MarketStEl

Yes! it's time for a visit! That goes for all of you! ← If Barrymore's -- or whatever the name of that bar just south of downtown on one of the main streets was; it was one of three gay clubs in the city (that's a lot for a city of 60,000) -- is still open, I fully intend to drop in and ask them to make me a cocktail with Moxie. Or maybe I'll just save that for a meetup with you and yours. You've provided lots of entertainment, great food, great storytelling, and plenty of reminders of Portland's charm in this foodblog. Let me know when you start filming on Claw.

That's a stat I'd like to see too. In a forum on transportation and urban policy that that I participate in, I've seen from time to time a statistic (factoid?) cited to the effect that city dwellers use less water per acre of land than farmers do. But someone has to grow the food. If city-dwellers grew their own food, and this statistic is correct, then the difference should disappear or maybe even favor the farmer as the use of water for food production would be on top of the other ways all those households use water. However, what's not clear from that statistic is how many people are fed (or clothed; cotton is a very water-intensive crop, which is one reason why it shouldn't be grown in California's Central Valley) off that acre of land put to the plow. If that land feeds enough people to account for several acres' worth of urban water use, then the statistic may be less meaningful (and pro-development) than it seems at first glance. The operative word in all of this is choose. One of the benefits--if you wish to view them as such--of living in an urbanized as opposed to an agrarian society is that individuals and households within it can choose to do something other than produce food for their own sustenance with their money. We have generally regarded this as a Good Thing, for by breaking the tie between humanity and the land, the creation of an agricultural surplus permitted us to pursue a whole bunch of other things, including the philosophical pursuits that lead you to explain and defend the choices you make so well, that we have come to call "civilization". And the words "civilization" and "city" share the same root, and the distinguishing characteristic feature of the city is that it is made possible by the surplus food a relative handful of farmers produce. You are correct that you need not be rich to grow all your own food; the presence of community gardens in some of Philadelphia's poorest neighborhoods also attests to this (or at least its potential for realization). But you probably do have to be well-off in order to do that and enjoy most of the other fruits of civilization at the same time. Many others choose to do the latter with the funds they have and leave it to others to grow their food for them. Nothing wrong with that, IMO. Nor is there anything wrong with showing the people who make this choice ways to spend their food dollars that produce greater good for a greater number of people and the ecosystems of our planet. But we should make sure that when we claim an environmental (as opposed to a moral) benefit for our actions, those benefits really do exist. Edited to fix comparative adjective.

Following up my own post to make one more point that came to me during the day: One of the ways in which h. is the "right" answer is that the RTM is unique in the degree to which so many Philadelphians -- including some who are probably only occasional patrons of the Market at best -- take a proprietary or near-proprietary interest in the place, as evidenced by the higher-than-usual interest in what is otherwise a pretty stock landlord-tenant dispute. Let's face it, we wouldn't be talking about this so passionately or for so long if it were Kravco booting a recalcitrant retailer out of the King of Prussia Plaza.

Can't speak for the sour coleslaw, but I had a similar experience a little over a month ago in the West Oak Lane section of Philadelphia, where I had gone with a friend to a outdoor jazz festival. (Aside: This event is totally free and gets bigger and better with each passing year. Bookmark the link for next July.) There's a barbecue restaurant in a strip mall in the block where the main stage is located. We thought that would be a good choice when we both got hungry. I had a rib platter; my friend (born and raised: Northern Delaware/South Philly; lives in Northern Delaware presently; currently Villanova Law student -- all but that last fact relevant to the tale, as you will soon see) ordered a whole slab. "Best ribs I've ever eaten," he said. "I've had much, much better," said I. I wish I had my camera to document the total absence of a smoke ring or any evidence of smoke flavor aside from that contributed by the barbecue sauce. And it was clear that the ribs had been parcooked then finished in an oven (maybe it was a smoker, but you couldn't prove it by me). But what made this experience stranger was that this restaurant (a) had a long line of patrons waiting to order from it and (b) had a slew of "Best of" and "Readers' Choice"-type awards from newspapers serving the area hanging on its wall. I had to chalk all this up to Philadelphians' collective ignorance of what constitutes good barbecue. Edited to add: BTW, diva, love your .sig.

Obviously, the thread title didn't help with its absolutist tone, but to restate Shalmanese's point more concisely: There are many good reasons to perfer locally produced food, but reducing your carbon footprint isn't one of them.

