MarketStEl

Updating what I posted well over a year ago: I've now made both tomato sauce and mayo from scratch. My days of making large batches of tomato sauce may or may not be over, depending on whether I get and accept a job offer from the software firm in Yardley where I interviewed today. My source of copious quantities of lovely Jersey tomatoes vanished along with my job at Widener, but I found out today that the woman who will be my boss should I get and take a job offer at Activant grows lots on her Bucks County property. (I've already gotten an offer from another firm in a Trenton-area location that would require my buying a car, which is one of the reasons I didn't just jump at the offer yet.) Making one's own mayo is very easy, but I don't use it often enough to make it all that much.

Pub license? I thought that in Pennsylvania, all liquor licenses fell into one of two categories: "restaurant" and "hotel". It was my understanding that bars and brewpubs are all classed as restaurants for licensing purposes, but that restaurants and bars in hotels operate under the hotel's license (hence the Society Hill Hotel Bar & Grill in Old City Philly, IIRC). I also thought that the big issue had to do with Sunday sales -- namely, if you want to serve alcohol on Sundays and you have a "restaurant" license, you had to earn a minimum percentage of your revenues (again IIRC, 30) from the sale of food. I think that there are several bars that have taken the approach to serving food that you plan to for this reason -- and at least one I know of that doesn't even pay the rule lip service in this fashion. (Then again, there is now a B&B hotel above this bar, so the issue may be moot.) Did the Liquor Control Board create another category of license?

Sriracha mayo! That should earn it points automatically. (I've been combining mayo with the Korean chili sauce -- slightly sweeter than sriracha -- that H-Mart sells lately and loving it.) Guess I need to conduct an inspection visit. I assume this sandwich is somewhere in the $7-$10 range?

BTW, I don't think any of us have anything to be embarrassed about -- nor do I think that carpetbagger will return to Tennessee thinking to himself, "Is that the best this town can do?" If you go back to his initial post, it's clear that he had some of his agenda set in advance. He was going to go to Cheesesteak Corner anyway if at all possible, simply because of its reputation (IOW, an "I can say I've been" visit); the only thing I did was correct the false impression someone gave him that Cheesesteak Corner is in a dangerous neighborhood. And he also said he wanted to check out something representative of the region's German heritage. To do so properly would have required travel to the Northeast, and it appears to me that time to venture well beyond Center City and environs was something he lacked, so he went for the one place we suggested that might come close and was close to him. His visit to Delilah's was likewise informed by what he had seen on TV before arriving here, and none of us did anything to dissuade him, really; why should we? Her food isn't bad, after all, even if there's better to be had at the RTM. About the only place that I suspect he would not have visited had one of us not said something about it was Moriarty's, and that was only because he didn't want to put up with either dressing up for someplace fancier or waiting for a table at El Vez (yeah, he should have tried Lolita just up the block, but he probably would have had no better luck). And he liked the wings. That, you may recall, was the only reason I recommended the place, and I added: It's true that I like Moriarty's, but I made no effort to pass it off as either fine dining or the best the city had to offer for anything other than wings. I realize I'm veering dangerously close to echoing former U.S. Sen. Roman Hruska (R-Nebraska), who famously said in reference to President Nixon's doomed nomination of Harold Carswell (or was it Clement Haynsworth?) that "there should be a place for mediocrity on the Supreme Court." But none of us steered him to the mediocrity; he knew about it before coming here. And I will stand by my characterization of Moriarty's wings as not mediocre. He will be back, and we trust that next time, he will have the time and inclination to try our better eateries, having gotten the obligatories out of the way.

Boy, did it ever! Though the stats say the Iggles still stink worse than the 'Skins, they managed to best your beloved tribe in a true stink-bomb of a game yesterday. (Exciting, yes, but they still stank up the field with all those penalties and turnovers.) Nonetheless, it sure smelled good to us up here in Philly. So: what did you settle for in the way of eats since Magus wasn't able to FedEx you a burger?

