MarketStEl

Is Jack cheese in general original to the United States? If not, then Monterrey Jack is akin to Colby, the American member of the Cheddar family, named for the Wisconsin county where it originated. Nonetheless, I agree that, while witty, that line from The Independent is a bit of a cheap shot. Especially these days.

The owners didn't give me the name of the dairy either--but they did say that it is a family-owned operation located in northern Delaware, and that it has been around for 207 years (presumably in the hands of the same family, much like E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Co., which is almost as old).

For me personally, the very last few times I set foot inside a Winn Dixie (and we're talking some 5 years ago now), the stores were not particularly clean, the produce was not well tended, meat looked below average, overall the canned/boxed choices were poor, and the entire experience screamed "we're not even trying now" ... ← Sounds like the Southern edition of "The Decline and Fall of the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company" (that's "A&P" to you). I was still living in Kansas City -- a market then served by A&P -- at the time A&P entered its near-death spiral. The company focused on low prices to the exclusion of just about everything else, and the customers fled in droves. Today's A&P (dba "Super Fresh" in the Mid-Atlantic region) is a smaller but better company. The quality of their merchandise is very good, as is their customer service; the stores could be cleaner and the selection of products greater... One difference: A&P, AFAIK, never filed Chapter 11. That one fact suggests to me that Winn-Dixie management has been seriously asleep at the wheel, and in the dog-eat-dog supermarket biz, this could prove fatal in the long run. Hope they get the wake-up call offered by Publix.

What she said. An even more pleasant surprise: The per-person tab for this Lucullan feast was a mere $25, including drinks and tip. One of the great things about dining in a large group at East, Southeast or South Asian restaurants is that you end up creating a huge do-it-yourself tasting menu for much, much less than the same experience would run at a haute cuisine establishment. Great for the budget-conscious. I'm nagging my friend Chris to go out for pho with me sometime this weekend.

Interesting. This discussion began three years ago, was most recently added to in June, and throughout all of this, nobody has mentioned the secret ingredient in every good African-American potato salad I've had: Pickle relish. Not diced pickles--relish. Sweet relish or India relish (which is almost as sweet anyway), makes no difference. I have a friend who can't stand relish, so sometimes I make it without, but when I want the genuine article, in it goes. And let me also endorse the use of Miracle Whip instead of mayo in potato salad. I don't think it's a must-use ingredient, but it does add a little extra tanginess to the concoction. Now I'm going to have to make some after reading all this. Gives me an excuse to try this aged rice vinegar I bought recently.

Any particular reason(s)? I had thought that Winn-Dixie was one of those integral parts of the South, like Spanish moss, magnolias, fried chicken, hot sauce on everything, Miracle Whip and whatever that brand of mayonnaise is that all y'all swear by but we can't get up this way.

So you were at the other end of the long table, then? Sorry I didn't get to meet you when I finally got there after walking around Chinatown for about 20 minutes. OTOH, I must have been walking faster than Charlie and Co., for nobody was at "The Train" when I got there and found out it was shuttered. (Question for Andrew et al.: What would that dinner have been like?) I can attest that the breading on the grouper was not impenetrable. Even though the restaurant provided extra tools with which to demolish it, I found that I could cut my portion with a fork once I got it off the filet. At our end of the table, there was also kung pao beef -- nicely seasoned, and the chili pepper cleared my sinuses nicely -- and a squid dish whose name escapes me now; the squid was breaded, fried and served in what I think was a garlic sauce, but by the time that dish came around, everything had dissolved into one big coconut-curry-garlic blur, so I won't swear by this. The dishes I liked best were the basil pork, with mustard greens in a spicy garlic sauce, and the coconut scallops. But there wasn't a bad dish in the bunch. One nice thing about eating in a large party at most Asian restaurants is that the meal becomes a de facto tasting menu. The main dishes are meant to be shared, and there are so many of them that you don't dare take more than a bite or two of each. Nonetheless, by the time it's all over, you're stuffed. And contrary to the stereotype, I wasn't hungry again two hours later. Guess all that protein counterbalanced the carbs in the rice.

