Holly Moore

Another rationale for the name. From the Gourmands Guide to Dining In and Around Corinth by Milton Sandy Jr.

OK, on the assumption Rocco's A&E producers check eGullet regularly, save the cost of an Email and post your story here. Key word is "drama." Truth is optional.

If time permits, rent a car in Oslo and drive the coastal route to Bergen and then return across the mountains. Also, don't write off breakfast. The buffet at my hotel in Bergen had seven different treatments of herring. Could have been my best mean in Norway.

It has been my experience that landlords would rather not have a restaurant as a tenant. With regular retail there are far fewer problems with bugs, rats and dumpsters. No cooking odors. No need to run an exhaust to the roof. If it must be a restaurant tenant, then a TGIF, Olive Garden or any credit worthy, deep pocketed national chain is preferable to an independent or local, especially one with less than adequate capitalization. There is one exception. The landlord that loves to have a restaurant come into an old building and install new electric and plumbing and bring the building up to code. Then the restaurant goes out of business and the property owner ends up with a much more valuable property. The reason rents are so high in Center City is because so many national retail chains and restaurant chains are willing to pay big city rents. In the 80s and 90s Philadelphia Center City rents were some of the least expensive downtown rents available. An upscale restaurant that can not justify Center City rents is going to have to do what it takes to be a destination restaurant. It can not rely on foot traffic. There are upscale restaurants in Philadelphia that have pulled it off, but none of the multiple Michelon star caliber. It is too bad that restaurants are spending so much on decor that it costs a half a million to a million or more to open. I'd like to think that a minimalist decor (and minimal investment in decor) could sustain a really fine dining experience. But with the expectations set by Starr and the others, that would be another risk, along with the location.

Greetings all, If you have any questions concerning geographical rational for a post please contact Katie or myself by PM. It is off topic for this thread. Thanks for your understanding.

Having been there for the first restaurant renaissance, it is my recollection that many of the restaurant renaissance restuarants opened in secondary locations - especially those who were undercapitalized. That is still possible nowadays. Center City is pretty much out of the question unless one is opening a restaurant projected at a million or more in sales. But as I said earlier in this thread there are still reasonable locations - upper South Street especially, between Broad and 21st. Back in school I learned that a restaurant's rent should be about 6% of sales. Maybe that has changed, but it can't be all that different. A $4,000 a month rental projects to $800,000 a year. $5,000 projects to $1,000,000. Center City prime rentals are that or higher for a relatively small location. Plus they are almost always net, net, meaning the tenant pays real estate taxes and building insurance. Last time I looked, upper South Street was $1200 to $1600 monthly for similar square footage. Lesser locations, so a restaurant like Pumpkin must make people willing to head there. The location is a risk, for sure. But for a restaurant just getting off the ground it's a lot easier to write a $1500 rent check than one for $5000.

Carman is touring the Mideast and is due back the second (I think) week of July. No international incidents yet, but I'm still hopeful.

Flambe everything. 100% alcohol sales.

No grease stains for you. My theory, but the best writing is self indulgent. A writer needs passion about a subject. Hopefully many subjects. If readers share the passion, they will enjoy the writing. If not they'll turn the page or click the "X" There can be solid, interesting writing on any manner of food, be it ordering a cheesesteak with both whiz and provolone or announcing the early crop of apples from a Bucks County orchard. The writer picks the subject, the reader decides what is of interest.

Not sure I agree with that statement. A columnist like Rick Nichols or a reviewer like Craig Laban offers opinions - he does not merely report facts. Opinions can can ethically reflect an agenda the colunist believes in or a movement the columnist supports. While we have very good food journalists nowadays, I believe the last "Movers and Shakers" were Jim Quinn and Elaine Tait.

I'm thinking one of the gastro-pubs could make Pepperpot a signature soup.

Most every military drill instructor up unitl the new Army. What Ramsay's doing is akin to the first third of old military basic training, back when there was a draft. Taking a group with all sorts of diversity and skill levels and breaking them so that he can rebuild them in his image. Yelling, sleep dep, manhandling. All part of the breaking down and weeding out process. Not that it's necessary. But that's the best comparison I've come up with.

Burger that greasy good, and me in a patrol car, I'd light the lights, turn on the siren and pursue an imaginary perp in a high speed chase all the way to Sacremento.

OK. It's been bothering me for a few days. I'm familiar with a fish knife and a fish fork in a formal dining setting, but what is a fish spoon?

