MarketStEl

You may not be a pom expert, Mark, but what with all the celebration of pom going on in this foodblog, I'm surprised you haven't put on a cheerleader outfit and started shaking pom-poms! You may shoot me after I've finished this post. (emphasis added) Wonder if that sambal in Maryland was purchased at a Giant food store? A little Dutch-American connection, brought to you by global capitalism: People in the northeastern United States may "go Dutch" when they shop for groceries without being aware of it. Giant Food of Landover, Maryland (the dominant chain in the Washington, DC, market) -- and Giant Food Stores of Carlisle, Pennsylvania, plus Tops in New York State and Stop & Shop in New England and New Jersey -- are all units of Albert Heijn's parent company, Royal Ahold NV. (And if our American shoppers stop to fill their tank with Shell gasoline on the way to the store, they're patronizing another well-known Dutch enterprise [Anglo-Dutch, technically, but Royal Dutch Petroleum is the dominant partner in Royal Dutch/Shell]). I don't know whether this is discussed at all in schools today, but I remember learning in high school European history class about the mercantile bent of the Dutch, who were considered the first bourgeois society in Europe.

I've just been informed (via IM) by a hospitality industry veteran and eG lurker that out-of-state retialers won't ship to consumers in Pennsylvania because the state doesn't have reciprocal agreements allowing such shipments. This person also says that this hurts in-state wineries too, because they had counted on out-of-state shipments for a good chunk of their revenue, and even if the state law prohibiting direct shipments from out-of-state wineries is unenforceable, the ongoing retailer prohibition still hurts our in-state wineries. Edited to elaborate based on further IM exchange: Apparently, the ruling did not require Pennsylvania to allow out-of-state wine shipments. All it did is tell the Commonwealth that it cannot treat in-state and out-of-state businesses differently. Such a ruling can be interpreted in two ways: --the state drops all restrictions on the shipment of wine within and beyond its borders, or --the state restricts both internal and external shipments of wine. Guess which interpretation the Commonwealth chose.

I guess I could plant on a windowsill, but I'm not willing to risk my brown thumb on the outcome. Besides, a co-worker brings in tomatoes from her South Jersey garden every week, so why should I do the heavy lifting when she does it for me? I should ask her what varieties she grows. Some of the varietal names are very intriguing, I must admit. For instance, what's the origin of the "Kellogg's Breakfast" tomato? I thought that was corn flakes! (What cereal would you top with tomatoes anyway?) And how did it come to be called the "MortgageLifter"? The "Heinz" I understand. That company came up with its own tomato breeds to guarantee a consistent quality supply for its ketchup. But I do wonder what a raw Heinz tomato tastes like.

So you explained later on the "orange" connection, though I still don't quite see how all that translates into calling this flavor (I'm guessing) "summer heat orange pepper", but what I want to know is: Did you find the golden sticker? And what do you get if you do? And how many of the 21,635 ingredients listed on the back of the label sound like they were produced in a nearby lab? This now makes two foodblogs in the space of a month in which piri-piri (pilli-pilli) chiles have made an appearance. I've even gotten a recipe for piri-piri sauce (its original application in an eG Foodblog context) which uses no piri-piri peppers, for AFAIK, these peppers are native to southern Africa and scare, if available at all, in the United States. This is one food item I'd love to find on these shores. Anyone know whether that's possible, and if so, where? (The peppers, not the sauce. I understand from the other foodblog that the leading brand of piri-piri sauce is available at some specialty grocers in the US.) You are allowed more leeway to stray from purely food-related musings in a foodblog -- which can be as much travelogue as food diary -- than in other eG discussions. It's perfectly acceptable -- nay, expected -- for eG Foodbloggers to show off various aspects of life in their hometowns/environments as they see fit. (Look at all the mass transit and historical stuff I worked into my two foodblogs!) I'm sure that somebody will be serving something to eat at Amsterdam Gay Pride if it's anything like Philly's two big gay block parties (Equality Forum in May and Outfest in October), and that can be your entree. I for one would love to see it. I note from the Kwakoe festival site you linked upthread that slavery was abolished in Suriname (then Dutch Guiana, IIRC) on 1 July 1863. That's six months to the day after the Emancipation Proclamation took effect in the US territories then in rebellion. It's also the same year that Czar Peter the Great freed the serfs in Russia. Must've been something in the air that year. Edited to add: Since we're talking orange, I have an Orange Savings Account. Does that qualify me for some sort of honorary Dutchness?

