Buckethead

I assume you're talking about Easter weekend, Fri-Sun? I know nothing about our city's B&B scene, but Google shows a high concentration of them in the Washington Square West area, so if that's where you end up I'd recommend Southwark (4th and Bainbridge, one of the best bars in the city, and a very good restaurant too), Chick's Cafe, or Brauhaus Schmitz, a German beer hall. That may not be what you're after but their draft list is fantastic and the food is pretty good too. Chick's is the weakest of those three as far as food goes IMO. If you end up in Rittenhouse, Village Whiskey is new and very good, but small and usually packed. Tinto (next door) has a nice bar too. Pub and Kitchen is also nearby and excellent but the crowd can get annoying there depending on the day of the week you're going. Fine BYOB dining=Bibou, but it's very hot right now and there aren't many tables. Call and talk to Charlotte and explain you're looking to have the table all night. If they are booked (Opentable says they are on 4/3 apart from a 5:30 table), Koo Zee Doo and Kanella would round out my picks for the 3 best BYOs in the city right now.

All of Percyn's picks are good, but I would narrow that list down a bit. Koo Zee Doo is awesome but it's not open on Wednesdays. Bibou is awesome but the only table for two they have available on Wednesday is at 5 pm. Kanella and Zahav are my two favorites of the remaining candidates. Fond is very good, but it's not in the same league as most of the others, and you've most likely had very similar food in NYC. As far as I know (which isn't all that far) there is nothing like Zahav in NYC, and Kanella compares very favorably to Kefi. Amada would be my pick over Chifa, if you'd like to try one of Jose Garces' places. I'd go to Zahav if I were you.

I tried it last week, it was good but not as good as Osteria, and it costs about the same when all is said and done. The best thing I had was the coppa on the salumi plate.

According to Opentable, Bibou has a table open at 7:30 tonight. They didn't earlier today, maybe more cancellations will follow?

(quote actually from Philadining's blog, not his EG post)Based on that and your photo of your glass of wine, it seems that you got the special treatment. Either that, or they decided they were throwing too many pies away and they should just serve them as-is. I tried Stella last night and they obviously didn't do the structural integrity test on our pie, it was limp and floppy on one half, barely crisp on the other. Also, our wine pours (four of them between two of us) were about half the size of the one in that photo, the glass was less than half-full. The pizza (we had a margherita) was OK but nothing you can't get at any other half-decent upper mid-level place like Bertucci's or whatever. I liked the look of some of the other pies on the menu but frankly, if you can't knock a margherita pizza out of the park I'm not sure how good the other ones can possibly be. After reading about Starr's pizza taste-test trip, I expected more. I actually liked our small plate (the sausauge and lentil ragu) a lot more than the pizza.

Last time I was there, I had the same problem with the pizza. Not cooked enough, and as a result the middle of the pizza was totally floppy.

It was 'Best Cajun', the photo is making me hungry..

It seems like the crowds have died down a little bit at Cajun Kate's, I went there today right at noon and there were open seats at the counter. They have yet to expand into the adjacent stall, I wasn't there long enough to talk to them about it so I don't know if that's still in the works or not. The food was as good as ever, I finally got to try the smoked pork po-boy, that was excellent. My smoked brisket gumbo was a little unpleasantly fatty, but still very tasty. Fried mac and cheese this week is sweet corn and applewood-smoked bacon.

Don't get me started on that stupid layout.. I live about 5 minutes away from there on foot, and I don't go very often because of the ridiculous floorplan. The first time I went I was so stupefied by it that I just left without even getting any gelato. It has exactly the problem you describe, and more: the line to order is also the line to taste, pay, and enter/exit the building. And it's a space about 30 inches wide by 10 feet long. If there are 4 people in line you are waiting outside. There are also apartments upstairs, and the residents use the store as their way in and out as well. I was told by someone working there that the gelato is in those covered containers because they don't make it there, they bring it in from another store. I think it needs to be in those containers to survive the journey with its texture intact. And they don't have one of those nice gelato cases like they do at the Sansom St. locations.

There's also the new location on E Passyunk Ave., next to Paradiso. The selection of flavors is a lot better at the 20th St. location, though.

There was a fire this morning at the original Capogiro at 13th and Sansom: http://mealticket.blogs.citypaper.net/blog...th-st-capogiro/ They're closed for now. The gelato display case was destroyed, so if they plan to replace it with another one imported from Italy I guess they could be closed for a while.

