Diann

I know you saw the Philadelphia thread already, but I figured I'd throw in my two cents as a current Penn student. We really do have a lot of food trucks -- including Chinese, so Toronto wouldn't be unique in that respect. I think Berkeley also has numerous Chinese food trucks. What's on Penn's campus? My favorite* are: - Greek Lady: The owners are Greek, but most of their food isn't. There's the original small cart which serves mostly hoagies (Italian, tuna salad, chicken salad, etc.); around 2002 they opened up a larger truck that served souvlaki and gyros off of a spit, plus other hot items like cheesesteaks. Now they actually have a restaurant (still on campus) serving basically the same stuff as the big truck. See www.greeklady.com for the menu. The original cart is still around, though I haven't seen the other truck in a while -- probably because the restaurant takes a lot of work to run. They make a good cheesesteak, chicken cheesesteak, and cheesesteak hoagie (god, I hate to think how many calories are in those things). - KoJA: Bulgogi, "teriyaki", etc. served out of a truck. Nice sticky white rice, deep fried "dumplings" (I think they come from Wal-mart), and two very nice Korean men running the place. They stuff large styrofoam clamshell containers with rice and bulgogi for $5.50. - Yue Kee: Probably has the most disreputable appearance of all the trucks on campus, and service is extremely slow (you can call ahead to place an order, but it'll still take half an hour to get your food ready) but it's the best Chinese truck... - The Original Le An: I think I'm misspelling this since I haven't eaten there in over a year. While they claim to make Chinese food, you're better off going with Vietnamese stuff (a decent pho, chive dumplings, sweet rice in a bamboo shoot for dessert, bubble tea)... The "Real" Le An is across the street, so it can be confusing. I think one of our local papers did a story last year about the difference between the two carts. - The fruit salad ladies: There are probably four or five of these carts within a five-block radius of each other. The basic fruit salad is a clear plastic clamshell container with slices of watermelon, honeydew, cantaloupe, grapes (red and green seedless), navel oranges, pineapple, mango, kiwi, and either strawberries or cherries. Excellent when most of this fruit is in season, and still pretty good even in the middle of winter. $2.00 for a small, $2.50 for a medium (16 oz?), $3 or $4 for a large. - Bui's: I feel like they're a campus institution. You can technically get cheesesteaks, hoagies etc. here, as at many other trucks (as mrbigjas mentioned), but people come in droves for the egg sandwiches, especially on weekend mornings (well, really more like noon or 1PM, but that's "morning" for a lot of people). It's basically two eggs on an Amoroso roll, with cheese (always white American) if you want it, any kind of breakfast meat you might want, and "salpeppakechup?", the trademark line of the people at Bui's, who are extraordinarily nice as well. You can try to make a sandwich that's vaguely healthy here by ordering egg whites with fresh tomatoes on a roll. And I think it's impossible to spend more than $4.00 on a sandwich here, no matter how much junk you load it up with. A standard egg and cheese runs you $2.00. There's also Magic Carpet (for vegetarian items, like falafel and spinach pie), Hemo's (for grilled chicken sandwiches that are good when you add spinach, mushrooms, tomatoes, cheese, and "Hemo sauce" -- really just like a runny Dijon), MexiCali, Indian trucks, crepe trucks, various hoagie trucks where you can always get a hot dog, meatball sub, cheesesteak, etc., other Chinese trucks...the list goes on and on. Most undergraduates seem to live off of food trucks (which makes sense, given that a meal in the dining halls costs something like $10 or more). There are also several interesting food trucks near Drexel that I haven't had a chance to try yet -- soul food, barbeque, and Jamaican stuff.

Oh, I know I left out a TON of stuff :) although personally, I'm a little wary of tripe. Tendon yes (like in pho), tripe no, for some reason.

