herbacidal

Okay, ready for the overwhelming? I'll try and limit things to walking distance. Of course, I'd easily walk from Old City to Rittenhouse, so I gotta big area. From the Aramark Tower on Market: Not counting Market St, go south on 12th for 3 traffic lights to Walnut. On the left corner, right next to the Cosi is Caribou Cafe. A very good approximation of a Parisian brasserie. If you stop at the second traffic light instead, that's Sansom St. Go right (west) and half a block down is Fergie's. Great place for a beer, decent bar food. You can get dragged into the Quizzo game if you go on a Tuesday or Thursday. At the end of that block is a great place for eats. There's Capogiro for the best gelato you'll have this side of Italia. There's El Vez for good kitschy Mexican food. One or two stores away from one of the corners is Lolita, a Nuevo semi-Mexican BYOB. [ BYOBs are restaurants that seat from 25-70 that do not have liquor licenses and therefore permit you to bring alcohol. In the past decade or so, their emergence has become a strength of the local dining scene, as they provide innovative food at reasonable prices with (generally) good service. Most people bring wine or beer, though Lolita is popular for suggesting you bring tequila for margaritas. I wonder what a BYOB would think if I brought a bottle of bourbon or cognac. ] If when you get to Walnut you choose not to cross the street, go east on Walnut towards 11th. You'll come up on Pompeii, an Italian restaurant. Haven't heard much about it at the new location, but I believe I always heard good stuff about it before the move. It's at least worth checking out for lunch if you feel the mood. Pizza, no place I'd really recommend. Pizza Club went to Top Tomato (few doors down from Pompeii), and I thought it was so-so. Cheesesteak, I guess you can go for Steve's (on the 12th St. side of the Reading Terminal, right next to Pearl's Oyster Bar). I've generally been happy with the food at the restaurant at Loews, and I've tried it several times under different chefs/names. Not jawdroppingly delicious, but if you're time crunched and don't feel like fast food, it's conveniently right there at 12th and Market. If you don't feel like cabbing it to Standard, walk to Good Dog. It's on 15th just south of Walnut. Just as good, although they don't play with the menu overall as much as Standard. But on what a cheeseburger.

But unfortunately, at one time in the past it was. Reference "A Prayer for the City", by Buzz Bissinger. Outstanding read for fans of urban history and development. Uh, to keep this on-topic, I really got stop to by the place soon. Of course, I could say that about Melograno, Matyson, Rx, Marigold...

Hmm, methinks this is the difference between an Egulleteer and a normal person. A normal person looks at something in the grocery store they haven't eaten / seen before and thinks "Hmm, I wonder what that is ? Eww, that looks gross." An Egulleteer looks at something in the grocery store they haven't eaten / seen before and thinks "Hmm, that looks interesting. I should buy it, take it home, and figure out what to make with it."

What distinguishes a Persian restaurant from an Afghan restaurant or any other Middle Eastern restaurant? In both food and decor. In service as well, but I expect that to have been adapted to the American style than the others.

As rlibkind mentioned, from bottling to transportation to retail, their wine is kept at optimum chilling temperatures. They keep fleece jackets, sweaters, coats, etc. for people who walk in who are not appropriately attired. Their sales staff is as knowledgeable and helpful as you can get. They are what I call a boutique wine shop, in that they work with top-quality vineyards whose grape production is too high to use for their own purposes and too low to bottle in a high enough volume to efficiently and appropriately market. I guarantee to most people that when they walk into Moore Brothers, they will not recognize 95% of their inventory. Their wines are that hard to find. And not exorbitantly priced either, although there are random vintages that can get up there. NYC wine geeks will rejoice. Katie, I'm sure I've left something out. Go ahead.

Yea, I noticed them doing the same restaurant in the same week's review too. With CP and the Weekly, I think that was true for Barclay Prime, now Marigold. Can't remember the other ones offhand.

Aruna, Evidently, you had the highest turnout for a dinner yet, and twas a fine meal they all had. That is, with the exception of me, who had too fine a meal, as more than a few people can account for my beached whale status afterwards. Good job, girl.

I think Sam Won is farther East/Northeast. It's on Castor, right?

IIRC, Fresser be from that great Chicagoland area.

The only times I've had oysters cooked they've been fried or steamed. Raw oysters aren't bad but I do miss them steamed with ginger and scallion. I forget what kind, I just remember that they were really big and we sold them for $2 each at a Chinese restaurant back in the mid 90s.

There's gonna be another session? Cool. I couldn't commit either.

All your reasoning is correct. That's why I don't expect privatization anytime soon and am quite happy that Newman is utilizing the strengths of the system rather than just lamenting the weaknesses. I do wonder though about how liquor and beer are bought and sold in restaurants and bars in other culturally conservative states in the Midwest and the South. Anyone share info on Alabama, Oklahoma, and Montana?

