MarketStEl

Congratulations! Now: Anybody willing to ferry me up there? I got an e-mail from Trent inviting me to visit and saying that he had some cheeses that would make me forget Pennsylvania Noble. This is a challenge I'm more than willing to take him up on, but Telford's not accessible via SEPTA. It'd have to be after the 25th of the month. I wouldn't want to go up there and leave empty-handed. (Edited to add: It's not like I'm completely unfamiliar with his product, though -- I did buy a wedge of Telford Tomme at DiBruno's a few months back, so I know he can back up his challenge.)

My lack of familiarity with fast food -- which I don't eat all that often -- shows: On fast food, I got 4/11, 200 points. On breakfast and dinner, I got 9/11, 390, for each.

From Wikipedia: To answer my own questions if anyone else was interested, according to Wikipedia Rotel is a combination of tomatoes and green chiles sold in a can. It also appears that Velveeta is sold in a block and has the same texture as single slices of processed cheese, with a slightly different flavour. And as SB points out above, it is indeed sold in Canada. I'm still curious why the other processed cheese products are still popular here but not the Velveeta. One last question, all the obove posts seem to involve cooking it. Can you just cut off a slice and munch on it raw, or is it always cooked? ← Kraft also makes Velveeta Slices, individually wrapped single slices of Velveeta. Velveeta has a higher moisture content than American cheese and IMO a sharper taste. A thick slice off a Velveeta loaf is noticeably more gelatinous or rubbery in its appearance and behavior than an equally thick slice off a loaf of American cheese. (It doesn't wiggle like Jell-O, but it will sway; it's more limber than American cheese for sure.) Sure you can eat Velveeta right off the block (or by the slice)! But given that it's made to melt, why would you? Aside: I saw an ad for Mensa in the most recent NLGJA (National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association) newsletter. The ad explained the organization's purpose, but the line I liked was the one that read, "If you think you're smart enough to join Mensa, you probably are." I've never seen the Hot Mexican version of Velveeta up this way. The only kind the local supermarkets carry is the Mild Mexican version. I've done the chili and the salsa versions of the Velveeta Mexican dip, but not the Ro-Tel dip yet. Apparently, it's a thing apart from the others, judging from the testimonials here. Ro-Tel is available at many local supermarkets now, so I guess I'll have to give it a try.

Sandy - can you explain this one? I have a lot of mustard (about 14 different kinds in my pantry right now, thanks to too much wine at last year's Napa Valley mustard festival - story for different thread) but don't believe I've ever seen any mixed with mayo. Is this like those strange experiments from the 80's with pre-mixed peanut butter and jelly? ← Probably referring to something like Hellmann's/Best Foods dijonnaise. Never had it myself, but I've seen it on store shelves. ← Precisely. It was French's answer to Dijonnaise, GourMayo. The supermarket where I bought it stopped carrying it, but I did try all three varieties. I reached the conclusion that if I wanted to combine wasabi paste or chipotle powder or Dijon mustard with mayonnaise, it'd be no more difficult to do it myself, and the mayo would be better. However, I reached that conclusion before I attacked the Creamy Dijon variety; that bottle is the surviving legacy of that experiment. And since we've added pickles and homemade condiments, make that 60. I have a tub of homemade piri-piri sauce (that I haven't tried yet since making it), two jars of gherkins, and a container of what I guess you might call a homemade aioli: I combined Hellman's mayonnaise with the Korean chili pepper sauce (oops, make that 61, and 16 hot sauces) I buy regularly at the H-Mart in Upper Darby. It's sweeter than sriracha, which is on the sweet side for hot pepper sauce, and that makes it very good for mixing with mayo and putting on a tomato slice. The ratio, if anyone's interested, is about 2 tablespoons chili sauce per half cup of mayo.

