MarketStEl

The proprietors of CrownFriedChicken.com are unaware of the existence of this location. I have informed them of the omission.

"Chicken Fried Chicken"?

As the owner of a firm pot belly, I await this book with anticipation. I'll probably read it while eating cheese.

D*mn! I'd be eligible for a free drink tonight. Sorry I didn't see this sooner. --Sandy, 47 today

Crown Fried Chicken has fans all over--even in the Ivy League. We ran a photo of a few of them at Commencement 2001 in the Penn Current. I've been to the Broad and Ellsworth store on a few occasions--relatives of my roommate own a bar one block west at 15th. (One of the better hoagie shops in the city, Melino's, is cater-corner from the bar.) Their chicken is yummy. I seem to recall that it's pressure-fried. I take it from the fan site that the various CFC locations are independent stores and not franchises?

Oh, the Brits are right: Faggots are very tasty. But what's this stuff about them being made from pork liver and pork? --Sandy, who's sure that somewhere in merrie olde England, right now, some klutz of a cook is burning a faggot

You betcha. You don't want all us expats and tourists overrunning the really great places, leaving no room for you to eat.

In keeping with my food fetish, I usually have something that uses or tastes like cheese by my side as I take my random walks through eGullet. Tonight, it's a box of Fiesta Nacho Cheez-its -- the new variety with the entertaining commercial where the guy learning Spanish is attacked by the boombox playing the learn-Spanish tape. On more occasions than I care to count, it's a plate of crackers spread with peanut butter and topped with slices of Cheddar, Swiss or Monterey Jack. On occasion, it's celery or carrot sticks with dip.

I think Rich Davis may have warped everyone's thinking when his KC Masterpiece sauce was picked up by Clorox and rolled out nationally. I really don't remember the KC sauces of my youth as being as sweet as the ones you see up this way now (the other one I knew well was Grant's, which was sold at the KCK 'cue joint of the same name @ 11th St. and Washington Blvd. owned by friends of the family), but it seems the molasses-y stuff sells well beyond the Heart of America. But all good Kansas City sauces, even Gates', have a touch of sweetness to them--Ollie's DIY recipe, the one he shared on "From Martha's Kitchen," calls for sugar (I use brown sugar, which is just refined sugar with molasses added, when I make it). It's just that the really good ones kick your taste buds in the pants first before they pour some honey over them.

Maybe there's better sauce out there now (haven't been back home since 1987), but I would go there just for the sauce--which is also atypical of Kansas City sauces in being more tangy than sweet. Then again, I believe you can get Gates' sauce at just about any area supermarket, which saves you a trip to one of their restaurants. Sauce aside: I recently purchased a bottle of Albertson's "premium" store brand sauce, Essensia, at my local Acme (the dominant supermarket chain in Philadelphia, owned by Albertson's). It came in three varieties: Tennessee, Southwestern and Kansas City. I bought the latter two. As the brand name is a play on the word "essential," labels for these products include the phrase "What's essential is the..." For the Southwestern sauce, it was chipotle. For the Kansas City sauce? Molasses. --Sandy, who makes his own Gates'

Porn is also fantasy. It is something the consumer of it dreams of--pure, wild, reckless sex, without any of the effort required to get it or the baggage that may come with it. I chuckled when I read the following passage in O'Neill's article: In other words, the appliance is itself pornography: desire displayed as though the display of it were its fulfillment. I assume the purchasers have hired help to wipe that sticky stuff up off the kitchen floor in front of the range.

My post on the pre-merger second thread seems to have gotten lost in the coding, so I will try to approximate it. While it was not one of the main points she dwelt on, O'Neill's mentioning of the influence of advertisers and promoters in some categories of food writing is another area worth exploring. After all, if the writers breathlessly describing baby vegetables are pornographers, then the ones who serve as conduits for promotion are prostitutes. Her tale of how olive oil went from ethnic curiosity to all-American pantry staple is instructive here, and yet another example of how, in the end, it really is all PR. The people who did the mentioning that got reporters singing the praises of olive oil's health benefits and the "Mediterranean diet" in which it plays a prominent role achieved the sort of result that marketers and public relations professionals would kill for: promotion that is so unobtrusive that it seems almost organic. I note that historically, even as the "hard news" sections of the paper became more impartial in their recounting of events, the "softer" sections--including the sports and former "women's" pages--remained deferential to the interests of the subjects they covered, be they fashion designers, football teams or food processors. Except for the restaurant reviews, today's food sections still carry a whiff of this deference.

