MarketStEl

Just now watching the Fox29 "Ten O'Clock News", which is running a feature story on the Rick's Steaks ouster. Rick Oliveri is quoted in the report as saying that it's political and motivated by his outspokenness as president of the Merchants' Association, and the reporter (whose name I didn't commit to memory) mentioned that Rick's is on a month-to month lease while the Market management is pushing to get merchants to sign long-term leases "that could significantly raise their rents." Kevin Feeley is the RTM spokesman in the report; he responds to Rick's charge by saying that if it were political, they could have done this long ago. (I guess he's all right as a spokesperson--he was Ed Rendell's when he was Mayor of Philadelphia--but I would have liked to see Steinke himself in this role here.) The frame in which the Fox report placed the dispute is the ongoing efforts to raise the Market's profile -- the report notes that traffic at the RTM is up -- and the need to respond to competitive pressures (the report's closer). On the whole, a fairly balanced report that didn't sensationalize the matter. More on this should 6ABC, CBS3 or NBC10 follow suit. Edited to add: NBC10 teased the story in tomorrow's Inquirer on its newscast (the two have a content partnership).

Reviving this thread because, in the course of a discussion on Korean fried chicken on the Pennsylvania board, a whole new category of "unfortunate" food names has entered the conversation: Foods named for places that have no association whatsoever with the food in question. The discussion begins with this post about a product a fellow Philadelphian picked up at an Asian supermarket in the inner 'burbs (the same one I visited in my first foodblog). Quoting the post: Indeed! (Turns out that Philadelphia Inquirer food editor Rick Nichols had the same reaction to this product when he spied a box of it on the shelf of a Japanese grocery/eatery in the Main Line suburb of Narberth.) Almost in this category is a chain of chicken shops that I used to see in some of the 'hoods in NYC called "Kansas Fried Chicken." Kentucky's not a big poultry-producing state, either, but it is in the South, which has strong associations with fried chicken. Kansas doesn't even have that going for it. Where did the folks who named this KFC get their idea from? What's next? "Authentic Minnesota Barbecue"? (Trivia question: You can actually find "Minnesota barbecue," so to speak, at your supermarket, and a well-known barbecue restaurant chain is headquartered in the Twin Cites. What's the stuff on your supermarket shelf, and what's the chain's name?)

Maybe deep-dish? Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Chicago -- all those C-cities in the Midwest look alike...

Check the link. It's in a Vadouvan post a bit of a ways down. ← Saw it. V. himself didn't mention anything; rlibkind mentioned "various boozy sauces" and gave a specific example of a bourbon marinade prior to V.'s post.

I'm sure I'm not the only transplant from KC. ← Guess I should out myself as the outlier in my own family, as everyone else who has migrated out of Kansas City lives on the Left Coast -- a great-aunt in View Park, LA, a cousin in Oakland and a brother in Seattle. I don't think any of them have plans to return to the Heart of America soon, so you can't borrow them for your BBQ run, sorry.

A later post makes the relevant point that the Inquirer as well as LaBan is a defendant in the suit. However, the above analogy is not correct. I don't subscribe to the Wall Street Journal, but a friend of mine who does has been regularly feeding me links to Wall Street Journal Online stories about the possible sale of Dow Jones to News Corp. Almost all of these links are to stories -- often feature-length -- written by WSJ staff that appeared in the print edition. Edited to add: They may, however, be waiting until items move over the wires before running their own stories. However, one of the leading business news wires is Dow Jones' own, so I doubt that they really could rely on the AP to cover their story for them.

