MarketStEl

Thanks for posting this- I spent a semester on sabbatical at the University of Missouri in Columbia and went to the Blufftop Bistro several times. *Pause for moment of nostalgia.* I thought the chef did a really nice job of pairing the food with the wine. Then, of course, there's that incredible view. You can even get there on the Katy rails-to-trails bike path. It's great to hear they are still around. ← A little bit of trivia for you all: Before Prohibition, Missouri was the nation's leading wine-producing state, due mainly to the Germans who migrated from Pennsylvania to the east-central part of the state, around Hermann (whose streets are named after those of Philadelphia, from which its first settlers came). Also correcting a spelling nit upthread: The community along the Brandywine Creek in southwestern Delaware County, Pennsylvania, that is home to the Wyeths and the winery is indeed Chadds Ford. The winery, however, calls itself Chaddsford (one word).

That thread contains one of the two best metaphors ever posted to eGullet: "napalm summer breeze" The other is the analogy found in racheld's foodblog, now in progress: "Tofu is like a teenager looking for a peer group; it takes on the persona of its surroundings."

I've now run the dishwasher twice, packed up the yams, mashed potatoes, stuffing, gravy, mized mustard/collard greens, pumpkin pie and canned cranberry sauce, and wrapped up most of the turkey and put everything in the fridge. I'll tackle taking the meat off the bones and using the bones for stock tomorrow. The last guests have left, everyone but me is asleep, and I can now look back on a fun Thanksgiving and catch up with the action here. I live for days like this, just like you. Glad to hear Chris was in good enough shape to share in it with you. Green Eggs and Ham in your cookbook collection! Ever tried them? As for me, I do not like them, Sam-I-Am.

Over in the current foodblog, racheld has an excellent metaphor concerning tofu: "Tofu is like a teen in search of a peer group -- it takes on the persona of its surroundings." Prepared properly, tofu is great -- and versatile -- precisely because of this quality. But it is possible to prepare tofu poorly. My earliest experiences with the vegetable protein in college scared me away from it for years. Fortunately, I gave it another chance many years afterward.

Having read the rest of this thread after posting that reply, I must confess I don't quite get his point either. If I understand him right, then I'm at least one-third Chinese, for I enjoy making stir-fries -- they're quick, delicious and very nutritious. Yet nothing about the rest of me would lead one to conclude that I'm in any way Chinese, or any other Asian ethnic group for that matter. So: Are we talking about identity here, or striking poses?

You certainly piqued my curiosity. Would you care to expand on that, if you don't consider it a trade secret? ← Unfortunately, I have been sworn to secrecy on this one. I will tell you that it involves careful control of temperature and the effect is to dramatically reduce the acidity (or at least the acid taste) of the sauce. I was instructed to keep this one to the grave. ← Please break that promise by making sure the technique survives you. That doesn't necessarily mean posting it here. It means passing it on to someone who you believe will respect it--and you--the way the person who passed it on to you did.

Sandy, the link didn't work for me - and I'm curious about what's at the 69th St Terminal. ← Oops! Looks like I linked to a limited-time promotion. Try this link instead: H Mart, 7050 Terminal Square, Upper Darby BTW and FWIW: The German company that owns Trader Joe's is Aldi, which also operates no-frills supermarkets in this country. Aldi stores in the Philadelphia area are usually cleaner and neater than those of their chief competitor, Save-a-Lot. I had heard that the company's name was a contraction of the phrase "All Discount," which would certainly accurately describe their pricing policies both at the eponymous chain and at TJ's -- the latter, of course, relative to the category in which it competes.

Metaphor of the Week: Now I'm gonna have to swing by H-Mart on the way home and pick up some. D*mn you! Wait--I'm going to have to resist this urge. There is a 22-pound turkey hogging precious fridge space, waiting for its star turn on Thursday. As a gay man, I know that Thanksgiving -- the most family-oriented of all our holidays -- can be problematic for some of my brothers and sisters who, for whatever reason, feel less than welcome celebrating the holiday with their own families -- even if those families make every effort to include their gay members in their celebrations. My partner and I felt it was important to establish our own Thanksgiving tradition, independent of our respective families'. (It was fairly easy to cut out mine: 1,200 miles separated me from them, and both parents died within a year of each other in the late 1980s.) An important part of that tradition is inviting friends over who may have no dinner of their own to look forward to. Even though I buy a big enough turkey to feed multitudes -- my partner has a thing about small turkeys -- our apartment is only so big, and thus we can accommodate only a few each year. But it's always a pleasure to be able to cook a traditional Thanksgiving feast for friends who appreciate it all the more because it lets them be part of what I think is the best holiday of them all.

