Holly Moore

What, me worry? I figure in another forty or fewer years I'll be thin as a rail, no matter what.

Just got around to asking a couple of the baristas at Philadelphia's La Colombe is they serve iced espresso. They do - "If a customer wants it..." Beyond that they pointed me to a sign on the counter advertising an iced espresso drink - ice, a layer of sweet condensed milk and topped with espresso. Those outside of Philadelphia, and perhaps New York City, may not be familiar with La Colombe. For me, La Colombe is the gold standard for both coffee cafes and baristas. One question, why are male espresso drawers not referred to as baristos, or are they??

Was cruising Craig's List for office space and happened upon Commercial Kitchen For Rent. Rent's only 600 per month. Figured it might be just the thing for someone looking to cater or bake or whatever.

A double cheese Whopper, hot off the broiler, back when BK had their flame broil conveyor broilers was a great hamburger. McDonald's and the others had nothing to compare. In the early 70's, when I did regional marketing for BK in metro New York, it was a point of personal pride that I could do 70 down the LIE while eating a double cheese Whopper, and not get a crumb or drip on my shirt. That was back when I considered grease stains a bad thing. My other crowning achievement, as long as we're talking about the King and I, was running the Grand Opening for Burger King's first Manhattan restaurant - a converted Horn and Hardart on 58th or 59th Street just off Central Park. We threw a Whopper eating contest between the Jets and the Giants. Marve Albert did the bite by bite announcing and an unknown kid by the name of Andy Kaufman was the referee, complete with blaring whistle. We made the Today Show and the back page of the Daily News - and I got to spend a couple of expensed weeks at the Plaza. Those were the days.

One more responsibility. A chef has a responsibility not only to innovate, but to keep alive the great recipes and cuisines of those who have gone before, lest they eventually be forgotten.

Bad photography, being worth a thousand bad words, saves me from reading bad writing. In the eGullet threads I read I rarely see bad pictures. I see, and contribute, non-professional pictures. As Fat Guy says, any picture in focus gives a sense of the place and the food. Such a photo may be all it takes to inspire a side trip, or some wishful thinking. Within eGullet and among the food blogs there are some amazingly professional amateur-snapped pictures - and I'm not just talking Philadining.

There are no places where I have to dine (or eat) and there are plenty of good to great meals out there where cameras are not prohibited. I've always been a tad ornery when someone tells me what I can't do. I'd rather find a meal at a place that sees hospitality as I do. Moot in that I haven't faced this issue with photography. I have started to walk out before a meal when a place refused to relent on a service charge for six or more. Happily, we established a dollar value on their principles - the check for a table of eight. I tipped on my experience and not a fixed percentage.

Are you talking about restaurants? I know of no restaurant other than Momofuku Ko that bans photography (as opposed to banning just flash), so I'd be interested in other examples. ← I know of one place - Tommy Gunns

Last November I shot well over 100 pictures at San Francisco's Ferry Terminal Market. Never asked for permission, never sensed irritation on the part of the vendors. In January I was at a small public market on Isla Mujeres in Mexico and asked a butcher if I might take his picture. In both cases I trust my judgment and am happy with the results. If I wanted to take pictures at a restaurant and in my judgment I could do so unobtrusively or, at least with minimum obtrusion, and they flatly told me "no pictures" I probably would leave. Same reason I will choose a different restaurant if I am hosting a large group and the original restaurant insists on adding a service charge. I don't like dumb rules and, whenever possible, shun them. A restaurant might suggest, in the way of a kindergarten teacher, that some people use a camera obnoxiously, forcing them to ban all cameras. Such lowest-common-denominator policy-making shows small thinking and is an insult to a restaurant's more considerate clientèle. While I dine more often at five grease-stain joints than at Michelin three star restaurants, I can not think of any restaurant where a pocket size camera, used without a flash and with good judgment would intrude upon other tables. I would consider any restaurant with a no pictures rule to be pretentious. Fortunately, most cities cursed with a pretentious restaurant are also blessed with a number of similar, or superior, hospitable restaurants. As I attempted to communicate in an earlier post, conversation at nearby tables can be far more disquieting than someone taking a few pictures. If a restaurant's goal is the serene enjoyment of one's meal, a policy focusing on no talking rather than no clicking would have more impact.

