herbacidal

the place in philly i used to call my home bar was a place i called frank's, and most people called dirty frank's. two key points useful to this thread: 1) doctor friend of mine (med student at the time) took a sample of germs for one of his classes; he got his culture from the payphone in the bar; he got the best sample of anybody in the class 2) my most memorable memory of the mens room was the floor underneath the toilet rotting/torn away, leaving hole approximately 4-6 sq ft worth. you could see all the pipes and etc. underneath.

i'm sure you can acquire a more flavorful+lesser known+not widely available beer than most people, rich. perhaps that would be a worthy contribution.

jeez, see what happens when i leave this thread for 4 hours? uh, my way of making sure i make it is not to commit to it until last possible second. but i have reserved that day for varmint luncheon personally, just trying not to really commit. but okay, guess i'll commit to coming. if i plan something, something will happen so that I have to change it. so i keep track of things, try and keep that date open, and follow what others are saying+doing, so i can jump in at last minute and still go. the menu planning shouldn't be hard. lemme know if u need help. Sweet and Tart is the one on Mott that's a split level dining room, right?

really. that's interesting. okay more people with wenzhou+hangzhou food experience. maybe i've just been talking to the wrong people. when people have referred to hangzhou to me, it's just been about the scenery. the food has never ever been mentioned.

I think you are trolling, Herbacidal. If you reduced Chinese cuisines to four, they would be most likely be Su-Hang (encompassing Zhejiang), Northern (Beijing/Shandong/Manchu), Cantonese/Chaozhou and Sichuan/Hunan. if i were to reduce it to 4: Sichuan + Hunan Cantonese Beijing+Shandong(+Manchuria?) I would expect Manchurian to be more hardy, not quite like Beijing, although there would definitely be influences. Don't know enough myself. Xian and area BTW, what is trolling? When's the last time you went to a restaurant in the US that DIDN'T have Westlake Soup on the menu? How about Sour West Lake Fish, Tea Shrimp, Beggar's Chicken, Su Dongpo pork? Anything with shredded bamboo shoots? This is different. I should have been more specific. I was starting with commentary about Zhejiang cuisine and perception as one of the classical cuisines in China. As far as the dishes you mention, this is a separate issue than above, because people IMO would lump these in with Cantonese, since the restaurants have been mostly Cantonese in America that serve these dishes. Are there any Zhejiangese restaurants in the US? I didn't know there were any Yunnan cuisine restaurants until they were mentioned in a thread on the CA board recently. They're on the menu, but most people wouldn't recognize them as Zhejiang. They recognize Sichuan and Fukien because of the separate restaurants, but also because the food is different enough, whereas there are much too many common characteristics between Zhejiang and Cantonese food for most people to distinguish. Most of these dishes you've mentioned, I don't recognize in my area, I will admit, although it has been a long time since I looked at menus. I tend to just order from either talking with waitstaff or what I remember liking from my waitering days.

you coordinators without portfolio are supposed to know everything. it's not like you have any specific ministerial duties to take care of.

that means the noodle guy in front probably leaves them cooking them too long. find another shop.

is hangzhou the most famous cuisine? it is definitely the most famous city of those four cities in China. Shaoxing wine is used for cooking. Ningbo I can't recall, but I'm sure there's something from there. four classic cuisines of Zhejiang? Zhejiang wouldn't even be one of the four most highly regarded cuisines in China. doesn't mean it's not interesting and delicious nonetheless, just that it's weird. i'd speculate that the various minority cuisines in Yunnan are more well known in the US than Zhejiang food. ethnography has always intrigued me though. gonna hafta look into this some more. damm you. something else to for me to waste time on.

it's all fairly nice. yes, sur la table is there. just up route 73 a bit from trader joe's.

i suppose that's possible, but here in philly, that is not the case. within the past 2-4 years, maggiano's, buca di beppo, olive garden, and chili's have or are opening in downtown philly. cannot say what the wait is for these places though. parking would probably be about 10 i think.

My sweet tooth is curious: what are "double pastries'? Were these pastries something you could try, or did they have lard in them? I'm wondering, "double"-what -- does this have anything to do with the "double happiness" Chinese character that is prevalent at weddings? i'm guessing just 2 different kinds of pastries. Based on personal experience based on the menu which is fairly standard, I would guess they're just simple cookies. fairly doughy probably. correct me if wrong, please. describe them also if you would, as i've been avoiding chinese weddings for a while and i don't really remember what they look like off the top of my head.

yea, i was wondering about that. maybe he decided to skip and just go to the after parties.

As others have said...I will miss this thread far more than I will miss the show. =R= The first show I saw was the one where the cooks left, the next to last show I believe. I was enjoying this thread for weeks beforehand.

and that is a problem how?

pardon the ignorance. what is "bio"?

i think you overestimate the bunch and their drinking capacities. like elyse said, tommy's all talk and no action. everybody else is lesser variants of the same.

I would say that I agree with FG's post that this is from, and subsequent posts. True the primary issue I suppose is that an editor was ordered to insert an article and lie about it. But for me a secondary issue is that the marketing director wrote that editorial piece. Like the bitter icing on top of the sour cake. Not that non-editorial staff shouldn't be allowed to write articles. I believe that a weekly in town here occasionally has non-editorial staff write a food article. If the article is factual, valid and well-written, then all is well. What matters to me isn't that the marketing director wrote it, or that it was a fabulous glowing review. What bothers me that the fabulous glowing review that he did write was not written in fairness, it was written to be subservient to the company.

man you guys are not helping!! i am trying so hard to respect starr, the organization and his clientele, but this is falling in line with what i've heard about most of his restaurants.

i prefer to be on what side is losing at the moment, so we can start a comeback.

i agree. one would have thought that a marketing director is also aware of the value of public relations, and that such a move would have acquired significant bad press.

i don't understand. are you referring just to tourists when visiting wineries and vineyards?

the drivers manual thing is new to me. my mistake. guess you learn something new every day. the idiomatic difference is no big deal though, that's no different than somebody from the northeast US not understanding a particular American English term from somebody in let's say Texas. despite character order, most chinese i've met would understand things regardless. between context and the particulars of the word, they'd figure it out. but this has absolutely nothing to do with food. however, i am enjoying it.

I think that the Slanted Door website explains it better than I do: So it looks like the Embarcadero venue will be just abandoned altogether. I've seen the new location in the Ferry Building, right by the Ferry Plaza farmer's market, and it's quite nice, right on the water with a good view of the East Bay. As for popular restaurants that start out in the Mission and then move while converting their old location to a cheaper menu, that seems to be a trend right now.

If I do that, are you in, herb? sure, let's make it on a whim. unless i get obliterated by the next passing of mars.

owww, the colors!! my eyes, my eyes, i'm blind!! i probably will try to pop in on schiller's sometime though.