Made it to Lakeside last night! Stuffed myself silly (with three friends) and had leftovers for $12 each. Ordered shrimp dumplings (har gow), pork dumplings (siu mai), panfried pork dumplings, those wide rice noodle things wrapped around shrimp served with soy sauce (he fun?), steamed rice in lotus leaves (came with big chunks of chinese sausage and various other meats, yum), congee with chicken and ginger, chinese broccoli in oyster sauce, chicken feet (dyed cancerous red...mildly frightening -- the color, not the chicken feet themselves ), steamed BBQ pork buns (cha siu bao), sesame balls with lotus seed paste, panfried noodles with beef, and I think a couple of other dishes I can't remember now. Oh! and of course the do miao/pea sprouts that inspired me to go to Lakeside (my friends picked it over Shiao Lan Kung) in the first place. Friends missed seeing the food come around on carts, but I figure the food is fresher the way Lakeside serves it. EVERYTHING was good, especially the har gow (very thin translucent wrappers and lots of fresh shrimp, not filler) and cha siu bao (the BBQ pork inside was moist and chewy). Service was friendly, too. I did miss my chrysanthemum tea, though (Lakeside serves "generic Chinese restaurant tea"). Question about the pea tendrils, by the way: does anyone know what I'm talking about when I say I think there's a difference between the large shoots/tendrils and the small ones? I remember my parents always asking if a restaurant had the small ones, and I think those are the ones folks on this thread (me included) obsess over. They actually look like what you'd imagine pea shoots to look like, vs. what I was served last night (which was still good!) -- these were more like large leaves, not tendrils... Need to stop by Sue's again to check this out. Or, I bet lots of places in Chinatown carry them.

According to the Italian Market website, it's on 9th between Wharton and Fitzwater. Excellent hoagies and bread to be found at Sarcone's; cheese at DiBruno Bros.; and Vietnamese/Mexican food along Washington Ave (see above posts).

I know! I'm going to Montreal tomorrow (yes...I'm going somewhere where it's even COLDER than here. Good planning!) but I can't wait to get back and start trying all of these places. If you haven't googled it yet, they're similar to regular dumplings except they're round, always steamed, and they contain some broth inside (along with the regular meat/vegetable filling). So you can easily injure yourself when biting into one because of the hot "soup" spurting out, but I'm willing to burn my tongue for some. Thanks a bunch to all for the suggestions. I'd never heard of Four Rivers and that's exactly why I posted on this board. Forgot to add Shiao Lan Kung to the original list since I read about it all the time here! P.S. What's this sweet chicken (xoi ga) dish at Ba Le? My experience with Vietnamese food is limited to pho and bahn mi's and such. Need to start branching out...

What place is this? I remember going by a Jamaican place (that I vaguely remember as being part of a chain) at around 50th and Baltimore. Can't remember the name, and for all I know I could be ten blocks off. ← The chain might be Golden Krust, which is 125 S. 69th St. I *think* the name of the place I love is Caribbean Cuisine (just based off of this website, which seems to be useful if you've got a hankering for anything Jamaican.) It's definitely at 60th and Baltimore, in an old trolley station. Basically just a tiny storefront; great patties, oxtail stew (my fave), jerk, doughy white bread (can't remember what it's called), rice and peas, cabbage, roti... haven't tried any of the fish/seafood items yet but they seem to be big sellers. They also have a dinner buffet -- maybe $10 for seven different items that rotate daily or weekly. And they carry Ting and all sorts of Jamaican drinks, yum. They have a sign inside that says they won best of Citypaper or Philadelphia Magazine in 2002 or so (sorry for the terrible memory, I'm all drugged up on cold medicine right now).

This is almost embarrassing to admit, but I've lived in Philadelphia for almost four years and I've been to Chinatown less than ten times. It's not like I live far away ("the UC" -- I like that )...it's not like I don't get into Center City (I somehow find time to dine out at least once a week, and mostly on the other side of the Schuykill, too)...it's not like I don't love food...AND, I grew up eating Chinese food. RAAAR. So I've resolved to change this. These places are on my to-go list already: - Lakeside Chinese Deli - Rangoon (not Chinese, but whatever) - Ba Le (see above) - Soup Train (that's in Chinatown, right?) - Nan Zhou Now I need advice re: actual Chinese restaurants. I love duck/wonton places like Sang Kee, and I've been to Joy Tsin Lau/Empress Garden/Ocean (Harbor?), etc.; I need to go back and explore their menus. But I'm trying to find homestyle Cantonese/Shanghai food -- does it exist here? I'm thinking winter melon soup and other slow cooked soups -- don't know what to call it in English, sorry; steamed whole fish; Shanghai "lion's heads" (I can't spell, but here's an attempt: shr tz tou); soup dumplings (I'm almost positive that soup dumplings aren't in Phila anymore)...and then homestyle dishes. I bet brushing up on my Chinese reading skills would be helpful for this. Regardless. Any ideas? And what about general suggestions for Chinese food? Where do you go, and what do you get? Doesn't have to be in Chinatown, but I don't want Joseph Poon/Susanna Foo, either. Thanks!