Unfortunately, Holly IS right about the issue, which is why even though I agree with the overall program of the Market management, I still think they handled it badly. Yes, landlords do have an absolute right to do whatever they want with their property -- subject to the constraints of only the law. But when the tenant is a retail business, the business acquires a set of assets that attach to the physical space it occupies, and a landlord should make sure that there is no other option prior to permanently devaluing those assets by terminating a lease. We recently lost a popular coffee house that had become part of the community over a landlord-tenant dispute. In this case, it was the tenant that ultimately decided not to renew when the coffee house's owner could not get a guarantee from the landlord that anyone who acquired the business before the lease's expiration would not face higher rent. In essence, by not offering that guarantee in the lease, the landlord devalued the asset that the owner obviously planned to sell at some point -- but in this case, the landlord can't be faulted, for he was acting within his rights. (The space will become something that will probably do well but not contribute as much to street life on its block: a jewelry and crafts shop.) Again, absent crucial evidence, we cannot know that things had not reached the same point they had in the Village Coffee House's lease negotiations. And since everything is in court, we won't be able to know until a settlement is reached or the suits go to trial. The Board of Directors evidently thought they had; however, if that was the case, they owed it to other Market merchants MORE than the general public to explain -- in detail -- why they felt so. They will certainly have to do so after the last lawyer has packed up his briefs and gone home. Edited to add relevant adjective.

The sequence of posts that began at No. 71 in johnnyd's foodblog got me to thinking: Condiments are the culinary equivalent of kudzu. Or maybe they breed like rabbits. In any case, give 'em enough room and time, and eventually, they take over all the available shelf space in your pantry. I figure the process works something like this: You're about to make a dish that requires a certain type of condiment sauce, oil, or vinegar. You go out to the store to buy a bottle. Of course, the recipe doesn't require the entire bottle, so what's left goes on your shelf. Some time later, you're out shopping when something new or unusual catches your eye on a shelf somewhere. You think to yourself, "Hmmm, I'd like to try this and see what it tastes like." Into your cart and onto your shelf it goes, there to await its star turn. On your birthday, or on Christmahaunkwanzaakah, someone--a friend, relative, or co-worker--buys you a bottle of an exotic __________, knowing that you are particularly fond of sauces of this type. You thank the giver profusely and sock it away, making a mental note to be sure (never) to invite him over for dinner (sometime in the future). Before you know it, you're like me (and H.J. Heinz)--you have 57 varieties of oils and sauces of varying kinds, including multiple varieties of vinegars, mustards, salsas, marinades, oils and hot sauces, and maybe even more than one variety of ketchup (in addition to Heinz, I have a bottle of La Niña Spicy Ketchup I bought three weeks ago), scattered throughout your pantry and fridge. I'm only presenting my census data in the aggregate: 14 hot sauces, including 5 habanero sauces, one Louisiana-type, one cayenne sauce, two Huy Fong sauces (sriracha and chili garlic) and two varieties of Tabasco (but not the original--I need to restock it) 7 oils, including the basic cooking oils (canola, soybean) and the buttery-flavored canola oil for popping popcorn 6 vinegars, including 3 rice vinegars 5 types of mustard, one mixed with mayo 3 soy sauces, counting teriyaki as a soy sauce 3 marinades 2 sweet chili sauces -- one American, one Asian 2 bottled salad dressings, one left by a guest who brought a tossed salad to a dinner 2 pancake syrups, one "lite" 2 barbecue sauces 2 steak sauces (Heinz 57 and A1) 2 varieties of ketchup 1 jar of salsa 1 jar of mayonnaise (Hellman's, natch) 1 jar of hoisin sauce 1 bottle of fish sauce 1 bottle of Worcestershire sauce 1 chutney Angostura bitters Top this, why don'tcha? I'm sure some of you can.

I thought you preferred your fat saturated, not partially hydrogenated, Holly. My apologies. --Sandy, awaiting your trip report and site additions on KC's best

This just in, from the Pennsylvania Department of Health: At least it looks like they won't leave anybody relevant off the task force. But do we want to make sure that any state laws that come out of this project don't override existing city ordinances? The resident nutritionist on our Hospitality Management faculty, Connie Holt, has her own two cents to say on the subject. I will be helping her craft it for public and media consumption.

May I suggest this take place at either one of our many fine brewpubs or at Tria? Sorry to hear the news, but glad to hear he's staying around. Maybe he can supply us with awful PR pitches too!

