MarketStEl

I wonder what constitutes "substantial processing." Since there are very few olive groves in the US (if indeed there are any at all), I would imagine that any of the major US olive oil producers -- like Baltimore's Pompeian -- would "substantially process" the oil they get. Yet Pompeian's Web site leaves me with the impression that the Baltimore plant receives oil in bulk from abroad, so it's already "processed" somewhat, isn't it?

I must duplicate that combination the next time I make pizza! Only this time, with habañeros.

It seems oddly fitting that I should run across this topic as I sat down to have lunch at my desk--leftover coq au vin mixed in with leftover broccoli with cheese sauce, all from last night's dinner. (There's more chicken at home in the fridge. I'll e-mail you some if you like.) For the first time since my support-staff days more than 20 years ago, I have my own office. It has no windows--it's on the side of the suite that is next to the main corridor-- but it does have a vent fan over what was once the door to the main hallway. (There is no evidence whatsoever of this door's existence in the hallway itself, as that stretch of the corridor has been dressed up, with portraits of all the past presidents of Pennsylvania Military College/PMC Colleges/Widener College/Widener University hung on its walls. At the end of the corridor is the office of the current president.) Anyway, that vent fan is quite good at keeping the smell of whatever it is I'm eating from invading the outer office. However, I really haven't put it to the test, as all I've heated in the office microwave is frozen pizzas and not-terribly-fragrant leftovers. It looks to me like I'm the most consistent brown-bagger in the office right now, but eating at one's desk is not at all uncommon, given the dining options in the immediate vicinity of campus. On campus, our foodservice provider (Aramark) runs the student dining hall (which the faculty and staff also use a lot), the faculty dining room (so far, I've seen no faculty or staff in it, ever), two Java City grab 'n' go cafés and a grill in the convenience store in the student center. There is also a Quiznos Sub shop in the student center. A food truck occasionally shows up on 14th Street. Off campus, there is a small coffee shop that sells pastries, a convenience store with a deli/hoagie counter, a pizzeria that doesn't open until 4 pm and a steak shop (there's a picture of it in the "Lunch!" thread). That's it. Oh, there's also a diner at the Days Inn two blocks from campus. Which means that: --lunch outings usually involve driving to one of the nearby towns (or in my case, riding along with a co-worker), or --lunch is an at-your-desk affair. I guess I'm a cross between a gourmet and a grazer, though my snacks are almost equally split between healthy and trashy. (Edited to remove the bit of cheese sauce that landed on my monitor.)

It is supposed to refer to oil from the first cold pressing of the olives. I've seen labels on several brands that include the phrase "first cold pressing". I've yet to see regular olive oil that is as dark as the extra virgin that appears on local supermarket shelves.

← Oh, it's not a secret--it's probably the most widely distributed Italian brand of industrial balsamic vinegar in the United States: Monari Federzoni And yes, they have been producing balsamic since 1912. What is less clear, however, from looking at the company history, is whether they have been producing industrial balsamic for all this time. If I understand the timeline on the history page correctly, they have been producing industrial balsamic only since the 1980s. Maybe someone else can sort things out for me. Their web site does note the difference between what they make and true balsamic, which is referred to in Italy (according to the site) as "Aceto Balsamico Tradizionale". There are government standards covering the production of both industrial and traditional balsamic.

Of course, you should take everything with a grain of salt, but -- and I'm surprising myself a bit here by coming to the defense of Whole Paycheck -- I'd say that WFM's CEO strives mightily to practice what he preaches. Whole Foods offers an ESOP to its hourly employees. (ESOP = Employee Stock Ownership Plan. It's a fringe benefit more common in small businesses than large ones. It allows employees to purchase stock in the company out of their paychecks, often at favorable prices. Some ESOPs offer employees part of their compensation in the form of stock, but these are very rare.) On top of that, regular employees get stock options based on hours worked in a year. So you can't accuse Mackey of taking advantage of something that his employees can't when it comes to owning Whole Foods stock or options. Info about Whole Foods Market benefits

Well, since Susanna Foo has been turning out Cordon Bleu Chinese cooking for more than a decade now, I guess you could say that the process was short-circuited a bit here, at least when it comes to Chinese cooking. And she has been joined by others, like <mumble>, the creative chef at Nan in University City, one of a more recent wave of Asian-fusion restaurants scattered across the landscape. (I guess it probably helped that Philadelphia has had a Chinatown since the mid-19th century--it's one of the oldest, and geographically one of the smallest, in the country--but then again, Boston has one too, and I wouldn't call that city's cuisine cosmopolitan, or at least I wouldn't have when I attended college there.) The other waves of immigrants--and the restaurants they have spawned--are still fairly recent: The Italian Market's Latin American accent became pronounced only within the last three to five years, for example. I don't think they are yet at the point where the next generation is ready to Americanize the dishes they grew up with or give an ethnic twist to more, um, white-bread fare. (The Cuban-Colombian-American restaurant on Pine Street may be called Mixto, but the mix is more of a pan-Latino one, as might befit an establishment connected to the owners of Tierra Colombiana.) It might be more interesting to revisit your question in another five to ten years.