Err...ignore Tony Luke's, since I didn't read the previous posts.

Rome!! That's great. Enjoy yourself and eat lots of pasta for me. Brunch at Lacroix is better than dinner in my opinion. What about Tony Luke's, John's (still haven't been), cheesesteaks, Vietnam for the sampler platter, Fisher's pretzels, Monk's/any type of beer-and-frites place, Lolita for the amazing margaritas, Smoked Joint for more BBQ, Jamaican food (there's a place I love at 60th and Baltimore), and Chinese food? Just some thoughts in addition to all the things you listed below :) Oh, and Yann for pastries, perfect bread, desserts... maybe Miel too if you like it. Guess you won't need Capogiro!

First post in the PA forum! I've been lurking for a while, though. This is from a while back, but I was at TSJ for their $30 all-you-can-eat Super Bowl special, which was a great deal for the money. They did a great job of passing around lots of fresh pizzas to each table -- I don't normally like barbeque chicken pizza but their chicken was tender and juicy, and there wasn't too much onion or barbeque sauce overpowering the thing. Crust was soft and chewy -- not a classically great pizza crust, but still good. And the pulled pork and pickle pizza -- sort of like a Cuban sandwich, yum. They also passed around trays of "pretzel bites" (fine), brisket wrapped in pita with horseradish BBQ sauce (good, but too much horseradish overpowered the brisket, I think), and pulled chicken pita (YUM. I love their chicken.) At the buffet, they had wings, ribs, pulled pork on spongy white bread :), slices of brisket, bowls of root beer beans and slaw, platters of mac and cheese...my thoughts: - Wings: I don't actually like wings with the traditional hot sauce, but these I liked. Bigger than Moriarty's, dry-rubbed, flavorful, and the spice doesn't hit you until you're a few bites in - Ribs: Good but not memorable. I think I like Phoebe's better... the sauce was fantastic, though (even served cold) - Pulled pork: Not vinegary enough, and a little dry. GREAT spongy white bread, though -- for some reason it reminded me of the Taiwanese style tea bread loaves you can get in Chinatown bakeries - Root beer beans: Nice meaty bits in the beans, but I noticed the metallic aftertaste people have been talking about - Mac and cheese: Hm, interesting. Lots of people were ordering big bowls of this for their tables, but I didn't think it was worth an extra $10. Nice crunchy topping and the noodles weren't too mushy, but I actually prefer Phoebe's (ultimately TSJ's just ended up being bland.) But I like Boston Market's mac and cheese, so I'm probably not a true connoisseur of the stuff. - Cornbread: OHMYGOD. Crunchy on the outside, dense and slightly sweet on the inside, with chunks of peppers (either cubanello or jalapeno, but I think cubanello) scattered throughout...if I could bring this cornbread to Phoebe's (still my favorite barbeque joint in/around Center City, and thus the one I frequent most regularly) I could die a happy girl. They also had $5 margaritas (good) and $3 drafts (even better). And very importantly, fantastic service, especially considering that the place was PACKED. They made sure to have lots of big screens, which I appreciated, and every server/bartender was incredibly nice AND thoughtful, replenishing plates, cutlery, napkins, FOOD, and drinks as needed. My main problem with TSJ is the regular menu pricing -- I probably wouldn't go back for a $22 half-rack ribs when I can get the same thing at Phoebes for $12. (And I think other BBQ joints are priced like Phoebes, as well.) And, as Peter said, the atmosphere's kind of weird. But I will be back for happy hour, when pizzas are $7 and other food specials are $5-$7. And it probably would be fun for a group outing :)