What you said, Magus. Cooked-to-order bacon is much, much better than precooked, reheated bacon. That said, you can take the shortcut many diners use to handle busy times: Fry a large batch of bacon early and keep it warm in a metal container on the grill. It won't be as hot as the bacon cooked with the burger, and it will lose some of its juiciness, but it keeps you from having to focus on both the bacon and the burger when you're getting slammed.

You're not going to go off on one of those Million Man March-style numerology tangents, are you?

I am guessing that: --Nina C.'s computer has passed the point of no return, and --it being past the warranty period, cannot be replaced without shelling out major bucks, and --said major bucks are either in short supply or needed for other purposes right now. At least I hope that's why this blog has yet to resume.

Missed this comment in my earlier reply: If you knew how El Vez got its name, you might not think that, for the rap Muzak at El Vez makes about as much sense as El Vez himself. Pronounce the name faster than you otherwise might. The restaurant's namesake performed at its opening. El Vez (the performer, not the restaurant) Web site Use this link instead if you don't want your eardrums blasted by punk rock on your visit Edited to correct tense error and clear up antecedent reference.

In the case of Moriarty's, I believe that your statement above depends on the category. Overall, it's good but not great, but I can think of only one other restaurant in the city that I might consider its equal or better when it comes to Buffalo wings -- La Creole (I think that's its name) on South Front Street. Judging from what he ordered, he did decide to check out my recommendation of Moriarty's for its wings. It's certainly not authentic (or 100% authentic -- they do have shepherd's pie, which is a stereotype) Irish fare, as I also agreed above. But as we both noted in our own way, that's not what you go there for. You go to Pat's and Geno's so you can say you went. Now that he's gotten those out of his system, I'm sure he will seek out better cheesesteaks next time. Don't forget that all the first-rate ones are now served well away from Center City -- it just happens that Pat's and Geno's are also the two places in the Cheesesteak Pantheon (Pat's deservedly, Geno's by association) that are closest to where carpetbagger was staying, with the sole exception of Jim's at 4th and South, which is arguably better or worse than Pat's.

I don't go there as often as I probably ought to, but that's in part because the place isn't set up to handle a large group of hungry singers post-rehearsal, and the Irish Pub across the street (nice waitstaff, worse food but still acceptable, atmosphere one step up from a frat bar) does. (Edited to add full disclosure: One of the waiters on Moriarty's staff is an acquaintance of mine. If he has the night off when we perform, he has attended PGMC concerts, and I occasionally run into him at one or another of the Gayborhood watering holes/pick-up spots.) I had one of those Tex-Mex dishes on my last visit (belated birthday treat from a fellow PGMCer) -- a shrimp quesadilla. The main reason I had it was because I had ordered those wings the last time I ate there, two weeks ago. Yeah, I agree that these sorts of things really have no business being on an "Irish" pub's menu, but consider that most of what we call "Irish pubs" on this side of the pond are really American pubs tricked out with faux-aged wood and Guinness signs (Moriarty's is one of the less inauthentic examples of these), I don't find it quite so blasphemous. On your next visit, if you want something that's more authentically Irish, try The Bards in the 2000 block of Walnut, or, for a fancier experience, the Plough and Stars on 2d Street in Old City. There's also a hole-in-the-wall restaurant on West Chester Pike in Upper Darby -- I don't know its name -- that serves a genuine Irish breakfast and has become a sort of unofficial consulate for Irish immigrants in the area. Glad you're enjoying your visit, and that you liked the wings. Moriarty's is one of those Restaurants Every Neighborhood Should Have -- a reasonably priced, convivial place where you know you will get decent eats no matter what you order.

Allow me to chime in with a defense of the Down Home Diner as well. I enjoyed a fine lunch there with Rebecca Salame (Rebecca263), her son and a female buddy of his (NOT girlfriend) last summer. The food there is perfectly fine, and you should try the scrapple. Everything else on the menu, however, you can probably find just as good or better versions of back home. How's Day Two coming along?

