MarketStEl

I'll buy that and let him off the hook, then. Has anyone else on this forum been through that little hamlet in (I believe) Cumberland County where US 40 makes a sharp right turn on its way from Atlantic City to the Delaware Memorial Bridge? (I wouldn't have, either, had my partner not decided that he wanted to go to Rehoboth Beach after all once we were much of the way back to Philly after getting fed up waiting for the next Cape May-Lewes Ferry.) It looks like a little bit of the Deep South that blew across the Mason-Dixon Line. I couldn't tell for sure, but there must be a place there that offers decent home cookin'.

Especially cottage cheese!

And it looks like you've not been south of the Ocean-Burlington county line on the Garden State Parkway, either. (I will humbly apologize if I am mistaken, and yes, just visiting Atlantic City counts, though there are bonus points for venturing into the other communities on Absecon Island.) Judging from the comments I've seen here--including Rachel Perlow's downtopic from this one--anything south of Interstate 195 must be Delaware to Bourdain.

Okay, break out the Pillsbury crescent roll can!

One of the things I appreciate about the Chairman's Selection program is that it offers excellent wines at every price point. I've enjoyed the Hague Cellars wines that have been offered for $8.99 (pinot grigio) and $9.99 (merlot), respectively. (I also note the winery uses screw caps on the pinot grigio. Good move.) What's even better is that the State Stores now offer good buys on interesting wines outside the Chairman's Selection program. That lemony Las Brisas white from Spain I had earlier this summer was not a Chairman's Selection, but it was an excellent value, also in the under-$10 range. I'm guessing that the success of the Chairman's Selection program has spurred PLCB buyers to apply its methods across the board.

Thats a dumb analogy (forgive my bluntness). Might as well be "London vs. Hartford, CT" or "London vs. Albany, NY." New Jersey is not about globally-recognized urban culture centers (we have NYC and Philly for that). ← Thanks at least for the acknowledgement of the large metropolis opposite the state's southern end. As for Bourdain himself, he shows his North Jersey/Metro New York bias in this one sentence in his testament to New Jersey Italian subs: No wonder the local pols fought so hard to have the USS New Jersey permanently berthed in Camden, near where it was built. Edited to add: For that dis, Bourdain should be driven blindfolded to the Cherry Hill Mall and required to spend a week eating nowhere else but its food court.

Will test your theory soon by picking some up at Passyunk and Reed and reporting back to the list.

Pro wrestling = "sports entertainment"* Food Network = "food entertainment"? *Actually, I prefer to think of pro wrestling as "soap opera for men."

Now I get it. Often, when eating hot dogs or smoked sausage, I skip the bread and condiments part. I even skip the heating part! After all, they are fully cooked. I suspect some of us got thrown off track by a few of the ingredients in your original dish. Yes, everybody loves ramen, but in the ghettos I've been to, nobody has kim chee on hand. If they have Chinese mustard, it's in those little takeout packets that they forgot to use. Sriracha? If they've heard of it, they might have a bottle of "rooster sauce" on hand, but I'm more likely to find Tabasco or Crystal hot sauce instead. I will grant that Chinatown fits the definition of a ghetto, but I suspect that it's not what first comes to mind when many Americans hear the word. The face of the ghetto they conjure up probably looks like mine. As for my dish: Shrimp are probably a bit pricey for my homies--though I have seen them, and salmon portions, at the Save-a-Lot--but some of them do have kielbasa lying around. You can substitute Velveeta for the cheeses I used. Let's try this instead: Open can of Campbell's tomato soup. Add one can milk and heat through. Boil ramen and drain; reserve seasoning packet for future use. Combine noodles and soup. Sprinkle with Parmesan cheese. How's that?

Here's what I made for dinner tonight (sorry, no photo available): Medium egg noodles in a tomato-cheese sauce made with: 1 12-ounce can diced tomatoes with jalapenos 1 cup shredded New York State extra sharp Cheddar cheese (store brand) 2 cups pre-shredded Italian cheese blend (store brand) 1/2 teaspoon dry mustard 1/2 teaspoon cayenne 1/2 teaspoon Vietnamese hot chili garlic sauce (same brand as that sriracha) 1 cup milk 2 tablespoons butter 2 tablespoons flour 1 tablespoon cornstarch mixed with water when the sauce didn't reduce quickly enough for me and mixed together with: about 3/4 pound chopped large shrimp about 1/3 pound Polish kielbasa, coarse dice I'm not sure this really qualifies as ghetto, but it seems pretty lowbrow to me. Everybody scarfed it down. I'll have what's left for lunch tomorrow.