Must have been a light night; 5 people and 4 bottles! When hitting BYO's like this with a group, we usually make a wine "assignment" for each diner. A group of us will be visiting later this week. Has anyone tried the tasting menu? I understand it is 7 courses for $70 -- are these courses on the a la carte menu, or are they specially made for the tasting menu? Brian ← I had the tasting menu a week or so ago and it was all courses off the regular menu for that evening. The portions were smaller than the dishes going out to the dining room (thankfully). I'd recommend doing the tasting if you don't mind the cost, everything I had was excellent. The scallop in particular was the best I've ever had. But you won't get anything you can't get off the a la carte menu.

I was there for dinner this past week and the waiter said they had one lamb's head (and neck!) for one lucky table, we ordered more conservatively but I remember him telling another table that it was $40. We did get the pacu ribs, those were awesome.

The only place I know in that immediate area is A La Maison, and I wouldn't recommend that you go there.

When do they open?

The Main Line is part of Route 30, west of the city. City Line Ave. is Route 1. The two do intersect, but that's probably not near where you'll be. I don't suppose you can give us a cross-street or the name of her neighborhood? 'Northern Philly' covers a lot of real estate.

So did anyone go?

Shola's blog appears to be open to the public again: http://studiokitchen.typepad.com/

It's $250 per person. Foobooz has the menu and wine pairings: http://foobooz.com/2009/03/degustazione-at-vetri/#more-7828

I had lunch there today, it was great as always. The fried mac and cheese this week is crab and yellow corn. I got to talking with someone there who said they are thinking about expanding into the stall next to theirs (one of the other tenants is leaving). From what she said, they would turn some or all of the counter seats they have now into a cold display case for their takeout business (which is huge, 6 or 8 people picked up orders just while I was eating lunch, and that was at 3 PM), and the stall they will expand into will provide seating. So it may soon be much easier to go there. I know I only go if I can go late in the afternoon, it's too crowded around noon to sit down.

I presume your answer to those questions is 'yes'? Care to share any of that info with the rest of us?

If you're set on Morimoto, I'd do omakase, no sushi. I've never had the omakase there but their sushi is just good, not great. My one non-sushi meal there was also good, but not great. If you're set on sushi, I'd go to Zento instead.

I've been to three of these dinners now (Restaurant M and snackbar before this) and this one, while I enjoyed it quite a bit, was my least favorite of the three. Of course, the previous two meals were among the best meals I've ever had, so my expectations were very high, and this one was a bit less expensive than the other two. Dessert was my favorite part of the meal, although from other diners' descriptions on Chowhound, I think mine must have been plated wrong: the yogurt powder on mine (which was delicious) had been sprinkled on the plate first, ending up underneath the other elements. It also was really stuck to the plate, so it was hard to get it re-integrated. I can imagine that it would have been much better sprinkled over the fruit and sorbet (which is how other people described theirs), rather than the plate. The sorbet itself was fantastic though. My favorite savory course was the fish, the peanut-cauliflower puree was a great combo, and my fish was perfectly cooked, though my wife's was a little more medium than medium-rare. The brown butter was perfect. The veal dish had elements that I really liked, but overall I felt that there were one or two too many things going on on the plate, it was nearly impossible to get a bite incorporating every element, and even when I did I felt like the veal was the weak link. The sweetbreads were really well done, as was the ravioli and the celeriac puree. I noticed the menu I posted earlier was not exactly what we got, the veal dish for example had sweetbreads on it, and I don't think there was any elderflower jelly in the dessert. I'd be interested to learn what else was involved in the sweetbread prep, they were a really nice surprise in that dish. He told us that he was planning to do another dinner at Blackfish next month, and that it would be announced on the Studiokitchen facebook group, so if you're on facebook just search for 'studiokitchen'.

My newspaper says Excellent - Three bells. When I saw that, I said, "Damn! It will be months before I have that Cypriot breakfast." ← Three bells is more like it! But online it has two bells: http://www.philly.com/philly/restaurants/2...08_Kanella.html I wonder which one is Laban's actual opinion? Maybe this is his way of saying it's 2.5 bells?

So I'm reading Laban's Kanella review, and wondering yet again what the point of the bell system is when the bells appear to have no relation whatsoever to the text of the review. He lavishes praise on the chef, the food, and the service. The worst he can say about the servers is that they can be 'quirky', yet he admits that 'each of our waiters proved to be charmingly enthusiastic, skilled pros.' The only words written about the food that are not *glowing* are these: 'There were few disappointments - a bland baby octopus; some overspiced green beans; a few bones left in the whole dorado.' That's it. The rest of the food is described as 'transcendent', 'masterful', one dish is described as 'one of the most profound dishes I've eaten all year.' So that's only good for two bells?