And the dreaded thread drift blows in on the east wind... I noticed your said Pizza Parlor...are you from back east? I remember Nehi sodas...thoes were good times ← I grew up with Shakey's Pizza Parlors and Farrell's Ice Cream Parlors. Guess the "parlor" stuck in my head even though those chains have long since faded away. ← "If your pizza is perfection, it's from Shakey's!" The chain is forever etched in my mind with a memory from high school days. Juniors on the honor roll and seniors at Pem-Day could leave the campus to eat lunch at nearby restaurants. The Shakey's Pizza Parlor catercorner from the University of Kansas Medical Center at 39th and Rainbow Boulevard in KCK (which now lies just west of the 39th Street restaurant strip in KCMo) had an all-you-can-eat pizza buffet on Tuesdays at lunchtime. Some of my clever classmates figured out that if one of them bought a plate and simply passed it around from student to student, they could do the equivalent of a "dine 'n' dash" without having to steal away from the premises furtively. So I and about three or four other classmates bought plates, and while we ate our slices, the others in our party took our plates back down the line. Apparently, the management was watching all this, and about 15 minutes into the game, the manager came around and kicked everyone who hadn't bought a plate out of the restaurant. To those of us who did pay for the buffet, he gave us a coupon good for a freebie on our next visit. Who said honesty wasn't the best policy? OK, thread drift over. Back to drooling over burgers topped with luscious bacon and talk of homemade soda.

Capaneus: You'd probably also be surprised to find a bunch of people agreeing with whatever you had to say about Pat's and Geno's, unless it was "They're still the best cheesesteaks in town." I think the general consensus is that these two tourist magnets have long since surrendered their claim to supremacy. carpetbagger, esq.: That said, you should not fear for your safety if you decide you should go there just to say you've been. The area around Cheesesteak Corner (intersection of 9th/Passyunk Ave/Wharton) is not dangerous, contrary to the picture your informants have painted; the two sandwich shrines stay open all night and draw decent crowds well into the wee smalls on the weekends. You could even walk there if you're up to it; just be aware that the 9th Street market feels very desolate at night -- you might want to approach via 10th Street instead; you won't be able to miss it -- just look for the blaze of light from Geno's across the ball field at 10th and Federal. You can get a decent cheesesteak at Rick's in the RTM, but if you're going to have a classic Philly sandwich there and have time for only one, have that roast pork Italian instead, and get it from DiNic's. [...] Philly has been described as a city of neighborhoods. There is a Polish influence in the Allegheny section. Wonderful pierogi, pastry, and kielbasa. Allegheny^WPort Richmond The district's main drag is Richmond Street; Allegheny Avenue cuts across it. The Allegheny section of the city lies west of Broad Street around the street of the same name, well away from Port Richmond. If you have the time and the interest, you can reach this district on the restored vintage streetcars that ply SEPTA Route 15. Take either the Broad Street or Market-Frankford lines to Girard station and transfer to a car headed eastbound (to Richmond and Westmoreland streets); you will ride right through the Polish district. Marra's -- which is not in the Italian Market but five blocks southwest of it on Passyunk Avenue -- has some of the better pizza in the city but is otherwise unexceptional. But you weren't coming here for pizza, were you? And as for the "Italian" Market, the Southeast Asian flavor is rapidly being supplanted by a Mexican accent, which is convenient because that means they don't have to repaint the storefronts (the national flags of Italy and Mexico use the same three colors). There is a little storefront restaurant in the 9th Street market's less busy stretch (south of Washington Avenue) called Taquitos de Puebla that a lot of us swear by for delicious, inexpensive, and even adventurous authentic Mexican fare. Try the cabeza de res taco if you dare. An equally good Mexican restaurant with slightly better ambience in the same area is Plaza Garibaldi in the 900 block of Washington Avenue. Also in this general vicinity are several very good Vietnamese, Laotian, and pho restaurants, mainly in two pockets along Washington near 6th and 11th. Pho (pronounced something like "fur") is THE soup that eats like a meal, and if you've never had it, you should try some; I'd recommend Pho 75 (the city's original pho house, in the mini-mall in the 1100 block of Washington; the ambience is high school cafeteria but the soup is very good) or Pho & Cafe Viet Huong (across the parking lot from Pho 75 in the same mall; the ambience is more like a busy diner and the menu is more extensive; try their bun bo Hue [spicy beef vermicelli soup]). Free associating: Two of the city's best Vietnamese restaurants are closer to your hotel, across North 11th from each other between Race and Vine. You won't be disappointed with a meal at either Vietnam (on the east side) or Vietnam Palace (on the west side); I am partial to the latter. There is also an excellent lower-end sushi place much closer to your hotel: 1225 Raw (yes, that's how they answer the phone there), at 1225 Sansom Street, right next door to Capogiro. You can easily walk to either Tria from your hotel. The original is at 18th and Sansom, to the southwest of the Ritz; their new Wash West outpost is at 12th and Spruce, to your southeast. Both are busy all the time; the one on Spruce offers outdoor seating (heated), making it a great place to watch the passing scene. Naked Chocolate is at Juniper and Walnut, just around the corner from Capogiro at 13th and Sansom. The area around Capogiro -- the heart of "Midtown Village" -- is loaded with decent places to eat and drink, including Stephen Starr's Mexi-kitsch El Vez and the more straightforward Mexican BYOB Lolita, the wine bar Vintage, the aforementioned 1225 Raw and the old-school-elegant traditional (but not red-gravy) Italian restaurant Portofino (on Walnut just east of 13th). If you like Buffalo wings, the best in the city are served at Moriarty's, one block further east of Portofino, next to the Forrest Theater. But you weren't coming here for Buffalo wings, were you? (N.B. the rainbow-flag-bottom street signs in this area. This is my home and stomping ground.) What the man said. This is a great town to dine out in. Edited to fix typo.