I know you've seen my first foodblog and the fridge shot therein. 'Nuff said? Yes, Velveeta is, like, totally industrial* and about as far from natural cheese as you can go and still call it cheese (the only substances beyond it are Cheez Whiz -- essential for authentic Philly cheesesteaks, say I; an abomination, say others -- and the aerosol stuff), but in certain foods, it's an essential ingredient. Though I have become comfortable enough making macaroni and cheese using real cheese that I can forgo the Velveeta, it does have a certain comforting (oleaginous?) quality about it that for some reason the genuine article doesn't. (Edited to add: And the funny thing is, to my taste, it's actually sharper than most Cheddars -- to top it, you have to go at least to a very good extra sharp variety.) *The folks at Sargento mock Velveeta (or is it Philadelphia Brand?) in their current TV commercials depicting boxes labeled "cheese" moving in lockstep along mazes of conveyor belts. It's not clear to me which Kraft product they are mocking, but the label design and colors make it clear they have Kraft in mind.)

Reviving this thread to note that the 12th and Spruce location has been a hit since Day One. Never have I walked past the place in the early evening and not found it at least nearly packed. And on the nights when the weather is good and they open the big folding doors on the 12th Street side, the buzz extends almost all the way to Camac Street, it's that lively. I think the secret to Tria's popularity, now that I've been there, is threefold: One, they offer a lot of handholding for those who might be intimidated when it comes to pairing wine or beer with cheese or other light fare; two, they combine upscale taste with a casual attitude in their decor (and this goes for the staff as well, not to mention the menu copy ["Remember, the glass isn't two-thirds empty, it's one-third full"]); three, everything's priced and sized so that you can eat (and spend) a little or a lot as you see fit. IOW, this is a most versatile restaurant, suitable for just about any informal occasion or anytime you want to meet friends for something more than a drink (though you can have that too) but less than a meal (though you can make one of those out of their fare as well). It's a great addition to the neighborhood. Edited to add: Of course I signed up for their e-mail list: "Not Spam. More like Prosciutto di Parma."

Backed up by the post below and my own childhood experience. Because it's European. ← But it's also more "urban." More below. Are you using "dinner" and "supper" as the British do here -- IOW, "dinner" is what we call "lunch" and "supper" is "dinner"? If so, then this jibes with my experience -- except that, as Grandma didn't keep or feed me during the week, dinner (supper) was usually around 6:30 pm rather than 5:30. Both my parents worked in shift jobs during my earlier youth, but usually one of them (mainly Dad) was available to fix dinner. Kansas City, however, is a city in our agricultural heartland. The early morning newscasts on local TV included livestock and commodity price reports. I don't think that they run those even on WGAL TV 8 (Lancaster's local TV station) up this way. I can't recall eating dinner before 7 ever once I got out of college, and I haven't lived in a predominantly agricultural region since leaving Kansas City. I'm the cook in my household, which means we usually eat dinner 30 to 90 minutes after I get home, depending on what I end up fixing. Sometimes I remember to prepare some Crock-Pot specialty before heading for work, and on those evenings, we eat early. Otherwise, on a summer night, it's 8 at the earliest, and 9 more likely, before I have dinner ready, as I don't walk in the door until after 7 pm. When I go back to a five-day workweek for the academic year, dinnertime will move back to the 7-to-8-pm window. As others have noted above, I do think that the nature of urban living itself, unless one lives in an urban area in farm country, tends to make later dinners common.

I loves me some gazpacho in the summer too! In fact, I made a ton of it to take to a friend's birthday party up in Northeast Philly this past Saturday. (I seem to be making so many treks up to Philadelphia's vast post-war suburb-in-the-city, maybe I should move there. Not. ) It was the first gazpacho I ever made (I couldn't have done it without the co-worker with the prodigious garden in South Jersey), and people loved it. But I notice that the gazpacho in the picture above is decidedly non-chunky -- in fact, it looks just like tomato soup. This is the first time I've seen gazpacho that didn't have little chunks of tomatoes, cucumbers and whatnot in it. What goes into this gazpacho? Is it pureed to a fare-thee-well?