Claws. Or, in this case, Claw. With all these photos -- and knowing that Portland, Oregon, is several miles inland from the Pacific -- I wonder just what it was about the Willamette River Valley that reminded the settlers so much of Maine. Must be the trees. The Pacific Northwest has its own scenic charms, but nothing that looks remotely like Portland and Casco Bay, IMO. That tourist promotion slogan the State of Maine came up with about a decade ago is spot on: "There'll never be another Me." Question from left field: Are there any three-digit addresses in the City of Portland?

Good answers, and I tried to frame the questions so as not to bias the answers (with the exception of the last two). I have some comments (obviously, or I wouldn't bother with this post). I can't speak to the revenues either. It isn't as clear-cut as I portrayed it to separate the restaurants from the fresh food purveyors, as several merchants (Coastal Cave Trading, Salumeria, Hatville Deli, Little Thai Market...) perform both functions. Places that serve prepared foods for on- or off-premises consumption do make up the single largest category of Market merchants -- and I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that for those who sell both prepared foods and fresh/packaged ingredients, the cash flow and (gross/net) profits from the prepared food sales help sustain the fresh food side of the business. However, they are not more than half of the total merchant count -- nor can they be unless taken together they account for no more than one-third of the Market's total leasable space. AFAICT, these places currently number about 30-35% of the total number of merchants in the Market, depending on how you want to count the dual-purpose merchants. Taken together -- and double-counting the dual-purpose places -- fresh food vendors and prepared-food vendors are about even in their share of the Market's total merchant count. I think if we went strictly by traffic--which is one way of measuring "what the customers want"--the Market would be overwhelmingly places that served prepared foods for takeout or on-premises consumption. Here I differ with your analysis for that reason. To keep the "farmers' market" function viable, the management IMO has to put a thumb on the scale in favor of the fresh-food purveyors. The Operating Policy Guidelines reflect this, and I do know that one of the main reasons the recent lease negotiations were so contentious was because the management structured the leases to favor the fresh food purveyors. However, not even the prepared-foods merchants received terms worse than they might get for retail space elsewhere. Nonetheless, if I were a restaurateur exclusively, I too would probably fight for something that better served my interests. I don't think that would be an inaccurate description of what Rick Oliveri did as head of the Merchants' Association. Which is all well and good, but see the opening sentence of this paragraph again. Your last sentence in the answer to point 5 explains why supermarkets remain in business. My understanding was that supermarket net profits in terms of sales were 1-2 percent, and that appears to be a bit on the low side based on what you say here, but the main point is that they make their money by selling huge amounts of stuff at nearly-nonexistent profit margins per unit. (BTW, finance mavens, this is the same principle that hedge funds and other esoteric forms of securities trading use to make tons of money on tiny price fluctuations.) Cash flow may matter more for a small merchant, as in broadcasting, but no business can continue to operate on a continuing net loss basis. (I think. Accounting being what it is, I may be wrong here too.) I have neither spoken to any fresh food vendors about their business operations nor spent any time working in the business (I did do a 9-month tour of duty at a lunch counter in Cambridge in my college days, so I can claim restaurant experience on my resume), but my gut feeling is that there are factors (spoilage and damage, for instance) that make their margins (and maybe cash flow too) more precarious. My more limited experience with farmers' markets backs up your claim, but I probably shop the opposite from you: I go to the RTM for produce first and foremost because their produce merchants can't be beat in the value-for-money department, and often enough I end up buying meats from Giunta's or one of the other butchers too. I am, as you know, rather price-conscious, and I guarantee you that I am not alone in being so. The RTM -- like many other grocers -- tries to cater to both the price-conscious shopper and the shopper who demands top quality. Most supermarkets tend towards the former, and specialty grocers/butchers/produce merchants... are all about the latter. The RTM is unique in going for both ends of the spectrum. I'm going to have to ding you on that opening sentence. Not every conventioneer is a businessperson. I wonder whether the members of the National Education Association, for instance, get generous expense accounts from their school districts to attend their national convention; I certainly saw plenty of teachers crowding the aisles of the RTM during the recent NEA convention here and even managed to strike up a conversation with a teacher from Miami who was buying produce at O.K. Lee's. We in academe do get reimbursed for our expenses attending professional conferences, but one way to handle that is to hold conferences in places that offer you a package that includes meals (as with the College and University Public Relations Association of Pennsylvania, which meets annually at the Hotel Hershey). Reimbursement, BTW, is not the same as an expense account; you have to spend your own money first before getting it back from your employer, so if you don't have all that much money, you're not going to drop money on a cab when there's something else nearby. And something tells me that the members of the black fraternities and sororities who have held national conventions here get neither expense accounts nor reimbursement to attend what are largely social/networking functions writ very large. In any event, none of these cases fit the scenario you set out in your answer -- and I suspect that these cases apply to far more conventioneers than you suspect. And the fact of the matter is that -- pace Chick-fil-A -- most collections of merchants marketed as a single destination do require tenants to remain open during stated business hours as a condition of their leases unless some exception is specifically allowed (as with Chick-fil-A). (There may be other exceptions for places that open earlier if they can be accessed separately; some Gallery merchants on the lower level open early in the morning because the lower level is also part of the Market East Station complex and used by commuters heading to and from trains.) Requiring uniform hours of operation, IMO, neither bolsters nor threatens the character of the Market; it's purely a business decision, and one that in the rest of the retail universe is up to the owner of the physical property to make. (Edited to add: I've said earlier in this discussion that, given the nature of the restaurant business and given the Market's stated opening hours, I see no reason why the pure restaurant operations have to stay open until 6, as the Market closes too early for them to pick up any significant dinner business and lunch traffic pretty much vanishes after 3:30. I still hold this view, but I've heard arguments to the contrary that shaped the wording of question 8 in the quiz.) Which brings us to what may be one of the other sticky points. Is the market plural or singular? That is, is it merely "a collection of merchants" or is it a single institution that is more than the sum of its parts? If the latter, then I'm afraid the individual merchants -- unless they operate in a far more collective fashion than those currently at the RTM do, again pace the existence of the Merchants' Association -- may not be the final arbiters of what that whole is and how it should function. BTW, none of this means that RTM management gets off the hook for handling Rick Oliveri's lease. The move they should have made was to put the ball in Rick's court by offering him a lease on the same terms offered other merchants and letting him sign or decline, then pulling the trigger if he continued to behave as if he was somehow privileged still. But for reasons still beyond our ken, that can't happen now.