It's never too late! Ya think? Right now, I'm secretly waiting for Inga Saffron to call me and tell me she's hanging up her pen, and would I want to take over for her? (Inga Saffron is the architecture critic of The Philadelphia Inquirer.) My inside the fridge shot is not that exciting. I tend to walk down to the market and buy ingredients fresh when I want to cook. It's nice because I can go during the day because I work for myself. It's usually a nice half hour break from work, and usually combine shopping with lunch. But here you go: Only what's essential, I see. Funny, I don't remember you confessing your love on that long-running sriracha thread. Does sriracha require refrigeration? If so, I need to move my bottle, but it hasn't seemed to suffer from its placement in the pantry. Another can't-bear-to-waste-good-leftovers type! Can I trade my never-eats-leftovers roommate for you?

I hope that a Kansas Citian will follow up on this post to Set Me Straight (Edited to add: As if that were possible!), but pace deep-fried turkey, I would classify my hometown as still an Innie, but with a glorious indigenous dish--barbecue--that lets it get away with navel-gazing to its heart's content. Philadelphia was an Innie too, at some time in the past before my arrival here ca. 1983. Now, there is no doubt that this town's an Outie, transformed in no small part by waves--small ones, but waves nonetheless--of immigration from East and Southeast Asia, Russia, Ethiopia/Eritrea, and West Africa, among other places since the early 1980s. In fact, I'll bet that if you measured your city's culinary scene against the census category "Percentage of residents born abroad" and its direct descendant "Percentage of residents with at least one parent born abroad," you will find a very strong correlation between these statistics and the degree of cosmopolitanism evidenced in the local restaurant mix. The American Midwest--Chicago included--has historically not been a destination for immigrants from abroad, though I hear that Minneapolis has become one for certain Southeast Asian groups. (Chicago's culinary verve is partly the product of internal migration.) The coastal cities historically have been. Those two facts, I would suggest, make all--or almost all--the difference.

Oh, wow. Back when I was little--the age at which most boys answer the question "What do you want to be when you grow up?" with "A fireman!" or "A cowboy!"--I answered it, "I want to be an architect!" Didn't come to pass, sorry to say. But writing has its pleasures too. This is the most visually appealing blog I've run across yet, although I'm afraid Rem Koolhaas has yet to grow on me. (Neotraditional city planning and New Urbanist thought are more my speed, and these subjects have less to do with the essence of materials than the spatial relationships between structures and uses. Consider it a form of "plating," if you will.) I've only just skimmed the surface, as I have to turn in soon to get up at an ungodly early hour Monday to do work I would have done tonight had I not spent the entire evening trying to make a recalcitrant wireless router behave, without success. I plan to dig into the meat of this exercise sometime tomorrow. Great work so far. You may even be able to get away without the obligatory inside-the-fridge shot.

But is this really a recent invention, or only recent to the United States? One of the leading Italian manufacturers of industrial-grade balsamic vinegar has been in business since 1912, which suggests to me that there must have been some upsurge in demand for or knowledge of a product somewhat resembling true balsamic vinegar in Italy around the turn of the last century.

I was going to say something smart about repealing the Second Law of Thermodynamics, but Ellen's right, it doesn't really apply here. However, it does sound as if they are making a rather concerted--and silly, IMO--effort to repeal the laws of aging (which, come to think of it, do bear a passing resemblance to the Second Law of Thermodynamics), so the amusement factor for this place runs high.

As is their location, right off the central court next to the Spice Terminal. what? they've been there forever. ← ISTR DiNic's being further back, by where Braverman's used to be, but my memory has played tricks on me in the past. I do vaguely recall seeing on one of the posts dealing with changes in the merchant mix that DiNic's was one of those being reshuffled.

It looks to me like in the end, his criticisms boil down to these three points: --"Whole Paycheck" is doing little to close the gap between the healthy haves and the overly processed have-nots. But (as he also notes) the same could be said for the whole foods/organic foods movement in general. I wouldn't lay the blame for this at Whole Foods' doorstep. Again, a charge that doesn't stick. --The USDA bowed to the interests of Big Agribusiness in its drafting of "organic" standards. No doubt true, and no doubt inimical to the original spirit of the organic movement, as accurately described in the article. But as the organic farmers quoted in it point out, not even the organic movement is true to its roots. --I'll let him make the last one in his own words: I think this is the most interesting point of all. When the 800-pound gorilla starts demanding better, we will all get better.

As is their location, right off the central court next to the Spice Terminal. Welcome to eGullet, Delawarean!

