Tim Dolan

Unfortunately I just had to cancel my reservation for tomorrow night, two people, 7pm. So now there should be an opening if anyone is interested.

Just got back from a weekend if Vegas. For our big meal out we went to StripSteak in Mandalay Bay. The 18oz ribeye that I ordered medium rare came out perfectly cooked and was one of the top 3 steaks I've ever had in my life. We also shared some sides, some au gratin potatoes that were very good and truffled mac and cheese and actually tasted and smelled like truffles. My only minor quibble was the sashimi appetizer that I ordered. It was 6 gorgegous slices (2 of each) of tuna, compromised of albacore, ahi, and toro, however the plate and fish were chilled to the point that it was very difficult to discern the subtle differences of each fish. It was still good, but from the looks of what some of my friends ordered, there may be better apps to be had. But whatever, I was mainly there for the steak, and that was sublime. We had a group of 10 people and everyone walked away stuffed and happy.

Amen to that brother. My quick stop in Paris is going to be much less academic and much more focused on getting drunk and eating well. Thanks for the head's up on the pig's foot. Yea I had to make my reservation after Jan 10th for anything before 9pm. Bummer, but I'm sure it'll be worth the wait.

I posted this in the Paris thread also, but I'll be heading to London in January for my brother's birthday. The day we're flying over happens to be on my girlfriend's birthday, so since we'll in the air for most of the day I'm making it up to her by taking her to Paris for a night. Since neither of us are even remotely familiar with French cuisine, I made a reservation for Bibou the week before we leave so we could give ourselves a crash course on what to expect once we're there. When I say that we're unfamiliar with French food, I seriously mean it. I have had escargot twice, at the dearly departed Brasserie Perrier and Django, and thought it was delicious. I have had terrine once (I forget what type) at similarly defunct Ansill, and it was simply not for me. At least at the time. And I have NEVER had foie gras. Over the years my tastes have been changing and I have been trying diligently to break the chains of my pizza/cheesesteak/chicken upbringing. I think this will be a huge step in the right direction. The braised pig's feet sounds like something that should not be missed, so if it's on the menu when we go I'll definitely get it. Anyone have any other suggestions of things we should try before actually going to Paris? From the other thread, it seems that Parc would be a waste of time.

Some of the tables in the front at Tria on 18th might be considered cozy and low lit, however if you're looking for a full service dinner you might be better served elsewhere. I really liked Chick's, espeically when Katie was there, it's got a nice, old-school feel to and would only be a short cab ride from Rittenhouse.

Thanks! Violon d'Ingres looks like exactly the type of place I'm looking for. And I have absolutely already checked out Forest's blog (thanks Forest)!

My brother is getting married in London in late January, and since we'll be on a plane over on my girlfriend's actual birthday, I decided to make it up to her by heading over to Paris for a night as a birthday present. She has three things on her agenda; see the Mona Lisa, see the Eiffel Tower, then have a nice dinner and get drunk off of red wine (and perhaps a few cocktails) for the rest of the night. It's up to me to figure out where to stay, eat and drink. I have been and will be going through all of the other threads to see what I can dig up, but I figured it's always a good idea to put my questions out there to the knowledgable members of this board. As far as food, neither of us is terribly familiar with French cuisine but we'll try just about anything. Also, we'd prefer something more comfortable and casual (but nice) as opposed to dining at any of the truly high end places. I'd like to keep dinner at less than 100 a person as a guideline. If I can somehow manage to find anything that fits this criteria, and also stay within a 15-20 minute walk to the Eiffel Tower, that would be ideal. We will only be there for a night, so any place with a clean, comfortable bed will suffice. Neither of us has been to Paris before and although I'll try my best to be accomodating, my experience with the French language falls in between the window of negligable and nonexistant. Thanks in advance for any suggestions!

