Holly Moore

Yep. But a craftsman can take clay and mold a beautiful pot. A third grader can take the same clay and mold a pot that only his mother will see to be of comparable beauty. Knowing the ingredients were the same I've done same day tastings on a number of occasions. My read is that Papaya King cares about quality, Gray's cares about quantity. Edit: Here's a thread on Grays vs. Papaya King.

I was speaking only in terms of quality. And NO WAY does Gray's come close to Papaya King in qualtiy. Gray's is a great value and has saved many a college student from going hungry, but there's a reason for the difference in price. I can't speak to raw material source or portion size - only know that every Papaya King dog I've ever had was fresh hot and nicely cooked and I can't say the same for Gray's.

In terms of quality, Papaya King is to Gray's Papaya what In and Out Burger is to McDonald's.

A few years ago, in Papaya King's first attempt at crossing the Hudson to the provinces, they opened just of the U of Penn campus in Philadephia. A total flop. Closed in a year or so. It was a great location, but their prices were much higher than NY. Just wasn't the value, and the name wasn't enough to carry it. And since they weren't doing the volume the dogs weren't as fresh. They should, but I don't think that Papaya King brings along the cool name recognition of a Fat Burger or a KrispyKreme.

I got curious once and followed a relatively new employee out to the garbage area. Suspicions confirmed - he was taking gallons of milk, OJ and similar staples out in garbage bags where he or a cohort would later pick them up from the dumpster. Turned out he was the member of a krishna like religious cult and this was the way the good folk of this particular sect begged for alms.

I need to get back next spring to delve further into the frozen custard and to try a chili dog so will be sure to try the fries then. At this point, 4 Grease Stains. Would have been 5 were it not for the disappointing Chicago dog.

Sounds like a much needed respite and a great time to be in Center City sans kids. Saturday Morning Coffee: La Colombe - The coffee is theirs. The croissants come from the Rittenhouse Hotel - the almond croissant is highly recommended. Or you could hit Miel, just about next door to the Warwick, and BYO to LaColombe. The Four Seasons brunch is still spectacular. I prefer to go there for Sunday breakfast and watch the legion of cooks set up the buffet line, but that's just me. Then again, Little Pete's is right across from the Warwick, and everyone should really experience at least once their eggs benedict with mayonnaise in leiu of Hollandaise sauce. It's as good a cure as any for a Sunday AM hangover. I don't know from Spas, but I think there are a couple of fancy ones on 17th, just south of the Warwick. Of the Saturday Dinner spots you mentioned, I'd favor Melograno, but haven't been to Pumpkin. Enjoy

There's plenty of good eating down there. My favorite bbq is Allen and Son in Chapel Hill. Murray's in Raleigh is good too. For down home style cooking, you'll do well at Mama Dip in Chapel Hill or Big Eds in the City Market in downtown Raleigh. My site has some info on all these places - either on the Southern section of the Carolina BBQ section. Also see the thread on Katie Purvis's barbecue quest.

I got to the Shake Shack on Saturday rather than Friday. It was a perfect fall day for lunch in the park. Glad I finally made it there though they batted 667 on the food. I ordered the Double Shack Burger, the Chicago Hot Dog and a coffee shake. The place was busy so orders were backed up some. No complaint on that, they were turning out food a'plenty and in good time. What held things up were the burgers. They are hand formed as they go on the grill and thick, so take some time to cook. But that meant the burgers were fresh, hot and juicy off the grill when served. My Double Shack Burger was outstanding. A classic. They don't ask for degree of doneness so mine was medium. Would have preferred medium rare, but I was very happy with my burger. The Chicago Hot Dog looked semi-alright - it had all the requisite toppings except, ahem, sliced tomato. The dog itself was coolish and the poppyseed hot dog roll was unsatisfactory. It came across as stale, breaking apart. Maybe day old. Maybe sitting out too long. The roll didn't appear to be steamed or grilled and that is a disappointment considering the effort they put into their burgers and everything else. The hot dog's timing was off too. They were made and sitting on a counter at least 5 and probably more like 10 minutes before my burger was ready. My Coffee Shake ranked right up there with my burger. Great. The only problem was, after the shake, there was no way I could order a custard cone - I'll have to come back for that. All in all I liked the Shake Shack a lot. Service was excellent, the staff was friendly. The location ideal, and the burgers and shakes/custard were worth the train trip from Philadelphia. Also hit the Union Square Green Market - color me drooling with envy. We do ok in Philadelphia, farm market wise, but nothing the scale, the variety of Union Square. Then on to Pommes Frites - tres disappointment - the fries were overcooked and more like frozen than fresh cut. I was there a few years ago and they were much better then. Guy next to me ordered Poutrain. That looked interesting. Last Stop Crif Dogs. OK, but no Papaya King Dog. Walked down Broadway from Penn Station to Madison Square and then Union Square. Smells that could only be New York, and I mean that positively. Great selection of street food.