Wasn't one of the issues Bob raised in his initial post the lease terms for the prepared-foods purveyors? ISTR that post also mentioned that management wants to offer them leases in which their rent is based on a combination of square footage and percentage of gross sales -- and (quite possibly to that end) management has been asking merchants to report their sales. This issue was raised in the one grumble posted about this to Phillyblog too. I also STR that Rick Oliveri was one of those merchants who strongly resisted reporting sales figures to management. If another vendor expresses interest in doing business and a willingness to abide by the new lease terms, while an existing vendor is unwilling to do the latter, while it may be unfair to the existing vendor, the property owner is within his rights to refuse to renew the existing vendor's lease. A relevant tangent: The Village Coffee House across the street from me closed at the end of May. Its loss was mourned, as the owners had managed to transform it into a popular neighborhood hangout and social space that also served great coffee. The closing arose from an impasse in lease negotiations -- the Village's proprietors wanted a clause in the lease guaranteeing the same rent to anyone who bought the business from them before the lease's term expired, and the building owner was unwilling to agree to such a clause. Rather than risk having an (obviously contemplated) sale go sour, the owners chose to close. From where I sit, these new leases do advance the Market's core mission by allowing fresh food vendors, whose margins are thinner than the prepared-foods folks, to rent space for less than they might otherwise and thus remain in business there. The presence of office workers and the Convention Center both make it real easy for the RTM to become a glorified food court absent deliberate countermeasures -- "mall management," if you will. I'm sure some of you may find the mall-management approach Steinke is taking to the RTM's overall operations off-putting or even distasteful. But it strikes this observer as a perfectly defensible response to the competitive and physical environment in which the RTM finds itself. If, as I suspect, the non-offer of a lease to Rick is actually connected to the problems Paul is having getting sales figures on which to base a new rent amount for the space Rick occupies, then while it is sad to see a longtime merchant kicked to the curb, it is entirely understandable why he is going. FWIW, I've eaten Rick's steaks. They're merely okay, probably on a par with his relatives' steak place in South Philly or a bit below it. Unless Tony Luke blows it, I imagine he will offer a better product.

Wasn't one of the issues Bob raised in his initial post the lease terms for the prepared-foods purveyors? ISTR that post also mentioned that management wants to offer them leases in which their rent is based on a combination of square footage and percentage of gross sales -- and (quite possibly to that end) management has been asking merchants to report their sales. This issue was raised in the one grumble posted about this to Phillyblog too. I also STR that Rick Oliveri was one of those merchants who strongly resisted reporting sales figures to management. If another vendor expresses interest in doing business and a willingness to abide by the new lease terms, while an existing vendor is unwilling to do the latter, while it may be unfair to the existing vendor, the property owner is within his rights to refuse to renew the existing vendor's lease. A relevant tangent: The Village Coffee House across the street from me closed at the end of May. Its loss was mourned, as the owners had managed to transform it into a popular neighborhood hangout and social space that also served great coffee. The closing arose from an impasse in lease negotiations -- the Village's proprietors wanted a clause in the lease guaranteeing the same rent to anyone who bought the business from them before the lease's term expired, and the building owner was unwilling to agree to such a clause. Rather than risk having an (obviously contemplated) sale go sour, the owners chose to close. From where I sit, these new leases do advance the Market's core mission by allowing fresh food vendors, whose margins are thinner than the prepared-foods folks, to rent space for less than they might otherwise and thus remain in business there. The presence of office workers and the Convention Center both make it real easy for the RTM to become a glorified food court absent deliberate countermeasures -- "mall management," if you will. I'm sure some of you may find the mall-management approach Steinke is taking to the RTM's overall operations off-putting or even distasteful. But it strikes this observer as a perfectly defensible response to the competitive and physical environment in which the RTM finds itself. If, as I suspect, the non-offer of a lease to Rick is actually connected to the problems Paul is having getting sales figures on which to base a new rent amount for the space Rick occupies, then while it is sad to see a longtime merchant kicked to the curb, it is entirely understandable why he is going.

I thought half of Southern California had relatives in the Kansas City area. Can't you all just ask your friends to bring some back with them when they go "back East" to visit?

My cousin treated me to a decent lunch at a classy-but-casual place in Jack London Square called Kincaid's when I visited the Bay Area back in April. It has great views of the port and a glimpse of the Bay as well as good food. Not terribly ethnic, though: the menu tends more towards classic American comfort-food favorites and seafood.