Your skepticism is understandable, Jim, but the Coke example you raise actually undercuts your argument -- go back and reread that thread; Market management actively discouraged merchants from responding to Coke's overtures with not-so-subtle reminders, and to its credit, Philadelphia Coca-Cola Bottling Company ultimately backed off. And of all the new businesses that have set up shop in the RTM in the decade-plus since the Pennsylvania Convention Center Authority acquired it, about the only one that IMO might even remotely fit the definition of "chain" is LeBus, whose products are distributed in stores and served in restaurants throughout the region. I wouldn't begrudge local entrepreneurs like Delilah Winder multiple locations within the area; it's clear to me that the Operating Guidelines are meant not to exclude people like these from the Market but rather the franchise operations that we all know would destroy its character. The management may not be handling Rick Oliveri well, but they have demonstrated that they understand what is and isn't a local merchant, and I see no signs that they are even contemplating bending their Operating Guidelines, let alone flagrantly disregarding them. Edited to add: I see that Delilah Winder's name generates an Amazon.com context link to her cookbook, Delilah's Everyday Soul: Southern Cooking with Style. Now, context links like that make sense. And her story, as summarized on the description page for the book, can only be called a Reading Terminal Market success story:

What with the news Philebrity broke (which also appears in this morning's Daily News), this has moved from PR blunder to blunder. The law may be on the Market's side, but this news now makes it clear that this was done from pure spite -- there can be no other explanation. If there is, it is up to the RTM management to provide it. And at this point, getting us to buy it is going to be a much, much harder job. What was in that February e-mail, Mr. Dunston?

You have a point, but WFM already has a store within walking distance of some of the RTM's customers, at 929 South Street, and the 15th and Vine store will replace one currently open at 20th and Callowhill/Pennsylvania Ave. Between the RTM and the new WFM site is not all that much, residentially speaking. I seriously doubt that many Chinatown denizens will opt to pay WFM prices, as that neighborhood is Center City's poorest; besides, a lot of what they want the RTM doesn't carry either -- small grocers right in the neighborhood have that. IOW, I don't think that a WFM relocated so it's closer to the RTM than it is now is going to take a bigger chunk of business away from the store than the chain's two stores on the edges of Center City already do.

Katie is an outstanding mixologist, a gracious host and a most entertaining dining companion. A bunch of us meatheads had a fabulous time with Katie at the Picanha Grill recently -- and that was not the first time I've spent hours with her downing large amounts of cow and/or pig flesh, along with other stuff. Nor, I trust, will it be the last. Given that she had a restaurant pulled out from under her not too long before this announcement, I hope that her retirement as Pennsylvania forum host is connected to promising developments and that I will be able to stop by "her bar" for a cocktail in the not too distant future. In any case, let me offer my praise for her stewardship of the Pennsylvania board and my hope that she will remain an active and valued participant there too.

Thanks for the sweet offer...I'll be talking about BBQ eventually/hopefully this week, at which point we can dust off our soapboxes and determine exactly what should be in my (and my mom's) refrigerators...cool? ← Here's my soapbox: If Coke can sue Coke Zero for "taste infringement," can we sue Rich Davis for "defamation of character"?

"Competition" can take multiple forms. It can be on convenience, quality, variety, service, price, or some combination of all five. 9th Street competes with the RTM largely on price, though there are some 9th Street merchants who can compete with it on quality. I buy lemons on 9th Street because those don't vary widely in quality, and I can always find them cheaper there. I buy most of the rest of my produce at the RTM because most of what I buy does vary widely in quality, and I know that the Market's produce vendors all offer more consistent and consistently better quality than the 9th Street vendors do, and two of them offer consistently good or better quality at competitive prices. Neither 9th Street nor the RTM compete with supermarkets or Whole Foods on convenience thanks to their hours. RTM management wants the Market to head in that direction, however. I wholeheartedly endorse your concluding sentence above.

