MarketStEl

Well, this isn't a case of redundancy or misplaced modifiers, but over here, I posted about advertising come-ons that are full of hot air, like "...hand-selected Wisconsin cheddar cheese..." Another pet peeve of mine in this same vein is the use of the word "homemade" in ads promoting some sort of meal-shortcut product (the various Helpers, Crock-Pot Classics--a product whose appeal escapes me; chopping up a bunch of stuff and tossing it in a Crock-Pot seems simple enough--and those frozen veggie-and-pasta blends where all you add is the meat, and sometimes not even that). Yes, it's technically correct, as you're making this stuff at home and not at a restaurant, but it's certainly not the image I conjure up in my head when I hear the word "homemade." If this is "homemade," I'm Sandra Lee.

"Vodka martini" is NOT redundant. The traditional martini is made with gin. Vodka is a Johnny-come-lately. It has become more popular than gin as a martini base because it has no distinctive taste, thus making it easier to add other flavoring agents. Edited to add: Always read everything before posting anything. Always read everything before posting anything. Always read everything...

On a tossed salad? Yeah, maybe a little strange. On a tomato slice? It's almost as good as eating it with nothing but salt.

If you are planning only to have people waiting in/to enter the trailer, you can safely dispense with the music. If you plan to have seating on-site, you might want to add some background music. I'd probably go for a slightly broader mix than straight hip-hop. There are some artists whose instrumentals would be excellent for backgrounds, and others--Queen Latifah comes to mind--who would work well without having to delete their lyrics in most cases. Radio edits of others (Missy Elliott) you could also throw in. But I'd also mix in some classic R&B, neo-soul (e.g., Seal or Babyface), and maybe even acid jazz (e.g., Us3's "Cantaloop") along with the best from your hip-hop collection.

I wonder if David Sedaris was also delivered by Caesarean section? If so, then we obviously have a new early marker for witty social satire. Anyway, it seems to me that his fruit is ripe for the picking. Even though I have my own form of the affliction, which does not require the purchase of merchandise, I generally find the consumption of stuff as a means of showing off one's own superiority offensive, if common nonetheless. Personal snobbery alert: It also is often a sign that the displayer merely has more money than he or she knows what to do with. Tap water especially strikes me as inherently amusing. I still remember a Consumer Reports taste test of a number of different waters about a decade or so ago in which the two top scorers were the municipal water supplies of New York City and Los Angeles. Yes, water varies in taste depending on what minerals and other things are dissolved in it, but is water from a 3,000-foot-deep subterranean glacial pool in Idaho really that much better than what you can get by running your tap water through a filter that it justifies a price per gallon higher than that of premium unleaded? (All that said, I still stand by my praise for no-longer-produced Ephrata Diamond Spring water over on the Pennsylvania board.) Yet I now also share his respect for Martha Stewart. I hadn't thought of this that much prior to reading the sentence quoted in the review-- --but her perfectionism was indeed not about buying the right label but achieving the right result, which is not directly associated with either the brand name or the cost of the materials used to produce it. In that light, Everyday Food and her decision to lend her name to products sold at Kmart are both very logical extensions of her "brand," and if--as it appears--the time she served took the sharp edges off her personality, it may result in a whole new and different legion of fans for her. One more observation: Washington Post book review editor Jonathan Yardley writes about the above phrase, "which to my mind tells only a very small part of the story." I would love to have him elaborate on what he thinks is the rest of it.

Do this and you will have done a great service to everyone who loves good food, and quite likely raised the bar for good burgers in your home territory at the same time. Judging from your recounts of patronage at your game-day stands, I wonder if you really need to worry about the competition as much as the competition needs to worry about you!

So where do things stand now? It's kinda hard to tell behind the brown paper covering the windows. The bridal shop that occupied your space looks like it's OK up a couple of blocks and around the corner.

Repeated pleading on my part earlier produced only the state in which it will be located. Maybe Magus will take pity on us and give us a municipality (I dare not hope for an actual address) now that the pleading has resumed. Or does he fear an onslaught of salivating eGulleteers from all across America on opening day?

I tend to make my dressings on the acidic side too, sometimes even inverting the traditional 3:1 oil/vinegar ratio, though more commonly my oil/vinegar ratio is 1:1. I like the tang. This may also explain my preference for balsamic and rice vinegar over wine vinegar. As for iceberg lettuce: It may have no flavor or nutritive value at all, but it does have a satisfying crunch, which I think is the main reason it remains popular. Just make sure you're using some other lettuce--Romaine, radicchio, looseleaf, you name it--along with the iceberg. Your parents did have the basic idea right.