Sort of elaborating on pan: I see that three of those four projected restaurants are open. Was there not enough capital for the fourth, or some other obstacle? How long have these three outlets been open? How soon did the owners plan to expand up and down the East Coast? Perhaps I should look at the Web site before posting what follows, but that hasn't stopped me before: Philadelphia may prove a tough nut to crack, given the strong indigenous sandwich culture in this town, centered on the hoagie (="submarine sandwich" or "grinder" in many other locales) and the cheesesteak. However, since these sandwiches are more like those offered at Subway or Quiznos than what Starwich apparently envisions, and both of these two national chains have managed to establish a foothold in the land of Lee's Hoagie House and hundreds of really good indie shops, there may be an unserved market even here for Starwich to exploit. Assuming the Starr Restaurant Organization (coming to New York soon) doesn't squawk over trademark infringement or some such.

Glad to be of service. I've only seen Hamburger Helper at the end of the aisle when my local supermarket's running a big special on it (like BOGO free). As for your overall assessment of the cake mix of main dishes: I won't hold it against you at all. And it is indeed interesting to see what sorts of similar convenience foods people will and will not use. I've already mentioned how popular Hamburger Helper is in my house, but I refuse to buy Kraft Macaroni & Cheese Dinner or anything like it--it's never as good as what I make from scratch, and it's not all that hard to make mac & cheese from scratch, though I will grant that it is a bit more time-consuming--you do have to grate the cheese unless you buy pre-shredded. I really don't consider canned beans "convenience" foods--all the canner has done is soak them for you in advance, admittedly a huge time-saver. Okay, and sometimes season them (I keep a can or two of America's Choice Hot Chili Beans handy for whenever I feel like whipping up a batch of chili). Yeah, but they're not Dietz & Watson! (Truth be told, I wish I were...)

I use prepackaged convenience foods because sometimes I am either too pooped or have too little time to do the prep work I need to do to make a decent dish from scratch. And my partner loves Hamburger Helper Cheeseburger Macaroni, although you could make--and I have made--one that's every bit as tasty with real ingredients. But I second the sentiments expressed in the posts about the response women had to entering the labor force in World War II. "The Good War" produced a radical transformation in American society, as it did in several other countries, and even laid the seeds that blossomed into the various "liberation" and civil-rights movements in the decades that followed. Prepackaged convenience foods, in this context, were a form of women's liberation.

4. Assign the number 1 to low and 7 to high, then look at the sequence. Agreed, though, that gas range controls can be confusing (or nonexistent)--but I suspect that may be because the manufacturers figured the cook could gauge the heat level by looking at the flame. I wouldn't assume all cooks could accurately do that, either. Words (or pictograms--small flame, medium-size flame, large flame) would be a better guide.

You mean you never watched "How to Boil Water"? (Is that show still on?)

"Semi-homemade"? Which her home page then defines as "70% premade + 30% fresh." Which means she doesn't even meet her own standard--the prefix "semi-" means "half" (or "twice" as in "semimonthly"). But I'll bet the major food processors absolutely adore her. --Sandy, who nonetheless also uses prepackaged foods on occasion

Decent food, too. The Woody Burger is one of the better burgers in town.

Found out about this when I was en route to the karaoke night at Dragonfly, the gay bar above HM's, last Thursday. Apparently, their last night was the Sunday prior. I know the owners and also know several people who worked there, including the wonderful guy who ran their karaoke night (and does the same at Key West on Tuesdays and Woody's on alternate Mondays). I've heard a whole host of explanations/accounts/excuses for why what seemed to be a concept with potential here went under, but it seems to me that it boils down to this: They didn't market it right from the start, and backed that up with not enough good staff. One of the more pleasant fallouts of the success--yes, I said success--of the gay rights/gay acceptance movement since Stonewall is that we have now come to a point where a place does not need to be exclusively gay to be gay-friendly. The "metrosexual" phenomenon and the rise of the style that has been dubbed "gay vague" suggests that a sizable number of heterosexual males have lost their fears about being thought gay--and that is a good sign for places that wish to attract a gay clientele but not limit themselves to one. Now, while Hamburger Mary's is supposed to have a gay sensibility and be gay-friendly, it need not be exclusively gay--and I'll wager that the restaurant's patrons came from all walks of life. The bar upstairs could have probably been pitched towards a mixed clientele and still attracted the gay patrons they wanted. Hell, if Woody's now draws straight chicks looking for a good time... Edited to add: Mary will most definitely not return to that space. The owners also own the building that houses the restaurant and bar, and plan to lease the space out--not necessarily to another restaurant.