White Castle pulled out of the Philadelphia market back around 2000. I miss them greatly. Those little burgers sure were tasty. The two Popeye's outlets near me are both very consistent with the quality of their chicken, and it is consistently better than KFC. I used to trust anything Wendy's produced. But now they cook their burgers until they're dry. As for McDonald's: They generally try to stay abreast of current trends and fads, which does dilute their attention to their primary product--and some of the trendy items they introduce miss the mark. Did any of you try their Philly cheesesteaks when they were offering them in the summer of 2004? (Or were these just a Philly thing? If so, then they move from the realm of the merely unfortunate to the carrying-coals-to-Newcastle level of futility.) OTOH, it's hard to wreck a salad. Mickey D's are pretty good.

Of course it's not Southern barbecue! That little thing about slaves aside, and pace the Bootheel, Missouri's not a Southern state. But just as North Carolina ain't Texas or Tennessee, KC barbecue is a thing unto itself. Like the state it's in, it's a crossroads, with a little bit of a lot of different influences thrown in along with the molasses. And, of course, there's the burnt ends. --Sandy, 1200 miles away from any good burnt ends. Yes, I'm a native--a piece of my heart will always remain in the Heart of the Nation.

1) Your customers are telling you something. Besides, even the people who didn't ask for doubles and triples got them anyway, one patty at a time, it appears. Better order more ground beef for your next game. 2) Yes, but it's a good tired. Sort of the way I felt after handling the ribs for a party to which a friend of mine had invited 50 people, and most of them showed.

Say, why don't we combine this with the breakfast thread and... Cue the end theme music from "Frasier"!

Thank you, John, for making the point I--and some others on this thread--was trying to make far more succinctly than I could.

Indeed, elitism is not always a bad thing. And as I get paid to write--or try to as often as possible, these boards being one of the exceptions--I too am a stickler for grammar and usage and have been known to pick usage nits with other Netizens (in private, of course; to do so in a public forum is bad netiquette). But--as others have said upthread--there is a difference between elitism and snobbery. I think many of us can distinguish between the insistence on high standards and the show-offy display of one's own superiority. Being a know-it-all type myself, I often tread along this line and sometimes cross it. Never having eaten at Chez Panisse, or for that matter visited San Francisco--whose residents share with Boston's a conviction that they live in the absolutely finest city in America--I can't say whether Alice Waters invites satire or not; earnestness sometimes has a way of attracting people eager to poke fun at it. But I also appreciate similarly minded people here in Philadelphia, such as Judy Wicks of the White Dog Cafe, who is a major backer of the Fair Food Project, which runs a farmstand every weekend at the Reading Terminal Market--one of the country's greatest public markets and a haven for lovers of good local foodstuffs--whose general manager is a friend of mine. (Just had to get in a six-degrees-of-separation game there. And I just engaged in behavior that can come off as snobbish, namely, name-dropping.) Should you find yourself in Philadelphia, a visit to the Reading Terminal Market is a must. I'm oversimplifying with what follows, but as long as you don't shun a really good fast-food burger simply because it's served by a fast food chain, then I don't think you're afflicted with the disease some of us have diagnosed here. I'm reminded here of a corny joke that conveys a similar sentiment: "Any society that accepts shoddy philosophy because philosophy is a noble calling, yet ignores excellence in plumbing because plumbing is a lowly trade, will not long survive, for neither its theories nor its pipes will hold water." Which KC thread? Guess I need to check out the Heartland forum again. I would. One of the interesting things about conversation--on- or off-line--is that it can head off in any direction the participants wish to take it.