My rules for taking pictures work for me. I do not feel the need to impose them on others. Picture taking like most things in life requires personal judgment. If someone agrees with my judgment they will find me tolerable. If a person doesn't, they will not. I rarely ask in advance. I want candid shots. I want shots that represent the food as served to any customer. Also, since I am taking pictures for my website I don't want to put "should I comp him" stress on the owner. I have been there where I have agonized if a person at my restaurant wanted a comp. I do not and do not want an owner or employee to consider that I might. In a very small place I may ask permission or explain why I am taking pictures. I am also more apt to ask in a foreign country where I feel more the intruder. I was a camera nerd in high school - photo editor for both the yearbook and newspaper. For a long time, wherever I traveled I packed along a couple of cameras, a light-meter, lenses, filters and more. Then, one trip, while driving from Oslo to Bergen through some of the most stunning geography in the world, I realized I was so busy taking pictures that I didn't burn anything into my memory. For a while I stopped taking a camera on travel. My first trip around the world, back in the pre-digital 80's, no camera. No regrets either. My guide in India was surprised I had no camera. I explained I was writing a journal and did not want to be distracted by taking pictures. When we arrived at the Taj Mahal, he shooed away the film peddlers. "Mr. Moore is a writer, his mind is his camera." I doubled his tip. Unfortunately I have a similar sense of disengagement when taking pics for HollyEats. My instinct when food is set before me is to dive in, taking no prisoners. Instead, I turn on my camera and take pics from various angles before tasting my food. It can diminish my passion for a meal. There are restaurant meals where I intentionally do not bring a camera. I often enjoy more a second, "off-duty" visit to a HollyEats featured restaurant. I have never been good with dumb rules though, or with people who seek to impose their rules upon me. A restaurant tells me, "No pictures," I am not happy and would likely leave. A restaurant asks, "No flash pictures," I gladly comply. The restaurant that best handled the issue, Grant Achatz's former Trio. The maitre d' offered to have someone in the kitchen take pictures of my courses. I could sit back and giggle with glee at Grant's culinary antics.

I wish people wouldn't talk once a course has been served - not only at my table but at tables within earshot. Just let me focus on my meal No distracting conversations please. And no opinions on the food, either. I need to savor and decide for myself. Don't talk about the food, just eat it. Since people are not usually talking when they are taking pictures, please, feel free to snap away.

Interesting discovery at Parc today. I can enjoy a meal there even when Parc's bureaucracy offers no opportunity to complain. Perhaps we are approaching deténte. I hope not. I survive on tilt-worthy windmills as much as nourishment. Got to Park at about 2:50 today. The hostess, while showing me to my seat, advised, "Our Apres-Midi" menu goes on at 3 PM. We agreed that a server should be dispatched immediately as I was wanting lunch. I ordered and received without further discussion Parc's Croque Madame. Thick slices of ham and turkey on a slab of their bread, blanketed with a cheesey mornay sauce and topped with a fried egg. Very good. One curiosity. Pity the tourist who heeds the sign hovering over the outside tables along 18th Street. Someone - I suspect the awning installer - pivoted the sign 90 degrees, making east north, north, west and so on. Someone not familiar with the area would be heading north on 18th Street in search of the Avenue of the Arts.

Tomato gelato today. Richer tomato flavor than many an present day Jersey tomato.

Cracker Barrel wouldn't appreciate my input. I have a thing going on with Minnie Pearl at her namesake, the Sarah Cannon Research Institute. It's a brief tryst, about an hour or so. Recently I've been flying in and out the same day, but that is a lot of US AIR Express to deal with in an eight hour period. My return flight Friday is at 1 PM, so can't make Rae's this trip, but it is now on my list. Sounds like my kinda eating.

