MarketStEl

Maybe. But have you seen the current crop of GEICO insurance commercials featuring their spokesgecko? One of them is a dead-on self-parody of the phenomenon this segment was trying to illustrate. The gecko says, in all earnestness, that people trust spokesanimals more: "If a human told you you'd save 15 percent on your car insurance, you'd say, 'Yeah, right, that's nice.' But a gecko? You're all ready to say, 'Yes! Yes! Would you mind watching my baby?'" I think the basic point the producers were trying to make here is a pretty strong one: children do attach great significance to familiar characters and images. The comic strip "Peanuts"--which, pace Charles Schulz's brilliance, should really be retired to make room for cartoonists still living--once had a daily strip in which Lucy Van Pelt went around with a sheet of paper, asking the gang, "Sign this, please--it absolves me of all blame...Sign this, please--it absolves me of all blame..." Ya think today's tort lawyers took her message to heart?

I know that my characterization of the Southeast as a world apart from the rest of the state grates on some of my fellow Pennsylvanians, but it looks to me like the Californians picked up on this same aspect of the state's social geography: And while I'm at it, while I agree that competition is usually the best cure for an ailing or dysfunctional market, remember what I've said in the past about New Hampshire, another state with a state-run liquor monopoly, but one where the operating philosophy is to maximize revenue by luring buyers from out of state (read: Massachusetts)? Allow me to repeat one of the paragraphs above: IOW, by maximizing sales, Newman has raised the amount of loot the state gets from its liquor stores, and the consumers benefit in the process from the lower prices. Frankly, given the makeup of this state, I've long wondered why Pennsylvania pols seem unaware of the Missouri approach to dealing with culture clashes within its borders. (The Show-Me State has a similar cultural geography to that of Pennsylvania, with two relatively liberal large cities that don't see eye-to-eye with each other at either end and a conservative interior [in Missouri, it's the Pentecostals, strong in the state's southwest--Springfield is the headquarters of the Assemblies of God, the Caucasian branch of Pentecostalism (the black counterpart is the Church of God in Christ)--who provide the culturally conservative counterweight to St. Louis and Kansas City] that holds a balance of power of sorts.) When issues that are favored by interests in either city but cut against the grain of interior sensibilities arise in Jefferson City, the usual solution is to pass legislation allowing counties to opt into or out of a proposed rule. Seems to me that the same approach could be applied in Harrisburg to the benefit of the Commonwealth as a whole. Edited to add two more observations: --The writer of the San Francisco Chronicle story did miss the mark by a long shot when he lumped the Quakers and Amish together under the "culturally conservative" umbrella. The two sects do share a radically individualist view of man's relationship to God and a reverence for modesty and sobriety (the latter being the key value in this discussion), but that's about it. On most of the matters people use to gauge whether someone is "liberal" or "conservative," most Quakers fall well on the "liberal" side of the scale. --But in case anyone doubted the truth of the observation that the temperance movement is strong here as a result of that (actual or residual) cultural conservatism, recall that the 1218 Chestnut Street Wine & Spirits store drew pickets on the first Sunday it was open for business. Can you imagine that happening in a large city in any of the states that border Pennsylvania?

Over on Phillyblog, a discussion about whether the condo boom is about to go bust (consensus: yes) has morphed into yet another discussion of this city's virtues or lack thereof and whether we could ever hope to be a <world-class cliché>world-class city</world-class cliché>. The latest insult in this department was a list of "best cities for singles" compiled by Forbes.com. For the second year running, Philadelphia ranked 12th on the list of the 40 largest US metro areas--right behind Columbus, Ohio, and just ahead of Sacramento, Calif. (We scored high in singles and culture, in the middle of the pack for coolness, online dating and cost of living, at the top of the bottom half in nightlife and just above the bottom in job growth.) In addition to the rankings, the editors asked a young professional single in each city to provide some recommendations. Zoey Sless-Kittain, the 29-year-old social editor of Philadelphia magazine, recommended this as her "perfect date": Quoting myself from Phillyblog: Good thing they haven't made Ms. Sless-Kittain food editor yet.

Computer froze on you?

I've been through, but not to, Wellfleet. If you're driving from Boston to the Cape, you must pass through Wellfleet to get to Provincetown; Truro separates the two. (Of course, the nicest way to get from Boston to P'town is to take one of the Bay State ferries in season--it's also faster than taking Routes 3 and 6. A quick glimpse at a map of Massachusetts should indicate why.) I realize that the main purpose of the foodblog is to chronicle our lives through what we cook and eat, but I always love sense-of-place stuff--the chance to indulge my inner hhlodesign. If you could get a little of the atmosphere of Wellfleet into your chronicle, I'd appreciate it. Looking forward to this themeless themed blog. It's off to a nice start already. P.S. I haven't been up to New York recently, so I'm still holding on to those Starwich coupons.