Since there are some issues involved here that go beyond Market Management vs. Rick Oliveri, I thought it might be useful to offer the following Reading Terminal Market Quiz to gauge how people here perceive and understand the place. Most -- but not all -- of the questions have no "right" or "wrong" answer. Unlike the trivia contest in my first foodblog, there is no prize for most correct answers. 1. The Reading Terminal Market is primarily: a. A farmers' market with a special emphasis on local producers b. A convenient place to grab a bite to eat at lunchtime c. A bazaar featuring interesting and unique merchandise from books to crafts to flowers to gifts d. Some combination of all of the above 2. Even if you did not answer d. to Question 1, what do you see as the current mix of the above three functions, in percentage terms? 3. What ought those percentages be? 4. What is the profit margin of a typical supermarket, expressed as a percentage of sales? 5. What is the profit margin of a typical restaurant, expressed as a percentage of sales? 6. A farmstand or purveyor of fresh foods has profit margins closer to that of: a. The supermarket b. The restaurant c. Neither; it's better than both d. Neither; it's worse than both e. Neither; it's exactly halfway between the two 7. What is the Reading Terminal Market's primary competition? a. Whole Foods Market b. Super Fresh c. The Gallery food courts d. The Italian Market e. The supermarket you shop when you get back to the 'burbs f. The farmstand that sets up shop in your neighborhood every week g. All of the above h. The Reading Terminal Market has no competition; it's unique 8. It's 5 p.m. You are attending a convention at the Pennsylvania Convention Center and your plenary session has just let out. You're hungry, and you've long wanted to try one of those famous Philly cheesesteaks. Where do you go to get one? 9. It's 5:30 p.m. You have a few things you want to pick up on the way home for the dinner you want to fix tonight. You hear that the Reading Terminal Market is open until 6. You walk into the 12th and Filbert door and see that most of the merchants' stands inside the entrance are dark. Do you: a. Press on anyway, knowing that someone has to be open because the entrance isn't locked? b. Turn around and leave, thinking that there's nothing open? c. Scratch your head and fire off a quizzical e-mail to the RTM when you get home? You may append any additional comments you wish to your answers. Edited to refine answer choices for questions 6 and 7.

If this guy decides he wants to write restaurant reviews on an ongoing basis, maybe I should start reading PW again. My take on the lavender-scented adjectival phrase is that McManus is a John Waters fan and was commenting on the burger's dress(ing); the copy editors simply forgot to capitalize the D. We can allow that, can't we? Now I gotta go back through the archives and read his pans. I clearly have been missing something. Then I gotta go over to Misconduct and have the "lunch burger".

