Tim Dolan

I know most of the places in the Borgata are booked up during primetime a few weeks out, so you're really stuck between a rock and a hard place. There's also more than enough foot traffic, so the wait list becomes pretty long if you attempt the walk-in approach. Maybe you could convice everyone to gamble until 10 then go for a late dinner .

Apothecary opens tonight, and with it the trend of cocktail focused bars and lounges comes to our city. I'll leave the comparisons to other places to those who frequent NYC. I myself am very much a beer drinker, but I'm still fairly excited to check this place out. Katie I'm assuming this place has to be at the top of your list...

It's been almost two years since I first tried sushi (recounted here) and I was randomly feeling the urge to give it another shot, so after much research we decided to hit up Zento. We didn't sit at the bar because our tactic was to order things that we knew we liked, as well as ordering a few individual pieces of sushi to see how things went. This tactic worked out very well. First off, I have to mention that our server was great. When we told her that we knew next to nothing about sushi, she was borderline excited that she was going to be able to take us to school on the subject. She made us feel very comfortable asking anything we wanted. We started off the the new-style sashi appetizer, which was a few slices of whitefish drizzled with a ginger yuzu sauce. I figured it would be a good way to ease into the meal. This was killer. The yuzu provided a nice citrusy kick yet didn't overwhelm the fish. More importantly, my girlfriend might've liked it better than I did. It was definitely an eye opening experience and also laid the foundation for the rest of the meal: I had eaten (mostly) raw fish and very much enjoyed it. I also played it safe and got the Kobe beef entree, which I though was good but not great. It was accomplanied by a nice, spicy sauce that I enjoyed. Not much else to say about it. GF ordered a crab roll, which is really the only sushi related item that she has been a fan of for a while. I was definitely only dipping my toes in the water, but I got a piece of maguro and a piece of o-toro. This time, there were no alarms ringing in my head and I was actually excited to try what was in front of me. And this time, I honestly liked it. I didn't love it, and it was still a somewhat strange experience, bu the important thing is that it got me excited to try even more things. It's not like I flipped a switch and suddenly love sushi, but it definitely made me more curious to see what else I can get into. I can say that after having the o-toro I have a much better idea of what all the hype is about. It was a beautiful slice of fish that had a silky texture to it. They also had a special that evening, an Australian whitefish (name began with an H, the rest I forget) that my GF ordered and said was very good. This is the same person who couldn't even get down what she tried on our first excursion. All in all, it was a very satisfying trip. We didn't try very much, but we are definitely over our inital fears. As dagordon had mentioned, the fact that it was cut smaller than what other place offer definitely contributed to us enjoying our meal more. It wasn't small and we didn't feel ripped off, but there wasn't more than what we could fit into our mouths in one comfortable bite. Next time, less normal food, more sushi. And uni. I wanted to pull the trigger on that but I wanted something to look forward to for next time. We're taking baby steps towards sitting at the bar.

I say you go for it man. You could do a side-by-side tasting and see which one you like better. For some more in-depth research, check out this thread.

Some unfortunate news. I was in tonight and the new owners are beginning to foul things up. Word from some people who know is that there is a heavy case of "we're going to do things OUR way" with the new mangement. Four or five steak jockeys who have manned the grill for the past few years caught the axe over the weekend. There's a help wanted sign in the window. They ran out of black cherry soda due to not placing the normal order. The normal bottles of Tabasco sauce have been replaced by some truly terrible homemade hot sauce. Imagine if you started with a normal bottle of Tabasco, dumped out 2/3 of it then filled it back up with one part water and one part vinegar. It was gross. The "new items" that I heard are being added to the menu are shrimp and chicken fingers. I was thinking maybe cheese fries might make sense, but shrimp? The pleasant folks that didn't get fired yet seemed to realize that the writing is on the wall. It's pretty sad. I mean, I understand that it's completely natural for new owners to want things set up how they want and bring in their own people, but you think that maybe, just maybe, they would realize that the people who've been working there for years have a pretty good idea of what's going on?

I just got finished eating a totally unremarkable steak from Harry Och's that I bought this afternoon. I was feeling like splurging so I asked them to cut me off an inch and a half thick porterhouse. It looked great before it hit my cast iron pan and even better when it was finished, unfortunately the taste didn't measure up to the looks. There was no discernable difference between that steak and any piece of meat that I could pick up from Acme. And at $36, there should be.

I call these the "review lemmings." You see them everywhere, tattered review clutched in their sweaty little fists. It's kind of amusing. ← I'm not a LaBan lemming, but I'm absolutely an EG lemming . After seeing those picutres Philadining posted, my brother and I ran down down to see if we could get some of that goodness. The word is most definitely out, because they were all out of XLB, sui mai dumplings and something else that my brother wanted. Boooooooooo. Walked around to the Terminal instead...