As of today, I've gotten the entire first decade of "Bests" (1974-83). I will only say that in 1982--the first year the annual pick-and-pan-fest focused on the 'burbs, with a sidebar for diehard city-lovers--the experts obviously took leave of their senses, for that year's picks were: Best Pan Pizza ('Burbs): Pizza Hut (Upper Darby and everywhere else) Best Pizza (City): Pizzeria Uno (509 South 2d) Marra's made it into the pantheon in this decade--twice, in 1978 and 1979--as did Bitar's ("Best Weird Pizza," 1979, for their yogurt-and-spice-on-pita-bread concoction). But Tacconelli's had yet to appear. More when I tackle the next decade or two on lunch hour Monday.

You raise a very interesting point. It sounds like Gourmet has taken a slightly different approach to the newsstand-vs.-subscription cover conundrum than magazines like The Atlantic Monthly and The New Yorker have. (The two titles I just cited have card stock outer pages that partly obscure their regular covers; teasers for articles inside appear on the card stock page, which can be removed to reveal the cover art as it was meant to be seen.) If Gourmet is choosing its cover photos mainly for how they will look with text superimposed over them, then shipping copies to subscribers without all that text, the subscriber copy covers will look a little strange. But going back to the beginning of this thread, it seems to me that wasn't what had people all upset.

Since I just plunked down a chit for JeffL's excursion to Picanha on 4/9, 4/22 will work better for me as well. I just started looking through the Best of Philly lists, beginning with the very first one in 1973. I'd like to suggest that we save the undisputed best--Tacconelli's--for last, unless Papa Tacconelli announces his retirement sometime in the next few months. Marra's should also IMO be a later item as an old-school favorite. I'll have a complete list up sometime next week, and what say we pick three candidates for starters from it?

Don't tell me that it can trace its heritage to Kelly's of Mole Street? That's like Wachovia stating that it is the oldest commercial bank in the United States. (It doesn't, but it could after it acquired CoreStates, which had previously swallowed First Pennsylvania Bank, which in 1929 had acquired the Bank of North America, in business since 1782.)

Hey, all the other bloggers have exposed theirs! (Edited to add: I'm also channeling an old Atlantic City tradition as well as what appears to be an unofficial eGullet one. During the annual boardwalk parade that preceded the Miss America Pageant, the queens who lined the route would shout out at the contestants as they rode by, "Show us your shoes!" The contestants unfailingly obliged. I somehow doubt that this tradition has survived the pageant's relocation to Las Vegas.)

While we're at it, I see that one of their recent episodes focused on the opening of Righteous Urban Barbecue, the Kansas City import much discussed on the New York board. Guess I'll have to catch it in repeats on FLN. Comcast Center City Philadelphia customers get FLN as part of their basic digital cable package, along with the Tangentially-About-Food Network.

I refer you to my statement in post 49, above:

Show us your fridge!

Well, let's see...there was that dam disaster that caused the famous flood of 1889, then there was the one in 1937 that was of purely natural origin. I think that Johnstown was spared major flooding from Hurricane Agnes in 1972, but I may be wrong. The tax was to repair damage from the 1937 flood. Maybe they're banking the money for the next one. Yeah, right. Indeed they do--I believe one wag called it "the mother's milk of politics." But here I suspect the issue is not simply about money. It's about jobs and values too. The jobs part we already know about--eliminate the State Store system and you'll have a bunch of very upset employees on your hands. Yes, they'd probably have first whack at any new jobs in the private liquor stores that replaced them, but the pay and bennies would be worse--maybe even much worse. Then there's the values part, which I alluded to earlier in this discussion. Since this discussion is about Philadelphia dining, I'm not surprised to see hardly any participants from the rest of the state chiming in. But it's the rest of the state that matters when it comes to the question of altering or abolishing the state's liquor control system. This is one of those times when I wish Lancastermike weighed in on the subject, as I suspect he could offer a persepective not heard much in the Southeast. Given that every Republican governor since Thornburgh has made an attempt to scrap the LCB, and that every one of these attempts failed, there must be something besides money and jobs keeping the system in place. (Or maybe those two are enough to keep the legislature from following the governors' lead.)

Interesting and fascinating. Perhaps we should just slap a label reading "Everything you eat contains known potential carcinogens in varying quantities" over the door of every supermarket and farmer's market and be done with it. But I do have one question that might shed some light on certain manufacturing processes if an adequate answer exists. ← How is it that American cheese contains no benzene, but one of its principal ingredients, Cheddar cheese, does? Does the heating of the cheese during pasteurization destroy the benzene? (There is no such thing as unpasteurized American cheese.) Edited to fix formatting errors and to add: And if that is the reason, why would most Cheddar sold in the United States--which is made from pasteurized milk--contain benzene?