Gimme a date and time. I wanna be there.

A comment from the other side of Lake Ontario: Perhaps the provincial government might want to consider appointing someone who does not consider alcohol an unmitigated evil to head the agency? The Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board (the largest single purchaser of wine and spirits in the United States, BTW) has done much to shed its reputation for being hostile to imbibers and oenophiles under its current chairman, Jonathan Newman, himself an oenophile. The state has even gained a rep as a wine lover's paradise of late thanks to Newman's driving some real hard (and fantastic) bargains with outstanding vintners and passing the (substantial) savings on to the consumer with the PLCB's "Chairman's Selections." It hasn't hurt the agency politically, either. The frequent calls for its sale or dismemberment have all but disappeared around these parts of late.

A belated report: Went over to DiBruno's Rittenhouse Square location a couple of weeks back to score some Hendricks Farms cheeses. The Telford Reserve is a wonderful, slightly sweet Cheddar-style cheese with a lot of character. I'd still put the Noble a notch above it, but it is outstanding in its own right. Is the Goadacious supposed to be runny? The cheese I bought at DiBruno's seemed a little firm, and not like the cheese described uptopic, though it had a great tangy flavor. Hope to have a chance to try those blue varieties someday soon.

Say, shouldn't we have a pizza outing before Andrew heads abroad? BTW and FWIW, the place where I first had lahmejune in Watertown no longer exists. The "spa" (="convenience store with fountain") over which I lived in Watertown Square still does, but it has been purchased by an Indian family and spruced up considerably.

Try Glory brand canned collard or mustard greens, seasoned "Southern" (="soul food") style. If there aren't enough African Americans near your local supermarket for it to carry the line, drive into Wilmington and try one of the stores there. (One of the real pleasures of my neighborhood Super Cruise is that it sits on the border between affluent Center City's "gayborhood" and a lower-income black community. Makes for a great merchandise mix.) Good collards and mustards are a PITA to make. Glory's done all the work for me. Also put me down for canned sardines, smoked oysters and clams. I've also been known to keep a can or two of salmon on hand every so often, and tuna all the time. I also willingly keep several cans of Campbell's soups on hand, in a number of varieties, but always there's at least one can of tomato, chicken noodle, and New England clam chowder around. Canned broth I usually avoid, but that stuff in the aseptic packs called "Kitchen Basics" is pretty good. As for beans, you will always find cans of America's Choice Hot Chili Beans hanging around; others come and go as I need them. Aside from the soul food classics, my pantry is uncontaminated by canned green vegetables. Almost every one I've ever tried has a mushy consistency and/or tastes either salty or metallic.

Having slogged through this discussion with eyeballs intact, I will now toss a few random pebbles into the lake and see what ripples emanate. On Rachel Ray: I guess I should consider myself fortunate that I have only watched a few episodes of "$40 a Day," including the one where they did Philly (and ate at Villa di Roma in the Italian Market--probably not the 9th Street eatery I would send a budget-minded food traveler to, but then again, the ones I would aren't Italian). But if some of the descriptions of what she does on "30-Minute Meals" I've read here are accurate, then is excessive perkiness a mortal sin? Many was the night when, having pulled back into town at 7 after a one-hour commute and wanting to be done with dinner by 9, I really didn't feel like (a) going through all the steps of doing a really good dish entirely from scratch or (b) stir-fry. Now, I know I can find some good 30-minute meals on Epicurious or maybe even in RecipeGullet, but I don't see anything horribly wrong with using some pre-packaged shortcuts from time to time. (Following a packaged food fad just because it's new is another story.) On Alton Brown: Shticky his shows may be, but they are incredibly informative and offer all sorts of interesting foodgeekery and more than a little science (I guess these two categories have a lot of overlap). On Slate: Someone upthread seemed to be under the impression that the publication has officially cast its lot with the anti-"food snob" crowd because of this defense of Rachel Ray. Anyone bother clicking on the "related in Slate links at the end, the first of which takes you to an essay by Slate's food editor ripping into the Food Network in general and Rachel Ray in particular before going on to praise a short-lived BBC series? Slate seems to have become an unusually lively online mag that casts a wide net across politics and culture (high and pop), and I'd say that even if I wasn't acquainted with the guy who writes the "Chatterbox" column. On Bobby Flay: Someone barbecue him, please.