Whew. Just got caught up with this wonderful blog. Warm, evocative, sentimental writing, some of the best photos of baked goods I've ever seen, great-looking wooden utensils and blue glass, and real down-home cooking and memories mixed in. Indeed, Susan chose the right week for you to blog. I never knew Grandpa Davis, as he died before I was born. Grandma Davis -- I called both her and Dad's mom "Grandma" -- was a jovial presence in my life for the first eight years of it, but I remember her as vividly for her last year on this planet, hooked up to an oxygen tank, barely able to move around her house. The bulk of my grandparenting, and all the Sunday dinners, came from the Smith side of the family. I spent almost every Sunday with Grandma (Smith) and Grandpa, during which time we would go on scenic drives around the region--up to Fort Leavenworth, over to see the Civil War cannonball still lodged in the Johnson County Courthouse portico in Lexington, to Topeka to see where a tornado had taken a bite out of the state Capitol dome, and sometimes all the way across the state to St. Louis. Grandma would always pack sandwiches -- liverwurst and cheese was (and remains) my favorite -- and we'd eat at a rest stop somewhere on I-70 on the way down. If the trip was to a place nearby, the day ended with dinner prepared by Grandma. (Some of it would be cooking before we departed.) All of it was good, and the veggies usually came from the garden Granddad (and Dad, after Granddad died) tended, but what I remember most were the rolls she baked--hot out of the oven and so delicious. (Well, I do have one other vivid memory: Granddad letting me have a taste of his Coors at age four.) Thanksgiving was when Grandma pulled out all the stops. Turkey and stuffing, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, collard greens, cranberry sauce -- jellied, thank you -- and more of those wonderful rolls, topped off by pumpkin pie for dessert. I guess my own Thanksgiving efforts are an attempt to channel Grandma in a different place and context. Going back to your initial post, Rachel: Indiana "the northernmost of Southern states"? I know that southern Indiana, like southern Illinois, has much in common with the lands across the Ohio, but I've never thought of Hoosier country as particularly Southern. I would sooner attach that designation to my native Missouri, which recapitulates just about all the country's regional splits within its borders -- and which was a slave state, after all. Or do you live in Kentucky now?

As for giving back to the community: I understand Andrew's point about where a national chain will get its ancillary services from, and it's valid. I'm also sitting on a $75 Roy's gift certificate that I won at a benefit auction for the Philly AIDS Walk organized by an acquaintance of mine who solicited the donations from every participating business himself. Most of the other participants, as well as the restaurant where the auction took place (Vesuvio), were independent local businesses. I guess all this proves is that some franchisees of national chains can contribute to their local communities to the extent they are allowed to or capable of. And since someone mentioned the Italian Bistro: That's a purely local operation, based in South Jersey, IIRC.

I love food. I love to write, and I believe I write very well. But I don't write much about food. A few blurbs and a profile of an ice cream parlor in Philadelphia Style, and that's it for money so far. (Well, I did profile a then-Dining Services staffer who opened an Ethiopian restaurant in U-City, write a few restaurant roundups and write rather frequently about Dining Services initiatives at Penn, and my most recent contribution to "What's Up @ Widener," our internal newsletter for faculty and staff, was the following (pasted here because the newsletter is no longer posted on our Web site): ...and our School of Hospitality Management is one of my beats as a public relations officer, so yeah, maybe I do write about food.) But as both of my foodblogs should indicate, my interests range far and wide and well beyond food. Most of what I've written for publication deals with my other interests. I'm not sure enough of my ability to discern flavors and combinations to want to hazard an honest-to-God restaurant review yet, at least one meant for an audience beyond the members of this Society. But while we're talking about writing for money, Fabby said over a year ago: Samuel Johnson said it more archly: "None but a blockhead ever wrote except for money."