It depends on the degree. I have spent time in a kitchen and ended up not doing a column. And I have told, as part of a write-up, of mishaps that occured during the turnout. I have never encountered a sanitation issue to the point of it being dangerous to the public, so I am not sure how I would have handled that. It is perfectly valid to see consumer advocate as the prime duty of a critic. But I maintain it is just as valid to define that primary role as finding the good places to dine. If you're coming to Philadelphia, and please do - I'll make sure your $100 is well spent - and if any of my reviews you might happen upon were not five to twenty years dated , - I would want you to use my reviews to find those good places. And I will have enough fine choices where you need not worry about blowing you $100. Beyond that, logic could reassure you that if a place had been open long enough to have probably been reviewed by the major reviewers in that city, and I hadn't written about it, there is likely a reason. I wrote for the Philadelphia City Paper for fifteen years and had the sense that my readers came to understand that over time. Getting back to your $100. Restaurant reviews only increase or decrease the odds of you not blowing it. Restaurants are so dynamic that you could have a totally different experience than the one lauded in the review that drew you to the place. I agree the higher the average check the less the margin for error, but here in Philadelphia I have had a disappointing meal in restaurants I know are usually capable of far better. The converse too. Fortunately no reviewers were in my restaurant the day the kitchen roof caved in. Or the day the chef walked out on a Saturday night taking her right hand man with her. (Yeah the floor staff was gleefully humming "ding dong the witch is dead... but that's another story.) Or the occasional days when the planets were simply out of kilter and the kitchen or the floor staff didn't have it together. There were days that, had a reviewer been present, instead of the consistently great reviews that we did receive, we would have been panned - torn apart. That is probably the case in any restaurant. That's the difference between a restaurant and a movie or a book. No two experiences at a restaurant are the same and even in the course of a dinner service some diners can have great experiences and others bad ones. That is another reason I never wrote bad reviews. This could have come from me walking those miles in a restaurateur owner's shoes. I probably had more empathy than the average reviewer who came up through newspaper ranks. I believed then and now, similar to my feelings about the death penalty, that there is too big a risk for indavertant error for a reviewer to pan a restaurant on the basis of the usual one or two review meals. A bad review in a city wide publication could unfairly harm a restaurant and, depending on the power of the reviewer, that harm may be irrepairable, even fatal.

