Holly Moore

A Maine lobster roll fan goes to Connecticut, orders a lobster roll and receives a bun heaped with warm lobster. "Bleah!" says Maine lobster roll fan. "Where is the wonderful contrast between sweet chilled lobster meat and warm toasted bun? Does anyone in Connecticut know how to make a proper lobster roll?"

Yes. They all do.

This Is My Cheesesteak Features the usual suspects: Pat's, Geno's, Steve's, Jim's, John's, Tony Luke's and Jim's again. World Premier in Philadelphia, Saturday April 14th, 2007 10:30 AM at The Bridge: Cinema De Lux at the corner of 40th and Walnut Streets" All the "Philadelphian" cheesesteak shop owners will be there.

Tradition - the way he started doing steaks neigh 60 years ago. I'm a Whiz guy - I tried Chink's. I liked it. One must broaden one's cheese palate beyond provolone and/or whiz. Here is their full menu Chink's Along with a good steak sandwich, Chink's serves perhaps the best milk shake in the city.

Tourist here. Rule's and I really hit it off. I went for a classic roast beef and yorkshire pudding dinner. Alas it was only available for two. Like all good tales, there is a happy ending. Here is my write-up: Rule's At HollyEats.Com

They were good. I talked him into putting them on the menu after having them in Charleston. Is Jack still at the diner on occasion, that you ran into him?

No help now, but Jack McDavid had shrimp and grits on the breakfast menu at the Down Home Diner for quite awhile in the 90's.

Know what you mean. I keep looking for Delaware Avenue and end up on Columbus Blvd. I'm still in favor of the Down Home Diner. Give you a chance to walk the market, too.

Looks like tomorrow I'll be venturing into Jersey in pursuit of Hot Dogs. On my list so far, Jimmy Buff's in East Hanover and Jersey Joe's in Port Monmouth. Anybody know Bubba's Doghouse in Lyndhurst? What other great dogs are missing from my list? Any grease stain worthy non hot dog recs? Can always use a great non-gourmet hamburger. Fresh Cut Fries. Onion Rings. John I need you!!! Here's where I've been so far. Jersey Dogs at HollyEats.Com Thank ya all.

Hazarding a guess, Johnny's Hot's. Their hot sausage sandwich is one of their mainstays.

What is so hard about frying chicken. From a post about Kansas City area Fried Chicken, That's Pittsburg KS, not PA. Poulation 19,243 in 2000. Five places famous for their fried chicken. Other than a DeBreaux I can not name one place in the Delaware Valley that has built its reputation on fried chicken. Down Home Diner does great chicken, but it is not their reason for being. There are no places with a dozen skillets going, frying up batches of chicken. If I'm right, that's a big void in Philadelphia eating that needs to be filled.

Alas, my lot in life. Always a demigod, never a god.

Bob, Wall's Barbecue is worth a try, and an adventure to track down.

Steven, within this structure, is it ok for a reviewer or writer to solicit a comp from a restaurant as opposed to the writer being invited by an owner or publicist?

Daniel, you are probably one of the few restaurant critics that merits hazardous duty pay.

Well, wait, are we certain that the fries (even though I'd agree with you, they do look like the frozen varietal) at ChefBURGER aren't house-made (I have no idea - if somebody has already confirmed this fact, I apologize for being clueless)? FWIW, I was just in Chicago and had the duck fries at Hot Doug's. I don't know if he makes them in house, but I have to say, they were kinda soft and not-that-stellar. *sigh* They sure tasted great, however... but that crispness was missing. ← Before posting I tried to check on their site and through Google, but couldn't find anything. Looking at them, though, they sure look frozen. I'm not sure Hot Doug twice fries his duck fat fries. Fresh cut fries, only fried once, are often limp and greasy - and perfect at 3AM after the bars close. Otherwise, I prefer twice fried.