Go to Osteria. I'm not sure if it's still on the menu, but their steak for two was easily among the best pieces of meat in the city when I had it, and you'll have much more sucess with the rest of the menu if you choose to go that direction.

He mentioned to me once that if he did open a place in Philly, he liked University City. It wasn't anything more than him just throwing out an idea though.

Thank you very much, sounds great!

I'll be going to St. Croix in December. Anyone have anything to recommend since 2007?

Yeah I should mention that they were NOT selling any cases of beer, only 4, 6, and 12 packs, larger single bottles and a few other specialty items. Still, their selection was very impressive.

Wow. This place is huge and has just about anything that you could want in a supermarket. It just opened on Sunday and has been jam packed. I went during lunch and was literally overwhelmed. I was starving but didn't know what to eat. They have different counters for everything; pizza, sushi, hoagies, panninis, wings, and soups. There were stations for Asian, Thai, and Indian food. They had American classics like pulled pork and mac and cheese. Prepared food to take home is everywhere. I took a quick look at their meat and fish sections and was very impressed. The steaks looked particularly good, with some well-marbled strips and ribeyes. There was one dry-aged ribeye that looked particularly awesome. Yes, awesome. I wish I would've bought it to see if the taste lived up to how it looked. The sheer variety of everything is staggering. At the very least, this place definitely raises the bar for what a supermarket should be. What surprised me the most is that there is an actually bar that serves alcohol. The most surprising thing to me is their beer selection! Signs outside tout local Sly Fox on tap. This place could go toe to toe with the Foodery and barely lose out because it doesn't have quite as many esoteric Belgians. Crazy. Although everything in there looks awesome, the food I had was just average. I had a chicken paninni with pesto and roasted peppers that was pretty bland. A side of pulled pork, however, was good enough and actually had some pink on it indicating that it was really smoked. I stopped in yesterday and was drawn to the sushi counter since they had a small team of sushi chefs furiously cranking out rolls of every kind. I bought a spicy tuna roll, and I'd have to give it a solid B. All in all, I can easily see why people are so taken by the place. It is clean, staffed by an army of nice people, and has an incredible selection of things to choose from. I'd say the quality is better than any other supermarket outside of Whole Foods, but their prices looked a bit more friendly. Not too bad.

These are the short rib sliders with horseradish cream from the Swift Half. The meat was very tender and delicious, very similar to pulled pork. Washed it down with a few oatmeal stouts that you can see in the top of the picture. Jeremy Maclin would score his first NFL touchdown on a 51 yard bomb from Donovan McNabb about 15 seconds after these arrived and the Piazza broke out in cheers. One could do much worse on a gorgeous fall Sunday afternoon.

My gf and I went last night and thought everything was very good. I am by no means a pizza snob, and I found the place to be a fun pizza joint. We had a margherita pie and a San Daniele pie, which had prosciutto, arugala and smoked mozzerella. Both crusts were delicious, and I thought our margherita pie had an enjoyably wet (not soggy) center. Gf is the furthest thing from a foodie and her first comment was "I don't usually eat the crust, but this crust is really good." Later on when there were only a few pieces of crust left in front of us she said, "I want to stop eating, but I really love this crust." So take that for what it's worth. I considered asking for either some olive oil or sauce to dip the extra crusts in but instead just ate them plain. We finished with chocolate and ricotta gelatos which were perfectly fine. Our server was nice, and both her and a manager stopped by to ask if the quality of the pizza was to our liking, which it was. As far as comparison goes, and again, I'm no pizza snob, I've had the prosciutto and arugala pizza from Osteria, and that was a truly eye-opening pie. If that was an A+, then Stella's version was a solid B+. My whole thing with pizza is that I am firmly in the camp of "whatever pizza you grew up with is your favorite." Therefore, I love Alex's in Manayunk and Sam's in Wildwood. I loathe Mack's further down the boardwalk cause I'm loyal to Sam's. That's about it. Don't even talk to me about Mack and Manco's. I would stop at Stella if I was in the neighborhood, but I'm not sure I would travel down there again if I can get something equally as satisfying TO ME closer to home. Fortunately for them, they're in a killer location and will always have a ton of people in their neighborhood.