Holly, those kinds of stories are certainly informative, and they are interesting. They're a form of food journalism. But they aren't reviews. The problem with getting to know people in the kitchen is that it's awfully hard to mention the negatives, and that's what a review must be free to do. Otherwise, it's not a review. Kathleen Purvis, food editor, The Charlotte Observer. ← Kathleen, I agree what I described is not a review. But I also believe my sort of piece can often give the writer a better and perhaps fairer insight into the nature and capabilities of a restaurant than a review based on one or two meals. Over the course of a day's prep and turnout, when the kitchen is under fire, the real nature of the restaurant is going to come out, both good and bad. I had a self-imposed policy in writing both reviews and pieces such as I described here that my job was to find good restaurants for my readers and not to warn them away from bad restaurants - that there were enough good and great restaurants in Philadelphia to cover that I didn't want to squander my column inches on the poor ones. Those would be gone soon enough, anyway. If a restaurant was bad I did not write about it. If it was good but flawed I did, and mentioned the flaws as well as the favorable aspects. That is how I handled my kitchen "embed" pieces too. My self-imposed policy, along with my having a restaurant background, did leave me open to shots about my credibility. More than one foodie has said to me, "How can I trust what you think is a good restaurant if I don't know what you consider to be a bad one." But correctly or not, I always assumed that those who were disappointed by my not writing bad reviews are the same people who back up traffic for miles on the interstate so they could inch past a three-car accident hoping to see blood and maybe even a dead body or two. I don't intend to come off as downplaying restaurant reviewers. There are a lot of great ones out there. Here in Philadelphia two come to mind. Elaine Tait and Jim Quinn. Both had great credibility. Both had tremendous impact in shaping Philadelphia's Restaurant Renaisance of the late '70s - in encouraging restaurants to excel. And both wrote both favorable and not favorable reviews. (Both also showed their wisdom and excellent judgement in that they gave Holly Moore's Upstairs Cafe great reviews ) And it is entirely possible that their good reviews meant more to their readers and to the establishments because they also wrote bad reviews.

Chickie's does use Sarcones bread for their full size hoagies. Campo's on lower Market uses Sarcones for both hoagies and cheesesteaks.

Because I had owned a restaurant and I had taught at the local restaurant school prior to writing restaurant reviews, I went in with the paranoia that I would probably be recognized, and I sometimes was. When I was recognized, the unexpected took place. Everything went down hill. Severs pandered. Hosts hovered. The kitchen's timing was thrown off - I believe because they were taking extra care with my order, but the end result was some of the food at my table was cool. Portion sizes wonderously increased (compared to nearby tables) as did plate layout and garnishing become more spectacular - on occasion overwhelmingly so. I never liked writing reviews. First because they are formula pieces - opening graph or two, description, what we ate, the service, closing graph or two. Adjectives. Lots of adjectives. I came to hate adjectives. But mostly because they really don't tell all that much about a restaurant. I found I could learn a lot more by fessing up, hanging out in the kitchen during prep and turnout, talking to the chef, the owner, servers and the kitchen crew. Watching the food come together, from raw to plated. Not only did did I always better understand and appreciate the restaurant than I would if I had been confined to a table in the dining room, I sometimes happend upon a story that made a far more fun and interesting write-up than the one I had initially intended.

Unless Friday's blustery weather causes second thoughts, I'm planning a field trip to the Shake Shack tomorrow. To help justify the train fare, I'd like to also eat a couple of additional grease-stain worthy places roughly in the same neighborhood. Any suggestions? Thanks in advance.

Curious - Is Alderny Dairy still around in North Jersey. I spent a summer dipping their ice cream at Sip and Sup at the corner of Rte 10 and Rte 202. It was great ice cream.

Any one have a pic of those Mexican dogs?

NBC says Kerry always downs a traditional election day meal of clams and chowder. It showed him at a restaurant, but didn't name it. Curious if anyone knows the restaurant and the caliber of its chowder?

No recipe, but here's the story behind the Derby Pie.

As a one time restaurant owner in Philadelphia I, in semi-good humor, used to complain to my servers that they were taking home 20% of my sales whereas I was lucky to take home 5 percent.

Well eaten. Looks like the start of a summer tradition. See how many miles the Camry can amass.

With the same disclaimers I stated earlier, whipped heavy cream is fine if no sugar. Also a cream cheese base icing. My understanding is that the problem with Splenda is that it doesn't provide foundation - but is fine for sweeting, so you could probably add Splenda to either heavy cream or cream cheese. Pure peanut butter is also ok, so a variation of that might make an interesting frosting ie cream cheese and peanut butter?

One would certainly think so. But I suspect recipes migrate across borders in that area and are adapted to local ingredients. Today I had Balkan mouseka - very good and rather un-Greek. And, if I'm correctly understanding the family tree, prepared by the owner's mother. Also had another blending of cuisines for dessert - pumpkin strudel - which was included with the entree. Gathered some further reasoning for the name. The Balkan Express is a train that runs from Istabul to Paris. Therefore, according to the rules as interpreted by the owner, it is ok for the restaurant to serve any cuisine served along that route.