What kind of sugar is demerara, and what is it used for/in? Also: You gave us a nice, complete tour of your kitchen, but where's the fridge shot? And finally, on Moxie cocktails: How are you two gonna top Moxie and Jagermeister?

There are a bunch of dance clubs within two to three blocks of Mercato. Trouble is, they're probably not the type of dance club the OP is interested in. See my first post on this thread.

I'm currently corresponding with my favorite lurker, who advises me that there are a couple of good options if you like Latino/salsa dancing. One is Miami, which is on South Street somewhere in the 500 block, near Fat Tuesday's. The other is Cuba Libre, on 2d Street just south of Market in Old City. Just up 2d from the latter is the Continental, the place that launched Stephen Starr on his career as restaurant impresario. There are better cocktails to be had in town, but it's one of the longest-running Scenes around now. She also reminded me that Osteria, by virtue of its location on Broad above Brandywine, isn't within walking distance of anything else that's been mentioned here or that you might want to check out. It's definitely a must-visit, but you might want to consider parking nearer to where you want to end your evening and taking SEPTA up to Osteria, especially if you want to end your evening in Old City or on South Street. (The Route C bus stops almost at the restaurant's door, and it's about a block and a half north of Spring Garden station on the Broad Street Line.)

The fire destroyed the Five Spot completely.

Moving from Iowa to Texas, it would have been hard for you not to pass through Kansas City, and even harder still to avoid passing through Kansas. The shortest Interstate routes from Iowa to Texas all pass through KC. As for "My Sharona", obliquely bringing this back to food: How familiar are you with the work of "Weird Al" Yankovic? His parody of that song is called "My Bologna." It's not the only time he's written a food-based song parody, either: there's also "Eat It" (Michael Jackson, "Beat It"), "Girls Just Wanna Have Lunch" (Cyndi Lauper, "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun"), and "Livin' in the Fridge" (Aerosmith, "Livin' on the Edge"), among others -- these three barely scratch the surface.

That's the place, and it is in Somerville. One of my college roomies hailed from Somerville, and I think he'd be pissed to have Davis Square moved south across the city line, especially since it went from in a funk to funky since the subway extension opened. You are correct in suspecting any BBQ joint that has "ambience." Those usually don't have good barbecue. Oh. Gotcha. I'm familiar with that style of "barbecue" too. It does have its charms, and you're right -- it's really grilling. If you've seen enough of my posts, you know that I'm a native of Kansas City, which is in Missouri. (Repeat after me: "Kansas City, Kansas, is in Kansas.") If your move to Texas from anywhere north or east of St. Louis was entirely via Interstates, you either missed Kansas completely, took a side trip via Old Route 66, or went via Kansas City. Your point about great barbecue being highly personal is well taken. But I'd say that actually applies to any outstanding dish, even those born of the more formal traditions of haute cuisine. Given that haute cuisine is more formal than BBQ, it might be easier for someone else to replicate an outstanding haute cuisine dish than to replicate someone else's BBQ recipe, and those dishes may not reflect the childhood or other life experiences of the cook beyond their formal training, but IMO every great cook puts something of him- or herself into what he or she prepares. And I share your attitude towards white bread. It's mandatory for barbecue (and for grilled cheese sandwiches and French toast) but to be avoided otherwise.

1) Think King of Prussia, not The Gallery. Recall that when anyone connected to management at the RTM talks about food retailer competition, the name that usually comes up is Whole Foods, not Pathmark. 2) Chick-fil-A = the Amish. If a mall owner wants a business whose owner follows a set of personal or religious values for a tenant, the owner will usually find a way to make an exception to policy for that business. It's been clear for some time that management's push to have all merchants stay open throughout the Market's stated business hours will not apply to the Amish -- not even those Amish merchants who, like L. Halteman, choose to open on Monday and Tuesday too. (They've also been consistent in their policy of making Sunday opening optional, at least thus far.) To do that, we'd have to make the Pennsylvania Convention Center Authority a private 501©3 nonprofit organization.