I've seen the Reading Terminal Market on TV shows and in your blog and am not sure we really have an equivalent. The closest is probably going to be the recently constructed Ferry Building Marketplace. But, the Ferry Building, being recently constructed, seems to me to be much more concentrated on "upscale" stores and patrons. As it seems like it has already been covered multiple times on eGullet, I won't be going there this week. I will instead take you on a tour of the Alemany Farmers' Market, (and perhaps the Daly City 99 Ranch,) on Saturday. ← That's a very interesting history the Alemany Farmers' Market has, and it has an only-in-San-Francisco quality about it. I believe that municipally owned farmers' markets historically have been the exception rather than the rule, but both have been around for a while: my hometown, Kansas City, Mo., has a municipal farmers' market that dates to the early 1930s, when the Pendergast machine sponsored a massive program of municipal improvements that included new parks, new boulevards and trafficways, and this market. I don't know whether Seattle's famed Pike Place Market has always been a publicly run facility, but it began with a proposal for a public street market by a Seattle city councilman. The Reading Terminal Market, by contrast, was a privately run enterprise up until the building that houses it was acquired by a public authority for incorporation into the Pennsylvania Convention Center. I'd say the view is very much worth the climb! Certainly much more pleasing than what I see in much of Chester (again, see my first foodblog). Fridge shot coming. This is my favorite picture from when they were kittens. ← Awwwwwwwww.... BTW, that's a very delicious-looking sandwich you had in the post following this one. Maybe it'll be a hoagie when it grows up!

Among the high-end chains, Ruth's Chris Steak House delivers consistently superior steak with courteous and efficient (but not obsequious) service. The restaurants in Four Seasons hotels are also uniformly first-class. If you want to go down the price scale a bit, I've been pleased with the dining experiences I've had at Chili's, Fuddruckers and especially Maggiano's Little Italy. All three chains serve high-quality food (well, okay, Chili's is a notch or two below the other two) and run their shops well. (I note that Chili's and Maggiano's are sister chains.) And for fast food: Popeyes. White Castle. Need I say more? --Sandy, who still hasn't watched Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle in its entirety Edited to add postscript: Nonetheless, I must agree that a big-city downtown with nothing but national chain restaurants is not my idea of a dining destination.

Sukhothai, on the street floor of my building, closed abruptly two summers ago. Within weeks, there were orange signs on the door advising those who entered that Ecolab owned the dishwasher inside and wanted it back, and at about the same time, the Thai sculpture that had been inside the restaurant had been installed in the lobby of my apartment building. That last suggests to me that this was also a case of back rent. I note that Lula, Sukothai's successor in that space, was dark this weekend. And as with Sukothai, and unlike the last time Lula was closed, there are no signs about the place being closed -- not even the non-specific "closed for renovations," which is the traditional restaurant euphemism for "we've gone out of business."* I fear the worst and hope that it's what the bartender there hinted might happen -- yet another retooling to position the place to appeal to a different crowd, like the gay men who packed it on the second Friday of each month for Tony Sparacino's parties. *That sign now appears in the window of Uruartu, the Armenian joint on 10th Street.

Between demands of work and various kinds of drama on the home front, I had precious little time to surf eG this past week, and thus for the first time in quite a while, I missed a foodblog completely. Except for that post about having your olive oil pressed fresh from the grove. That was wonderful. Thanks for sharing that with us. Now I will have to go back over this blog at my leisure to see what other treasures you had to share.

Not really on-topic, but please share your commute... (I refer you to my first foodblog.)

That's "WHYY" in Philadelphian. Do either you or your wife ever listen to "Fresh Air"? It originates at the station. Has anybody tried to undertake a Foodblogger Pet Census? It's been a while since I've seen a pet-less foodblogger, but I'm not at all certain whether cat people (like you and I) outnumber dog people among the foodbloggers or vice versa. There will be more than porridge on the menu this week, despite your blog title, right? San Francisco is at the top of my list of American Cities I Must Visit. I wouldn't expect you to hang out in the Castro, but that's one of the places I would very much like to see. (I have a friend, ex-West Chesterite, who lives in SF now. I'm contemplating doing a three-way visit incorporating both seeing him in San Fran and my brother -- and newborn niece! -- in Seattle, but I'm told that doing this by air is crazy expensive. Any suggestions welcome.) I'm looking forward to your take on Fog City and the culinary scene there. And I have a question for you: What's San Franciscan for "Reading Terminal Market"?

Boy, we're back to the very subject that introduced me to eG in the first place! Put me down with Katie on this. Chains are not inherently good or evil. As with independent establishments, they rise or fall on their own merits. There are excellent chains and Gawd-awful mom-and-pop places. The only problem I have with some chains (and you know which ones these are) is more the fault of the diners than the restaurants: Namely, the patrons become so comfortable with the familiar mediocrity that they then shy away from trying something different and potentially better. Carry on as before.