No, tossed salad was not a dinnertime staple either at home or at Grandmom's as I was growing up, but we did have a salad every so often. It was just as you described it, except the cucumbers were never peeled, and the salad dressing was usually that orange glop the bottled dressing makers called "French"--I loved that stuff, and didn't learn what real French dressing ("vinaigrette") was until I was in college. These days, I get the urge to throw together a garden salad every now and then much as my parents did. I put in more stuff, though: I start with Romaine lettuce and add radicchio, shredded carrots, red bell peppers, cucumbers, Vidalia or red onions, sundried tomatoes and fresh tomatoes. If I have some on hand, I may add pickled banana peppers as well. I usually dress the salad with a balsamic vinaigrette or sometimes just plain seasoned rice vinegar. From there, everything else is an add-on: julienned turkey, ham and cheese and sliced hard-boiled eggs for a chef's salad, or crumbled blue cheese and croutons. Frankly, I think a chef's salad makes a great complete lunch.

Many years back, on one of my infrequent visits home, my father told me about some aunts on his side of the family who lived in Louisiana, but about whom next to nothing was known. He then shared with me a recipe for gumbo that he had, but had never made while I was still living at home. It had a little bit of absolutely everything in it and took two days to make. I jotted all the details down on a slip of paper and, when I returned to Boston, transferred everything onto a couple of index cards. I even tried making it once--with a subset of the ingredients--and did okay, if the guests' reactions were any guide. It's been some 20-plus years since the one and only time I tried Dad's gumbo recipe. Stumbling across this thread and having a roommate who loves okra got me to thinking, Maybe I should try that recipe again. So last week, I stocked up on okra on 9th Street--one of the vendors was selling okra for 3 pounds for a dollar--and put some aside for the dish. Then I went hunting through my old recipe file box for that recipe. I must have gotten sloppy over the intervening years, for the only thing I could find was this one card: "So wing it on the rest," I said to myself. And wing it I did. I didn't have lobster, crab legs or Polish kielbasa, so shrimp and chicken would have to suffice by themselves. And, as all of you can see, some key ingredients were not listed, as I would discover at the end. But off I went. I chopped up two pounds of okra, one large Spanish onion, and the 4-pound chicken I'd simmered in a Crock-Pot the day before--reserving the water for use in the gumbo--then peeled a pound of shrimp and crushed three large cloves of garlic. I pulled out a couple of cans of diced tomatoes (one 28-ounce, one 14.5-ounce) I had on hand as well; as the labels said they contained jalapeno and green chile peppers, I figured they'd do. I then crumbled three bay leaves and got down to business. But oops! I didn't make a roux. Instead, I combined flour and butter as if I were making a white sauce. Then I added the okra and cooked it for about 5 minutes. Next came the onion, then the garlic, then the chicken, then the shrimp, and finally the tomatoes. I didn't have the time to cook the okra down as another cook-off participant did. The result looked like this: Then, in went the two quarts of water I had reserved from cooking the chicken. An hour and 20 minutes later, after the stew had simmered over low heat (adding 3 tablespoons of file powder during the last 15 minutes), I served it over cooked rice. The result looked like this: and tasted much blander than I remembered it to be. Looking back through this cook-off thread, I now know why. No celery! No bell peppers! No cayenne or crushed red pepper! And no roux! I think it would have benefited from the kielbasa as well. Oh, well. Chalk this up as a re-learning experience. At least the consistency was more or less right. There's always next time. I think Dad could understand that.

It may well be that Parmesan, like Cheddar, Colby or Monterey Jack, has become a generic for a variety of cheese made by a certain method and possessing certain texture and flavor characteristics and has become completely divorced from the place that gave birth to the cheese. I suspect that you are typical in not necessarily distinguishing Parmigiano Reggiano from "generic" Parmesan when shopping for cheese, and to the extent that people buy on price and not taste, your concern for Italian cheesemakers is warranted. Well, since Versailles (pronounced ver-SALES) is a community of about 2,500 people in Morgan County, Missouri, about 125 miles SE of my hometown of Kansas City, who knows? Vichy might well be American after all. Here in the States, with this statement, you'd be bringing up a bunch of Mickey Mouse legislation that has very little to do with the topic of these forums. I feel for the owner of that jewelry shop called Harrods. I've never eaten Grana Padana--I'm sure that there must be a local cheese shop that sells it, probably DiBruno's--but I have tasted a Dutch hybrid called Parrano that is a cross between Parmesan and Gouda, or something like that. (Gouda--there's another place-specific cheese whose name has become a generic!) Or, if you prefer, there's the "street" version of the Golden Rule: "He who has the gold makes the rules." It's been great conversing with you online.