Happy birthday! I hope you're dining on something other than a burger and fries.

That wasn't what he was saying at all. What he was saying is that nobody goes to a restaurant because it offers better ketchup than the competition, while people will go somewhere for a soda that's a cut above the ordinary. You can serve a great burger and have your customers dress it with Sysco Grade A Fancy Ketchup, and they'll still wolf it down; conversely, they will avoid the place with blah burgers and so-so fries served with Heinz. But if the latter place had a great old-fashioned soda, people might give it a shot, though they probably wouldn't visit it twice unless the burgers and fries got better. We'll drop cargo crates to you from the plane every so often.

I think you all know that I love what I do very much: I know I'm good at it and I get great satisfaction out of doing it well. But I think one of the things I have learned in the wake of my recent job loss is that I enjoy it best when doing it on my own terms -- when I get to choose the time, place, topic, client, and pace. Unfortunately, this and sufficient, steady pay are usually incompatible unless you are a real hustler, which I'm not -- yet -- so at least for the near term, I will continue to have to adapt to doing what I do well on someone else's terms. In the kitchen, I do not have to adapt. I am master of my domain. I choose the subject of my work, the way I will approach it, and the manner in which I execute it. After all these years, I hadn't made this connection until now, but I think it does explain one reason I love cooking as well as my territoriality towards my kitchen. But therapy? I think that just thinking -- focusing on my thoughts and subjecting them to criticism -- has helped me tame "my black dog" (as Winston Churchill called his lifelong depression) more than anything else (besides going sober for 18 months), but thinking back over the times when my black dog had the run of my brain, no matter what else I didn't want to do, I could clear my head, if only momentarily, by heading into the kitchen and making something, anything. and here I thought I was the only one to do that..... ← Nope. Wandering around grocery stores is one of my favorite therapies too--right next to cooking. Especially ethnic groceries. All those fascinating and unfamiliar labels and aromas and shapes and colors. Especially when I'm feeling blue over the slenderness of my wallet, browsing through an ethnic market is like a free vacation to another country. (And I can even justify buying a few "souvenirs," because after all, I still have to eat... ) ← Make that at least three of us who find grocery shopping uplifting. I think I go into an almost Zen-like state as I amble through the aisles of the Reading Terminal Market, push my shopping cart down 9th Street while scoping the produce, or stroll around the supermarket. Why should I limit myself to a single instance of this feeling per trip? (Well, there's that and the game a former maintenance guy in my building called "me vs. the supermarket: Who's going to walk away with more of my money?" I get a bit of a high from playing that game too.)

