MarketStEl

Specifically, the thread veered off in the direction I identified with this post, and if you look at the passage quoted in it, you will find part B of the logical fallacy plainly and baldly stated in finest New York fashion. However, our Winnipeg friend is correct inasmuch as Herb did start out by saying "What's great about your city's dining?", thus turning a negative into a positive. I still feel that it's worth exploring the root cause, though. (Edited to correct Freudian slip.)

Since this thread was started by yet another (insert city name here)-vs.-NYC comparative-dining discussion, the city in this case being Philadelphia, I may as well cut to the chase and state what I see as the problem that usually gives rise to these pointless theological exercises. It could be roughly described as follows: 1) Talented chef or restaurateur opens a restaurant in one of the large provincial centers, and said restaurant soon garners local and even national attention for its quality (or qualities). 2) Outsiders make pilgrimages to the new shrine and sing its praises. 3) The talented chef/restaurateur, flush with success, decides it's time to take his game to the next level and announces plans to open an establishment in New York City. 4) New Yorkers, being all at once more sophisticated, more demanding, more critical and as provincial as the folks in the provinces, express skepticism or astonishment, or both, that this hayseed from the hinterlands, fabulous though he may be, could possibly open a restaurant equal to what New York has to offer in (insert any category but barbecue here). (Now I exaggerate on this last point, for not even New Yorkers are arrogant enough to argue that they offer better cheesesteaks or roast pork Italian sandwiches than Philadelphia's best. But I don't exaggerate by much.) 5) The interloper's New York outpost opens and wows the socks off the multitudes. All of this is the result of a logical fallacy that New Yorkers seem prone to repeat, one which triggers a defensive response when unleashed on the hinterlanders. The fallacy takes the form of two propositions: A. There is no other city in the country like New York. B. The best other cities have to offer could not possibly measure up to the best New York has to offer. A. is true, but B. does not necessarily follow from A.

Well, I may as well just jump on into the fray, especially since several people I like have also come out. (Then again, I did hint at this to Rebecca in another thread in General Food Topics a while back--I think it was in response to someone else expressing either incredulity or skepticism that people would actually serve raw meat.) I have had the occasional bout of diarrhea, no doubt caused by some bug in something I ate, but I've only gotten really sick from eating food twice. Both times, it involved restaurant meals. Both times, it was seafood. Once, it was fried oysters. The other time, it was sushi, which is one of my favorite foods in the whole wide world--I loves me some raw fish! I still happily gobble up sushi whenever I get the chance, but I've not been back to the restaurant whose sushi made me sick, which is right around the corner from me and--oh, the agony!--now offers a $19.95 all-you-can-eat sushi special every night. That might be enough to get me to risk that place again. I've never gotten sick off raw meat, not even raw hamburger. And I never--repeat, never--make hamburgers or meatloaf without scarfing down some of the raw material along the way. A dash of seasoned salt on this clump. A splash of Worcestershire on that one. Yummy! I think we should organize a "beef sashimi" party, complete with dipping sauces. Yes, including soy sauce mixed with wasabi.

Historical trivia relevant to this discussion: Time was, you could do just that. Up through (I think) the 1950s, suburban housewives in Reading Railroad territory could place orders with Reading Terminal Market merchants by phone. The orders would be filled and placed on outbound Reading commuter trains for pickup at the station nearest home in time for dinner preparation. (See? There really is nothing new under the sun. The only difference between this and acmemarkets.com or genuardis.com is that it's done online now, not on the phone.)

Yeah! Now that's what I'm talkin' 'bout!

I'm the exact opposite of you, almost: I've been to Vietnam Palace on numerous occasions--though none since 2001--but to Vietnam only once. My impression was that VP beat V hands down in the value-for-money department, and if the food is great--which it was IMO--I can deal with basement-rec-room decor. I note the place has gotten an extreme makeover within the past few years, though, and that basement-rec-room ambience is probably a thing of the past. Frankly, I'm not all that concerned about the decor at these places, for by and large, it's an afterthought. Pho' 75 is your high school cafeteria, only with edible food: the CityPaper editors were a little less charitable in their CP Choice Award description of the place two years ago, referring to it (IIRC) as a re-education camp. Nam Phuong, right around the corner on 11th, has the catering-hall ambience down to a T. And I don't think the new place that has replaced Rio Bravo at the 11th and Washington corner has done much to alter the former establishment's high-school-gym-dance vibe. But I'd eat at any one of those establishments again. (Well, I haven't eaten at that new place yet.) I realize there are exceptions: Porky and Porkie has an elegantly simple appearance, very Korean (and Japanese) in its spareness, and Cafe de Laos next door oozes intimacy and tropical charm. But the rule for me is that when I'm eating Chinese or Southeast Asian, I'm only there for the food. Edited to add: And speaking of the food, I forgot to mention the tomato crab soup at Vietnam Palace. I could live off that for months if I had to.