Hate to dissapoint you you but Vichy is east of Lyon in France(And the original fizzy water I believe) so it looks like you being selling under false place names for longer than I thought. That was my point, and the reason why I brought up the Saratoga example. (To throw another interesting monkey wrench into this discussion, for a period of time in the 1980s and 1990s, the company that owned the Saratoga Springs in New York State was a subsidiary of Anheuser-Busch.) I know that Vichy is in France--about the only Americans who wouldn't are those who slept through the history of World War II. (Vichy was also the seat of the French puppet government under German occupation.) It was because Vichy was associated with sparkling water that the bottlers of Saratoga water appropriated the French place name. Want me to further muddy the waters? The most popular brand of cream cheese in the US is named for the city where I live, but has no other association with it--it was never manufactured here, nor did anyone from here produce it elsewhere. The makers of Philadelphia Brand cream cheese gave it that name because--again, in the late 19th century--Philadelphia had a reputation as a center of fine cooking and dining in America, and they wanted to capitalize on that association. You can find all sorts of US-made products now that seek to capitalize on some association with well-known American locales, but if you read the fine print, have none beyond the labels (e.g., West Virginia brand bacon, made outside the state; a company in New York City for many years sold smoked sausages under the "Carolina" brand name--the product is now sold as "Caroline," with the "e" shaped so that it recalls an "A", presumably to avoid legal action over the sausages not actually coming from the Carolinas). Let's come back to this assertion in about 20 years, when the Chinese economy may well be bigger than the United States'. The Chinese are just beginning to realize the need to protect names and trademarks as a guarantee of quality as their own companies now compete on the world stage. I guess they're lucky that none of our manufacturers has yet adopted "Hunan" or "Szechuan" as a trademark for a line of Chinese foods. Of course not. European manufacturers and producers understand "intellectual property" and trademarks. But I'll bet that somewhere, some European manufacturer is making a line of, say, barbecue sauces called "Old Kentucky" or something like that. I have no knowledge of how the Roquefort producers were able to protect their name from misuse in the United States, and it may well be that in this matter, it also hinges on the specific term "Parmigiano Reggiano"--which you indeed cannot produce in the U.S., no more than you could grow Vidalia onions in the UK. (Vidalia onions are one of those rare American foodstuffs that do have a legally protected, place-specific name--they must be grown in a specific region surrounding Vidalia, Ga. Edited to add: In response to the success of the Vidalia onion, other growers have developed super-sweet varieties, the best-known of these newcomers being the Texas 1015.) Then we may want to learn the distinction between the terms "Parmesan cheese" and Parmigiano Reggiano, since there appears to be one. Edited to add: And if there is, then we may have actually gotten better at respecting protected place-specific designations for foodstuffs than our exchange suggests.

Kah-rrrrruh-FOOH-(rrrr), the last syllable in parentheses because barely pronounced, and the "rrrrr" referring to what I call the about-to-expectorate sound at the back of the palate ← Dusting this exchange off and adding a twist: And what exactly is "un carrefour"?

As I recall, it was Galileo, and then the shark-jumping involved something called Galileo's Osservatorio. I started telling the guy about the history of the place, but I got the feeling it was news to him, so I stopped. No sense in spooking him, particularly when I think part of the problem was the neighborhood, and that has changed so completely, in terms of restaurants. ← In between Fratelli and Galileo--or was it after Galileo?--it was the space where Day's Deli went to die after getting kicked out of its longtime home at 18th and Spruce, next to Great Scot (which took over the building for storage space). It was called "Days & Nights -- An American Cafe" in that last incarnation, which was very short-lived. The food was on a par with the old deli, which wasn't all that hot. Edited to add: And while we're on the subject of cursed or semi-cursed spaces, does anyone know what might happen to the street-floor space in the Grand United Order of Odd Fellows building at 12th and Spruce that housed a succession of so-so all-night diners over the years (variously, the Hasty Tasty, the Duck Soup Deli and the Cheap Art Cafe, plus a couple of others I've probably missed)? I had heard that the owners of the Plough and the Stars had wanted to put something in there, and a liquor license application did appear on the windows a few months ago, but that space has now sat empty for about two years, and there are no signs of revival.