Appalachian Mountain Spring Water is one of those brands that is mostly "municipal water that has been filtered." Strangely enough, it's one of the few brands of bottled water that uses clear plastic for its one-gallon jugs. If you look at the label, you will see that it lists several sources for its water, one of them being "municipal supply"--which municipality is not mentioned. As for NYC tap water: I believe there is now a company that bottles it and sells it outside the city to would-be water connoisseurs. "The Drink of Millions," I believe is their slogan. And it is true that New York City tap water actually enjoys an excellent reputation for taste and quality beyond the Big Apple.

No, but I imagine that people in the area would cheer if they were sentenced to "a diet of Bread and Water."

I wouldn't worry too much about that. (The place described in the link is a genuine institution in Providence, R.I. You are on track to become one in your city if you stick to your plan.) Set up some tables and chairs in that parking lot. You will need them. As for ambience, I refer you to my earlier response to your question about music. Mix it up and you may even give some of your customers a history lesson! Stick to that trailer. It's distinctive and it will broadcast your uniqueness to passers-by. Diners--and at heart, what we are talking about here is a classic diner, only this one specializes in just one item--rise and fall on their food and their staff, not on their appearance (well, they do have to look neat and clean in most cases). Since it sounds like you've got the location thing taken care of, if you do the food and the 'tude right--and you've already mastered both, judging from your accounts of your game-day business--nobody will worry about the food-truck stigma. Edited to add: One more thing--as your firm opening date approaches, be sure to hand out flyers or cards advertising your new fixed location to everyone who patronizes your game-day stand. You will have an instant established customer base--something a budding restaurateur would kill for.

I've been thinking about this recipe for a few weeks now. I have a crap load of bleu cheese to use up--it has already formed fuzzy surface mould but the insides seem OK. Aside from potato chips, could this recipe be used for pasta, as well? ← Well, the half-pound of Maytag blue cheese I bought at DiBruno's last Saturday all went into the macaroni and cheese I made Tuesday night, and I make my mac and cheese using a cheese sauce based on béchamel, just like the sauce in this recipe. In fact, if you omit the onion and salt and add a half teaspoon of dry mustard and a half-pound each of shredded sharp Cheddar and shredded aged Asiago--did I tell you I am a cheese junkie?--you'd have my cheese sauce from Tuesday night. So the answer to your question is "Yes." Aside: My friend who comes over for dinner Tuesday night had the following reactions to his first taste of Maytag blue cheese: "It's very delicious." After looking at the label on the wrapping paper: "And very expensive." I did not reply with my usual one-liner--"And it never needs service!"--but did tell him about the alimentary exploits of the various descendants of the appliance-maker's founder. (Anchor Steam Beer is another.)

Somewhat related to this last post: The Caribou Café, the popular French bistro across the street from where Paul will open, closed in mid-August for remodeling, with signs posted stating they would reopen Sept. 4. (Usually, such signs are restaurant-speak for "We've gone out of business," but as those are usually not accompanied by a specific reopening date, this was legit.) Sept. 4 came and went, and they remained closed. Signs stated "We will reopen in a week," and the dining room filled with kitchen equipment. One week later, the dining room was still filled with kitchen equipment and the restaurant was still closed. They finally reopened around Sept. 15. Murphy's Law still has not been repealed.

Bunch o' questions: 1) Where is the Savoy Grill now? 2) Do they still use the advertising tagline "A new, different and exciting restaurant over <insert decade> years old"? 3) Chains are going into its old space? 4) The Kings and Scouts both bombed; do you all really think that if they build the Sprint Center, they will come? 5) Where exactly is Sprint headquartered now? Their new, redesigned website says the merged company is "headquartered in Reston, Virginia," but the press room page still lists "Sprint World Headquarters" as being 6200 Sprint Parkway in Overland Park, and just about all the media-relations people there have phone numbers in area code 913 rather than 703. Maybe this is like TWA (nominal headquarters: New York City; actual center of operations: Kansas City) or the old Bell Atlantic (nominal headquarters: Philadelphia; actual center of operations: Arlington, Va.)? --Sandy, Sprint PCS customer

Or "Schuylkill River"? --Sandy, sorry, couldn't resist