Taking all of these in a group, but before I do, a comment about something else I suspect Detroit needs to do: Get its downtown back. Back in the early 1980s(!), I read a series of articles in The Kansas City Star about Detroit. One vignette related in the series stood out. The reporter, who came to the Star from Detroit, told of a game he played with his fellow reporters called "King of the Corner." The game was played thusly: One of them would stand on a downtown street corner. If nobody passed within their view within 15 minutes, they were "king of the corner." There were many corners in downtown Detroit where this game could be played in the middle of the day. Even when I moved to Philadelphia in 1983, you could not play this game during the day on any downtown street corner, and Center City has only gotten livelier since then. People who know Newark, NJ, know that the Ironbound -- the mostly Portuguese working-class neighborhood just east of the city center -- is home to some of the best eating in the Northeast. But until the suburbanites got comfortable again with the idea that one did not take one's life into one's hands when visiting downtown Newark, the Ironbound remained a "well kept secret." It isn't any more, and it's not because the Ironbound changed; it's because outsiders' perceptions of downtown Newark changed. I'm not familiar with the restaurant scene in Kansas City now -- though I got a taste of it when I returned home for my 30th high school reunion last summer -- but I can say that the city has had a strong food culture for many years. Growing up there (1958-76), I had heard it said -- by non-residents, in print -- that the best meals out in Kansas City were served in the homes of Kansas Citians. That was not meant as a slam of the city's restaurants, though they were less varied then than they are now. The one exception to the rule back then was barbecue, which lots of people ate out, even many who made it themselves at home. I would like to suggest that the strong barbecue culture -- it's a quasi-religion in the area -- laid the foundation for Kansas Citians to appreciate new restaurants that served unfamiliar cuisines or took creative approaches to familiar ingredients once those started cropping up, and that this accounts for the city having a livelier restaurant scene now than comparably sized cities in the Midwest -- or even some larger ones like St. Louis. Calvin Trillin captured the soul of fine dining in Kansas City in my childhood with his fictional restaurant, "La Maison de la Casa House, Continental cuisine," in (I think) American Fried. The opening of the American Restaurant in Crown Center in 1974 was the first crack in the walls of this old edifice, and it's since been completely demolished. ryangary: What I said about Philadelphia above. However (san please copy) for some reason or another, a bunch of the locals decided there had to be something more and better than this sort of thing sometime around 1972 or thereabouts. Philly even developed its own homegrown culinary academy, The Restaurant School (now The Restaurant School at Walnut Hill College), that served as a breeding ground for great local chefs. Again, I might attribute some of the difference to the presence of a good food-producing territory and culture in the city's hinterlands; this gave local chefs good raw materials to play with, and play with them the chef-owners of Restaurant Renaissance establishments did. (With the closing of the Astral Plane this past Sunday, only one restaurant from that era remains in business: Friday Saturday Sunday, still excellent, funky and reasonably priced for what it offers after all these years.) I really don't associate Michigan with any notable foodstuffs or food-producing regions, though I'm sure it has some.

I had some Copper River sockeye I picked up from Yi's in RTM. Don't think high-heat pan roasting would have worked terribly well on the thinner fillets. Instead, I used Vadouvan's short-cure-and-slow-roast method from http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=86937 which made for the most amazing buttery-soft, rich, melting fish I've ever had. Even if he did say it was only for King salmon. Call me a rebel. Had it with snap peas sauteed in butter and quinoa with almonds and lemon zest. Big hit, except for the one person who felt undercooked fish wasn't safe. Go figure. ← Just grilled some last night that I bought at Yi's on Saturday. Made one mistake -- turned it during cooking. (Wrecked the flesh side, and the skin separated.) No matter. It was absolutely delicious. What do you use for the cure?

In that vein: Perhaps the greatest and simplest indigenous American dish is this: Take one large, ripe tomato. Some of the best in the country are grown in New Jersey, and they're coming into season right now. Slice it. Shake some salt on the slices. Enjoy. I'm also quite fond of pumpkin pie and its close cousin (in taste, not origin), sweet potato pie. Of course, the hot dog is also an all-American treat. Barbecue as we know it ditto -- even though cooking over wood fire is as old as cooking itself, most food historians trace the origins of American barbecue to the cooking practices of Native American tribes in what is now Florida. (Not to mention that really, true barbecue is cooking with smoke, not fire.)