I may need to enter a 12-step program if I am to have any hope of getting Widener University faculty mentioned in the press. The trouble with life is it interferes too much with eG.

Sorry to throw you with that Epicurious "recipe", Sara, but it's been fun hanging out with you here on eG. We all hope you'll become at least a regular lurker if not an occasional participant on the forums. Thank you for sharing your time, your knowledge and that thing the Beastie Boys have for you with us. Don't be a stranger, OK?

I'm not going to even remotely claim to be an expert on medium-term or longer storage of produce. I'll just share my odyssey over several years. For a while, Ziploc made produce storage bags--plastic bags with tiny perforations that allowed air to flow through. I swore by these, as with them, it was possible to keep washed lettuce and other leafy greens fresh for more than two days or so in my fridge. Unfortunately, they didn't sell well nationwide and are no longer made. For the past few months, I have been buying pre-washed bagged salad mixes from Iovine Bros. in the Reading Terminal Market. These are prepared at their stand from mixed spring greens or combinations of Romaine, peppers and cucumbers. I had been wrapping them in paper towels and shoving them back in the bags they came in, but even with the towels, they became brown, wilted and sodden after about three days. A couple of weeks ago, I plunked down $25 on a large salad spinner. This seems to have done the trick. This particular model (an Oxo Good Grips) includes a lid so that you can use the centrifuge bowl for storage after you've spun the greens dry. One week later, the veggies were still crisp, though they were showing some traces of brown around the edges. (My refrigerator has a serious moisture problem: we haven't been able to keep condensation from forming on the ceiling of the fridge compartment.) I think that vented produce bags would be a good thing to reintroduce, perhaps at the produce stand. Oh, btw: When that radio ad ran, I would raise my hand. I view it as a relaxing activity and a chance to test my budget-savviness. Since the unscientific survey sample thus far nonetheless suggests a strong correlation between participating in this organization and enjoying the act of shopping for food (big surprise there ), maybe the problem lies with our attitudes towards food in general.

...in a direction he would no doubt be willing to go if he could only get the Merchants' Association to go with him. A couple of you already know that I just got the job I wanted Wednesday afternoon. As of Feb. 6, I will be a public relations officer at Widener University in Chester. It's going to be a challenge, but one I'm ready for--I understand the school's new chosen mission very well and it's one I believe in. Anyway, this job will be ideal--or would be--in another respect. Scoping out the various routes I could take to work, it looks to me like the quickest and easiest would be for me to take the R3 Media/Elwyn line to Swarthmore and transfer to the 109 bus to Chester there. If I leave my apartment at 7:45 in the morning, I should be at Old Main by 9. Which means that on the return trip, if I leave Widener at 5, I should be back at Market East around 6:05... ...just a few minutes too late to pick up something to cook at the Reading Terminal Market. And even if I did get in before 6, it's not assured that I'd be able to buy from all the merchants I might want to patronize, as many close for the day around 5:30 instead of the posted 6 p.m. closing time. Over in the Conversation with Sara Moulton, I wondered whether Americans would be willing to pick up fresh ingredients the same day they plan to use them, the way I understand Parisians do, if greengrocers, butchers and delis were spread across the suburban landscape the way convenience stores, gas stations and drug stores are. (Wait--Wawa stores have delis. Scratch "deli" from the preceding list.) So here I am, in an ideal situation: I can stop by the best place in town to buy fresh food on my way home from work. But it's an illusion: the place won't be open by the time I'm back in town. Might it not be worth staying open an extra half hour to capture more of the on-the-way-home business? I know that the 5:30 to 6:30 hour is a busy one at my neighborhood Super Cruise, and I could imagine the same for the RTM, especially as developers are busy converting every square inch of vacant space in its vicinity to apartments and condos. But first I understand that Paul would just like to get the merchants to all stay open until 6 like the signs on the doors say they will. I'm in your corner, Paul.

So they aren't wearing the very Seventies corduroy jeans and LaCoste alligator rugby shirts anymore? When I saw the waitstaff I had a flashback to junior high school. This was practically my uniform for a chunk of my adolescence. ← Nope. The preppy-clone look is a thing of the past. But our waiter probably would have looked great in it. That look was also the uniform of many guppy types in the 1980s.

