Holly Moore

Cause $50 is a resonable price for "truffles on brioche, with some ground beef and other stuff." Nothing to hype there.

Depending on the bread, room temperature is fine by me, though I have fond memories of the restaurants of yore that used to serve popovers fresh from the oven. Haven't seen that for years and years. What elevates my dander is rock hard cold butter - butter that tears at the bread as one tries to spread it. Never ever a need for that to happen, but it does in all level of restaurants.

Today's Philadelhia Inquirer reports that La Colombe, considered one of the best if not the best coffee roasters in the country, has banned smoking from the cafe it operates off Philadelphia's Rittenhouse Square. Not because of the health hazzards of smoking, but because so much smoke in the small cafe makes it impossible for them to put out quality coffee drinks. Here's the entire story from the Inquirer: La Colombe Bans Smoking

Yo!!!!!

S.O.S. It's the only way to charge into the morning when the wind chill is below zero. Best S.O.S. (creamed chipped beef for the politically correct) I've ever had was at Philadelphia's long gone Commissary. They added cheddar and sauteed onions to the cream.

The great news is that Miel is coming to us. Robert Bennet is opening up a second shop in Center City Philadelphia - late winter or early spring. But a trip to Miel in Jersey is worth the bridge toll, especially if you can wrangle a tour of the kitchen from Robert. It is a pastry chef's dream. Specialized departments and equipment and a separate temperature controlled chocolates room.

I knew that. Must have been a semi-senior moment. At least I was consistently wrong throughout the posting. Welcome to eGullet, even if your first post is to take me to task.

There's a group of dedicated eaters in Philadelphia that goes by the name of the Dangerous Dining Club (DDC). They take over a restaurant for one dinner a month, work out a menu and chow down. Usually ethnic, always casual. They have their own discussion group on Yahoo. You have to register with Yahoo to join / read the messages. DDC Yahoo Group Their next dinner is this Tuesday at Avalon in West Chester PA. Here's the info and menu. Tuesday January 28, 2003 at 7:00 PM $25.00/person (tax & gratuity inclusive) Your choice of one from each category: Appetizers Soup du Jour Frisée Salad with Lardons Hard Cooked Egg and Warm Potatoes with Sherry-Wine Vinaigrette Duck Carpaccio Baby Arugula, Pommes Frites & Truffle Vinaigrette Smoked Salmon Served on Potato Blinis and garnished with Caviar Entrées Oven Roasted Venison Roast Winter Vegetables, Broccoli Rabe, Juniper Berry Sauce Potato Crusted Halibut French Beans, Baby Carrots & Tomato-Saffron Emulsion Sautéed European Chicken Breast Served with Crispy Polenta Cake, Natural Au Jus Dessert Chef’s Choice Assorted Sorbet Crème Brûlée or for your $25 you could go to New York and get half a hamburger.

I scoffed at the idea of a $25, $29, $41 or $50 burger. I've had so many great hamburger stand burgers that the idea of Manhattening up a good ol' burger seemed more than a tad on the inane side. Struck me as a contest among restaurateurs to see just how much New Yorkers could be suckered into squandering on a hamburger. Then I read the above from Chef Boulud's interview with Aaron Brown on CNN. Gotta respect that sort of initiative. I can't say the same for Homestead's Kobe burger. But I'm of the minority that likens Kobe beef to the emperor's new clothes. I'm much happier with well aged steak from a quality butcher.

Curious. Are the ketchup and dijon mustard from a bottle or prepared in the kitchen? If from a bottle, I see the opportunity for DB's to add another $10 - $20 to the price and offer their own ketchup and dijon mustard. Be interesting to see if Chef Boulud can improve upon Heinz.

John - To this point I have agreed with you 100% and have gathered most of my knowledge about Jersey Dogs and much of same about hot dogs in general. But... Now I have to change that to 99%. There is no such thing as "way to greasy" especially when it comes to Italian Hot Dogs.

After spending the last few days in Charlotte I now declare myself an expert on Charlotte eating - as opposed to Charlotte Dining. Breakfast: The Coffee Cup and John's Country Kitchen. Both places fry up classic down home breakfasts seasoned with hospitality. John's offers pig brains as one of their meat options, the Coffee Cup includes fat back. I passed both up for sausage patties and liver mush. Lunch: Back to the Coffee Cup for skillet Fried Chicken and some of the best Southern style vegetables you'll ever have. Or head to Lupie's for great chili slaw burgers and/or chili slaw dogs. Choice of chili's. Mild mannered Cincinnati or gullet-burning Texas style. Order a bowl full of banana pudding for dessert. Dinner: Pick up fried chicken dinners from Price's and haul them back to your hotel room. You won't find any better. Or if it's Monday head to Lupies. Monday night is Meatloaf night at Lupies. The mashed potatoes alone (only served on Meatloaf Monday) are worth the return visit. The meatloaf is kinda good too. Still have a few more meals in Charlotte. On my list for lunch - eastern NC BBQ from Bill Spoon's and a couple of dogs all the way from Green's Lunch. Dinner - an expedition to the Twin Tops Fish Camp a few stone throws west in Gastonia and tomorrow, Mert's Heart and Soul and likely some more fried chicken. Oh yeah, for dessert or mid afternoon or mid morning snack, return to Gastonia and to Tony's Ice Cream company. Ice cream is made right there, high in butter fat, low in over run and full of flavor. If you've got room or a partner you're willing to share with, get their banana split.