The report gave no further detail into the nature or amount of the fall in sales at Ruby Tuesday. Exploring some of the questions you raise would be useful. A drop in sales due to the second or third factors you cite above could be reversed through marketing efforts or a change in the way the information is provided (e.g., the waiter could ask patrons if they wanted to see the nutrition charts before they order or hand out separate cards listing things like Weight Watchers points--which I suspect many patrons would appreciate). But a drop due to the first factor would be harder to reverse; about the only way would be to turn tables over faster during peak periods, which would probably annoy at least as many customers as the menus with the nutrition information printed on them. Suffice it to say that if the producers of Dateline were so inclined, they could probably do another entire hour on this subject.

I suspect we can count the number of businesses in Delaware that didn't get a "Best of..." from Delaware Today or its readers on the fingers of one hand and maybe even have four left over. I mean, they had to go into neighboring states for some of the winners? (In the case of TV, they really had no choice. WBOC in Dover is the state's only commercial TV station. Viewers in Wilmington get their TV from Philadelphia, although two Philly TV stations, including WHYY, the region's PBS station--which is licensed to Wilmington--have Delaware studios.) That is really stretching it.

This is sort of like a lot of designer clothing lines where 'you're paying for the name.' I shelled out $6 on Friday for a huge (about 1.5 lb), absolutely gorgeous Brandywine grown in Lancaster County, largely on the recommendation of the guy who runs Kaufmann's about the taste of the Brandywines he (or the farms he gets his tomatoes from) grows. It was as advertised--juicy and delicious, great with fresh mozzarella and basil. Even better, however, was the non-heirloom-varietal Jersey tomato I purchased earlier in the week from Iovine's. And even better than those were the non-heirloom-varietal Jerseys that a colleague in Human Resources on the floor below brings into the copier/coffee room at least once a week, and often more often, during the growing season. IOW, what JohnL said, which I generally endorse. To borrow Wendy's ad slogan, I'd rather do what tastes right.

Certainly the annual "Best of Philly" issue is a huge moneymaker for Philadelphia magazine, but it also can be a nice revenue booster for the places so honored. I had a nice chat with the owner of NYPD Pizza (Best Pizza, Philadelphia City, 2005; one award was given for each of the five Pennsylvania counties [Philadelphia city=Philadelphia County] and South Jersey as a whole that year) about this phenomenon while waiting for my pie one evening. He told me that the way he found out he had won was from customers, who kept telling him "Hey, congratulations, you got the best pizza in Philly!" when they came in to order. He thought they were giving their personal opinion until he got the official letter from the magazine's editors about a week later. The thing was, there were more customers coming in to tell him that after the news of the honor broke. He told me that business went up about 20 percent in the wake of the award. For a small pizzeria, that ain't beanbag. BTW, a few of us intrepid eaters are engaged in our own "Best of..." odyssey in this year's Pizza Club on the Pennsylvania board. Wanna read about our exploits so far? I have a barbecue recipe and guidebook in my possession in which the authors state up front that they don't want to assign any of the 100-odd 'cue joints they rated a ranking of 'the best' because "as far as we know, as we write this, someone, somehwere is building a pit in a shack somewhere, hanging out a beat-up sign reading 'BBQ' and serving the best barbecue ever." So their top rating was "As good as we've ever had."

I got tripped up by "andouille" on Friday night. The trivia quiz host asked me how it was pronounced, and I whispered into her ear, "an-DWEE." Several of the contestants on stage at the time informed her after she said that that it was actually pronounced "an-DOO-ee." A vous de discouter...

That photo looks suspiciously familiar. The Negev is gorgeous- and I remember staying on a kibbutz in the Negev that was green and lovely (though I think they had factories, not farm) - but is there a lot of growing in the Negev? What kind of crops, if any? ← D*mn, somebody beat me to it! As I looked at this photograph and some of those above it, I thought, "The Negev is absolutely gorges!" That sounds way cool, getting chocolate milk straight from the cow! I must visit and see these marvelous animals sometime. This has been an absolutely fabulous blog. Thank you for showing us all the culinary traditions you share with your Middle Eastern neighbors. 'Tis a pity that everyone in the region can't use these to truly break bread together. I look forward to the rest of the tour in the future.