It's a fair statement, but being equally fair to the establishments that have "gotten lazy" over the years, the vast, *vast* majority of those dining out won't base their destination on what amounts to a glorified side dish. Yes, they're an American institution (though hardly exclusive to America), but when people are deciding on a place to go to eat, their choices are usually defined by entree, and not by sides. Rare's the day when I get a strong enough hankering to drive out of my way for a batch of fries. In fact, it's never happened before. A great burger, though? Yeah, I'll drive for that. While sides are important, and I *definitely* understand where you're coming from (I often don't get fries anymore from some of the finest burger destinations here in Detroit), I understand the other side of the coin, too. All things being equal, I find that in my own mind, the quality of the entree is more important than that of any side that might come with it, a la carte or otherwise. Not hankering for ho-hum fries is also probably one of the few things that helps keep my belt buckled where it is. ← Perhaps a bit of hyperbole on my part. But if there are two burger places within a ten minute drive, pretty equal burgers, and one serves fresh cut fries and one serves frozen shoestring fries, I'm guessing more people than not chose the place with the great fries.

A lot of the dog places in Chicago manage fresh cut, twice fried french fries. McDonald's, before they got lazy, did. Those places that do them well and, granted it takes some effort, probably get as many customers because of their fries than their burgers.

I'm reading along this thread, and despite my prejudice against big burgers I'm thinking "Interesting - worth a try the next time I'm passing through KC." Then I see the pic of the fries. The place seemingly takes a lot of pride in their burgers (other than threatening to grill them medium well) and then they go and serve the same old dreary, most likely frozen, shoestring french fries found everywhere. A pity.

From above: I'd suggest that if a critic gets a reputation for accepting comps and then not giving a place the benefit of the doubt the lesson learned will be to not comp that critic.

Perhaps there are sorta ok comps and not ok comps. Sorta OK comps - Restaurateur originated with no defined quid pro quo. examples: opening parties, benefits, supplier sponsored tastings, guest chefs, meals offered while a writer is at a restaurant to do a feature other than a review. Not OK comps - Writer originated with a specific quid pro quo. I'd like to write about your restaurant, but I expect you to feed me in the process. I'd like to write about your restaurant but I can't afford it so you will need to give me my meal. Restaurateur originated with an expected quid pro quo. Be our guest for dinner so you can write about us or review us.

That story has been done, most recently by the Wall Street Journal ("The Price of a Four-Star Rating"), and it didn't affect anything as far as I know. ← Isn't the Wall Street Journal article about bloggers and forum participants as opposed to professional media? This is upsetting, though.