You won't go wrong with Tony Luke's - South Philly 'tude at it's grittiest. But it's not all that close to the Barnes Foundation. Manayunk's a good suggestion. Walk Main Street and pick whatever is interesting. If Cheesesteaks are of interest. Dalessandro's, high above Manayunk, off Ridge Avenue at the corner of Henry and Wendover Street, serves some of the best in the City.

Not sure. Haven't been through one, but may have missed it. There is a Delancey Street. Real classy. Lot's of fancy houses, just off Rittenhouse Square.

Which city. Philadelphia or NYC?

Had dinner at Bella a couple of days ago. Quite good and only four easy blocks from my house. Nice clubby bar and cocktail area up front, dining room overlooking beautiful South 20th Street. Met owner Ali aka aliwaks. She's enthused and committed, despite having only been open a few months and already having gone through the tempermental chef trauma. New chef is doing a good job. So's Ali. Started with Smoked Trout & Roasted Beets w. Creamy Horseradish & Cucumber Concasse. Ordered it because I'll order most any menu item featuring roasted beets, but the smoked trout was great and worked well with the dollops of horseraidsh. I don't know why I didn't order the Aromatic Braised Short Ribs over Wasabi Mash. I wanted to, but have been focusing on fish and seafood recently so went for the Grilled Sea Scallops with Kalamata Olive Fig Tapenade over warm salad of Anise & Clementines. Also excellent. Olives and Figs make a good tapenade mix. Entree came with two pureed vegetables, butternut squash and turnips, and a savory beet flan. Good crunchy seeded bread from Metropolitan Bakery. Many of the menu items carry people's first names. Some are friends. Some contributed recipe ideas. Some are whimsical such as Alice’s Pasta: Butterfly Pasta w. Kennet Square Mushroom Ragout. Ali was watch Alice in Wonderland and was inspired to blend butterflies with mushrooms. At 20th and Lombard (the former Waldorf Cafe) Bella's sort of off the beaten restaurant row path but makes for a great neighborhood restaurant. Has gotten off to a good start with some good reviews but Ali says things have slowed down since election day. Not sure what the Democrats taking a shellacking has to do with dining out.

This is ancient history, as I grew up in Northern Jersey (Mountain Lakes) and haven't been back for eons. The place I really miss is a pizza joint called Pizza Mia on Rte 46 as one's entering Denville from Mountain Lakes. They used to bake their own bread in the pizza oven - round flat loaves. They made a great hoagie using this bread - my favorite being rare roast beef. Even more spectacular - my first Italian Hot Dogs and Italian Sausages - there was a glass enclosed grill on the front counter, potatoes, onions and green peppers mellowly sauteing away. Foot long hot dogs and sweet Italian sausage off to the side, pre-sauteed and just needing a warming. A single dog or sausage went into a quarter of the bread round, a double order merited a half round. I think it was at Pizza Mia that I first came to accept grease as an essential nutrional building block. I'm also wondering about the more formal restaurants my parents hauled me off too. The Harbor on Rte 46 in Parsippany, Llewellyn Farms (? Sp) on Rte 10 I think in Whippany, and my favorite because the waitresses truely doted on me, the Diamond Springs Inn outside of Denville. Any of these still around. I know the drive-in of my youth is gone - Sip and Sup at the corner of Rte 202 and Rte 10. We reversed the letters to become Pis and Pus. It's also where I worked the years before and after my freshman year in hotel/restaurant management. Owner was a grad. Kitchen prep the first year. Every day, - two crates of cabbage into cole slaw, peel, devein and bread 50 lbs of shrimp. Peel, slice and bread a large bag of bermuda onions. I actually miss those summers. There's something about the assembly line routine of high volume prep that is quite transcendental.

Yeah, looks like I'll have to figure out a way to be in Barbados on a Friday. When I asked for authentic local cuisine from a restaurant that's been around for awhile, my hotel sent me to Brown Sugar in Bridgeport. Nice place, but fancier than I was seeking. Started with a pepperpot stew of lamb and beef shin, then a plate full of flying fish. The stew was great, a nice sweet, peppery hot. The flying fish were ok, but a very heavy breading. Don't know if that's typical of Barbados cooking or not. On the return to the hotel, my cab driver drove me through Bridgeport. We went down one street, don't remember the name, but he said this street used to have partying going on all through the night. There was a woman vendor frying fish under a tin roof and surrounded by a bunch of people waiting their turn. I've got a feeling this was where I should have had dinner, but there was no way the hotel was going to send me here. Hopefully I can find it when I return.