A tad bit...yucky. I have this on impeccable authority. Check out the latest posts (as of 1/26/06, 11:12 pm ET) in the "Hot Dogs" thread in this forum. But as for your larger philosophical and metaphysical musing: Is it perhaps time for a National Hot Dog Packaging Standardization Committee, along the lines of the World War I-era Screw Thread Standardization Committee that lasted well into the 1970s? I've seen more variations in hot dog packaging than I have bun packaging. I've only run across hot dog bun packages in two flavors: packs of eight and packs of 12. ("Why 12?" IMO is an even more interesting question than the original, for it is even more out of sync than the 8s are. Or maybe not. Read on.) Meanwhile, as for the dogs: The one constant I've noticed is that the packs weigh one pound, with one notable exception that I'll get to in a minute. Oscar Mayer manages to get ten of their regular hot dogs out of that pound, the highest number of any brand I'm aware of. (This may be because Oscar Mayer wieners are noticeably thinner than the competition.) I think that several other national brands, including Armour, also come ten to the pound. Oscar Mayer "bun length" franks (also slender dogs) come eight to the pound, as do a several other brands, including Dietz & Watson, Ball Park, Nathan's Famous and Jamestown Brand Hungry 8s. Dietz & Watson Eagles Franks, however, come six to the pound. And then there is the notable exception: Hebrew National, whose dogs come in a 14-ounce package containing seven frankfurters. Imagine the chaos if all the other major manufacturers adopted the Hebrew National standard. You'd have to load up on eight packages of hot dogs and seven packages of buns before things even out. As Hebrew National franks command a price premium over most other brands due to their reputation for top quality, this could be an expensive proposition indeed. By contrast, you can achieve balance with a mere three packages of Dietz & Watson regular or Jamestown Brand dogs and two 12-packs of buns. And if you're buying buns by the 8-pack, these brands allow you to achieve the Nirvana of perfect 1:1 symmetry. (Boy, the stuff I write to keep from working on paring down an overloaded customer's resume.)

I hope that didn't get our waiter in trouble at Jones that Tuesday night. I'd say he went just a bit beyond normal casual conversation. We certainly didn't mind that at all. And I'd also have to classify him as eye candy, but with a brain and casually dressed--it appears that the uniform at Jones is no uniform.

Of course, you do know that here in Philadelphia, it'd be BYO Red Stripe -- and you'd probably be lucky to find a place that sold it in quantities smaller than cases. A friend who passed by the Broad and Olney location on the way back from the northern 'burbs brought with him a curried goat platter and red beans and rice. The curried goat--itself served over rice with a side of cabbage--was quite good, with a moderate amount of spiciness. The red beans and rice were, as my friend would say, bangin'. Well-seasoned and hearty.

Be sure to print a bunch of "CAUTION: FILLING IS HOT" stickers to slap on the wrappers for your pies as a prophylactic against the occasional lawsuit-happy customer.

This thread is quite touching, and I'm sorry I can't add to the heartwarming stories of family dinners growing up, because aside from Sunday dinner at Grandma Smith's, my childhood family dinners were not coming-together-and-bonding occasions--quite the opposite, in fact. But I do wonder about this "no time to cook" business. I wonder if it may not be "no time to get the right ingredients" as much as "no time to cook"? Consider that most Americans relegate grocery shopping to a two-hour block of time either every Saturday or every other Saturday. Then consider that many of us don't particularly enjoy this activity (a local supermarket chain in the Philadelphia area used to run radio ads that began, "Okay, all of you out there who enjoy shopping for groceries raise your hand"). Add to that the possibility--maybe probability--that most Americans also aren't up on proper medium- to long-term storage methods for fresh produce, despite the best efforts of people like Sara and Alton Brown. Put all of these factors together and you probably have gone a long way towards explaining the preponderance of canned/frozen/convenience veggies and other foods as ingredients. It probably would not be all that difficult for most Americans to pick up some veggies on the way home, much as the French do (or so I understand), for preparation that evening. Or let's say that it would not be that difficult if greengrocers and meat markets were distributed across the suburban landscape the way convenience stores, gas stations and drug stores seem to be. But they're not, and it seems most working Americans don't think about picking up dinner on the way home unless someone else has already prepared it.

This is true. And now I am worried. (I'm assuming you mean A&W when you say "hot dog chain"? Or is there something out there in America I'm missing?) I think Barbara was referring to Wienerschnitzel (nee Der Wienerschnitzel), the soi-disant "world's largest hot dog chain." I beg to differ with both Barbara's assertion that the hot dog is no longer the American food icon and your quick assent to this assertion. While the hamburger is certainly ubiquitous and dominates the world of chain fast food, I would say that the hot dog is no less ubiquitous now than it was back when baseball, not football, was the national pastime. It's just that--Wienerschnitzel aside--it's not chain fast food. New Yorkers don't grab hamburgers from sidewalk vendor carts; the food vendors that work their way down the stadium aisles during baseball or football games sell hot dogs just about exclusively--for anything else, you have to get up and go to the concession stand; every convenience store worth its salt has a roller grill with hot dogs lazily rotating atop it. And they're certainly as popular with kids now as they were back when an inspired jingle-writer first penned those immortal words, "Oh, I wish I were an Oscar Mayer wiener..." I don't know if there is any place where we can easily find statistics on how many hot dogs vs. hamburgers are sold daily by restaurants and vendors, but I'm not even sure that those figures are necessary. There's still something about the hot dog that makes it an "all-American" food icon, even if we eat more burgers.

