MarketStEl

Well, I'd love to have you along for the next installment, and for me during the summer, Thursday is Friday anyway, so I'd be willing to entertain moving it to a Thursday. But I have a prior commitment on July 27, so it would have to be either Friday the 28th or Thursday, Aug. 2. Back to you...

Anyone else?

In one of my random walks around the Web, I came across a rather clever, crumudgeonly essay attempting to identify the distinguishing characteristics of American culture. The essay, which appears at Asia Times Online, the Web-only successor to the English-language international newspaper, is written by someone who signs himself only as "Spengler"; as far as I can tell, given the tone of his essays, this person is attempting to claim the mantle of a latter-day Oswald Spengler (The Decline of the West). Well, if America is in decline, apparently it has something to do with really black coffee: The entire essay is in this vein, and eGullet Society members are advised to pay special attention to items 2, 3, 4, 6 and 9 on Spengler's list of the characteristic features of American culture. After you've read it, won't you join me for the discussion forum on this essay? We will meet at the Olive Garden at 7:30.

Marshall McLuhan, in his tongue-in-cheeky followup to his book Understanding Media titled The Medium Is The Massage (1967), has a photo of a sunny-side-up egg with a brand logo ("IPC process," IIRC) on its yolk. Okay, so this is not exactly the same thing, but it's close enough to turn McLuhan's "Good Morning!" from an oddity into a prediction. I believe McLuhan's picture was meant to express disdain--or at least trepidation--for a world in which everything becomes an advertising vehicle. With this technological development, we have moved one small step closer to that unlovely world, but frankly, most of the damage in this department has been done already, what with sponsorships of just about anything that moves and many things that don't. Edited to replace the word "illustration" with "photo." In this case, the distinction is significant.

Could go either way. It was compiled quite a while ago: so I suspect that there's been lots of changes. For instance, this list predates the opening of Fatou and Fama, a cheery little West African/Caribbean restaurant in University City (horn-tooting aside: the restaurant's main page--after the intro--includes my blurb announcing its opening in The Penn Current in 2002 in its scrolling list of "Testimony from Press and Patrons"; I had even nicer things to say about the place in a later Current article they apparently must not have seen), and also predates Yankady, a Senegalese restaurant at 4519 Baltimore Avenue (the name translates from a West African tongue whose name escapes me right now as "It's good here"). Chefzadi: You might want to see if you can contact Fatou Ndaiye Wilson (the "Fatou" in Fatou and Fama; Fama is her mother, who taught her everything she knows about cooking) for your project. She is a well-regarded African chef in the local community (also Senegalese) and has been praised in the local press for her food. You probably know about Dahlak already--it's generally considered the best Ethiopian restaurant in the city, though some swear by Abyssinia about five blocks north of it. Amare Solomon, who established it, is no longer with us, but his widow continues to run it.

As I don't hang out on the "Dinner!" thread that often, this will be an introduction to a new eGer for me. I look forward to learning something new.

This has been a wonderful blog, Bryan--the sort of stuff I'd love to have on those Very Special Occasions. Of course, since you do well at producing the home versions of these, you don't have to wait for special occasions. If you don't go into the business directly, please keep your writing sideline going (that is, assuming you don't make a career out of that). Hope the Stanford visit goes well. Richardson Romanesque with red-tile roofs is an intriguing architectural melange, IMO.

Okay, the votes are in, and it's South Philly by an overwhelming margin. Proposed itinerary: If I wanted to make this convenient for myself--and why not?--I'd start this trip at Wolf Street Pizza (2135 Wolf Street; 1992 winner), which is very close to the Route 37 bus, and proceed from there to Russo's (1429 Jackson; best Sicilian pie, 1991) before concluding at Celebre's (1536 Packer Avenue; four-time winner--1983 [white pie], 1987, 1989 ["good old pizza"] and 1995 [city]). If we get a large enough crowd, we could conceivably add Joe-Joe's Pizza and Variety (2000 South 12th; 1993 regional winner) to this stop, or we could wait to hit that place with the Italian Market winners. This itinerary also has the added benefit of getting what looks like the evening's disappointment (based on AOL Cityguide member ratings) out of the way first. How does Tuesday 7/25 look for you all? 7:30 pm start time?

So far, my one visit to this place--en route home if I return via the El--was for the last Phillyblog happy hour. I only drank and didn't eat. It was somewhere around 8:30 and there was a decent crowd in the place. I think our server botched someone's wine order as well, but the diners among us liked the food. I don't remember that much about the wine I had. Maybe one of you will have to take me by the hand someday and guide me through all this Masonic-ritual stuff that you call wine tasting. It looks to me like they have found a clientele, as the place has been at least semi-busy whenever I've walked past it; I guess the patrons must be either forgiving enough to accept the slow service or not in a hurry. One of my upstairs neighbors--the guy whose name is on the Jon Christopher hair salon up the block from me--appears to be a regular.

