Bobby 2 Shakes

Was it me or did I spot Bourdain carrying a sack of Butter Bhang Biscuits on one of his India shows?

Mademoiselle de Paris preceeded Yann in the same location. Didn't Didier have a stroke or some other sort of catastrophic health crisis that forced them to shutter the shop? ← I think so. I was wondering how they're doing. BTW, I think Neil Stein had a Fish Market restaurant there in between.

My first instinct would be Sansom Street Oyster House. I've never had a bad meal there, and maybe you can wash it down with their Oyster Stout (Yard's?)

Does anybody else remember Didier and Maribel Leroux? They used to have a fabulous pastry shop called "Mademoiselle de Paris" on 18th ST.

A little help in determining what qualifies as porn - ---It's not the meat, it's the motive.

Ask the sushi chef - Kubiya Hiyorshi

Did anybody ever get a chance to get out to Pace One yet? I used to eat there in the 80s when I lived in Phoenixville. The last time I ate there was in September 1990, shortly after our wedding. I loved that place, it had what I considered a "Napa feel" which is some serious extrapolatin' when you've never been to Napa Valley.

If you have to apologize after drinking it, that's how you know it's good beer. Lousy beer never gets to hang around and sink in enough to do any real shame-inducing damage.

Funny thing. My wife tells me when I go to a nearby Korean Supermarket (H-Mart) if I don't bring Wei-Chuan dumplings, don't bring any. She grew up in Taiwan.

Maybe if Howard Johnson had cameras to monitor quality they'd still be flourishing today. Spreading high quality over a broader spectrum just raises the bar in a different dimension. It is a wise chef who protects the brand after having established it as a touchstone. A much deeper (and well-researched) discussion of this topic just came out last week in Michael Ruhlman's Reach of a Chef

Probably the funniest moment in this book is when some cooking school students were asked why they went there. When I read the answer I laughed so hard I brined my shorts.

Hear! Hear! In a pinch, Kelliann's at 16th & Spring Garden or Westy's at 15th & Callowhill (infamous wings) will do, too. Pool tables at Westy's.

I so picked the wrong day to put a sign on the fridge where my wife and daughter could see it saying (no, proclaiming) that I'll have NO sugar until Jan 1 2007... Unless, of course, they have Splenda offerings...

Zwahlen's is reputed to make some decent ice cream in Audubon. Just ask Holly.

The obvious jumping off point would be the Kellerousse Gastronomique duo of The French Laundry Cookbook and Bouchon by Thomas Keller and Michael Ruhlman. Another great picture cookbook is one called Larousse Best Desserts Ever that I bought in the early 1980s. Ann Willan's Look & Cook series has great color illustrations, as does the Time-Life Good Cook series. Shizuo Tsuji's Japanese Cooking - A Simple Art has sixteen pages of beautiful illustrations, of which eight are finished dishes. Also, it depends what you want from a cookbook. If all you want is to suck out the zeitgeist like when watching the Food Network, then you want color pictures. If you want to learn how to make dishes, Jacques Pepin's Complete Techniques (B&W) is for you.

Better Fishtown than Beantown.

Here, Philly Inquirer columnist and voice of reason Rick Nichols weighs in on PETA's next target, Philadelphia; Pumped with a side order of waffles.

What a coincidence. I was just thinking about how wonderful it would be to go to a donut shop where you place yourself in the hands of the baker and he whips up whimsical concoctions of dough, icing and a carefully thought out flavoring regimen timed to hit each tastebud at the exact moment of maximum impact. Guess it won't be long now, maybe they'll be on the menu at Bar Masa between rounds of golf. Reading this book feels like having a pousse-cafe with liqueurs handcrafted over a period of years by one person lovingly hand-poured before your eyes by this same artist, who watches intently and vicariously enjoys each layer as you drink it. The lessons learned from Charcuterie in taking time to allow ingredients to reach their peak were not lost on Michael. In this case, the ingredients were details, and these details were arranged like a Bach or Beethoven symphony. Despite this mastery, some will not enjoy this book because his views are not in alignment with theirs. Some will nitpick and magnify the tiny flaws that are inevitable in a work of this magnitude, especially those with an ax to grind. If saying this makes me sound like a sycophant, it is a sycophancy well-deserved.

Hear! Hear! Although I must admit I'd drive to NY, Balt or DC to eat at his restaurant. But closer is definitely better - Upper Darby is best for me!

Not to mention free samples everyday - salted clams, fermented black beans, sesame leaves sweet or spicy... you could eat well free here alone. I tried some Chinese sausage made in Korea, OK if you like cinnamon - not for me, though.

I'd have to get a pie from Franzone's and one from Charlie's in the Swede Square Shopping Center and settle once and for all which one is the best in the (Montco) area. Then get to Tacconelli's and see what all the fuss is about.

Anybody hear any news about Chef Ito? I just read Michael Ruhlman's Reach of a Chef and there's a story about a strip-mall sushi chef named Masayoshi Takayama. Thomas Keller talked him into moving next to Per Se, and now he's charging the highest prices in the country, $420 a person to start including mandatory gratuity. People (like Ruhlman & Bourdain) who eat there say it's a steal! Surely we can find a way to keep Chef Ito in the Philly area, but his food would warrant NY prices wherever he went.

I've heard that the Mounties keep a Bouquet Garni under their saddles in the same way the Tartars made early Steak Tartare. Of course, that could just be the voice in my head.

I quite agree. I don't see anybody gaining wisdom from substituting Steve & Edie for Penn & Teller.

I'm reading Reach from the beginning, diving into Bits willy-nilly like a caffeinated cockroach, and so far it confirms my earliest conclusion; Ruhlman is the Beatles, Bourdain is the Stones. Today, we don't need 4 guys to represent the archetype. In our sophistication we realize that Michael has facets of his personality that represent John, Paul, George & Ringo, and just as John Lennon was the Beatles' ambassador to the Stones fans, there's a part of Ruhlman that resonates with the Stern section of Tony's peanut gallery. I also get the feeling that if Grant (chefg to you eGullet aficionados, as noted in the book) suspected that the mechanics he took his car to weren't giving 100%, he'd elbow them aside and tune the fuel injection via the car's computer to deliver 100 extra horsepower and discard enough weight in the car to have the effect of adding another 50.