Alan Richman evidently is a member of the Calvin Trillin School of food criticism. (For those of you who have never picked up a copy of "American Fried: Adventures of a Happy Eater" or "Alice, Let's Eat," Trillin, an essayist, sometime novelist, and regular contributor to The New Yorker, is also well known for his enthusiastic writing about regular-folks food, including a Life magazine essay in the early 1970s in which he declared Winstead's Drive-In in Kansas City the world's best hamburger and another--reprinted in "American Fried"-- in which he called that same city's Arthur Bryant's Barbecue THE SINGLE BEST RESTAURANT IN THE WORLD [capitals his]. (Trillin is also on the record as having written, "Anyone who doesn't think the best hamburger place in the world is in his home town is a sissy." Richman's superlatives are covered by this quote, with the mitigating factor that they really are among the best anywhere. (Mr. Trillin and Yours Truly share the same hometown, have an everlasting fondness for same, and are both highly unlikely ever to live there again.)

This weekend's Metro reader nomination is North 3rd, in Northern Liberties, nominated by Fishtown resident Dayo Adeyemi. Looks like a good-but-not-great candidate: Readers of "Eats, Shoots and Leaves" ought to be able to spot two punctuation errors in the above, which appears as it ran in the paper.

Is it the crush of traffic that has turned the path to Minor Gourmandry into a dead end street? Or has Andy's host pulled a fast one on him? Entering the official URL for the site (embedded in the above link) produces a Not Found error. Googling "minor gourmandry" produces this working URL for the main page: http://prettytothink.typepad.com/minor_gourmandry/ but the links from the main page, all of which begin from the official URL, go nowhere. When might the full glory of Minor Gourmandry be restored, pray tell? And what sacrifices are the hosts asking us to perform?

Well, it's not "Pretty Fruit," but it is a prettified name: Kiwifruit. ISTR that this moniker for the sweet New Zealand fruit with the starburst-shaped seed core replaced a much less palatable name--Chinese crabapple or something like that.

There are tradeoffs in every exchange, I guess. My penance for overdosing on the whole fish along with mr and mrs bigjas apparently was to completely miss out on so much as a single bite of shrimp. No biggie. It appears to me that we can already retire my proposed Best-of-Philly "Best Place to Pig Out for Under $25/Person" category right here and now, for either the waitress forgot to charge us for some of our dishes or the whole plate-sharing experience is an out-of-this-world bargain -- and the place lives up to its name to boot. But I was one of those who reached the conclusion that the kitchen must have a huge vat of Szechuan chili pepper sauce on hand, which it then ladles over numerous dishes. The whole fish, the dumplings, the braised beef filet, even the kidney and tripe -- thanks, James, for ordering this, I loved it! -- had this fiery sauce/seasoning in copious amounts. The cold sliced chicken was a welcome change as a result. It came in a slightly syrupy, sweet-hot sauce that looked to be soy-based. I am going to have to order that three-pepper chicken again, though, mainly for that third pepper. Those Szechuan peppercorns are something else--pungent, astringent, licorice-y, and definitely medicinal. I should keep a bunch of these on hand for sinus congestion. It was nice to be able to meet Jeff for real this time, and Andy too. But I'm still trying to figure out how Evan could read my avatar as female. Yes, there's those bright red lips, but that's a moustache above them! And this time I didn't bail out on the Capogiro nightcap. That rosemary goat milk gelato was out of this world!

True. But the Pizza Club hasn't yet given NYPD Pizza its official stamp of approval. It deserves its BoP--this place has thin, crispy crusts down cold--and we really need to descend upon it soon.

And where is their Haddonfield location? I get over there on occasion.

The Philadelphia edition of Metro, the global daily for the rider with a short commute, has embarked on a quest to find the best Buffalo wings in Philadelphia. In their opening salvo in the August 8 Weekend section, they set the bar for the competition very high by anointing Moriarty's as their choice for the best wings in town. Metro's short-attention-span article length means that you don't get an extended paean to the place, but what more justification do you need than the lead paragraph: The editors are open to persuasion, though: they're soliciting readers' personal best nominations. Send yours to wings@metrophilly.com. Or, if you like, talk about them here as well. I really can't quibble with Metro's own choice, as I believe I've stated here before.