Went back to Fuji last night for my aforementioned birthday dinner. It was completely awesome. We just sat down at the sushi bar, I told Jesse it was my birthday, and he took it from there. Soon plates of incredibly fresh and delicious sushi came from behind the bar. First up was an app of gorgeous diced tuna with avocado, sea salt, wasabi and citrus oil. Next was a long plate of nigiri filled with about 10 pairs of all kinds of different, awesome stuff. Finished up with two rolls, one with eel and another with yellowtail. I didn't think I was a huge fan of rolls, but the roll with yellowtail, tobiko, and burdock root is easily one of my new favorite things to eat. Dessert of banana tempura came out on the house. There was another fellow at the bar who was getting entree after entree sent out to him from the kitchen. After talking to him for a few minutes he was probably the most enthusiastic fan of Fuji on the planet. It's wild that this place isn't jam packed every night.

Heading to Vegas in Janurary for a bachelor party. I haven't been to Vegas in 5 years but I know that it will look totally different since then. For what I've read, there was a huge influx of high-end restuarants with world famous chefs. We won't be interested in any of those classy French places, we're just looking for great steaks, and personally I'll be looking for great sushi. I'll be reading through the other threads as much as I can, but figured that I would post specifically for these two types of dining. Only requirement would be to keep everything below $200pp for each dinner. I know you can pay as high as the stars in Vegas, but we'd like to keep things comparatively reasonable but still eat very well. As far as sushi goes, the only thing I've seen so far after a very quick search was about Nobu. I think I'd like to stay away from there as from what I've read, it seems that it is the place with the greatest possibility of offering an average meal with an expensive price tag. Feel free to let me know if I'm correct in this assumption!

Dinner on Friday night was completely awesome. I didn't even name drop this website until after dinner and Jessie asked me how I'd heard about them. We sat at the bar and had a great time. There were 4 people to our left, and 2 to our right. They were all on a first name basis with eack other and said that they had been going to Matt's places for around 20 years. The woman sitting right next to me said that she hasn't even looked at a menu in 15 years. Dagordon had wrote that there's no reason to not go there if you're within 30 miles of Philly, and for some reason I kept thinking about that during dinner. It's really just a short trip over the bridge, and you'd be halfway there by the time you found parking in Center City. It's totally worth the short extra trip. We didn't even get anything out of the ordinary and it was still great. I'm still learning about everything so what is considered standard by more knowledgable people is still interesting to me. We both got the same thing, ordering the sushi deluxe combo off the menu. It was 10 pieces of nigiri with a Fuji roll (yellowtail, some type of root and tobiko), and we each ordered a piece of uni. Among the nigiri was sea bream, tuna, waluu (white tune/escolar), shrimp, amber jack, yellowtail, fatty salmon, eel, live scallop, and one more that I can't remember. The highlight for me was probably the live scallop with sea salt and truffle oil and the sea urchin, but really everything was excellent. The other people at the bar were great company and everyone was talking about their favorite resturants in the city. Jessie and another guy named Sam were rockstars and Jessie even encouraged us for next time to sit at the bar and just let him take care of ordering for us, like he had for the other guests. We wanted to turn around and come right back on Saturday. It's always great when you go into a place with high expectations and have those expectations exceeded. I have a birthday coming up and it's a no-brainer that I'm going back there. I mentioned to the other people at the bar that I had to bring some of my friends next time, and they were less-than-half kidding when they replied that they didn't want more people to come and take up their seats. I don't blame them.

I have reservations tonight at the sushi bar and I might shamelessly start dropping names. I'm excited.