It works both ways, by the way. US trademark law is the reason the people in Ceške Budovice, Czech Republic, who brew genuine Budweiser beer can't call it by that name in the United States. I understand that Anheuser-Busch even tried to keep them from calling their product by its proper name in Europe! I guess the French producers of Roquefort cheese had some good lawyers representing them in the United States, for we usually are not shy about adopting place-specific names elsewhere to describe domestic products that resemble them. Another example: For many years in the late 19th century, the producers of Saratoga mineral water--now a well-known place-specific name in its own right--referred to their product as "Saratoga Vichy water." The fact that the sparkling water is no longer referred to as "Vichy" suggests to me that part of the problem is that the US hasn't had a long enough history of place-specific food production to make names stick. However, that has begun to change over the past few decades. Cheeseheads can tell the difference between New York State, Vermont, and Wisconsin cheddar, and each has its partisans. Big cheesemakers in each of the three states have produced prize-winning cheeses in national competitions, and Wisconsin is actually the home of the only cheese variety that originated in the US, Colby (after the county), a mild cheese that is like Cheddar, but softer. (Someone is no doubt going to come after me for not including Monterey Jack cheese in this category, but California was part of Mexico when this cheese was created.) Similarly, certain California counties (Napa, Sonoma) have strong enough associations with fine wine production that there is now talk of setting up a geographic name control system similar to what the EU uses. Americans who know their cheese would not purchase Kraft (or 4C, or Frigo...) grated or solid Parmesan instead of Parmigiano-Reggiano just because the former is cheaper*; the longer aged genuine article tastes better, even if it's been sitting around a while in an airtight jar after grating. But like Gifted Gourmet, I'm ambivalent about this development; one of the reasons we can eat so well for so little in the US is because of these mass production techniques that produce acceptable quality products at low prices. *Okay, okay; when I'm short on funds, I would. But I do so harboring no illusions that I'm buying real Parmesan.

Well, this place is a bar, but in Pennsylvania, all bars must also serve food. (Whether they actually do in practice is another story.) I'd be careful ordering a hot dog from Dirty Frank's, but this Wash West institution--I think it's been around since the end of Prohibition--has a fabulous beer selection and an eclectic crowd. Boho literary/journalist types have been known to hang out there. There's no sign over the door, but the mural on the outside walls is one huge in-joke. It includes: --a French franc coin --a hot dog --Sinatra --FDR --St. Francis of Assisi ...and so on. You get the picture. Then there's Center City's newest barbecue emporium, The Smoked Joint.

There's a place in Kansas City with virtually the same name. Make that "there used to be a place...." This hole in the wall--one of the city's better barbecue joints--has been in existence since the 1950s.

Guess you've never eaten Krispy Kreme donuts, then.

Back to the opening question: Am I for or against spices? Yes. I believe Jinmyo gave an "It depends on what you're cooking" answer way back at the beginning of this thread, and I agree. In general, spices add interest and flavor to food, and can transform base ingredients into something wonderful. (Cinnamon in meatballs? Hmmm, gotta try that sometime.) But there are places where adding seasoning or spice is just plain immoral. For instance, to a really good, dry aged steak cooked medium rare. I find that I enjoy many vegetables simply steamed to just where their color brightens, tender but still crisp, with nothing else added. And yet a little tarragon can take green beans to a whole 'nother level.

We have long since determined that you are not going to be serving "fast food," so I think that by now, you should not be using the fast food industry as the template for anything you want to do. Instead, compare yourself to a classic diner or local drive-in restaurant--a place that specializes in good, honest food prepared to order but served reasonably quickly by people who respect you as a customer (which, at a diner, does not preclude a dose of attitude--it's often part of the charm). Your own precepts are philosophically quite close to those of many of the most admired and successful companies in America. Live up to them and you'll have legions of satisfied customer-fans, and you'll be happy too.

Having sort of touted Kaiser rolls upthread, I am now going to not quite contradict myself by saying that when I've eaten a burger on a Kaiser roll, the bread gets in the way of the meat. Good old white-bread burger buns toast well, and the toasting gets rid of any potential problem with your condiments. But once again, if you want something distinctive, you could try potato rolls or challah bread buns. Both of these will also toast OK, and they have an interesting sweetness to them.