One of the things I like about the CityPaper's best-of awards is that they invent neat wacky categories to recognize unusual places. I ate at Pho 75 (for the first time!) two weekends ago, and they had one--something like "best place to eat soup while pretending you're in a re-education camp" or something with a little less condescension. (The text pointed out that you went to Pho 75 for the fantastic soup, not the school-cafeteria ambience.) Perhaps we could have a few of those, including some anti-bests, such as: Best Place to Entertain Your Evil Mother-in-Law Best Romantic Break-Up Spot Best Mixture of Wildly Clashing Cuisines Best Place to Pig Out for Under $25/Person Best Place to Pig Out When Money is No Object Best Comfort Food Best Discomfort Food Most Stylish Presentation Best Triumph of Style Over Substance

Riffing off Capaneus' observation about what sorts of local restaurants the chains will hurt most, I can think of an analogue within the gay community. I imagine that some of you on this board have heard of The Venture Inn. One of the oldest continuously operating restaurants in the city, this intimate spot in a charming old building on Camac Street (next to the late, lamented Inn Philadelphia) has been a fixture in the gay community for more than a quarter century. For about the first 20 of those 25 years, it was also the place to go for gay men who wanted a reasonably priced fine-dining experience in an atmosphere where they could be who they were. The restaurant was busy just about every night of the week and on Sundays, when it offered a popular brunch special. Even though it had a reputation for drawing an over-the-hill crowd (it is still widely known as "The Denture Inn"), it did a very good trade among the mature gay set. That no longer seems to be the case. The Sunday brunch has been discontinued, former frequent patrons such as myself now dine there infrequently, and longtime owner Ted Wasserman is rumored to have the place up for sale. What has made the difference over that time is that the "regular" restaurants (indie, chain, doesn't matter) have become much more sensitive and accommodating to the needs of gay customers. When you can be who you are at a reasonably priced fine-dining establishment of any stripe, there's less of a need for a place specifically for a gay clientele. After all, it's the food we're going out for. (On the other hand, the advent of a number of establishments that are either openly gay-oriented [bump] or extremely gay-friendly [Valanni] that also serve outstanding food also hurt The Venture Inn's business, as its food has never really been much better than average.) And so it is with the chains and the indies. The chains, in this case, are to dining what the old B-movie theaters were to cinema. They do well in urban locations because there are still lots of urbanites who are simply looking for a place to eat for not much money, not necessarily for a specific sort of cuisine or experience. While there are high-end chains that cater to that latter crowd, the indies should continue to dominate this segment, for they offer the uniqueness a chain cannot match. If I were the owner of Pasion!, I wouldn't worry that much about Applebee's opening next door. If I were the owner of the Locust Rendezvous around the corner, I would. Now some speculation as to why chains do better in cities than indies do in the 'burbs. Actually, it probably boils down to one factor: walking. You will note that in the Philadelphia area, there are some suburbs, most notably but not exclusively on the Main Line, that do support a number of good independent and local chain restaurants. (For purposes of this argument, I will lump the local chains [Lamberti, e.g.] in with the indies.) Almost all of these, however, are either 18th-century towns that have since been surrounded by expanding suburbia (Moorestown, N.J.) or 19th- and early-20th-century railroad suburbs (the entire Main Line). What these communities have, and postwar Auto Age suburbia lacks, is pedestrian-scale business districts that people can "browse" on foot. Unfortunately, "browsing" a business strip is much harder behind the wheel of a car traveling 40 mph. An attractive storefront or a menu displayed by the door just won't cut it. You have to have a building and signage that can be read much more quickly and from much further away. For an independent restaurant operator working from a small capital base, the expense of desiging such structures and signage takes money away from the restaurant itself. That all but cedes the Auto Age 'burbs to the chains, with maybe the occasional indie strip-mall standout restaurant.

Absolutely, positively, definitely yes. Fried, in gumbo (which takes its name from the vegetable), and stewed, it's fabulous. Just boiled, it needs a little something extra.

I've had Fiji, and it's very good, and Trinity is even better. I also agree that you can taste the difference among bottled waters--lots of people like the taste of Poland Spring, I don't; I'd much rather buy Ephrata Diamond Spring if it were still around--but I happen to live in a city that has a pretty good water supply. Philly ought to; after all, this is the home of America's first water works (Fairmount Water Works, 1816), and the city fathers took pains to protect the quality of the water coming from the Fairmount Water Works by buying the land along the banks of the Schuylkill and the Wissahickon Creek within the city limits and turning it into parkland. Alas, industrialization outside the city polluted the Schuylkill, and the Fairmount Water Works closed in 1911 in favor of treatment plants that filter the water (Philly has very little chlorination). Most of the off-taste that people complain about in "Schuylkill Punch" (actually, the bulk of the city's water comes from the Delaware) comes from the 100+-year-old pipes through which it runs. Put it through a Brita filter, refrigerate it, and it's as good as almost any spring water you could put it up against. Unfortunately, my Brita pitcher broke and I haven't replaced it since.