They serve their own brand. Unfortunately, there is not much detail on their webpage. ← No, but there is an interesting offer for a fundraising book. "Images of America: Wawa" is a title in the "Images of America" series from Arcadia Publishing (Charleston, S.C.), written by historian Maria M. Thompson and Wawa Executive VP Donald H. Price. Like the other titles in this series, this is an illustrated history, with lots of photos from the company archives. Royalties from its sale benefit the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. (The title is in keeping with the series' focus, which features niche histories and specialized topics. I have two of the books in the series, "Gay and Lesbian Philadelphia" and "Boston's Red Line: Bridging the Charles from Alewife to Braintree.")

Weird trivia question: How does one arrive at the corporate name for the liquor license application? I see yours is "Addy's LLC."

Which I will now have to make a special trip to visit, as my working days in Wilmington are now at an end. Being a temp, I was very expendable in the wake of the merger. Get thee to Mutt's (on Orange Street in downtown Wilmington and on Basin Road in New Castle) posthaste, so you can experience a real hot dog. Again, 7-11 is to this place as Wawa is to a first-class hoagie shop (be it Capriotti's or Primo's or Salumeria....) Diff'rent strokes for diff'rent folks.

It wasn't the Canada Goose that first drew me in to a Wawa (which actually means Canada Goose in a local indigenous dialect and which we cheerfully export to you specifically to befoul your lawns), it was my enthusiastic Pennsylvanian colleaugue offering up 'a local tradition.' It's a Lenape word. (The Lenape, or Lenni-Lenape, or Delaware [yep--the Brits gave the local Indian tribe the same name that they gave part of the territory, that of (I believe) its first colonial administrator, Lord De La Warr], are the Indian tribe that inhabited what is now eastern Pennsylvania, New Jersey, most of Delaware and part of upstate New York.) It's also the name of the Delaware County hamlet that housed the dairy that spawned the convenience-store behemoth. (Wawa's corporate headquarters and main dairy plant are still in Wawa, which is no longer served by SEPTA's R3 Elwyn [formerly West Chester] Regional Rail line.) As for your enthusiastic Pennsylvanian colleague: Yes, Wawa is "a local tradition"--as I implied above, it's intertwined with the soul of the region in a way no other regional convenience store chain I've run across elsewhere is. But as for his notions of excellence in eating, well...as you were saying: Again, I'd have to agree with your assessment of the place of Wawa in the local sandwich pantheon and add that your local guide did do you a disservice, since you were only here for a short while. Still, I wouldn't knock him too hard for doing so, for, as you have probably gathered from the comments on this topic, many of us who do know where the good sandwiches are nonetheless appreciate Wawa for what it does. Continuing your misadventure: Sounds like what local writer Jim Quinn lampooned as "the mix-and-match menu" in a hilarious and overly long Philadelphia magazine essay in which he looked back at three decades of dining evolution in the Delaware Valley, published sometime around 1989. I've had a brush with this creature once, at an earlier incarnation of the now-closed General Wayne Inn. It appears it's still popular among a certain subset of Main Liners. May I suggest that your native guide consult some of his Bobo* acquaintances and get their recommendations for good eats on the Main Line? You'll probably do much better following their suggestions. Agreed with your assessment. In fact, for all its frustrations and shortcomings, it is an underappreciated gem on many counts, especially by those born here. We did, back in the 1970s. Does anyone have one now? *David Brooks, the neoconservative commentator-witticist who penned "Bobos in Paradise" and thus contributed the conjunction for "bourgeois bohemian" to the language, is a native of Wayne.