Holly Moore: The board and management has not implemented revenue sharing. As far as I know that is not even on the table at this time. rlibkind: Not by that name, but a similar concept is why many of the lease changes have been sought by RTM management. All merchants, no matter what they sell, pay a Common Area Management (CAM) fee, based on their square footage. The roughly dozen purveyors at the market (the produce, meat, dairy vendors, etc.) pay only CAM. All the others (lunch counters, trinket sellers, etc.) pay the CAM plus an additional fee. That additional fee is being restructured based on the average revenue of particular classes of non-purveyors, for example, all lunch vendors, or all crafts vendors. Under the new leases the additional fee a particular non-purveyor pays is based not on his or her revenue, but the average revenue for all similar vendors. The fee is in the form of the percentage of average revenue for the class of vendor; sandwich vendors, for example, might pay a higher percentage of average revenue than craft vendors. Me: Bob, this is the first time anywhere that I have seen any details of the lease changes explained by anyone -- and it explains why management insists on sales reporting even if the leases don't contain percentage-of-sales clauses (which, I discovered in the course of researching historical trivia for last week's eG Foodblog, were first used by good old J.C. Nichols at his pioneering shopping center, the Country Club Plaza): How can you determine the average revenue for a class of vendors if you don't have data on all the members of the class? I've had some offline conversations with a Phillyblogger I know who also knows several Market merchants (and who has joined the eGullet Society), and she explained to me that percentage leases are tough on small independent businesses -- probably for the same reason that the gross-receipts portion of the city's business privilege tax is a business-killer. I can't figure out how basing the percentage on a group average is better in that regard than doing it business by business, though. I don't think that John Q. Public either wants or needs this level of detail, but I could explain this in a way that I believe most people could understand and place it in a context that, while it would not have avoided this, would have maybe blunted the criticism. He would have. As I recall the conversation, Rick told me that if RTM had offered him a lease, "I'd have been stupid not to sign it." I believe Rick stated at the press conference that he kept asking for a lease and management, rather than speaking frankly, just kept replying, "It is not your time yet Rick?" Is there video or a transcript of the press conference online? I doubt this changes the legal landscape at all, since what we are dealing with here is contracts and not labor relations. If it were the latter, Rick would have a legal leg to stand on, for this statement definitely looks like failure to bargain in good faith. I said nothing about "competitng." And I don't see the produce at Headhouse as "designer fruit." Top quality, fantastic variety - but designer??? That word may be a bit over the top, but there is more than passing similarity between the small-scale, artisanally-produced, identifiably-from-a-specific-farm foodstuffs showcased at the farmers' markets and designer clothes sold at boutiques. Perhaps the most relevant parallel--as Bob alluded to above--is that Jane Average Shopper can't afford it. (For an entirely-within-the-Market comparison and contrast, consider who--and how many--you see shopping Iovine's and who--and how many--you see at the Fair Food Farmstand.) I know that the current management sees both Whole Foods and 9th Street as "competition," and while I don't think they regard the seasonal farmers' markets in this fashion, the shoppers at the farmers' markets--at least the ones in Center City--are probably more likely to do a chunk of their regular grocery shopping at WFM than they are at the produce stands on 9th Street. To the extent that this statement is true, then they are "competing" for the food dollars of those shoppers, even if it's the dollar they'd otherwise spend at Whole Foods rather than the dollar they'd spend at the Headhouse Farmers' Market. Of course, since we're all agreed that the Food Trust- and Farm to City-sponsored markets aren't really "competition," then Holly's point above holds. However: Pike Place Market has far more space to accommodate seasonal, farmer-to-consumer direct sales than the RTM does. As it is, the Seattle market struck me as more crafts fair than food emporium, though a more thorough inspection of all the market buildings might have produced a different impression. Bob did a good job of showing how accommodating a seasonal farmers' market at the RTM today is more like solving a jigsaw puzzle: Sure, there's space not used to sell stuff, but putting more vendors in those spaces means fewer people can find a place to eat what they bought at the eateries. Maybe the management could get rid of the crafts-fair-type places the RTM has now, but then they'd have the problem of more idle space in the off-season. Most of these farmers aren't going to switch to selling popcorn and crafts the way Kauffman's does; rather, they simply won't set up stands. I think I gave a good outline of one upthread. True, no other merchants have publicly stated their support for Rick on this forum. But some did voice their support in written and oral statements at today's press conference, and I have heard from third parties I trust that most merchants signed the petition. Save for those last two sentences, I agree with what you say above. However, if TL gets no more space total than Rick has now, it might not have as harmful an impact on DiNic's than we fear, for he won't have the room to turn out lots more sandwiches. But "might" covers a large territory, so I don't begrudge jtnicolosi his fear here -- it is justifiable. Once again, however, I'd like to offer free advice in my capacity as a public relations professional to the Market management: Level with your customers and the general public, and tell as much as you can about what's really happening. And do the same with your tenants. As those TV commercials for a mortgage lender say, People are smart. They can tell when something's not right, and they won't react well if they hear someone say that it is when they know it isn't. Remember, there's no such thing as bad publicity. Unless you make it so. Edited to get the BB code to work. For some strange reason, the first nested quote set throws all the others off.