Exactly. It'll be interesting to see if Pollan is interviewed or his book referenced. ← Pollan made no appearance, nor was The Omnivore's Dilemma mentioned, on this program, or at least that portion of it I saw. I found fascinating the extended segments dealing with Kraft and McDonald's, though, both for what they said and how the respective efforts at corporate image-shaping worked. Kraft came off smelling like a rose, or pretty close to it, in the segment where their top exec for nutrition was interviewed. Somehow even the fact that Kraft's majority shareholder is Altria Group (nee Philip Morris) became a quasi-positive in the segment, inasmuch as the narrative suggested that, having been burned on tobacco, the corporate parent wasn't about to repeat the experience with its food processing affiliate. McDonald's vice president for US operations (I guess they really do walk the walk about "being in our community 365 days a year," as the ads the company runs in African-American-oriented media say; the guy is himself black), it seemed, had a somewhat rougher time of it with that company's efforts to beat the "nutritional merchant of death" rap. When even a successful substitution of fruit for French fries in the Happy Meal gets dinged because the apples come with a caramel dipping sauce, you know you're operating in rougher terrain. I gotta give him points for not doing the "it's what our customers want" thingie about the high-fat foods, though--the show's producers let the customers do that for him, going back to one of the focus groups assembled for the report to serve up quotes to the effect that folks go to Mickey D's because of the fries. But the sentence that cuts to the heart of the matter when it comes to corporate responsibility and obesity had nothing to do with either Kraft or McDonald's. It had to do with the issue of putting nutrition information on menus in a place where customers could digest it before ordering their food. The sentence was this: "When the restaurant chain Ruby Tuesday put nutrition information on its menus, it discovered that sales dropped." This is at once a huge point in the food (or in this case restaurant) critics' favor and a real dilemma for the restaurant operators. It bolsters the critics' argument that the companies bear a lot of the burden by giving an example of consumers behaving responsibly when given enough information to make an informed purchase, but it also shows that in this case, giving the customers enough information is not in the restaurants' best interest. (The funny thing here, at least from where I sit, is that Ruby Tuesday's in-restaurant promotional materials touted their salad bars as much as their TV ads do their burgers--including the turkey and veggie ones). Maybe the answer is to mandate on-menu nutrition info (which apparently even McDonald's has experimented with) so that the entire industry takes the hit simultaneously. But if the Ruby Tuesday experience could be considered illustrative, it will be difficult indeed to get an entire industry to willingly shove a chunk of its sales out the door by so doing.

sylvia's totally uses smoked turkey in their greens, don't they? ← Now I'm gonna have to check the ingredients list on the can next time I see one.

Maybe you were channeling the real Steve's Prince of Steaks in the Northeast. When Rick Oliveri opened his establishment in the Reading Terminal ca. 1986, he called it "Rick's Prince of Steaks" in reference to the Oliveri family line. Steve, however, had already christened his establishment "Prince of Steaks" two or three years earlier in reference to the quality of his product (since the name "King of Steaks" was still Pat's, he had to settle for heir to the throne in name, though not in fact--Steve's cheesesteak is definitely better than Pat's). I don't know when Steve trademarked the phrase, but I imagine it was done in response to Rick opening a place with the same name.

All of the above are great spaces, and I'd second Holly's endorsement of the Penn Museum's Upper Egyptian Gallery or the Rotunda there. Another space you might want to consider is the Crystal Tea Room in the Wanamaker Building. This may prove to be a bit too Ladies Who Lunch-y for a bunch of contractors and engineers, but it is a fabulous space, and it's run by a well regarded caterer.