Though neither doctor nor dietician, I am pretty well versed in the Sugar Busters diet which is based on the glycemic index and which has a good track record in lowering blood sugar to safe levels without meds. Based on Sugar Busters - Nuts are fine, so is whole grain, whole wheat flour. So are most fruits with the exception of bananas and pineapple. So is 70% or higher cocoa content chocolate. So is brown rice which might make an interesting dessert base. As could, perhaps, whole wheat pasta. All the dairy products you mention are ok. Not sure about nut flours. Splenda is fine. So are eggs. The Sugar Busters book lists a recipe for chocolate mousse from New Orlean's Windsor Court Hotel - using high cocoa chocolate, separated eggs, heavy cream and coffee. I had enough luck with Sugar Busters that I haven't learned the Exchange System recommended for people with diabetes. Maybe someone familiar with it can add or subtract from the above.

I have been diagnosed Type II diabetes for maybe three years. I understand the glycemic index. It is also my understanding that the glycemic index is a measure of how quickly foods convert to sugar and more specifically how fast the body absorbs the sugar in food. I have also found that when I follow a glycemic based diet such as Sugar Busters I lose weight and I can control my diabetes without meds. When I go off it, I need the meds. I have been told that spikes in blood sugar are bad - that they contribute to the long term possible problems associated with diabetes. By measuring my blood sugar I know for me, at least, that the fastest way to spike it is to consume a dessert high in sugar. Therefore my conclusion has been that while moderation of sugar intake is ok, minimization is better. My experience has been that minimization is tough and I fall off the sugar wagon too often. My experience is also that restaurants and especially restaurant dessert menus don't make it easy to stay away from high sugar foods. Moderation usually isn't an option. It's high sugar or nothing. And in higher cuisine restaurants where a dessert may be an assortment of dessert elements, the high sugar comes in waves. I accept that people don't like to be reminded of dietary limitations, especially in an upscale restaurant. But just as a quality restaurant usually offers a vegetarian entree option there is no reason that a pastry chef, especially one with the skill levels found in a fine restaurant, can't offer one low glycemic index dessert - perhaps one built on ground nuts, 75% chocolate and Ben and Jerry's lo carb ice cream. Or something built on whole grain whole wheat flour. Or something that uses Splendra as a base, though it seems more of a challenge to create very low sugar spectacular desserts with only natural ingredients. Common pastry chef wisdom may be that diners want sugary desserts. But I suspect there are plenty of diabetics out there who are either forced on guilt trips by ordering a typical dessert or who forgo desserts, bringing down a restaurant's average check. All it takes to evolve that common wisdom are a few talented pastry chefs with the guts and the imagination to conjure up some restaurant quality, low sugar, low glycemic index desserts that stand as equals to their regular desserts. Please!

I don't know that it is so much a matter of "catching on" so much as it is a result of what has changed in our diets and our lack of physical exercise. Both have led to this sad denouement actually... how much can one ask of a pancreas which has to produce more and more insulin each time yet another Coke is drunk? I think we must have "pooped pancreases" ... and then the media has brought home the message even more strongly .. so our collective knowledge is greater now ... Diabetic dessert recipes are available all over the Net and a quick Google will confirm this ... ← "Catching on" was just my quirky, apolitic way of putting it. Yes, diabetes acceptable dessert recipes are indeed all over the internet - but try finding diabetic worthy desserts in a restaurant. The same restaurants that offer vegetarian entrees, adjust salt levels at request, and notify customers of peanut content give not a whit for those with diabetes. Diabetes is probably a much more common occurance than any of the above, and those with Type II diabetes at least, are probably past regular dessert consumers who would greatfully gobble up an attractively presented, rich, full of flavor sugar free, white flour free dessert. Yes, a cheese tray or some fruit could pass as a diabetic dessert, but when everyone else is gulping down cakes and tortes and cobblers and hot fudge sundaes, fruit or cheese just don't quite cut it.