Verrrrry innnnterrrresting. Today's Inquirer contains the same Associated Press story in its feature section. Wonder why the Inky used an AP story about one of its own staffers instead of doing its own story?

Something tells me that most commercially processed chicken in the US is most definitely not safe for eating raw. Maybe Bell & Evans or other air-chilled brands -- maybe. But certainly not the big processors. Your point about undercooking chicken, though, definitely applies to chicken breasts. Cook those thoroughly and nine times out of 10 they're dry, even if you marinated them before cooking. I find that I prefer my breasts slightly undercooked.

Does Bill Green still own that place?

Of course, here in Hoagieland, you're not going to find too many simple-sandwich absolutists, but there's nothing frou-frou or IMO excessive about a good hoagie, either, no mattter how closely it may resemble chef salad on a roll. That said, there is very little in this world that beats Lebanon bologna and Swiss cheese on whole wheat with Dijon mustard. Unless it's thinly sliced liverwurst with Muenster on rye with mayo (or mustard, depending on my mood). Or, for that matter, a single ripe Jersey tomato slice either sprinkled with salt or topped with a little Miracle Whip. (Though the dressing I made by combining mayo with some Korean chili sauce I picked up at the H-Mart isn't bad either.) I mean, who needs bread, really?

Quelle fromage! I'm looking forward to seeing more in this vein (blue or otherwise) as the blog progresses. Not to mention seeing if I can ape a recipe or two.

Nandos. I enjoyed the lemon/herb marinade. For those of us in North America, Nando's sauces used to be available here (they may still be, but my suppliers no longer carry them). ← Nando's Web site suggests that their sauces are slowly spreading eastward across the US from the West Coast. The company has restaurants in Canada (mostly western Canada). A quick search on "peri peri" using the Sauce-O-Matic at Peppers, the compleat hot sauce emporium in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, turned up 10 sauces with peri peri peppers in them, including six peri peri sauces (African Rhino, from Florida, and Zulu Zulu, from Georgia -- three each), but no Nandos. I'm of two minds about the whole "healthy" thing. On the one hand, life's too short to deny oneself true experiences, so I tend to prefer the genuine article over the better-for-you version. On the other hand, I could use fewer pounds on my frame. But watching total calorie intake and exercising IMO are better than cutting entire categories of foods out of your diet for weight loss' sake. This duality sometimes expresses itself in the form of things like making mashed potatoes with 1/2 stick of butter and the water in which the potatoes were boiled. Half a loaf that's better than none? Maybe. Maybe not. Wonderful dishes so far, and I enjoyed the personal history too.

I was there around 11:45 a.m. The crowd was large but manageable then, and I managed to strike up some small talk with a teacher from Florida buying produce at OK Lee's. Sorry I missed you, Mike! [Moderator note: This topic continues in Reading Terminal Market (Part 2)]

The Optometry College was east of Broad -- you lived in East Oak Lane. (Oak Lane, the street, lies entirely in East Oak Lane.) The RTM is in very good shape these days. And the variety of ethnic fare has gone way beyond Italian. In fact, calling the 9th Street market "Italian" is increasingly misleading these days. Let's just say that it's a fortunate coincidence that the national flags of Italy and Mexico use the same three colors.

We all await news of your next posting with bated breath -- and parched throats. That was a fun sendoff indeed!

Over on the related Philly discussion begun by the OP, one of our folks raised the following point: Speaking of burgers in Detroit, anyone know what happened to Magus? He posted extensively about his ad hoc grill on Michigan game days and his efforts to set up a permanent stand here on eG; here's the discussion, in Restaurant Life. We haven't heard boo from him in months.