It's a Pennsylvania thing. You wouldn't understand. Most Pennsylvanians wouldn't understand either. The speculation was that someone -- Gov. Rendell? the legislative leaders? -- didn't like the high profile the publicity-savvy Newman kept, burnishing his own image and rep along with that of the widely reviled (at least in the Southeast) Liquor Control Board. I cannot recall a PLCB chairman ever doing radio ads. (Actually, the PLCB didn't advertise at all up until about a decade ago.) Newman did. (As the son of Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice Sandra Schultz Newman, the PLCB chair was not unfamiliar with state politics, FWIW.) And though you didn't emphasize it, if anyone was wondering what happened to Blake Gray (until recently at the San Francisco Chronicle, writing about wine) -- ← Good luck from one VP of Marketing to another. At least he is getting paid, I hope, and has access to great wine buys. --Sandy Smith, Vice President of Marketing, Philadelphia Gay Men's Chorus (a labor of love)

Inquiring minds want to know: Will he have the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board for a customer?

Big George's, alas, is no more -- it closed about a year ago. I was wondering how long it would be before a Crown Fried Chicken fan cropped up in this discussion. This seems to be the favorite chain you've never heard of unless you live in the 'hood or are among a select few cognoscenti. Homestyle fried chicken is a thing of joy, but I must confess that Popeye's puts a hurtin' on most everyone else's.

I just noticed something on three of the receipts posted on this thread that I haven't encountered before: Receipts with the UPC and PLU codes printed along with the product description, like Jamie Lee's last receipt in the post just before this one. Wonder if those companies that ask you to send the UPC code off the package along with your register receipt in order to get a rebate or goodie would take a receipt of this type instead?

Forgot to carry my camera to Chorus rehearsal. Sorry!

I find myself in the same situation with a diabetic roommate (Type 1, had it all his life) whose kidneys have now failed. Next to the stove are a couple of lists with all the foods he must avoid or severely restrict. It makes buying food tricky, more so as I am the chief cook too and he doesn't do that much cooking for himself. He must avoid or restrict his intake of foods containing sodium, potassium and phosphorus. There is one category where I'm puzzled here: the list includes tomato products -- tomato sauce, juice and paste -- but not fresh tomatoes as foods to avoid due to their high potassium content. (Tomato and vegetable juice are also on the should-avoid list for sodium content too.) I know that processing increases the amount of lycopene in tomato products vs. tomatoes; does it similarly increase the potassium concentration? And what if I prepare a homemade sauce from fresh tomatoes? Does the same process take place? A friend of mine told me that there is one variety of deli cheese -- Finlandia Muenster -- that is made in such a way that it does not contain the high levels of potassium and phosphorous that put cheese on the should-avoid list for these two substances. Has anyone else heard this?

Sorry, diva, but the 'Skins stink this year. Almost as bad as the Iggles stink this year. What a good idea! International expansion! Except of course you should come to the Kansai area first--there's pretty much nothing in Hiroshima! Magus--I'm so happy that you're doing so well with your burger operation. I think it's good that you've started "small" (like those line-ups are small!), so you can really get a feel of what you need/want (and what your customers want/need) before opening your other location. You're getting used to the demand, the crowds, etc. etc. With all this experience, when you expand it will be with ease! ← Okay: You've got requests to add outlets in Washington, Hiroshima, Kansai -- and now Philadelphia. I'm sure burger lovers in other cities will be clamoring for No. 9 stands soon. Methinks it's time you considered franchising! Of course, that means you'd have to open a "Number Nine University" to make sure your franchisees know how to maintain your high quality standards. As a willing franchisee, I'd then have a built-in excuse to travel to Ann Arbor. Until then: Could you use a publicist willing to work via telecommute? I know how to work both the English language and a roomful of reporters, and my rates are very reasonable. For you, I really would work for food. Shipping my pay to Philly might present some logistical problems, though.

Truth be told, it doesn't -- IIRC it takes more energy to produce a gallon of ethanol than is generated by burning it.