malaysian takes it place. So while I am quite certain that my favorites are objectively good (not subjectively) and authentic, I have quite a few favorites. The one thing I can say is that I have not yet found good Chinese food outside of Chinatown. But there are at least two very good Asian restaurants in Chinatown that deliver, Szechuan Tasty House and Banana Leaf.

Oh my G-d, I cannot escape the Deconstructionists (AKA starving grad students)! That said, we will have to agree to disagree JasonZ, because I said that "quality" in Chinese food is generally unambiguous, I did not say "authenticity," which is not the same thing, except at the lowest levels of glop we all know is neither authentic nor good. I am disturbed that the question of great sushi arouses such passion. I do not have the necessary level of sophistication to draw conclusions, but in my experience, people are most passionate about religious (faith-based) differences, not reality-based ones, for example "Is abortion bad?" as opposed to the cool answer one would get if you asked "Should someone take antibiotics for bacterial meningitis?" or "The IRS sent me a summons, should I answer it?" Let's add Option 4 Osaka 8605 Germantown Ave Philadelphia, PA 19118-2828 Option 5 Kisso Sushi Bar 205 N 4th St Philadelphia, PA 19106-1801

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I am setting aside Morimoto because of its cost, but here are three much-discussed places. I was dismayed to read multiple people claiming to be experts, all of whom disagreed where the best sushi is. I consider myself quite knoweldgeable about Chinese, and "the best" is not nearly so ambiguous. So can anyone sort things out for me on the sushi front? The goal is a birthday dinner for a friend who loves sushi. Option 1: Sagami 37 W Crescent Blvd Collingswood, NJ 08108-1003 Option 2: 1225 Raw Sushi & Sake Lounge 1225 Sansom St Philadelphia, PA 19107 Option 3: Bluefin 1017 Germantown Pike Plymouth Meeting, PA 19462

Hmmm, my vote is for that Italian restaurant just off the Square.

A little while ago on the Chung King thread I mentioned that Szechuan Tasty House delivers, I ordered, and the food was terrible. Well, my wife and I ordered again and when I gave my order I severely admonished the poor woman on the phone that this was their last chance. The food was MUCH much better. I very carefully selected dishes that had been recommended before and everything was very good to superb. Spicy dumplings, dang dang noodles, braised beef, three pepper chicken, and pork with garlic sauce (the last I liked the least and it was still very good) made for an authentic and fabulous meal.

Bad news. We tried STH take-out and they seem to have dumbed it down for us dummies. We got a sampling of appetizers. The squid and conch we good. The spicy chicken was much sweeter than I remember it. The spicy wonton were also much gooey-er than I remember and also sweetened. The dumplings in spicy sauce were served in brown goop. The Szechuan hot and sour seemed like it was regular hot and sour with more vinegar (is that how they make it sour?). The spicy cabbage was sweet too, though I have seen this sort of cabbage served with nuts as a sort of table snack. So except for the conch and squid, not so hot. I am not sure what this says. Did I manage to get all their worst dishes, do they dumb things down for delivery, or has STH gone downhill?

1) Merely as an execise, prove or disprove: Szechuan Tasty House has the best Chinese DELIVERY in the city. 2) What are the cold noodles you liked Katie? I got the Szechuan Cold Noodles at Tasty House and they were not good at all. Yet I know they must have a better cold noodle dish than the one I had, which tasted tooth-achingly similar to the peanut butter glop served at most take-out Chinese-American places.

Forgive me if this has been mentioned, but Szechuan Tasty House will deliver, I just got their take out menu. That makes them the only authentic Chinese restaurant I know of that will deliver.

My wife and I had a light dinner there: really lovely.

Well, feel free to re-write the list! This is reality as seen by an Indian friend, and I am sure things change every few months anyway. What would you recommend and where would you recommend it? One thing I do not want to do is arrive there withj inaccurate or outdated info, hence the "list."

Updated, corrected list. Galaxy: chole bhatura, samosa, thali, pau bhaji Dosa Express (1170 Green) dosas Dimple's (1326 Oak Tree) sambhar, dosa, idli, chat papri Bombay Talk (1358 Oak Tree) chat papri Rajbhog (1373 Oak Tree) moti choor ladoo , gulab janum, rasgula, jalibi, rasmalai Bengali Sweet House (1384B Oak Tree) Rasoi (1567 Oak Tree) chicken curry, goat curry Mogul Express (1670 Oak Tree) chilly chicken Your description of Galaxy is not so flattering. Is it worth the effort?