I don't know whether Bootsie recognized me when I stopped by on Saturday afternoon, but we did end up chatting quite a bit about the food, the business and future plans -- and he keeps an eye out for comments on this board. I said I'd post one. Here it is: The service is fine and the Kobe beef burger is one of the best in town. Bootsie's gets extra points for producing a medium rare burger when I requested one. (The woman behind the counter was a little slow in asking me how I wanted it, so by the time I relayed my preference, the burger that was being made for me was on its way to medium. Bootsie put a new patty on, then later thanked me for giving him his breakfast.) The fries are also first-rate, properly crunchy on the outside and tender on the inside. These shoestring fries are a dark brown color to boot, which suggests to me that they had a pretty thorough second go-round in the fryer. The menu now features several burger combos -- an effort, I imagine, to make it easier for patrons to make up their minds by offering some toppings pre-selected. I went for the burger with blue cheese, sauteed mushrooms and sauteed onions -- a dynamite combo. The burger was so juicy, the whole grain bun went all soggy on me. My T-shirt resembled Holly Moore's shirt by the time the meal was over. Now I have to go back to try that Kobe beef hot dog.

Let me put in another rave for Giunta's meats. Yesterday, I purchased a pre-sliced cured ham from Giunta's for a welcome-home dinner for a roomie who had requested ham for the occasion. After I went through the supermarkets on the previous Saturday, I decided that if I was going to have to spend $3.99 a pound for ham regardless, I may as well get a good one. It was $3.99 a pound very well spent. All I did was brush the ham with tulip poplar honey from Halteman's and bake it for a couple of hours. The roomie has been raving about the ham since last night. So have I. This is without a doubt the best tasting ham I have eaten in years. I know where I'm heading for the Easter ham next spring.

I don't think that's too crumudgeonly, Bob. After all, DiBruno's started as one of those latter variety of food stores -- they were cheesemongers, pure and simple. Over the past decade or so, they first expanded and upgraded their selection of cheeses, then added specialty condiments (olive oils, balsamic vinegar...), then added prepared foods to go, then took their act from the Italian Market (where they still have two stores) to Rittenhouse Square and put everything on steroids last year with the new Chestnut Street store. However, Downtown Cheese in the Reading Terminal Market matches and in some places surpasses them on fancy cheeses and cured meats, and Salumeria in the same place sometimes beats them on price on items both stores carry. I don't think there's anything like Capogiro anywhere else in the country.

Not at all. Iowa is where all Maytag Blue comes from. Newton, Iowa, is home to The Maytag Corporation, the famed appliance maker whose repairmen have plenty of time on their hands. Make that was: Whirlpool Corporation of Benton Harbor, Mich., acquired Maytag this year. The Maytag family, however, is still around. They own and run Maytag Dairy Farms, also in Newton, which was founded in 1941 by F. L. Maytag II, grandson of the appliance company's founder. According to the Wikipedia article on the farm, Maytag started the cheesemaking operation at the family's dairy in the early 1940s to take advantage of a process recently developed at Iowa State University to produce blue cheese from cow's milk rather than sheep's milk. Relevant aside: Another Maytag is a respected brewer. Fritz Maytag is responsible for the revival of San Francisco's Anchor Brewing Company in the 1980s.

Well, my experience with Malaysian food consists of a single meal at Penang on 10th Street in Chinatown about a decade ago. Honestly, I don't recall what was distinctive about it, though I do recall a whole fish being brought out. Guess it's time to return there, just for you. I've enjoyed your trek through Mitteleuropa and your global cuisine-surfing. Thanks for taking us along for the ride.

Not if the customers are there for the food, you won't. I've dined on at least two occasions at the Iron Hill in Media, and the food, while far from bad, is nothing to rave about either. I'd say it's straight-down-the-middle, only-a-tad-fancified-at-the-edges pub fare -- better than TGI Friday's or Ruby Tuesday's only because it's local and can be eaten with decent brews. All the Columbia Grill would need to do to meet the competition is add more microbrews to its beer menu. Assuming they don't have any now, that is.

Not having been to the places in New York or Austin, I really have no grounds for comparison, and the merchants of the Reading Terminal Market offer so much that's so good, I think that many Philadelphians don't feel the need to patronize a high-end bazaar of the D&D variety. But such people do exist here. Otherwise, there would be no justification for DiBruno Bros. on Chestnut Street, which I suspect now holds its own with the aforementioned places with the recent addition of butcher and seafood counters. Edited to add postscript: Forgot to mention that the National Association of the Specialty Foods Trade named DiBruno Bros. Retailer of the Year for 2006.