Happy birthday, Bryan! Looks like you've been given (given yourself?) a wonderful present! Looking forward to the description of your meal at Bouchon. Another tip for your next visit to Philly, as you mentioned upblog that you couldn't find too much authentic Mexican fare up your way: For some strange reason, Philadelphia has seen a strong wave of immigration from Mexico and to a lesser extent Central and South America over the past decade or so. This has given us a slew of Mexican and Latin American restaurants, including one decent one (Mixto, with a mostly Cuban-Caribbean menu) in Center City, several excellent ones in dicier neighborhoods further out (perhaps the best known of these is Tierra Colombiana at the upper end of the "Zona del Oro" in Hunting Park, whose owners also own Mixto), and a bunch of very good and pretty authentic Mexican places in the Italian Market area (e.g., Plaza Garibaldi and Taqueria Veracruzana on Washington Avenue and La Lupe on 9th Street itself). You might want to put one of these on your itinerary. Edited to add: There's a discussion of Philly Mexican restaurants currently under way on the Pennsylvania board.

Ayer as in N.W. Ayer, the Philadelphia ad agency that was the largest in the world in the 1920s, or some other Ayer? I remember sometime in the 1970s, a small soft drink manufacturer tried to revive old-fashioned sarsaparilla, selling it--in cans!--under the name Olde Tyme Sarsaparilla. I remember buying a can and thinking it was a good bit snappier than root beer, with a slightly peppery flavor (maybe that was the anise or licorice I was tasting). I don't think the product lasted all that long.

Yeppers, and I see this beer-and-pizza tour d'horizon includes two places on the Review Tour itinerary, Mama Palma and Celebre's, plus a couple of places where it has been recommended we visit, the Grey Lodge and Tony's down the street. Since there remain places in the Northeast that have yet to be reviewed, perhaps we can add these off-list stops to the next Northeast swing. "The Best House Pizzeria"? Obviously, The Wurst House in U-City has changed hands. I'd always wondered what a pizza joint was doing with a name that suggested you were going to find German fare inside anyway. As for the crack about middle-aged guys Rollerblading down Spruce with wristpads: Would he rather we all got Hoverounds already?

Eight weeks? Boy, your parents are impatient! I'm an experienced writer and editor, and I went nearly two years between permanent full-time gigs. Keep your chin up and read "Dilbert" while your hunt continues. You might also want to consider offering your services on a freelance basis to graduate students with dissertations (mind-numbing though these can be) while you search to keep your chops up if your present job is lacking in tasks that make full use of your skill set and interests.

After having fries at Lula--which has a new chef and menu--tonight, I realized I didn't do De' Essence of New Orleans justice on one score: De' Essence's fries have the exact combination of outer crispiness and inner tenderness that makes for a superlative French fry. But they didn't taste like they were fresh cut. They were, however, very good. Lula's fries are fresh cut and unpeeled, which earns them major points. However, these suffered the fate of too many fresh cut, unpeeled fries I have had out: They were soggy.

This is your saving grace, Bryan: you are able to take a few steps outside yourself and realize just how fortunate you are. I've met my share of young people of similarly privileged backgrounds who don't seem to understand that. I hope that, as you proceed through life, you will have--or make--the opportunity to spread the love to those not as well situated as yourself and your friends. BTW, in a similar vein, you really don't want to get me started on trains.

That makes things all the more interesting. Especially in light of the fact that, in his debut column, he spent about three column inches talking about an editor in New Orleans (his prior gig before coming here) talking to him--no, make that exhorting him--about how to properly get inside a story to write about it, with the repeated interjection, "You've got to EAT the MEAL!" Guess it took him a while to actually get around to doing that. But he got there, and he does it well now. So do you have friends who roll their eyes when Inga Saffron's column appears? And if so, wanna discuss it on phillyblog? (Personal aside: I wrote an essay about Edmund Bacon shortly after he died last fall suggesting that all the fawning accolades being heaped upon him ignored some problems with his notions of what cities should look like. It ran in the CityPaper, whose editor then encouraged me to submit more material. I sent them one article--an essay on the aesthetics of SEPTA--that ran in their "Cityspace" department, about the only place other than Saffron's column where architecture is discussed in the Philadelphia media. I then suggested other essays, all of which the editor liked, but sometime around Christmas, my queries about when they wanted copy stopped getting answered. I found this curious in the extreme. Beyond that, I can't say more.)