Better organize any Wednesday night meetup soon, Scoats, if you want me to show up -- Chorus rehearsals start August 29.

Since you've been doing a bang-up job with the educational part of your blog, and with answering questions, I'm going to guess you simply didn't see this one in my last post: Also, is this sauce Indian or Indonesian in origin? (I think it originated in one of those two places.) Since you prepared a tomato sandwich immediately upthread, I'd like to turn you on to a little twist I recently discovered that I think you might like. One evening on the way home from work (via 69th Street Terminal), I stopped in the H-Mart in Upper Darby to pick up some veggies and ended up buying a container of store-made Korean chili sauce on impulse. The easiest way to describe the Korean variety is as what Vietnamese sriracha might taste like if a touch of corn syrup (as found in American "chili sauce") were added to it. I found the combination of sweetness and heat appealing. In the course of trying to figure out things to do with it, I mixed in a little of this (about a teaspoon) with about a half cup of Hellmann's canola mayonnaise. The whole of this condiment is definitely greater than the sum of its parts. You can easily vary the spiciness by adjusting the chili sauce-to-mayo ratio. It's great on fresh, ripe Jersey or Lancaster County tomatoes, and I can't imagine it would be any less delicious on the varieties available in the Netherlands. Given Amsterdam's modern-day polyglot population, I can't imagine your not being able to find Korean chili sauce somewhere in your vicinity. Next time, I plan on making my own mayo with this mixed in.

Steve's Prince of Steaks got the Best Cheesesteak, City honors; Garrett Hill Pizza in Rosemont won Best Cheeseteak, 'Burbs; and they gave a prize for Best Cheesesteak Update to the cheesesteak empanadas at Bliss. Rae got Best Happy Hour. I'll have to check out Zento in Old City, which won Best Sushi.

Let me add my own kudos on your writing style. Do you do write lyrics, or just music? Warning: I will probably pester you throughout, as I am about to do below, for translations. Dutch and English may be similar, but they're not identical. The meat in the photo looks to me for all the world like barbecued brisket -- there's that pink smoke ring around the edge. But the only term above that I recognize is "Peking duck," and this certainly isn't that. What are chia siu, fa chong/tsong, and fo lam? Are any of them slow-smoked? And which of these is pictured here? Isn't ketjap the sauce that mutated into what we Anglo-Americans call ketchup? My recollection is that the original sauce is thinner than the thick seasoned tomato sauce we eat. Is this sauce also made from tomatoes? 1) I have seen Heinz Hot Ketchup on some supermarket shelves, though I think that H.J. Heinz in the USA has largely dropped it in favor of Heinz Hot 'n' Spicy Ketchup Kick'rs with Tabasco sauce, which I have yet to try but which I imagine is more pungent than Heinz Hot Ketchup. My own experience is that most food products that call themselves "hot" in the Northeast US are merely mildly spicy by my lights. 2) Your mother is forgiven. Should I get my hands on some Gates', shall I send you some? Her? I'm clearly derelict, then, for I have none of these in my pantry. I can get Lee Kum Kee sauces at the Hung Vuong supermarket at 11th and Washington, along with many other popular Southeast Asian and Chinese brands. What makes their sauces distinctive? As for procuring cocoyams and other Caribbean produce: The 9th Street ("Italian") market has seen a boomlet of Mexican groceries and eateries at its southern end in the last year, so I might try those, though Philadelphia's new Mexican immigrants hail mainly from the state of Puebla, and I don't know how closely tied in they are to the Caribbean food chain. There is also a sizable West Indian population in West Philadelphia, and there is an excellent independent supermarket (a local chain that has made a specialty of running inner-city stores) at the 56th Street stop on the Market-Frankford El that carries a large selection of Jamaican and other West Indian foodstuffs. I might also scare these tubers up there; should I manage to do so before this foodblog runs its course (by no means assured), I will let you know. So your legal squat has a performance space-cum-restaurant on the street floor? Is that the space labeled "keuken" on the doorbells?