Capital Grille is perfectly fine in my opinion, but if your friend really loves steak this boils down to two options: the ribeye at Barclay Prime or the ribeye for two at Osteria. Both are ridiculously good. You could probably save some coin and get a steak that may or may not knock your socks off at CG, but since your friend is coming in from France, why chance it? Actually forget I mentioned CG, just do either Barclay Prime or Osteria. You'll be happy you did.

Sometimes you need a foray into the mediocre to appreciate the good stuff. But it was kind of late, around 11, so Shank's was out. And it was my brother's idea for the head-to-head so I threw him a bone.

Geno's meat was more tender throughout the entire steak (or at least my half). Pat's had a few pieces of steak that were probably sitting on the griddle for an hour and managed to find a way into my sandwich. I hate gristle as well, but sometimes you just gotta suck it up .

I'd say putting ketchup on a cheesesteak is just as normal as putting ketchup on a cheeseburger, although the picture above does have way too much of it. The hot sauce, on the other hand, you could argue is on the fringe. Even still, I've spiked my steaks at Dalessandro's with tabasco more times than I can rememer. To me it's like a substitute to an actual pepper. As for the condiments at Geno's, there were only peppers, ketchup and hot sauce available. Anything outside of those three I would consider to be completely out of left field.

All this talk about proper sandwich terminology made me want to get back to the places that started it all. And after taking a whole five minutes to figure out how to upload pictures from my camera phone, I present the classic head-to-head... Pat's, Whiz witout... Geno's, Whiz witout, WAY too much ketchup and some hot sauce, courtesy of my sloppy brother... You can't tell from these pictures, but the Pat's steak had much more meat on it, although it was a bit more gristly and a tad overcooked. Also although I ordered this steak wit out, I still had a bunch of loose onions in there. I know it's tough to complain about this when everything is cooked on the same griddle, but it happens ALL THE TIME at Pat's. I swear everytime I've gotten a steak from there, it's had some onions in it. And I hate onions. Geno's, on the other hand, was a bit skimpier on the steak, but wasn't overcooked or gristly and managed to keep out any onions. You know, like how it was ordered. Anyway, I've been to both of these places enough times (though tonight was my first time in a WHILE) that the complete opposite has happened at both places. Oh well. While my brother and I (and most of the city) both completely agreed that both steaks are good but there is certainly better, it was nice to get back down there just to see how things are going. Expect more haphazardly taken pictures of various sandwiches now that I can upload from my phone...

Pictures like that are the reason that I wish I liked sushi. Looks awesome. Gotta give it another shot sometime...

I stopped by Wasko's for the pork sandwich and it was indeed pretty good. It was a step above the Eagles Nest Deli on the other side of the river. I asked the guy behind the counter about how the Marchino's breads sell out in the 'burbs. He said he can't get people to order them. He said he's tried giving out samples and everything but they haven't caught on. People out there betta rekanize. I've found that most of the sandwiches in the area (Wasko's, Eagles Nest, Satchmo's) are solid, fufilling sandwiches, but they all have exactly the same type roll. I'm not sure if they're all from the same bakery but they sure seem like it. And it's not a bad roll, it's always been fresh from all three places, but it doesn't bring an otherwise good sandwich to the what-I-can-get-in-Philly level. The only place I've come across that comes close to a good South Philly roll is the Italian Market in Skippack. If all these places starting using the same roll as the Italian Market, then the overall sandwich bar of this particular area of the suburbs would be substantially raised.

Cheesesteak updates in the Manayunk/Roxborough area: there's a new place right off Main St., on the corner of Cresson and Levering caleed Duff's Steaks. They have a number of crazy, non-traditional offerings such a beast of a sandwich called the Junk in the Yunk. It's a cheesesteak with chicken fingers, fries, Whiz and American cheese buried underneath a pile of chopped steak. It's guarenteed to make purists roll their eyes in disgust, but it's not bad at all. I took a picture of it on my cell phone so I'll try to get it on here at some point. As for their traditional cheesesteak, I'd say it easily competes for second-best in the neighborhood behind Dalessandro's. Which brings me to my next point: Dalessandro's has just been sold to new owners. THIS I am extremely worried about. I don't know much about the details behind the sale, other than that the new owners have said the want to introduce a few new items to the menu. I was just in there last week and everything seemed as normal as ever, and one of my friends was there yesterday and told me the same thing. But you know how fast that can change. I don't care what they want to introduce, as long as they don't do a damn thing differently with their normal cheesesteak!

I rarely get a slice of pizza at the park, but I was at least happy with the Peace A Pizza stands that they had there. Well not this year. Anybody know anything about this place? I know I brought this up before after Geno's pulled out of Ashburn Alley, but now that Peace A Pizza is out I have to assume that that CBP is charging insane rent. I can't imagine how a business wouldn't want to stay in a place that draws over 3 MILLION people over 81 days unless they're not turning a profit.