You're saying that you think that all these papers have a salaried restaurant reviewer and that these papers pay for the full cost of all meals eaten by the restaurant reviewer in performance of this function? All I can say is: don't be so sure. Don't be so sure that some of them aren't making the reviewer pay for his own meals out of his own pocket; or that some don't have such a small budget that the reviewer is forced to subsidize out of his own pocket. Okay. And how much of this kind of work is there to go around, realistically? Even the lowest end of freelance piecework in food writing involves scrounging up assignments to crank out 100 word blurbs on restaurants or bars for things like Time Out's web site -- a form of "reviewing" in other words, which would presumably not be allowed. Not to mention, how is the aspiring restaurant reviewer going to get any reasonable depth and breadth of experience that might make him a good reviewer, especially at the higher end, considering that I assume you would also frown upon comps for this person? Of course, a person who worked away at this stuff as long, hard and successfully as it would take to accumulate the experience and reputation that might lead to one of the "company dime" salaried food writing jobs would, by that time, be a restaurant and food industry industry insider in that city, known to everyone in the business and with lots of relationships. This, in turn, would set off hundreds of "anonymity" and "professional/personal relationship" ethical alarms among the food writing police. Surely you wouldn't approve of that guy who wrote about the apprentice's first day in Ducasse's kitchen writing the review of Ducasse's restaurant. This kind of guy would get special treatment everywhere he went, and certainly couldn't be trusted to write an objective review of a restaurant where the chef gave him that great quote about sous vide, and the guy supplying the tomatoes appeared on that article he wrote about microgreens, and the head waiter is the one he trailed at a different restaurant for a week for that "front of the house" article last year, and, oh yea, the dishwasher is the one who hooked him up with that dude who delivers the best weed in town right to his door. So, in effect, you're suggesting that the aspiring writer guy work his ass off writing about growers, chefs, restaurateurs, dishwashers, reservationists, waiters, a day in the life of a kitchen and so on in one city (or perhaps lives nomadically for however long) in the hope that he'll get on someone's radar, whereupon he would then have to move to another city where he doesn't have any potentially ethically-conflicting relationships and is "anonymous" so he can take a job as that town's restaurant reviewer. Well, no wonder there aren't many food writers who pass the ethical and quality test! ← I never said all those papers had "salaried" personnel. Many restaurant critics are freelance. The ones I referred to, if not salaried are paid for their columns and expensed for their meals. As to the availability of writing work, that is the nature of professional writing. There are far more aspiring writers, be they food writers or whatever, than there are column inches. Those serious about pursuing such a career make it happen. A career in food writing can be achieved without accepting comps to write about a place. As to writing about food to gain the visibility needed to be offered a critic's job and the possible disadvantage of such gained visibility for the restaurant critic: 1. Cherishing anonymity is as much an ego trip for food critics as it is essential for an accurate review. I've offered my rationale in other threads, so will summarize here - a savvy restaurant critic almost always knows when he has been spotted and is receiving special treatment, and can work around being known. There are many things a restaurant can't correct once a critic walks through the door. Besides which, after a few months of restaurant reviewing, restaurants likely will have passed around a picture of the critic and posted it on a bulletin board. Does that mean the critic has to resign since restaurants now know the critic's appearance? 2. Back of the house usually only knows a critic is there if the front of the house clues them in. That a writer spent a day with a chef doesn't mean the chef will use x-ray vision to see him in the dining room. Beyond that known people often don't get recognized in a busy restaurant, especially when they don't want to be. Back when I had my restaurant - all of 48 seats - David Letterman was at a table for two on a busy Saturday evening and we didn't realize it until he was leaving. 3. Someone with general food writing experience and the resultant insight about food and restaurants has to be preferable to a publication than hiring an unknown quantity who simply dines out a lot and cooks at home. I totally reject the premise that a quality food writer has to seek out comps along the way to establish and sustain a food writing career.

Over the first year or eighteen months of a clinical trial I've been on for over three years now, one of the gene-targeting meds totally screwed up my taste buds. Anything protein based had no flavor at all. But fruits, sweets and some vegetables rang true. It was so impactful that I went to the Univ of PA's taste clinic. They did a day's worth of tests and decided the problem was with my nose and not my taste buds. I didn't and still don't believe them. Eventually my sense of taste came back. Steaks taste like steaks, and hot dogs don't repulse me. But for the past year or so, any dish with even a hint of heat to it is magnified a hundred times. For a while I couldn't even handle aged provolone on a hoagie because all I could taste was the sharpness of the provolone and none of the other ingredients. I figured it was a ying and yang thing. The amazing new meds worked, but there had to be a personal price - something that was so valuable to me, like my sense of taste.

My guess would be at least hundreds if not thousands of publications pay for reviewing meals. Unless things have changed, in Philadelphia alone, the Inquirer, the Daily News, Philadelphia Magazine, the City Paper and I'm guessing the Philadelphia Weekly all pay for reviewing meals. Food writers don't have to review restaurants to get started. One could suggest that the reading public would be better served if aspiring critics wrote about other aspects of food and restaurants - growers, chef's, dishwashers, a day in the life of a kitchen and such where no dollar outlay is required. Might even make them better, more knowledgeable and more well rounded critics. A great Ducasse article would be the an apprentice's first day in his kitchen. No cost of a meal there.