I've got a planning thread going around one of them, Best Pizza (City) winner Slice -- another newcomer, like 2005 winner NYPD. Where are all the pieheads, BTW? Not a single followup post yet.

I think this point is worth engaging a bit more, for it (a) touches on those aspects of "mall management" that trouble some people and (b) may help clarify what made this spat different. Those of you who have graciously responded to my other posts on this discussion in efforts to set me straight may continue doing so, for it should be clear as you read on that once again, I am inferring things. Absent insider knowledge, it's the best a reasonably intelligent person can do in any contested situation. My recollection is that Braverman's had not been in material breach of its lease with the Market while there were some legit lease issues concerning A.A. Halteman. IOW, the main impetus behind terminating Braverman's lease is that, in the management's opinion, they were not operating up to their expected standards of quality -- and the current management does have those; witness the spate of upgrades in the appearance of several existing Market merchants over the past year or so. The management also had quality issues with A.A. Halteman, but it's my understanding that more than that was involved in their lease termination. It's this aspect of "mall management" that most troubles its critics -- the enforcement of "codes of conduct," if you will, that tend to produce a sterilized, homogenized experience for the visitor. IMO, the RTM's chief defense against this outcome is that even as the management tinkers with the mix of merchants and asks them to upgrade their equipment and appearance, it continues to rely on independent local businesspeople whenver it seeks to make changes. Imagine what the King of Prussia Plaza might look like if the only difference were that no national chains were allowed and you might understand why this is not a trivial distinction. There was some alarm and disappointment expressed over the booting of Braverman's, too, as I recall. And certainly the termination of that store's lease wasn't "fair" to Braverman's owners, as they had met their lease obligations over their many years there (I think). But there wasn't the degree of outrage you now see, and such anger as was expressed then dissipated faster than it looks like will happen this time. Which means that -- for better or worse -- some of the elevated angst over this particular termination has to do with Rick Oliveri himself -- and Oliveri deserves credit for looking out for himself by taking his case to the court of public opinion when it's clear (at least to me) that the judicial courts wouldn't back him up. And yet that phrase, "looking out for himself," may also hint at the other problem. It's clear that Rick is not the sort of person who goes gentle into that good night. Such people earn both devoted friends and strong enemies usually, and both tend to show up for a fight. And in a fight, people tend to take sides: evenhandedness and an understanding of the other's position are almost always the first casualties. Comments made by others with more inside knowledge than I have suggest that the problem was more than just someone objecting to a lease he helped negotiate. Other comments made by similarly well informed people suggest that it boils down to little more than that. Who's right? I don't know, but I feel the Rashomon effect coming on.

Hello and welcome to the community of foodbloggers, Mark! I'm looking forward to seeing Amsterdam's multiculti culinary side, and you're already off to a good start. Also: Apparently, my mustache didn't disappear -- it just grew a bit and migrated across the Atlantic to some white guy's face. Is curry one of them? I know that curry is perhaps the one spice that is common to both Jamaican and Indian cooking, and when a vegetarian Indian restaurant around the corner from where I live reopened claiming to serve "East and West Indian vegetarian cuisine", the only thing remotely Caribbean I could identify on the menu were curry dishes--the real Caribbean restaurants around here are light on true vegetarian fare, unless you count the sides. Language nit: Would "keuken" also translate as "cooking"? I recall a Dutch fellow I knew a while ago pointing out to me that the Dutch and English languages are actually pretty close to one another, and there are certainly plenty of words in Dutch that sound very much like their English cognates. Let me second the call for information, either from you or from others reading this blog, about where to obtain the foodstuffs you feature in the United States. Those sausages look delicious! Maple syrup and sausage go very well together. I wouldn't be embarrassed to confess to your insistence on sweet-savory pairings here at all. (Kettle popcorn, OTOH, I just can't warm up to.)