I think it's pretty clear by now where the sentiments of the people who have been participating most actively in this discussion lie. As I said to chrisamirault in a PM, what has most surprised me about the ongoing argument is that it has been conducted by and large with both passion and civility. As I noted in a followup to rlibkind's post of the Seattle Times article -- which has been moved to Food Traditions & Culture in hopes of generating larger discussion on the subject of farmers' markets and their role in the life of cities -- the RTM has historically not had a tradition of acrimonious relations between the merchants and the management, in contrast to (what the Seattle Times tells us is the case at) Pike Place. I think that the speed with which current management seeks to make the changes they desire, as much as or more than the changes themselves, account for some of the tension and anxiety. If I could afford it, I'd have the management, Board of Directors and the merchants go through a personality profile called "DISC" that we just went through in our office here at Widener, led by a member of our clinical psychology faculty. It was through an exercise with that profile last year that I gained some valuable insights into my own work style and personality (including the insight that "enormous changes at the last minute" upset me mightily), and I think that all involved could use insights like this to figure out how to reach common goals more effectively. And if I've interpreted rlibkind's post two up from this one accurately, I think that neither he nor I believe that current management handled the Rick Oliveri situation properly; I've also told Paul this personally. On that score, I think everyone on this discussion is in agreement. Where we differ is in our interpretation of the long-range implications of both this affair and the larger changes management seeks to implement that led to this affair in the first place. The Reading Terminal Market is easy to love in a way Super Fresh and Whole Foods never will be, no matter how well they fulfill their missions*, and it's that love that drives us all to act to protect it according to our own lights. *Let the record show that I do appreciate the people who staff my neighborhood Super Fresh (a wonderfully diverse bunch, BTW, more so than I see in most local supermarkets), the folks who are "crazy about food" at the Acme and the people who enjoy what they do at Whole Foods. Edited to reflect passage of time between my starting this post and finishing it -- a reporter from The Morning Call wanted to speak to our Hospitality Management dean about restaurant gift certificates from restaurants that shut down.

Minor correction: It's not in the P-I. This item is part of a feature package The Seattle Times ran Sunday in connection with Pike Place Market's 100th anniversary. (Yeah, that surprised me too when I saw the e-mail from Paul in my mailbox. Usually, whenever I receive an e-mailed news story from or about something in Seattle, it's something that ran in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the smaller of Seattle's two dailies. The two papers are separately owned -- the P-I by Hearst, the Times by a local family, IIRC -- but share advertising, circulation, marketing and production through a Joint Operating Agreement dating to 1983 under the Newspaper Preservation Act.) The similarities to the situation in Philadelphia are indeed striking -- substitute "Reading Terminal Market" for "Pike Place Market" in the Seattle Times story (and adjust the prices of the condos downward a smidgen) and you could run this same story in The Philadelphia Inquirer. (Okay, there are a few other minor adjustments: Although RTM merchants are also a famously independent-minded lot, there is not a "history" of antagonistic merchant-management relations at the RTM, for instance, and local craftspeople do not play as large a role there as they do at Pike Place.) The one common element that is perhaps most striking of all is the degree to which the entire community takes a proprietary interest in these institutions. Locals consider both markets part of the soul of their respective cities, and changes and rumors of changes receive significant play in the press and a higher level of public interest than, say, the opening or closing of stores in a local shopping mall or even the city's downtown would spark. To borrow the Reading Terminal Market's current promotional slogan, Seattleites and Philadelphians have indeed "made" these places "their markets". To what extent is this true in the city where you live? Would Baltimoreans wage a Battle of Lexington Market were that place to reorient itself to a new wave of potential customers? Will Washington's Eastern Market be the same place once it is rebuilt?

Just so you don't get the idea that the issues underlying this dust-up are unique to Philadelphia, Paul called my attention to this item: After the centennial's over, what will Pike Place Market's future be? Those of you who read my Seattle trip report may recall that I thought the Pike Place Market had gone too far down the tourist-magnet path. As Seattle's downtown residential population swells, the question of where to strike the resident/tourist balance is live there -- as it is here, for the same reason. You could replace the phrase "Pike Place Market" with "Reading Terminal Market" in the story and it would read pretty much the same. These excerpts should give you a feeling of deja vu: (emphasis added) Stop me if you've heard all this before. I can understand the "don't mess with success/if it ain't broke, don't fix it" impulse. Personally, I don't like to go through rapid wrenching changes either; I'll bet that most of you would be surprised to learn that I was dragged kicking and screaming to Philadelphia from Boston 25 years ago. It turned out to be a good move, and things worked out better than I suspect they would have had I stayed in Boston. The same might well prove to be the case for the Reading Terminal Market a few years down the road from now. It may not look like it now, but it just might be that -- the mishandling of this lease aside -- what's happening is not the demolition of tradition but preventive maintenance.