All better. Now, how does everyone feel about "George" in the title as opposed to "Georges"

I corrected my original post from corned beef to corned beef hash. Not sure if that changes things for Bob.

As I struggle through the next six weeks of Carman traveling the Mideast - my weekend breakfast haunt therefore closed - I am forced to find new breakfast places. Sunday I ventured to the Famous Deli. I use these occasions to order foods that Carman will never prepare, like SOS. This time it was corned beef hash and eggs. Gulp!!! The serving of corned beef hash could have fed half the restaurant. It came mounded on an 11" long x 5" wide platter (estimate) and was piled about 5" high. Filled the entire plate. On top two fried eggs - they don't do poached. I asked for a spare plate, took a normal portion and slid off the eggs. Hardly made a dent in the mountain of corned beef. Not the best I've had, but not the worst either. It is a rare day in June that I will complain about tonnage. For me tonnage is usually second only to greasiness. But this was simply too much. I guess most people lug home what they can't eat. I opted not to. It would have just created another guilt trip sitting there in my refrigerator. Who wants to eat corned beef hash six more days in a row?

Want to start a pool on how many cooks Ramsay has in tears by the end of tonight's 2 hour episode? My first exposure to Ramsay was last year's Hell's Kitchen. I thought very little of him as a person - a bully who could only motivate through fear. Of late I've been watching the latest BBC America episodes of Kitchen Nightmare (Wed 9PM ET). There's a whole different Ramsay there - one I like a lot. I get a feeling the real Ramsay comes through more here than on Hell's Kitchen. I'll be watching Hell's Kitchen mostly to see if any of the apprentices has the balls to throw a plate of food back at Ramsay. Too bad the Irish lout eliminated from Top Chef didn't make it onto Hell's Kitchen. That would have been a show worth watching, though Ramsay would have ended up on top.

My favorite chicken salad comes from an Amsterdamn restaurant via Vincent and Mary Price's Cookbook, "A Treasury of Great Recipes." Along with cubed chicken breast, diced apples, minced onions, fresh dill and bound together by whipped unsweetened heavy cream.

My last three fine dining experiences, two at three star restaurants in France, and one in NYC, were wonderful. Especially wonderful because in a true fine dining establishment one doesn't find the "pretentious collareral BS" that both you and I object to. It has been my experience that the pretentious restaurants are second tier wannabe's - the more the pretension the less the skills of the kitchen. Not always, perhaps, but more times than not. I hope true fine dining, with flower budgets that exceed my annual income, formal dress codes and fish spoons never disappears from Philadelphia, or the world. Meals at such places, at least for one of my middle class means, are rare indulgences to be truly savored. Not just the cuisine and the ambience, but the service. Especially the service. The three fine dining meals I mentioned above had a style of service singular to that level of restaurant. Now the confession - those three meals all occured 2 - 3 years ago. But over the past couple of years I have still dined very well, whether at one our BYO's or huffing up two steep flights of stairs in West Philadelphia. Very well indeed. And the casualness of those meals was savored too. But once or twice a year I'd still like to put on my best suit, search out an unstained necktie, polish up my American Express card and dine at a true, formal, starched white linen world class restaurant.

I found that strange too. But I'm sure that's what he was - looked the part - very heavy (trying to look tough), shaved head, dumb looking and a very bad suit. ← That could have been me before I found a decent tailor.

Breaths there a barbecuing region with soul so dead that never to itself has said, "We have the best barbecue. We are the barbecue capitol of the world!"

As a long time citizen of Etc, PA, I'm hoping you make it here with or without the Food Network. What a great and deserved opportunity.

A good place to start is the Southern Foodways Alliance Website. Money above and beyond the cost of running the event helps fund the mission of the Southern Foodways Alliance. That's a pretty good reason in itself. Secondly, from the event announcement: The group events and self-guided tours will certainly relate to food culture and many times are specially arranged for the SFA and would otherwise never be available. And I submit, counselor, that from the fact that most events sell out well before the event date, it can be concluded that the SFA has a history of providing good, tasty and fun value for the buck. Besides that, what Mayhaw Man said.

... and the logic for such placement hopefully being more than "a restaurant is a business." I do have one bone to pick with the site. The listing of Restaurant Review websites does not include HollyEats.Com even though every Philadelphia dining establishment listed on HollyEats is BYO. That said, it's a great site requiring a lot of work to put together.