Remember "Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered"? Toss that into the equation and that's where it becomes "selling out."

See Post #310.

IME 5th and Pine is also tidier and cleaner than 10th and South. I guess customers in Society Hill are more demanding than us Wash West/Bella Vista/Hawthorne mongrels. Can't say I've noticed the dirty-diaper smell yet, but yes, there have been times when the SuperCruise is a little fragrant. Not rotting-produce-on-a-hot-summer-day-on-9th-Street fragrant, but un-supermarkety all the same. There are a few cashiers at the SuperCruise who are pleasant and greet customers. I usually seek out their lanes when they're working. But I find store personnel on the whole businesslike at minimum. Since we're now comparing notes on the chain, you all might find it interesting to note that when Consumer Reports last surveyed members on supermarkets, A&P ranked toward the bottom of the chains on the member satisfaction scale, with cleanliness of the stores a big issue. Since the range of scores for all chains surveyed was from the mid-70s to the high 90s on a 0-to-100 satisfaction scale, though, you can't really say they disliked shopping at A&P or any of the other chains surveyed.

Thanks for the tips in general. I'm supposed to go to Rembrandt's tonight to meet up with a friend and former Penn colleague who is one of a few friends who also enjoys jazz; pianist Sid Simmons is playing there tonight. I'll keep that in mind, and if I decide to order one, I'll report back to this board. So far, the vote tally is South Philly 2, Center City 0--though it also sounds like the Center City stop on the tour should also be split in two, West and East. Keep in mind that except for the Didn't Deserve the Honor to Begin With places (e.g., Pizza Hut, the winner in the all-'burbs 1982 BoP, or Pizzeria Uno, the winner in that same year's sidebar "for diehard city lovers"), our aim is to visit all of the past winners, even the ones that have gone downhill, as it appears Towne Pizza and Apollo in Media may have. (See the Northeast report for an example from this category.) The polls are still open through the weekend. After that, we will settle on a date. Weekday evenings are okay too. Edited to add: IMO, Pietro's is not so much more upscale that it cannot be compared to the more prosaic places. Patou in Old City, OTOH, is. I've eaten at both.

The medicinal part I agree with, but the root beer part? Overwhelmed by the medicine, it seemed to me. Self-Hating Jew? I'm Oreo. Pleased to meet you.

Expanding on this with some more anecdotal evidence to weigh: I'm a big fan of Buffalo wings, and a pub around the corner from me on Walnut Street happens to serve Philly's best. And unlike a lot of places that serve wing segments (probably from a big bag of IQF wing segments), this place serves whole wings. Eight of them in a regular order (their only size), for $7.95. Time was when I polished off an entire plateful of these in one sitting. On my two most recent visits to Moriarty's--both of them since starting to exercise regularly in Widener's fitness center--I've only been able to finish four. The other four end up either in roommates' or friends' stomachs or as a late-night munchie. Now, I don't know whether this is due to the exercise changing my metabolism or my appetite, or something else, but I do know that eight whole wings is actually a lot of chicken, enough for two to share.

An excuse to visit Providence! Beating Chris Amirault to the punch, I would strongly encourage you to use this excuse to do so and see what might just be the coolest small metropolis on the East Coast. Having seen it back when the river that runs through the middle of downtown was still one huge parking deck ("the world's widest bridge," begun sometime in the late 1700s and expanded by accretion until it covered the entire river sometime in the 1950s), I can tell you that downtown Providence's transformation is nothing short of astounding--and they've done it beautifully. If you can, visit either late in the spring term or early in the fall term, when they light the fires in the river on <mumble> nights. Of course, you will have to have a "New York System" wiener when you're there. Ask Chris how they got that name.

Perhaps--but why wouldn't I be seeing similar changes at the 10th and South store, which is a lot closer to most of those condos? Granted, the Uberfresh is about three times the size of the SuperCruise, but still, the latter probably grabs a higher share of those new condo dwellers. The last major changes in the 10th and South product mix that I noticed were the dramatic increase in, and grouping together of, natural and organic foods when Whole Foods opened right across the street. Oh, yes--there was the switch from Dietz & Watson to Boar's Head, but that was chainwide. But I will keep an eye open on my next trip to see whether anything else is new.

The store is at 7050 Terminal Square. Exit 69th Street Terminal on its south side (main entrance) and cross over to the south side of Market Street. Terminal Square is the street just past Garrett Road, which ends at Market at 69th Street Terminal's west end. Hang a left onto Terminal Square and walk up a half block. You can't miss it, but if you pass the Shiseido store, you've gone too far.