Lucylou: New style of shopping center? I direct you to the posts on the Country Club Plaza above. There's nothing new about it -- it's simply one of many things we once knew how to do well, but forgot as we rushed headlong into The Future. Now that we've found out that The Future isn't everything we thought it could be, we're going back and dusting off forgotten wisdom. To tie this back into one of the other things we've seen in this blog, isn't that also what things like CSAs are about? Pam R: If there were any other expat Kansas Citians reading this foodblog, they didn't reveal themselves. I got to meet moosnsqrl, but not any other KC eGer, on my trip back last year. I love where I live now -- and if you've seen my foodblogs, you may understand it when I say I'd have a difficult time moving back there before they put in rapid transit -- but dividend has reminded me anew what a great place I grew up in and shown me how it's grown, and grown more sophisticated, since I left it for college and for good in 1976. Thanks loads, dividend. I promise I won't wait 20 years before my next return visit.

I would second Sleepy_Dragon and also suggest asking people you may know who work in the industry in your area if they have any knowledge of your local community college's offerings. Many community colleges offer excellent programs at low cost -- that's certainly true for Community College of Philadelphia where I live -- but as with everything else, programs vary from place to place; do a little research before you enroll. A less prestigious but still highly regarded program with excellent industry connections, such as the hospitality management school at my employer, might be another option--we've turned out some very good chefs working all over the country. --Sandy Smith, Writer/Reporter, Office of University Relations, Widener University

Since then, I've enjoyed a great Vietnamese pig-out at an old Philly Chinatown favorite with a Phillyblogger who it turns out is something of a foodie himself; he told me to bring my camera next time so we can enjoy some food porn later. But I see no answers to the cultural/geographical/media questions, though I do see some mention of good Lawrence restaurants. Anyone up for these still? I should anyway on general principle. It's been a while since I've talked to him.

Well, David, you have certainly demonstrated that you can work high quality beef into a modest grocery budget with a little creative thinking. That looks delicious! And since I do splurge on $20/lb Lancaster County Cheddar two or three times a year (I buy about a half pound of it each time), I really can't say that I cannot afford high quality beef at all. I just need to think more creatively, as you do.

Now you've gone and gotten me all homesick with those wonderful Country Club Plaza photos! (More historical trivia: The Country Club Plaza, which is the northern gateway to real estate developer Jesse Clyde Nichols' 1000-acre high-end development, the Country Club District [so named because it surrounds what was at the time the Kansas City Country Club; that space is known today as Loose Park], is considered by most scholars of urban planning to be the first planned shopping center in the United States. The center, work on which began in 1921, was certainly the first shopping district designed to accommodate the automobile. It does so gracefully while putting pedestrian scale uppermost.) I was rummaging around online in search of one of the iconic images of the Country Club Plaza -- the shot of the J.C. Nichols Fountain with the replica of the Giralda Tower in the background. Erected in 1965, Kansas City's Giralda Tower copy is the official commemoration of its sister city relationship with Seville, Spain. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find it easily|got sidetracked along the way. I managed to knock back a few Boulevard Pale Ales at Charlie Hopper's in Brookside when I was in town for the Pem-Day/Sunset 1976 30th reunion last summer. (Wanna see my pictures? They include some great hors d'oeuvres, courtesy of Room 39. I believe I mentioned this on the thread where my return home was announced.) It's also nice to see that Mary Atkins finally got her due -- after all, her estate made up half of what I knew as the Nelson Art Gallery growing up. (Actually, the official name back in the '60s was an unwieldy one: the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art/Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts -- but everyone just called it the Nelson Art Gallery.) Calling it the Nelson-Atkins corrects a decades-long slight. But explain your best friend's roommates to me, please. I thought that you were required to leave Kansas City if your idea of barbecue sauce was Kraft.

Bumping this thread back up to congratulate Rene and his crew for their "Best of Philly" award -- for their hot chocolate, which I will now have to try. When things cool down, of course. Until then, it's iced coffee for me at Rim; I hear their French iced coffee is excellent.

Thought I'd just note that I stopped by DiNic's on Friday at lunchtime for a roast pork Italian, which you can now get there thanks to their recently-announced experiment with broccoli rabe. This, folks, is pure sandwich ecstasy -- the ideal marriage of savory, tangy, meaty and sweet. That didn't stop me from doctoring it with a touch of sweet heat in the form of pickled banana peppers, though. And while I can't imagine anyone defacing this sandwich with ketchup and mustard, I note that they provide these condiments anyway, along with the more understandable horseradish (they offer roast beef as well). I think I spied jtnicolosi hard at work, but I'm not sure it was him. Tony who?