I love dining outdoors by the water. You can't beat a waterside restaurant for atmosphere conducive to a relaxing meal with good friends. So it may come as a bit of surprise to you all if I tell you that this past Sunday was the first time in my 22-odd years in Philadelphia that I ate at the Moshulu. Then again, my previous visits to this Penn's Landing landmark were during its prior incarnation, when (if I recall correctly) the ship had a hard-earned reputation for only average food served in a stunning setting. Then the Moshulu closed, was sold, moved across the river to Camden, was left there to rot, was supposed to reopen over there, didn't, was sold again, moved back across the river to Philadelphia, was refurbished, and reopened with an expanded upper deck bar. I am pleased to report that the food at the Moshulu is much better than average now. Our threesome, being of limited means, decided to split an appetizer and main course from the bar menu. Our appetizer was the Bongo California roll ($12) -- three pieces of sushi filled with avocado and cucumber and topped with fresh lump crabmeat mixed with wasabi mayonnaise. I'm so used to encountering surimi where the crab should be that this last ingredient alone was worth the price. The rolls were served with mixed Asian greens, with soy sauce drizzle and wasabi dots. The main dish--the grilled flat-iron steak ($18) -- was even better. This relatively new cut was cooked medium rare (and we didn't even have to ask for it this way!), sliced, topped with watercress, Maytag blue cheese, and red onions and served over a three-cheese quesadilla--a little fiesta on a plate. All this and the Delaware too? What a deal! I am not pleased to report, however, that it took about 15 minutes from the time we were seated to see the bar menu. For some reason, the hostess who seated us apparently neglected to alert a server that we were now occupying a table, but since the waiters pass among those tables, shouldn't one of them have noticed us sitting there empty-handed? Once we prodded the hostess and got a waiter, the service was friendly and efficient. I decided to post this as a topic-starter because it appears there's never been a discussion of the Moshulu in any of its incarnations on eGullet. The closest I could find in a search was some posts by its former chef, Tim Olivett, encouraging eGulleteers to pay his establishment a visit. However, his signature now identifies him as ensconced at Rx in University City, so it was obviously not his fare we were dining on. Who is the chef at the Moshulu now? And does Tim still find time to post? I hope some of you will share your experiences with the granddaddy of fine waterfront restaurants in Philadelphia. Edited to correct the prices and some descriptions after checking against the Web site.

After taking a look at the Starwich web site (and I basically share Jason Perlow's criticisms of it, but would add one more: in an era of pop-up blockers, its use of pop-up windows for many functions could frustrate some browsers; then again, I guess I should talk, for my byline links on my own Web site open new windows), I would have to agree with your assessment above based on the ingredient choices. As far as I can tell, the closest competition in Philadelphia would be the Cosi chain, whose sandwiches are almost as adventurous and priced between Starwiches and hoagies. The interesting thing here is that Cosi originally offered a mix-and-match sandwich menu, with some pre-selected combinations listed by number; the chain has since abandoned this approach. (I've not yet experienced Miel, but I believe they specialize in pastries rather than sandwiches; if I am wrong, please correct me.) As for location, Starwich would probably want to locate somewhere near the West Market Street office canyons and Rittenhouse Square. There's a restaurant space in the 1700 block of Chestnut that's now available (see the "Hamburger Mary's" or "Gay-friendly dining" topics on the Pennsylvania forum) that might work well for them--but it would face serious competition from the DiBruno Bros. specialty food emporium/take-out kitchen just a few doors west.

Nous sommes tous Americains: This echoes word for word something the cheesemonger at New York's Fairway food emporium, whose name now escapes me, said when he gave a talk at Penn a couple of years ago. Ever since that talk, I've made a point of searching for raw milk versions of my favorite cheese varieties, and they have two qualities the industrial-grade pasteurized-milk versions lack: distinctive flavor and individuality--cheeses from the same dairy vary with the seasons. I believe this notion that pasteurized-milk cheese is "safer" than raw-milk cheese originated in the United States, where, in the early 20th century, a mania for sanitation (tied up with fear of immigrants from the "darker races" of southern and eastern Europe) took hold on a scale unmatched anywhere else at the time. Certainly the raw milk cheese keeps longer.