Somehow I remember that as being Pottstown or Norristown, but not sure. Have it somewhere in my downloads. Will try to search it out. But also as I remember, it was a variation on a cheesesteak. Very specific ingredients. And nothing is superior to a Philadelphia Cheesesteak. The out-of-the-city imitators are the only ones that refer to a cheesesteak as "Philadelphia Style"

Beyond which, those so inclined can see him eat a Red's Lobster Roll and a Pat's Cheesesteak when it airs in February 02 on your local PBS station. Be sure to buy the cookbook and the video too.

Was on my own last Friday for a late lunch. Ended up at Rogue, off Rittenhouse Square. Wanted to try Rogue's hamburger which people have told me is one of the best in Philadelphia. I agree. An excellent burger. Thick, plumply juicy, top quality meat, outstanding meat to bun ratio. Only burger I've had in a long time that I haven't had to season with salt and/or pepper. The pomme frites were semi-good. Like every other place in Philadelphia serving pomme frites, Rogue cuts them shoestring style cause, as the owner of Monk's (Belgium cuisine and they still cut them shoestring) tells me everytime I complain, "That's how my customers want them." There's no way to properly fry a thin shoe string cut potato into a proper pomme frite. Like the three bears' porridge, some pieces aren't cooked enough, some are just right, and some are fried solid like a potato stick. The potatoes need, in American measurements, to be cut 1/4" or 3/8" thick to cook consistantly to the proper outside golden crispness and inside puffy mealiness. But enough about food. Some random observations. One of the waiter looks like an ex-employee I eventually fired. It isn't him, but the resemblence is too close, bringing back memories akin to chalk scraping on a black board. Yards Ale is great, but can not be poured agressively down the center of the glass. I stop when the glass is half full and it still Mount Versusiuses all over the table. When lunching on my own I time the service by my USA Today. My order is taken before I could read the front page. Good. The food doesn't arrive until I finish reading all five sections. Not so good. I am able to complete (in ink) the crossword puzzle between the time I finish my meal and the bill is paid. Bad. A rather sophisticated and probably very well-to-do couple is sitting next to me. Between entree and dessert her cell phone rings. She takes the call and ends up talking for a half hour - through dessert and coffee afterwards. He sits for a while, gets up and visits the bathroom. Returns in a few minutes and pulls out his personal information manager. He turns himself sideways, facing 90 degrees away from her, and proceeds to aimlessly fiddle-faddle with it for the entire remaining time she is on the phone. Towards the end of the meal, two servers lock arms and skip halfway through the dining room. I'm the only one to notice. They notice I notice. We all laugh. Despite the fact that the crowd at Rogue is ever so happening, no one recognizes me. That never occurs at the Down Home Diner. I am obviously out of my element. But the ale is hearty. The burger is great. And the servers skip. I shall return.

Ditto Dstone001's recommend, plus a few of my own: Crown Candy Kitchen, the real thing, a genuine soda fountain dating back to 1913. Worth seeking out for a St. Louis style chili dog washed down by their specialty, a chocolate malted with a banana thrown in. Drink 5 in a half hour and they're free. Ted Drewe's - on Route 66. Frozen custard and their specialty a Concrete. Sort of a shake, but so thick that the spoon stands straight up, hence the name. and for dinner, Hodak's - some of the best fried chicken you'll ever had and homemade pies to boot. For more info: The Midwest @ HolyEats.Com

The reading I've done on the Oistins fish fry is that it happens mostly on Friday night. I will be in Barbados on a Monday or Tuesday. Is Oistins still worth checking out on these days. Is it both lunch and dinner. Where else might one "dine" for casual, informal and representative Barbados cooking.

No! No!! No!!! Breakfast is a glorious meal, not to be sloughed off - especially when consumed at a fine hotel or a restaurant that goes beyond a 99 cent coffee, egg and toast special. It sets the tone for one's day. It welcomes one into the world. It makes one happy and jolly and pleasant to most. I usually end up eating lunch around 4 in the afternoon, so I consider it more as a pre-appetizer for dinner than an actual meal. My most frequent lunch comes entirely from Philadelphia's Metropolitan Bakery - Two slices of their whole wheat, whole grain sandwich bread, toasted and topped, open face, with their salmon dill sour cream spread, and a few slices of Spence and Company sliced salmon.

Check out the salsa and chips that bear the name of Fred Imus, Don Imus's brother. Surprising good considering it's heritage. Hard to find here in Philadelphia but fairly plentiful in NYC. Fred Imus Salsa at Autobody Express