...though he might not be making all that much, as he faces penalties from the Market for operating without a valid lease. In other news: My subscription to Brian Tierney's other paper, the Philadelphia Daily News, began today -- and not a moment too soon, for this informative story about the standoff appears on page 11 of today's edition. This ongoing story, BTW, is a good example of why journalism has been called "the first rough draft of history." With each passing day, details are added, elements revised, and mistakes corrected -- or added; journalists are no wiser or more omniscient than the rest of us mortals. And speaking of mistakes added: I thought that someone said upthread that the leases still were not based on a percentage of gross revenues. So where's this come from? This -- and other material in the article -- also leads me to conclude that the main protagonists in this drama are really Oliveri and Dunston. Here's the situation as I see it: --Dunston is the one board member with prior experience in retail management. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your perspective), it's as a shopping mall manager, and a manager of a specialized shopping mall at that. Owners of shopping malls are far more involved in the details of operating their properties than RTM managements have traditionally been. They operate more like the music director of a symphony orchestra (edited to add: or the artistic director of a chorus ) might -- selecting players in terms of their individual contributions to the overall mix and giving them detailed guidance on how to make those contributions. Historically, RTM management has operated more like the landlord of an apartment building might: You're willing to pay the rent and won't disturb the neighbors? Fine, go ahead with your business. This approach was carried to an extreme in the 1970s, and it was the tenants rather than the landlord who began to repair the damage caused thereby, though the landlord soon caught on and realized he had a role to play too. --Dunston has managed to convince the board, but not all of the merchants, that the RTM needs to operate more like a traditional shopping mall to compete for the business of a shopping public that has become accustomed to highly engineered shopping experiences. While a number of factors beyond the merchants' or property owners' control have contributed to this, the fate of places like traditional downtowns and informal street markets -- sorry, 9th Street is both the exception, not the rule, and smaller than it used to be -- relative to shopping malls and big-box retailers supports Dunston's view. --While there is a split within the merchants' ranks over this bigger matter, the majority of them (including a number of those who agree with the bigger picture as outlined by Dunston) see nothing wrong with the landlord-tenant as opposed to the symphony-orchestra approach to assigning space in the market, at least as far as handling the tenant mix is concerned. And AFAICT, the landlord-tenant model hasn't prevented Market management from making necessary changes, even changes in the shopping-mall direction. But with their handling of Rick Oliveri, the board has run into THE irreconcilable conflict between the two approaches. Holly probably has it right when he ascribes this to ego: Having staked the future of the Market on the mall approach, Dunston -- and by extension, most of the board -- can ill afford to back down when presented with a direct challenge to that decision. I think that if that e-mail exists, sharing it with the public would go a long way towards explaining why things have come to a head in this fashion, and its continued withholding gives credence to the arguments of Dunston's critics. Perhaps its disclosure will only bolster them more by demonstrating that it was merely an excuse for a decision already made, but IMO it's a risk that perhaps the board ought to take. Of course, as long as the matter is headed to court, it probably won't be taken, for that document will be part of the evidence in any trial.

Great to see that there is a talented acolyte spreading the Gospel of 'Cue to those without the Word in New England. (I did eat at a 'cue joint in Davis Square, Somerville, the last time I visited Boston; it was okay for New England. This looks like the Genuine Article, OTOH. Question, though: "quasi-grilling in the mid-west"? Where in the Midwest did you go? Doesn't sound like you made it as far as KC.

Completely forgot to take a picture, but: While wandering through Whole Foods this past Sunday, I found something I had been keeping an eye out for in local shops for a while: Roaring Forties Blue. This was the first time I'd seen the Australian blue in my travels around the city. Needless to say, I grabbed a small wedge. Fan-freakin'-tastic! Not that crumbly -- actually, rather creamy, but with a kick. I don't think I'd dare waste this in a recipe, but I would top my burger or steak with it. Best all by itself, though.

Nika and saucée: Since both of you display concern for the class/socioeconomic aspects of the whole locavore argument, perhaps the two of you might want to contemplate/chew on this? --Sandy, who chronicled this program's earliest days for his co-workers at Penn

You want a V-place to drink near Vetri? Maybe you were thinking Valanni? It's in the next block east, and it has a small but happening bar. (Same folks own Mercato, the much-praised BYO across and just a bit further east on Spruce from Valanni. If you want to pick up a bottle at a State Store, you could do far worse than Mercato.) There's also a new Tria location one-half block further east on Spruce from Mercato. It's already caught on as a place to drink and nosh. Dance? Erm...Woody's?

Is there anything she left out of the sauce? Talk about BBQ fusion -- it's all the major styles rolled into one! Which probably makes it very intriguing. I will have to make some. I'll post a full report when I do.

You sure Dr. Salisbury wasn't reincarnated as Dr. Robert Atkins?

This looks like: --an opportunity to broaden my cultural horizons, --an excuse to ride the 15 trolley, which I haven't had since it went into service. I didn't know there was a significant Polish presence in the city.

Oh, yeah: While you're researching, don't forget to take in the history of White Castle, the first chain of hamburger stands in the United States, established in 1921 in Wichita, Kan.