Next time you're in town, dockhl, you should take a trip up Ogontz Avenue, the main drag of West Oak Lane. You'd be pleasantly surprised how good a shape it's in. (Though your comment about the train suggests to me you lived in East Oak Lane, as the SEPTA ex-Reading main line runs through that side of the district.) There's a decent casual sit-down restaurant with live jazz, the Ogontz Grill, in the main business district in the 7100 block of Ogontz. Across the street in the strip mall, there's a barbecue joint called Abner's that's highly rated by the locals. When a friend of mine and I went up to the West Oak Lane Jazz & Arts Festival last weekend, we pigged out there. He thought the ribs were fantastic; I've had much better, even in Philly. But I'd say it's still worth a visit.

Since san had cross-pollinated this discussion by asking a similar question -- "How die Philadelphia become a great restaurant city?" -- on the Pennsylvania board, and at least one other Philadelphian replied, I feel perfectly justified in replying here myself. Especially since one anonymous Philadelphia university professor described our mutual and san's current home as "Bos-troit" in a Pew Charitable Trusts report (explanation and link to the report available in the Philly thread san started). In the thread melkor started in Food Traditions & Culture that is related to both of the threads you started, I opined that core cities and their surrounding regions are closely intertwined in ways the suburbanites may not appreciate. (In fact, a Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia economist managed to quantify this interrelationship in a research paper titled "Do Suburbs Need Cities?") For all you might bristle at melkor's characterization of houses in Detroit selling for less than the average car, his comment does touch on a central point, and it is this: The restaurants that you find in those "great restaurant cities" that give them that reputation are not the ones that serve everyday fare that the average working stiff can afford to eat on a regular basis. They may be restaurants that the average fairly well off stiff can afford to eat at often, as the bulk of the restaurants in both New York and Philadelphia are, but they most definitely do not come from the working-class food traditions that you have even identified as giving Detroit a worthy food pedigree. Trust me, if all Philly had to offer was cheesesteaks, hoagies and 9th Street, nobody would be calling it a "great food city" either, even though all of the foregoing are great foods or great food places. (And I should note here that many well-off Detroiters came from the blue-collar aristocracy, not the educated meritocracy that you find in most of those great restaurant cities. Philly shares with Detroit an industrial heritage -- for most of the 20th century, the city's nickname was "The Workshop of the World," an homage to its highly diversified industrial base -- and that's one reason you find the two cities compared often.) (emphasis added) I take it that those Detroit restaurants are in a similar price range with those Philly restaurants? I boldfaced the passage above because it points to an essential component of Philadelphia's character, namely, that it is a small town (or 150 or so of them) masquerading as a big city. It's not just the restaurant and foodie community: in every identifiable community in Philadelphia, everyone seems to know everyone else. Perhaps if Detroiters were more like this, the restaurant scene -- and the rest of the city -- would be stronger. That was planned, starting around 1961. Edmund Bacon (Kevin's dad -- only one degree of separation there) earned his reputation as the leading city planner in America largely on his then-unorthodox approach to urban renewal in Society Hill, which was NOT to bulldoze it, but to restore the existing buildings and add new ones in between them. Such evidence as is posted on The DetroitYES Project (nee The Fabulous Ruins of Detroit) backs up your optimism, but Detroit has fallen much farther and has a longer climb back to urban health. Thank you for inadvertently backing up my point -- and my class analysis. That downtown people mover was supposed to have been connected to a subway under Woodward Avenue. In the 1940s, as plans for the Detroit freeway network were being drawn up, there were also plans for rapid transit lines in their medians, like in Chicago. Neither came to pass. Detroit blew its opportunity for comprehensive rapid transit worse than Philly did (I'll refer you to a bunch of posts in the "Getting Around Philly" section of Phillyblog for more detail on the latter). There are limits to my class argument, for Philly is as much a blue-collar town as Detroit is (actually, I believe a higher proportion of Detroiters hold college degrees than do Philadelphians, despite the presence of Penn, Temple, La Salle, Drexel and St. Joseph's universities within the city limits, and many more highly regarded colleges and universities nearby). Maybe the difference has something to do with the presence of a great agricultural region in the general area: Lancaster County is right next door to Greater Philadelphia, and New Jersey's farm zone lies adjacent to the east; is there anything like these near Detroit?