I believe I read somewhere that the old Heavyweight brewer was opening a place a few doors down from McMenamin's? Is that correct?

Last time I stopped in I had the Italian beer that you had on tap, I believe it was the Berrifico (sp?). It was very light, tasted like I was drinking air, but in a good way. I just bought my tickets for tonight's kickoff event in East Falls. The countdown to the end of my workweek has officially begun! Actually who am I kidding, the countdown begins as soon as I walk in every Monday morning...

It seems that since Beer Week was announced, more and more places jumped in as to not be left out of the festivites. I think it's pretty impressive that so many different events, no matter what size, have been added over the past month. Anyway, I missed the Navy Yard again this year. From what I read elsewhere the place was completely mobbed. Anybody go? And have any newly added events caught your eye?

The only thing missing is the giant Milwaukee's Best can falling from the sky and crushing you with it. j/k .

In today's Daily News...

Ok I went on Friday night with my gf for a belated Valentine's day dinner. We could only get 9:15 reservations and we were seated as soon as we walked in. The place was basically full and stayed that way until we left almost an hour and a half later. I thought our service was great. As soon as we sat down, the host opened up our bottles of wine, chatted for a bit and turned things over to our server. I believe her name was Marie (?) and she was friendly and enthusiastic without trying too hard or being cheesy. Started out with an amuse of toasted bread made in house, gorgonzola, soppressata and aged balsamic. For whatever reason my gf seemed borderline miserable early in the evening, like she just wasn't up for going out or doing anything. After she had this her face lit up and whatever seemed to be wrong with her just melted away. I might start carrying this stuff around with me and throwing her one every time she gets out of line . Needless to say, it was a good start. Our bread was brought to the table after our amuse and came with a dollop of ricotta cheese and olive oil, lemon zest and cracked pepper. Bread service isn't really a make-or-break part of dinner for me, but this really added something to the whole meal. The bread was cut from a huge main loaf that was at the front of the restaurant, which gave the place a nice sense of community since each table was receiving their bread from the same loaf. The bread and ricotta/olive oil tasted clean and incredibly fresh. It was great. My app was the beef carpaccio, which came with arugala, capers, shaved parmesan and some lemaon juice. Very simple, very tasty. The closer I got to finishing it, the smaller bites I was taking because I didn't want it to be gone. For my pasta I had the agnolotti filled with, iirc, some mixture of squash, artichoke and cheese, served with brown butter and toasted almonds. I don't know what else to say besides that it was great. Perfect texture and excellent flavor. I had wanted to get the gnocchi which I've heard so much about, but unfortunately they were out. If the ravioli were this good, then I can't WAIT to try the gnocchi. My third course was the hangar steak. This was pretty standard but executed very well. Beautiful medium rare goodness with porcini mushrooms in a red wine sauce. My dessert was tiramisu very light and very tasty. At the end of everything we were also offered some shots of sambuca, which was slightly sweet and mellow and will erase any bad memories of downing too many shots of disgusting Romana. Not that I would know anything about that. We did encounter some of the crunchy pasta that has been mention before, as my gf's plate of shrimp bucatini was a bit too al dente, but this was the only misstep of the night. I was so wrapped up in my dinner that I barely paid attention to what my gf had (except for the pasta) so I just emailed her to jog my memory. Her quote: "I got the mussles for the app and the fried eggplant. The mussles were huge, tender and delicious and the fried eggplant was amazing, not dried out, perfect. And the cheesecake for dessert which was the creamiest slice of heaven I've ever had." To sum things up, I don't have the techincal knowledge to know if things could've been any better than they were (save for the pasta), I only know what I think is good. And the true measure of a meal for me is when I take a bite, and my shoulders relax and I think to myself "damn, this is really good". It usually only happens when I have a really great piece of steak, but it happened with almost every bite I had of this meal. AND to top things off, as many people have mentioned, the check came to a grand total of $64 and change. It was almost laughable. I'll be back as soon as possible.

Wow... just... wow. I can't post details right now because I'm running out, but I just wanted to say that it was one of the best meals I've had in a LONG time. Can't wait to go back and try to work my way through everything on the menu.

Tried to walk in last Friday around 9:15 and was told I'd be looking at a 45 minute to an hour wait. So I skipped across town and hit St. Stephen's Green instead. Some other time...

Well sir, you were right. I had this on Friday and thought it was great. The crawfish (which I've never had and really aren't anything like shrimp, like I had assumed earlier) were fried by someone who knows what they're doing. The batter was light but very crispy and not greasy at all, and the crawfish were nice and tender. Next time I'll get it without the cheese and sour cream as to not distract from the flavors of the voodoo sauce and creole mustard, which I think are very good.