PL, reference another thread just a few spaces down the page for descriptions and comparisions of roast pork sandwiches from Tony Luke's and Dinic's. Tony Luke's, @ Front and Oregon, is as navigable from TLA as 20th and Snyder is. Basically, car transportation is best. Dinic's at the Reading Terminal at 12th and Arch wouldn't be available during the evening as it's a lunch spot. Roast pork Italian is roast pork sliced thin, with provolone cheese (I think this is standard, but it might just be my standard) and served with either broccoli rabe or spinach, on a long hoagie roll.

Hey come on now, let's stop the lovefest! As someone who has semi-regular drinks with Miss Aphrodite herself, the last thing I need her to have is a swelled head. But Katie, glad you finally made it out of the treacherous depths of what lies beneath.

There've been previous threads on PLCB and PA beer stores here and here plus probably some others if you go far enough back. Basically, there's a few different reasons why the system is the way it is and why it is unilikely to change dramatically soon. The PLCB workers' union, politics, the protests of the overly religious, beer store owners, are all different things preventing significant change such as selling off the state store system or integrating beer into the State Stores. At the same time Jonathan Newman, the current PLCB chairman, has made very significant progress and changes in recent years and I think he will continue to do much to modernize and improve the system. Smalller changes that would be nice to make in my eyes are: doing away with the by the case law for beer making it easier to restaurants and caterers to purchase wine and liquor, including but not limited to increasing the discount from its current 7-8% I can't remember anything else, since I rarely buy alcohol in PA.

Also the Grey Lodge at 62XX block of Frankford, I think. Website at greylodge.com. Owner Scoates is a member here. Food was damm good when all he had was a dinky little toaster oven. I hear the newly renovated upstairs includes a real kitchen. Best draft beer selection in the city. All local brews like Standard Tap, but I'd say most of the Lodge's are harder to find than the Tap's. (Scoates, I expect payment through Paypal, y'hear?)

There's a Portugese place that has gotten mixed reviews. I liked it, or at least I think I did. I may have liked its predecessor. The one I liked was Cafe Portugalia. There's also a good Korean place that I don't know the name of (inherited this characteristic from my friend who introduced me to the place). Take the Adams exit west from Roosevelt Boulevard. At that first light there's a shopping center on the left (where Cafe Portugalia is/was) and on the right is the Korean place. For the Korean place, make sure you go in the restaurant entrance, not the karoake entrance.

Yea, one of these days I have to pop in at one of these happy hour things around town. I hear both Capital and Morton's have good munchies.

Pan, There's no food-oriented claim. Unless someone wants to claim that the region's strong bread tradition was what lead to matzoh balls. (See, Chinese gave Italians spaghetti and Jews matzo balls.) That was more of an FYI. I'm not looking for real discussion of it here. Actually, I'm not looking for discussion about it anywhere, since I know little about the subject. I haven't researched the topic at all. It was something I was told and read about briefly years ago.

I had the roquefort burger a few weeks ago. Just the right level of doneness (minimal) and oozing with goodness and cheese, goodness and cheese.

Tommy runs the RTM operation. Full head of dark hair, 40ish or maybe a young looking 50-ish, sometimes wears glasses, wiry buil. When not busy he can usually be found schmoozing at his counter with other merchants. ← Yea, that's the guy. 5'9 or so, because I thought I remember him coming up to my shoulder. Anyway, I've known enough owners to know how one acts when he/she's around their place.

The only two I know of are what is now Dinic's NJ and the other is on 130 S at Federal St (it's unoccupied). ← Oh, that's what you're calling white towers. I think there's at least one other one I've seen in my trails through Joisey, but I can't recall where. Basically, it's a retail location that serves food, with only enough space for a small kitchen and seating at a counter. The one on 130 South at Federal used to be Roney's Hamburgers, if I remember the name correctly.

Where is the pojangmacha place? Details, mon. Really? Cool, maybe I changed his mind. My source was the guy who I assume is Tommy Dinic because he looked and acted like the owner when I was there.

From what I understand, Dinic's at the Terminal doesn't offer rabe as an option because most of their crowd doesn't know / like broccoli rabe and they were wasting their money keeping it on hand.

For those who are interested in Jews in China, there was a Jewish enclave in Kaifeng in (IIRC) one of the provinces just north of Jiangsu and Anhui, possibly the same one as Zhengzhou, Luoyang, and the Shaolin temple. I don't recall their current status. From what I remember, the most rational argument for their existence is that they resulted from Matteo Ricci stopping off there on his way back from Beijing/predecessor to Europe.