Along with Esq's lunch recommends, I have really come to like Arnold's for lunch - a cafeteria line meat and three or four or five. Great smothered chicken, great sides, great fried corn breads. And Martin's is definitely worth the expedition to Nolensville. Fir the first time in four years of biweekly travel to Nashville I'm staying at the Hermitage. Going to give them a try for dinner and breakfast.

I find the Best of Philly list valid to the degree that it agrees with my opinions.

Wonder if monkfish would work. It is supposed to be the lobster of fish or, as wikipedia puts it, the "poor man's lobster." No bashing as long as you swear to call it a "Minnesota Lobster Roll."

Oh, Parc. Why must we fight so. Another lunch, another spat. This time I was seated at 2:50 PM - 10 minutes ahead of the dreaded "Apres-midi" menu. Tick tock - 8 minutes passed and no server. Suspecting what was about to happen, a time stamp. About a minute later, a server took my order. At about 3:05 he returned. "I am sorry sir. Between three and five we only serve Apres-midi." Like I didn't know that. "But I was seated at 2:50." "I will have to ask the chef." The server retreated to the kitchen and a bus person brought me some bread. There was no way I was going to settle for "Apres-midi." I would have been quite satisfied with a free lunch of bread and water. About five minutes later the server returned. "The chef will prepare your order." The tide is turning. For the first time in our series of tiffs, I won. The server moved on to a table that had arrived a couple of minutes after me - well before 3 PM. They too ordered from the luncheon menu. Kinder, gentler folks, they settled for "Apres-midi." During my lunch, a person, armed with a clipboard walked up and down past the row of outside tables where I was sitting. Twice. She would pause, jot down a note, and then move on a table or two. Like a judge at a county fair. I was hoping for at least an honorable mention. I had the baguette provencal. It was very good.

A tad off topic. Has any London breakfast chef ever dared to break with tradition and prepare beans from scratch as opposed to going to all the trouble of opening a No. 10 can? (Are there No. 10 cans (tins?) in London?) While I have come to accept the role of sugary Heinz beans within the flavor interplay of a full English breakfast, I do pause for a moment, before first raising knife and fork in an American manner, to wonder what could have been, bean-wise, had Heinz eschewed global marketing.

How about a glass of ice water then, hold the water? If the place has cups and the place has ice, a store policy of no cups of ice to a paying customer doesn't cut it. Wouldn't even both me if it was a couple, and the person not getting the quadruple espresso was pouring him/herself a glass of celery tonic purchased across the street into my cup of ice. Hospitality should always triumph over non-essential policies.

A coffee shop should stress quality. It also needs to stress hospitality. Gently educating a customer is a service. Refusing to serve a customer making a reasonable request is stupid. One wonders about the management's motivation in this sort of thing. Is it a noble crusade or is it a power trip, an ego running amok? A coffee shop owner has an inalienable right to stupidity. But there have to be less piddling issues upon which to invest one's stupidity.

I am untrained in the ways of fine wine - one of those boorish "I know what I like" gulpers. Having amassed a bunch of years and, within those years, many fine dining opportunities, I have had the good fortune to sip many great wines - expensive wines that are supposed to taste very good. They did. I can not explain the subtleties of why? I can not legitimately fill out a grading sheet. I just know that I liked them. I seem to enjoy fine, expensive wines. A lot. Ergo they were not wasted on little ol' untrained me.

Another option - US Route 11

I'm going to be at a convention in New Orleans in a couple of weeks. It ends Tuesday. No reason to be home in Philadelphia until Sunday, maybe Monday or Tuesday. So many routes and just one car. My goal for the trip home is to hit as many HollyEats kind of places I can. I'd also like to avoid interstates as much as possible. It would be neat to get on some old US highway and follow it - such as taking the Lincoln Highway across country. One thought is to approximate the route of Amtrak's Crescent (dates back to 1891) which runs from NYC through Philadelphia and onto New Orleans. Any other ideas? Stops along the way? Side trips? Things to do other than eat, drive, eat some more? Thanks Edited to ad quote from Wikipedia article on the Crescent:

I suppose buying some from the kid at Fosters Freeze is cheating. Here's a link I found searching for Dairy Queen Chocolate Dip Magic Shell