(Okay, pizza lovers: I know you're out there, so how about joining us next time? Our small intrepid band has been taking one for the team for two tour stops, and we'd love company. That said, time to move on to...) Best of Philly Review Tour, Part III: South Philly II: Double-Parked Pizza "I wouldn't have believed this if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes," Jan said to me as we drove past the double-parked cars that lined 22d Street. If you needed more proof that South Philly is a world apart, just consider how they park down here. Cars parked in the middle of Broad Street. Cars double-parked on every side street wide enough to allow it. Cars double-parked next to empty curb lanes! And, of course, the parking rules every other Philadelphian must obey are suspended in parts of South Philly, it appears. But these practices must have some advantages, for in South Philly, unlike in other parts of town, it is possible to find on-street parking very close to one's destination. This made our second South Philly segment on the Best of Philly Review Tour fairly easy to handle--and, as it turned out, gave us a place to eat the pizza from our first stop, Wolf Street Pizza: Like Mama Rosa's from our first South Philly swing, this place is strictly carryout--there's barely room for a small table and two chairs in front of the counter. The rest of the space is taken up by the drink cooler and the kitchen. As we were only four and the pizza options were plentiful, we departed a bit from standard practice by asking the counter clerk what was good. This led to our ordering a Buffalo Pizza with grilled chicken after we had already settled on a Wolf Street Special (pepperoni, peppers, onions, mushrooms and anchovies) for our first pie. While we were waiting--and after explaining why we had descended on her place--the proprietor served us complimentary Buffalo wings. As one of us could not handle spicy foods, the wings were served with sauce on the side. These were somewhat unusual in being lightly breaded and fried rather than baked. These were small but meaty, and the breading gave them a satisfying crunch. One of us liked these better than anything else she ate that night. We may not have a fair evaluation of the Wolf Street pie, as the pies cooked in their boxes on the counter while we figured out where we would eat them. But since this place does take-out business only, we experienced these pies as any other customer would. We finally ended up tailgating on the back of Jan's mini-SUV, which was parked around the corner on 22d. The Wolf Street Special came fully loaded: and the Buffalo pie was half-sauced, half-plain to accommodate our heat-challenged colleague. The crust is the thick kind, and it had gone a bit soft from the cooking. It was only slightly chewy, though, and had good texture. "These are sort of like Domino's," said our mild-mannered dining companion. "Only with better ingredients," said I. The Special offered a great medley of tastes, and thanks to the judicious use of anchovies, it wasn't too salty. The chicken on the Buffalo pie was juicy, but absent the wing sauce (which was heavy on the hot sauce and light on the butter), we thought it could use more garlic. (This, as it turned out, would be the general knock on all the pies we ate.) Wolf Street won its Best of Philly in a neighborhood category, and we agreed that if we lived in this neighborhood, we would patronize this place a lot. These pies are definitely Still Worthy, and like Joseph's, they're one-milers. (We had argued a bit about this as we ate. As we had defined "Santucci's" disappointing pizzas as one-block pies, we agreed that these warranted a better rating, but weren't sure a mile wasn't too much. I proposed 10 blocks, and this seemed to satisfy everyone. Then, after we had dispersed for the night, I realized that there are nine city blocks to the mile in Philadelphia. So a one-mile pie it is.) Our next stop was Russo's, in the 1400 block of Jackson Street. The sign stated that this was the "original Sicilian recipe--from Sicily," but the name was missing. Thinking we missed it, we parked and walked back, and found out that Citysearch was at once correct and incorrect. There is still a pizzeria in business at 1429 Jackson Street, but it isn't Russo's any more: (Their sign crew obviously didn't finish the job they started.) We did check to see whether any "Best of Philly" plaques or posters were still on the walls. Seeing none, we struck this place from our itinerary and proceeded to South Philly's other legendary pizzeria: Finally, a place where we could sit down and enjoy our pizza! We figured that the Packer Park Shopping Center, in which Celebre's is located, must be a beehive after games and concerts, for it had as a neighbor a huge, relatively new Chickie's & Pete's. But as the Phillies game was already over and nothing else was going on at the Sports Complex as far as we knew, we were able to park right in front of the place, walk right in and get a table. Celebre's offers two kinds of pizza: "Famous" and "Special". The "Famous" pizza is the traditional sauce-and-cheese pie, made with two layers of mozzarella. Among the specialty pies is one called the "Old Way," made with one layer of mozzarella topped with sauce. Our waitress explained that this was the way they had traditionally made pies here, but customers started asking for the more common cheese-on-top version, so they changed their recipe. Then, after they did, patrons started complaining that they missed the pizzas made the "old way." So back it came to the menu. We ordered a white pie: and an Old Way. As you can see, the tomato sauce gave off plenty of steam, and the crust was nicely browned. Maybe we're garlic fiends, but we found both pies lacking in the stuff. The white pie also lacked oregano, and the menu stated that both of these ingredients went into it. I prefer my tomato sauce to be on the sweet side, so I found the Old Way pie to be perfectly fine aside from the lack of garlic. My companions were not as pleased with this pie, which is why I ended up taking most of it home with me. Our pizza-savvy, heat-averse companion pointed out that Celebre's conventional pizza ovens probably didn't get all that hot, and that this probably lowered the quality of the tomato pie. Celebre's proudly wears its four Best of Philly awards on its wall, along with Zagat Survey kudos and a letter from Tug McGraw in his role as Channel 6 roving feature reporter. The general consensus among us, however, was that this place is resting on its laurels. It's certainly Still Worthy, and it's a one-miler as well, not to mention convenient to the stadiums. But we've had better--including the pies we got from Wolf Street this same evening. As we left Celebre's, we noticed the parking lot was full to bursting. Maybe this was because the poor unfortunates couldn't find a place to double-park.