What I had in mind was just replacing the gold trim in your new logo with the bright yellow but keeping everything else about it the same. I already said I liked that Fifties look, and the script font was an integral element in that look (and it's good that you fixed that H). I might not like the new logo as much with the yellow as with the gold, but I'd like to see it anyway just to confirm or refute my impression.

What's a lot of political b.s.? Not being pressured to toe the administration line? I would think that independence would serve you well. I can't think of a student newspaper at an Ivy League-class university (a group that includes Duke, Stanford, MIT, Caltech and Chicago) that isn't. (I think the student newspapers at the "public Ivies" -- Cal-Berkeley, UCLA, Michigan, Virginia et al. -- are connected to their universities' J-schools, but I'm not absolutely certain about this.) Which isn't to say that the administration doesn't try to influence what gets in the papers. I know that just about every director of public affairs and Vice President for University Communications at Penn tried to work the editors of The Daily Pennsylvanian, with varying degrees of success. The two most recent Penn presidents have had a greater deal of success at doing this. I plan a surfing safari within the next few days. Could you do us a favor and give a heads-up on the important stories that are upcoming?

Ahem. ← You become a cook/chef to eat for free. Work for food. ← Y'know, "Will Work for Food" would make a great title for a chef's autobiography.

Speaking with my tongue fully extracted from my cheek: This is probably the best short history of the hot dog/frankfurter/wiener/Dachshund sausage (a new term I learned from visting the site) yet posted to this board. And it explains how the St. Louis World's Fair got into the legend to boot:

You don't want to know how I read the text in quotes above initially. ("Our burgers are only served on white buns. Just look for the sign of the burning cross.") Back to the logo: Way cool, and very Fifties--I wouldn't change that script font for that reason. But I would try to find some way to work that bright yellow color back in over the dull gold you have in this version.

Wait. This creates a huge hole in the history of the frankfurter, down which we can pour thousands of historians, a hundred or so English professors (because they have theories of everything these days) and perhaps the semiotics faculty at SUNY Stony Brook--sorry, Stony Brook University. The hole is this: We know that the hot dog was really invented at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition (St. Louis World's Fair) in 1904, in order to give the R.T. French Co. of Rochester, N.Y., something to go with its new yellow mustard introduced there, unless it was really invented by Abner Doubleday in 1869 because the fans at his new base ball games were complaining about having Tabasco sauce poured over them when they requested "red hots." In any case, this gives us a span of some 40, or is that 80, years during which apparently no one ate a hot dog until ravenous, class-addled Brits came pouring through Ellis Island or the Washington Avenue immigration station or wherever it was that we processed people whose names ended in consonants rather than vowels. How did this essential part of the American diet disappear completely from everywhere but print advertising for such a long period? Inquiring minds want to know.

Since I see there are at least two Wolverine alums on this thread, and at least one of you have memories of a special burger, if either of you get a free minute, you might want to take a look at the long-running "Burger helper" thread in General Food Topics. This one was started by an enterprising fellow whose burgers have fans standing in line for them at Michigan home games (he hasn't disclosed anything about his location except his state, but some of us have figured things out), and he is now pursuing his dream of opening his own free-standing, full-time take-out hamburger stand. He has gotten advice from fellow eGulleteers on just about every aspect of the business.

Newsweek feature on a new wave in soul food, passed on to me by Gifted Gourmet Melissa Goodman: A new generation of African Americans, including Lindsey Williams, grandson of the legendary Sylvia Woods, are turning out healthier variations on the traditional Southern-influenced dishes that we know as "soul food". Apparently, it's a life-and-death matter: The funny thing is, I think this is one of those trends that has been bubbling up from below for some time now. Both when shopping for myself and when picking up ingredients as a favor for friends, I've never in the past ten years bought hamhocks for flavoring collard, mustard or turnip greens--it's always been smoked turkey for me, and smoked turkey is what I've been asked to get. And while fried chicken still rules the roost at times, roasted and baked chicken make far more frequent appearances around my house. And I usually keep America's Choice frozen, not Glory or Sylvia's canned, greens on hand for when the mood to cook greens strikes. (Note to self: Pick up an envelope of Wiley's seasonings on the next trip to the Super Fresh.) Could it be that my brothas and sistas have already gotten wise to the effects of traditional soul cooking on their bodies, and the top chefs and journalists are only now catching up? Or is this just another passing trend sparked by those at the top?