As some of you may have already read elsewhere, I grew up in a city with a severe municipal inferiority complex much like the one we have here. Nobody ever erected a billboard on a major highway reading "Kansas City isn't as bad as Kansas Citians say it is." The characteristic reaction of Kansas Citians to putdowns of their city is defensiveness, and they are not prone to trash it themselves. I've met too many Philadelphians, including one who lives in very close proximity to me, who are. You can't tell me that others not native to the city don't pick this up. Yes, Holly, you're right on one point, and it is this: The local media (and other) reaction to this article is actually a sign of insecurity, not maturity. But I'm afraid it's well earned. Recall my asking Diann to put in a good word for this place along with me in that "NY, San Francisco, LA" thread? (Edited to add: I note she still has yet to do so.) Even Chicago gets a modicum of respect from beyond it that this city seems not to. Philadelphia was the largest city in the colonies, and for many years was the center of American culture and commerce. (We never were its center of learning; Boston got a lock on that very early on.) But the commerce title was swiped by New York, as was the finance and publishing title. (And the advertising title to boot: Stephen Starr's restaurant Washington Square occupies part of the former headquarters building of N.W. Ayer, the country's oldest advertising agency and its largest at the time of its construction in 1929. Ayer eventually decamped for Madison Avenue.) The point I guess I'm trying to make is that, to many outsiders, Philadelphia is a city of the past. Its glory days were when Ben Franklin walked its streets, and since then, it's been all downhill. You, me, and a bunch of other, younger people than us may realize--or have come to realize--that the Philadelphia of the here-and-now has plenty to recommend it. But that Philadelphia was a long time in the making, just as the Boston of the 1960s emerged from the shell of a great city that had fallen on hard times in the 1930s and had never fully recovered. Of what other US city has a comedian quipped, "I went there once, but it was closed"? (And that comedian was a native, no less, one who reportedly wanted his tombstone to read that on the whole, he'd rather be here.) And I note this coming from a city of which it was once said that there was a contest in which the first prize was a week there, and the second prize two weeks. I still vividly recall my initial impression upon first seeing Philadelphia in 1970. It was: "This city needs a bath desperately." Hardly what you want a visitor taking home with him. It no longer needs one, but impressions like those stick. I realize I'm rambling a bit, but I guess what I'm saying is that it often takes time for major transformations to register in the popular consciousness. The seeds planted in the 1960s and 1970s are only now beginning to bear fruit in the minds of those beyond the region, and maybe even in the minds of many of the locals.

Growing up as I did on canned vegetables, I guess I don't share Holly's pessimism. I too remember eating at a number of small mom-and-pop restaurants in Kansas City where the food was, let's say, serviceable. Better than fuel, but not really great. For Chrissakes, when I was growing up there, the city's cafeterias were touted as among the better places to eat out! (This was back when the local elites were trying very hard to distance themselves from anything that might remind anyone that the city really was a cowtown at heart; since then, the upper crust have learned to stop worrying and embrace barbecue and decent burgers, and from that gesture--for which a debt of gratitude is owed to Calvin Trillin--all sorts of good things have flowed.) We have had predictable, middling chain restaurants for decades. White Castle dates to 1921, I believe J.W. Marriott's Hot Shoppes in and around Washington are not that much younger, and Howard Johnson began spreading orange roofs and 28 flavors of ice cream across the country in the 1930s. Many of today's chains offer fare that's a good deal more flavorful than what I ate at the aforementioned mom-and-pops, if not higher in quality, and certainly more interesting than what you got at HoJo's--and served to you faster to boot. IOW, as our palates have gotten more educated, both the indie and chain restaurants have had to improve their offerings. Now as then, the good indie restaurants beat the chains taken collectively hands down for inventiveness and quality, but as has been already noted, the better chains are no longer content to settle for lowest-common-denominator fare. As for the posters who have noted that they've eaten very well in poorer communities, may I suggest that this has less to do with having high-class ingredients and more to do with putting time and care into the foods they work with? I can think of few vegetables that can outdo some well-prepared collard or mustard greens for taste, for example. You're probably still going to find canned Parmesan in the pantries of the houses where such greens are made, but boy, those greens are going to be great.

Umm, Chef Hamann, Chefs in Chinatown have been doing this for years. ← Chefs, like journalists, may not always be up on all the details of what's going on. Maybe Chef Hamann doesn't eat out much. --Sandy, who pitched his hometown paper on the idea of doing a story on Big Charlie's Saloon in South Philly for this Sunday's Eagles-Chiefs matchup, only to find that their own NFL beat reporter had been there the previous Monday and that they were running a story on Wednesday. If you go by the distances printed in The Kansas City Star's story on the bar, the place is somewhere in East Oak Lane, not South Philly.