Tonight on Dateline NBC, Stone Phillips devotes the entire hour to the obesity epidemic and who is responsible for it. The report will ask whether the producers or the consumers are more to blame, and looks at how food is marketed, among other things. The program was teased on this morning's Today Show with an interesting segment in which one of the Dateline reporters showed 2-, 3-, 4- and 5-year olds cards bearing images--some noncommerical (e.g., the American flag) and others commercial (e.g., the Nike swoosh, Cap'n Crunch, McDonald's golden arches). The children all easily recognized most of the trademarks and commercial characters they were shown--sometimes because they recognized them from the things their parents bought (Starbucks coffee, for instance). In one rather surprising (to me) segment of this report, a 2-year-old couldn't properly identify the letter M (though he knew it was a letter) but got the McDonald's M right off the bat. Looks like we need to market the ABCs more aggressively, folks. The program airs tonight at 8 pm ET, 7 pm CT, on NBC.

Oops! The only difference between Hellmann's and Best Foods is geography. Best Foods is what Hellmann's is called west of the Rockies. Now Duke's, on the other hand, is different. Lots of folks in the Southeast will use nothing else.

Fuck that shit.

Just a reminder for last-minute folks: We meet for the third tour stop tonight at 7. Meeting place is Wolf Street Pizza, 2135 Wolf Street. Second stop is Russo's, 1429 Jackson Street. We wrap up this trek at Celebre's, 1536 Packer Avenue. If enough hungry people show up, we may add a fourth stop. See you at 7.

Lafah differs from pita how? They look awfully similar. (And we could set up a gay tourism exchange with Philadelphia--the Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corporation just won a major advertising award for its campaign to encourage gay tourism here [slogan: "Get your history straight and your nightlife gay."])

Has he sought treatment for his condition? Sounds like bipolar disorder to me. Regarding potato salad: The funny thing is, it has been some time since I've eaten homemade potato salad that lacked pickle relish, but I have had it. And whenever I've either bought or eaten commercially made potato salad (including the kind served in diners and "family restaurants"), it's never had pickle relish as an ingredient. It's also usually been bland, unless I was lucky enough to find a place which used a supplier that made its salad with vinegar, in which case it at least had a bit of a tang to it--one that was often counterbalanced by sugar, I suspect, for I never saw anything else in these salads that I would consider naturally sweet (okay, carrot slivers maybe, but they're not sweet enough raw to counterbalance the vinegary bite).

Hmmmmm. So it's a flavor profile thing. I never ever make potato salad without pickle relish. I don't know too many black folks who make potato salad without it either. Since I haven't been purchasing Miracle Whip lately (and haven't made an experimental batch either), maybe I need to make potato salad with both and see whether or not that's overkill.

Never mind the wheat grass and the fruit and juice--what's his phone number? With or without the lad, though, fruit and juice stands like that one would be wonderful to have over here in the States. (Well, I guess we do have our approximations, like the fruit stands that sell fresh squeezed juice, and the smoothie stands that have proliferated like dandelions.) I have a linguistic question for you. I note that whenever you want to say "God willing," you use the Arabic term -- "Inshallah." Is this an ecumenical gesture or a way around the prohibition on uttering the name of God that some branches of Judaism have?

The comment on the garlic is noted. I doubt I'll ever get it up to levels that would pass muster in Gilroy, California, but I may have been dealing with a true garlic lover. Obviously there's room to experiment here. As for the saffron: Echoing James, I doubt I was sold something being passed off as saffron, and part of the reason why is because for years, I had in my spice cabinet exactly that. When I belonged to a food co-op in Allston (Boston), Mass., back in the days between college and college, I once purchased enough saffron to fill a small Grey Poupon jar for about $4. Knowing what I know now about how much real saffron costs per ounce, no way that could have been the genuine article. Not to mention that the threads were much thicker than what I got in the bag and were a mix of red and orange-red in color. That stuff didn't have much flavor to it either, but it was a little more noticeable when I used it in the rather large quantities I needed to turn things really yellow.