This may sound like a semantic quibble, but I'd like to suggest that running the Market like a shopping mall is not the same thing as turning it into one. It does constrain the freedom the RTM merchants have historically enjoyed to operate their stalls as they see fit. But the nature of retailing these days is such that it's usually the businessperson who endures inconvenience so the customer doesn't have to. In the not too distant past, every retail establishment was like Chick-fil-A. In fact, state laws in most states made sure of that. But as those state laws fell by the wayside, businesses (in most cases) quickly added Sunday hours. I can't say that I noticed too many people coming to the defense of the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board for keeping their stores shuttered on Sundays. The same moral and morale arguments the owner of Chick-fil-A makes in support of his company's policy apply here too. It's clear from the appearance of the Market on Sundays that not every merchant sees it as in his or her interest to open that day. And in deference to those sensibilities, the merchants are not required to open on Sunday. Yet despite clear evidence that shopping on Sunday is indeed something that a sizable number of customers want -- otherwise, the market would be empty -- Sunday hours remain officially an "experiment." Why is that? What is wrong with making the policy as it stands now permanent? In other debates, on other subjects, I have decried the creep of marketplace values into places where they're not appropriate and the tendency to view every transaction through the provider-customer lens. But if those values and that outlook shouldn't govern the operations of a market, where should they operate? The management conducts surveys to gauge customers' sentiments. I don't think that they're taking the approach they take to management either on a whim or out of malice. Like serpentine and monovano, I would like to be able to shop the RTM instead of the supermarket after work -- and I'm sure that keeping the entire market open an extra hour weeknights would go down as well as it seems some of the other changes have with proprietors not named Iovine. But why not try it rather than resist? You can always go back to the way it used to be if the reward proves meager relative to the extra effort. This may simply be an area where we have to agree to disagree. All I can say is that it is far from clear to me that the merchants more than the management are at present acting in the interests of those who want to make the RTM their first choice whenever they want something to eat.

Specifically, it's 50 miles W of Kansas City. However: Assuming no heavy traffic, construction or accidents, you should be able to get there in under an hour, as the speed limit on the Kansas Turnpike is 75 mph, a level unheard of in the Northeast. Just curious: Any plans for Gates' or Mario's?

I'm not certain, and I hope you're right on this one, Holly. Absent such a covenant or legally enforceable agreement, what I described is perfectly legal. But I will say that while the longtime merchants such as DiNic's, Spataro's, and above all Bassett's, the RTM's oldest tenant, do have at least a moral claim on proprietorship if not a legal one, I would no more ascribe total virtue to them collectively than I would total vice to current management. Oliveri in particular, from what I've been able to gather from various sources, seems to occupy something of a gray area, looking out for himself as much as--or maybe even a bit more than--his fellow merchants. (I note that throughout all this, nothing has been said about why he is no longer head of the Merchants' Association. The reason could be benign and bureaucratic [e.g., his term expired and he either could not seek another term or chose not to run], or it could not [e.g., he did not enjoy the support of his fellow merchants for another term as head], but this aspect of the whole story has gone completely undiscussed and unreported. Given the high degree of interest in the subject, I would have figured someone would have asked about it by now.) IOW, as I believe I've mentioned at least once in passing upthread, his fellow tenants may be backing him not because they're fond of him but because they're looking out for themselves. They're justified in doing so. But things may not be as bad as they look. (Yes, I know people aside from you, Holly, whose response to this statement is probably, "You're right -- they're worse.")