My girlfriend and I managed to score 2 of the 4 bars seats at around 6:30 on Friday. I love this place. Cool, quiet, very fun and engaging staff. The two bartenders (I think the guy's name was Chris, didn't catch the girl's name) were completely awesome and didn't even roll their eyes when my gf was so shocked that they didn't have vodka, then proudly proclaimed that she was a "vodka girl". I cringed, but like a true professional Chris offered to make her something to take her mind off of vodka. I was at least expecting them to get a good laugh at her expense, but they saw it as an opportunity to drop some knowledge. There was ZERO pretention on their part, which is half the reason we had such a good time. The other half, of course, were the drinks. You can tell they are all about people understanding what they are drinking, but more importantly that you are enjoying what you are drinking as well. I had a Doc Daneeka, a Center City Swizzle and an excellent martini. Everything was delicious. Yes it's a little on the expensive side but certainly worth every penny. Can't wait to go back.

Reading stuff like this makes me realize just how little I know about food. Very interesting stuff. Click.

I was at the Swift Half this past Friday night, and if this bar was a Phillies prospect it would be Kyle Drabek. It has the makeup to be an absolutely awesome place. Dark wood all over the place inside, gorgeous patio that opens to the piazza outside. And of course, there's that killer video screen to watch Phillies games on. (By the way, the Piazza is absolutely going to be the new best place to watch a Phillies/Eagles playoff game regardless of how non-sports-centric the area is. Seriously, it will be awesome, and it will be packed come playoff time. If you're like me that's great news. If your a hipster who lives in the area, that screen will become the bane of your existence.) Anyway, I have to admit I'm pretty smitten with that whole area. Completely crummy 10 years ago, completely awesome now and getting better by the day. I was born an optimist but raised with Philly-skepticism, and I think the whole area rocks. At that's still with full knowledge of the fact that two people were recently murdered there, which was very tragic. Ok, on to the food. Between 3 of us we had the lamb chops, the duck prosciutto and arugula flatbread, the mussels, the buffalo shrimp, and an order of fries. The flatbread was the best thing we had and was very good. From there, I'd say the lambs chops and shrimp were just ok, with the mussels and size of the fries slightly disappointing. The mussels were very small themselves and the accompanying broth lacked any zip to it. The mussels at Nodding Head are better by a mile. The fries come wrapped in paper and are served in what I'm almost positive isn't a pint glass. It seemed like it was a 12oz glass but I could certainly be wrong. (And if I am, I'm an idiot. Again, this is entirely possible.) They were only the regular fries as opposed to the sweet potato mix that they serve at Good Dog. Nothing was bad, but it certainly has some catching up to do to get on the same level as it's older brother. And it definitely needs to put up a better fight since the Gastropub Champ aka Standard Tap is two blocks down the street. I'd also argue that it's a pinch expensive, but I guess it's justified given the brand new space and glorious video screen that they're helping provide. That's the thing though, this place is definitely not there just to pander to the video screen-worshipping public. It wants to be better than that. Of course, they've only been open for like a day and everyone who worked there seemed to be very cool and helpful, so I can't imagine this place NOT getting any better. I'm certainly hoping it works out.

i end up at dos segundos quite a bit lately too; it's more convenient for me. the mushroom quesadilla rocks. last time i was at the south philly cantina, i got the turkey mole, and i swear i got enough food for six. a gigantic chunk of turkey breast, and an entire drumstick and part of a thigh. if there was less than a pound and a half of meat there, i'll eat my hat. it was ridiculous. (also pretty damn good) ← I was there twice in the past two weeks, including last night. Goat tacos, pork carnitas tacos, octopus, all delicious and fairly cheap. Very good margartias. The place is perfect for solid, satisfying, no hassle meal. It's great for a quick plate of something, or to hang out and drink for a while. Very clutch.

Man that website setup sucks. Nothing like scrolling through 10 pages of mismatched pictures. Anyway, I see that Kanella was the only place to get two nods on the list. Guess they must be doing something right.

OH. YES. Click.