john b
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Posts posted by john b
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I am too un-hip to know if Balthazar is still "hot"
, but I was there last night and had a very enjoyable meal. The food was well prepared, the service attentive, the room was very lively and loud. The crowd was a mix of tourists, neighborhood people, young, old, couples and families. I didn't notice any celebs, but I wasn't really looking. We had a 6 PM reservation and the place was packed when we got there with no let up in sight when we left around 8:30.I liked the simplicity of the menu. I needed help with some of the menu items which were in French (fortunately for me, I asked what the brandade was--it was delicious!!). My steak was cooked as requested (med rare). Everyone in our group (5) enjoyed their meals.
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I have a four sitting here that I've won but haven't used yet, for three South Jersey restaurants and one PA restaurant. The most I paid for a $25 GC was $6, the cheapest was $2 ($1 winning bid plus $1 handling fee). One is a buy one/get one free coupon, the others are $25 GCs. No Friday or Saturday nights is the only restriction on the $25 GCs, but the restrictions vary from place to place.
I don't know how restaurant.com or their participating restaurants make money on this deal.
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Thanks for the link.
I'm pretty sure it was the Westvleteren 8 I had. It wasn't specified on the label and the cap is gone.
I took a look at their website, which specifies that the beer is only sold to individuals and is not for resale. I guess a few rules had to be broken for me to buy it in a store
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Someone was nice enough to comp my round of golf yesterday, so I spent what would have been my green fees on beer!
A local store has a pretty good Belgian selection, so I picked up a six pack of Leffe, and singles of Westvleteren (how is this pronounced?!?) and Rochefort 6.
I also bought a six pack of Grant's Perfect Porter, which I found to be less than "perfect"
, a little on the watery side, and an off, soapy taste.The Westvleteren, on the other hand, was great--very complex with caramel, toffee chocolate flavors.
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Can we get a county by county "best pizza" list? From my stomping ground:
Mercer--De Lorenzo's
Burlington--nothing stands out, but there's a place on Rt 206 in Bordentown that makes a pretty good Trenton style tomato pie. I think it's Vesuvio's. The rest of the county is a pizza wasteland, a lot of serviceable pizza but nothing outstanding.
Camden--nothing stands out. Ralph's, in Haddon Heights, makes a pretty good tomato and garlic pie (square pizza, thicker than neapolitan pizza but thinner than Sicilian, big chunks of tomato, fresh garlic and fresh parsley). Their standard Neapolitan pizza is just ok.
The southern jersey shore: Mack & Manco's in Ocean City.
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Fresh draft Heineken
The first time I had Heineken on tap, I didn't know what it was. Someone handed me a glass and I didn't know what beer was in it. It was really tasty. I was surprised to learn that it was Heineken, since my only previous Heiny experience was skunked out of a bottle.
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Tastee Subs in Franklin Park and Edison..
Wow. Tastee Subs is still around? That was a semi-regular weekend lunch stop when I was a poor college student in the mid 80s. A sub and a quart of Frank's Black Cherry soda was under $5. The rolls were big and fresh, the meat was average at best, with lots of shredded lettuce.
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Main course arrives before I've taken two bite of my first course/appetizer. This happens more frequently at chains, and less frequently at better restaurants.
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Hoegaarden makes a pretty good one. Celis is allright, nothing great imo.
I don't usually drink beer, but wheat beers (does witbier translate as white beer or wheat beer?) like Hoegaarden, I adore. On the India forum I recently recklessly dismissed all attempts to match wine and Indian food, a pointless pairing especially when there really was a good pairing in white beer. Its the lightness and the spiciness and the coolness, that all balance out Indian food brilliantly. Why don't more people make them? Are they hard or expensive to make?
Vikram
Wheat beers, whether they be German or American hefewiezens, or Belgian or American wit, also go well with Chinese and Thai dishes, especially spicy dishes.
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I can't, for the life of me, figure out how Geneovese left off DELORENZO'S TOMATO PIES in Trenton off his list. It's easily one of the benchamrk pizzas in the US.
You beat me to the punch on De Lorenzo's, which, IMNSHO, is much better than Taconnelli's (I often hear the two compared).
JB's Bar-B-Q, in Rio Grande (Cape May county, near Wildwood), makes some very good BBQ. I'd put them on any "best of cheap eats" list.
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I thought Blue Moon was always a Coors product. ??
that might very well be the case, as i was speaking strictly from assumption and ignorance. i just assumed they, like many micro-breweries, were bought up at some point.
I think Blue Moon was a Coors creation, an attempt to tap into the micro market.
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Excellent and very interesting! It could have been written by my local wine guy, who eschews any Parker or WS "point advertisments." He actually pulled a wine off the shelf when it made the WS top 100 a few years ago. I think it was the 97 Isole e Olena Cepparello. He did continue to sell it for those who sought it out, but kept it at it's pre-top 100 price of around $40.
The wine/beer/liquor superstore in the area, once the top 100 list came out, doubled the price on the same wine, and did the same for the other "top 100" wines.
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Try Allagash White and Victory Whirlwind Wit. They are my two favorite American versions of Belgian Wit beers.
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Cheesesteaks are about synergy--the perfect cheese(I prefer whiz, mild provolone a close second) to meat ratio and a roll that is a little crusty and firm yet yielding on the outside and soft on the inside.
I've given up on Pat's. The last steak I had there was completely inedible--a tough, fatty, gristly mess. I've always liked Jim's over Pat's and Geno's. I also like Steve's in NE Philly.
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Where are all of my favorites, from Victory, Dogfish Head, Stoudt's, etc.??
Do some breweries not enter, and if so, why not??
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Blatz. It was $4.99/case when I was in college. We had get it cold to the point that it was almost frozen just to get it down.
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Adding to my previous post...
I did ask about the difference between the ovens in NJ and PA. The oven in PA is oil heated, they heat the oven all day then turn the heat off when they start cooking, the brick/masonry retaining the heat. This, I was told, was the reason they could only sell a certain amount of doughs per day. At a certain point in the night, the oven got too cool to cook the pizzas.
The NJ oven is gas, and the gas heat is kept on while they cook.
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(delurking)
After everything I heard over the years about Tacconelli's and never having made it over the bridge, I was excited when I heard that they'd be opening in NJ, a minute from my office and ten minutes from home.
Well, it was good, but not as good as all of the buzz led me to believe it would be. We had a red pie and a white. The red sauce was way too salty and a little over-spiced. The white pie, except for overdoing the garlic salt on the crust, was very good. Between the salty red sauce and the white pie crust, my lips were shriveled.
I tried the same two pies a few nights later, figuring I might have caught them on an off night, but I got the same "saltfest."
DeLorenzo's is still number one in my book.
Tommy's Roast Pork
in New Jersey: Dining
Posted
DiNic's is at the corner of the Black Horse Pike and King's Highway, in what was once a White Tower. I'm pretty sure it's in Mt. Ephraim.
Tommy's is at the end of Brace Rd where Brace goes into Haddonfield-Berlin Rd, across from Winner Ford. It's on the right side if you are going south on Brace Rd.
Another pretty good place is Piggy Joe's, on the grounds of the Pennsauken Mart, by the movie theater. I'm not a fan of their roast pork. It's a little on the dry side, compared to DiNic's and Tony Luke's. The "slop factor" is a must for a good roast pork sandwich. Piggy Joe's chicken cutlet with provolone and broccoli rabe is very good. They sell crab fries, too, and they win for convenience since it's less than 5 minutes from home.