Not to put too fine a point on it, but if the latter (the Convention Center Authority) wanted to, it could -- it's the Market's landlord, after all. It could even dissolve the Reading Terminal Market Corporation if it wanted to and run the market directly. Of course, that would piss absolutely everyone off. However: When the current ownership/management structure was established, it was envisioned that somewhere down the road, the Reading Terminal Market Corporation would itself pay rent to the Convention Center Authority. Right now, it does not. Now that the Commonwealth, not the city, controls the Convention Center Authority, the state may not be as willing as the city is to carry this asset -- which at least breaks even on operations, I believe -- on the books rent-free. (And before anyone calls this an injustice, let me pull a non-food-related but applicable analogue up: after getting $1 a year from the Delaware River Port Authority for decades, the city finally insisted that the DRPA pay the city something more like a real lease payment for use of the Locust Street Subway back in the mid-1990s, despite the benefit the city receives from PATCO's presence.)

All of a sudden -- just before I go to the gym -- I had a flashback to a dinner I had with my mom at a small, homestyle, "Chatterbox Cafe"-type restaurant in the 3400 block of Prospect Avenue. I think its name began with an L, but I won't swear to that. This was a few years after the riots that seriously damaged the block just south of the restaurant. The Safeway (torched) across from the Milgram (spared) never reopened. (Hmmmm...were the rioters demonstrating hometown bias?) This place, though, was in fine shape: checkerboard-pattern curtains in the windows, light-brown plywood walls, linoleum floor in very good shape, jukebox filled with R&B/soul hits. I remember ordering a Salisbury steak, and the waitress asked if I wanted "French, blue cheese, or Eye-talian" dressing on my salad. Being only 10-something, I went with the orange stuff. Nothing fancy -- just a good, solid meal that hit the spot. The sort of place Holly would appreciate. Something tells me it's long gone.

Jeez, I neglect the Heartland forum, and here's a Philadelphian in my home town! Holly, you've got to experience Gates'; even if it's no longer the best 'cue joint in town, it's still damned good. If for no other reason, you need to go to see what happens when a 'cue master goes all corporate on you -- yet remains local to the core; Gates' is still "Kansas City's Own". Just remember to insert your earplugs before entering. If you can, try the location at Emannuel Cleaver II Boulevard/Swope Parkway and the Paseo; while it's not the original version of this location -- I'm guessing that got demolished when the entire junction of these streets was rebuilt (sometime in the '90s?) -- it's still the heart of Ollie's BBQ empire. (If you can, bring back a bottle of Gates' sauce.) Does anyone know if Mario's is still in business downtown, turning out "grinders"? If so, that's another place you should check out, Holly. Mario's grinders are (were?) a truly unique variation on the hoagie/sub -- they were toasting 'em before anyone had even heard of Quiznos, and what's more, the fillings don't slip out the back end of the roll, because they're encased in the hollowed-out roll. Glad to see that you are filling a great void in your site. If you get a chance to do some non-food tourism, stop by the Negro League Baseball Museum while you're there. There will probably be copies of my friend's father's memoir in the gift shop. (Edited to add aside: We caught up with each other for the first time in 30 years last April, when he was in Philly to deliver a lecture and perform at Chris' Jazz Café. The first thing that came out of each of our mouths when we saw each other was "You look like your father!")

I don't know what I can say that hasn't been said already, but at least allow me to express my sympathy over your loss. It does sound to me like the sort of depression that accompanies a significant traumatic event; it's similar to the more general variety, with which I have had intimate experience. If there are other activities that give you pleasure, try engaging in some of them while you wait for the connection between cooking and your mother's passing to dissolve. I'm sure the culinary muse will find its way back to you. Even though this is much more serious than writer's block, it's similar in its trajectory, and one day, when you are ready, the way forward will reveal itself to you.

Talk about spontanaeity! Glad to read that straying from the established path has proved to be good for your career, your romantic life, and your sanity. Between markemorse's rosti and your tortilla española, you are going to keep me busy trying new ways to serve fried potatoes for brunch. This is a Good Thing. I look forward to learning about more new foods and techniques through your eyes. I also look forward to seeing more of Madrid (do you use the metro there?), which I haven't seen much of at all. Modern Spain, I've come to understand, is a very exciting country, confident and full of experimentation. I know we won't be treated to a meal at el Bulli in this blog, but I trust we might see some of that same spirit on display? Carry on. This is going to be fun!

Ten points for the double entendre. Twenty if it was unintentional, as I suspect.