HD73

Sometimes I order from Szechuan Tasty House, not because I'm hungry, but just because I wanna see my buddy with the moped. That guy is the man.

Dolce Carini is pretty good. They're on Chestnut, I think between 18th and 19th. I'm not sure about their delivery radius. The only problem is that they're closed on Sunday and every other day they close at 9 PM. I don't know about everyone else, but at least 75 percent of my pizza cravings occur after 9 PM or on Sunday.

I had a slightly negative reaction to the absence of a bell-rating, but not nearly so strong as some of these, so let me play Devil's Advocate for a moment. I just set up a dinner at Talula's table last week. If you want to get the place for a friday or saturday night, the wait was until January BEFORE the review came out. Trying to coordinate 8 adults that can make it to Kennett Square on a weeknight is a biatch. I can imagine that trying to make multiple visits to Talula's table while maintaining some semblance of anonymity would be nearly impossible. My guess is that the food there is really great (David McDuff certainly agrees per the other thread, and I've had a takeout pot pie and scone that were really excellent) and CL wanted to get the word out, but doing a full-scale review wasn't feasible. I never ate at Django under the old ownership, so I can't speak to his objectivity there. On a positive note, I'm having dinner at Talula's next week, so I'll make a full report and let you know if I think it lives up to the LaHype.

Maybe I misread, but I don't think they're offering any set wine pairings. That's what Matt was lamenting. Their regular wine/beer list and bar are open, but that's it.

So, in allowing you to Bring Your Own Bottle, he's not going for the BYOB crowd? An interesting theory.

They don't call it roasted chicken, they call it BROASTED chicken. I don't know what the hell that means, but it gives you a really nice texture (crispy skin but moist, juicy meat) without so much grease. I always loved their giant fries, which were really more like potatoes cut into quarters lengthwise. I think the old-family vibe is authentic. My dad grew up in Collegeville where there is/was a Speck's location. I can remember getting food from there when I was little (20 years ago) and I think my dad's family was eating there long before that.

Keystone Opportunity Zone. Moving into the Cira Centre significantly reduced Dechert's tax burden.

So the Pif message just told me to call Ansill, and the person at Ansill told me Pif is closed for good. Is this true, and if not, how does one go about getting a reservation for those last few days?

The Philadelphia Inquirer's food critic gives out bells (Liberty Bells) instead of stars. So a multi-belled restaurant is a well-reviewed one.

Yeah, but you're begging the question here. No one is going to disagree with you that a *screaming* 9 month old child is a disruption that should not be visited on other diners. But not all babies are the same. And not all parents are the same either. Letting the kid sit and cry his/her heart out is obviously wrong, but that's not what most people do. I dine out with a couple with a 1 year old relatively frequently. The kid is an excellent resta-baby: quiet, easily occupied and pacified. If the baby is going to be present, that's certainly something we take into consideration when picking a restaurant. And if the baby starts to fuss, one or the other parent takes the baby outside immediately. We ended up stuck bringing the baby to brunch at LaCroix a while back (a place that would normally be off limits, but the baby-sitter cancelled). She didn't make a peep, and was the most popular person in the dining room amongst the older ladies in attendance. The funny thing is, you still get looks from people no matter how the kid behaves. People are just ITCHING to be irritated by a baby. If you ask me, I've had a lot of restaurant table neighbors (for lack of a better term) that I would have traded for a crying baby in a heartbeat. As long as the parents are attentive, the kid is docile and the restaurant isn't completely inappropriate, I don't have any problem with it. I can deal with the occasional baby flare-up a lot easier than a table full of 40 something women opening sex toys and cackling at the top of their lungs. And yes, I have experienced both.

Sansom Street Oyster House has good food and a good happy hour, but you have to eat at the bar to get the deals. ← Excellent suggestion! The bluepoints are a buck apiece, and there's usually some other items at very good prices. ← hmmm...sounds tempting. i've actually never been there (my list is just too long.) maybe we'll check it out and then drink cheap beers at Oscar's for dessert! ← I actually noticed that place on my last walk to the Oyster House. I don't remember the details, but they had a sign out that I'd paraphrase as, "Nearly Free Yuengling 24/7." I'll have to check it out some time. The Oyster House's Happy Hour alcohol deals are decent, but not great. It's the food deals that make it great. They do have that Sly Fox O'Reilly Stout on tap though. Even if it's not on special, it goes great with oysters. The happy hour is 5-7 if I recall correctly.

Sansom Street Oyster House has good food and a good happy hour, but you have to eat at the bar to get the deals.

Lunch at Osteria today. Everything was delicious, especially that taleggio and asparagus lasagne. But the service left a lot wanting again. If the waitstaff wasn't as friendly as they are, the mistakes would start to be a major detractor. I think the problem comes from what seems like an "every waiter is your waiter" system. One person would take our orders, and then another one would bring out the food/beverage . . . more often than not to the wrong table. Our pizza went a few tables to our left before those diners redirected it in our direction. A glass of wine disappeared for 10 minutes. Our double espressos were sent to another table, who then asked us if they were ours. They were then whisked away and, despite our saying we would take them as they were, a fresh pair were pulled. Nice idea, but now dessert is sitting on the table for 5 minutes while we wait. And when the new espressos showed up, they were singles (but still doubles on the bill, until I asked for it to be changed). Again, I want to stress that everyone was extremely pleasant, and when mistakes occurred, they were contrite and quick to remedy them. It's not going to make me stop going. But it really is doing a disservice to the food and the experience as a whole. Honestly, if it wasn't for others in this thread making similar comments, I would have chalked up my experiences as flukes. It just seems silly to me that a place like Osteria can't take that last step towards excellence.

i haven't seen it around except for there. other places to look are at salumeria in the terminal and claudio's down in the italian market. my general theory, which i've posted before, is that if you can find stuff elsewhere that dibruno's carries, it'll generally be cheaper elsewhere. for instance that giuseppe cocco pasta, which is pretty good, is a buck cheaper at rittenhouse market than it is at dibruno's (if dibruno's is still carrying it, even -- i don't know that i've seen it the last couple times i've been there). (my other theory has always been that if retailers want to get a sense of whether they're gouging the public or not, they should just compare their prices to rittenhouse market. if your prices are higher than theirs, it might be time to take a step back.) ← Claudio's doesn't carry it, but Salumeria is a good idea. I'll check next time I'm at the RTM. I wouldn't balk at the price at DiBruno's, but I've found online merchants selling it for about 40 percent less. I know that their rent in Rittenhouse must be exorbitant, but sometimes they get ridiculous.

Laban's review from this Sunday disclosed that his Osteria review would appear next week. Probably a good time to grab a reservation before it gets substantially harder.

I bought some Rustichella d'abruzze pasta from DiBruno's the other day with a whole bundle of other things, and thus didn't notice the price. I took it home, cooked it, and loved it. It was really the best dried pasta I've ever had. Now I've been back to DiBruno's and was kind of blown away by the price. I'm willing to pay a premium for a great product, but I think there's a little gouging going on here - DiBruno's price is almost twice as much as some prices I've seen on the web. So my question is, does anyone know a retail outlet where I can buy this in Philly? If not I'll just order it in bulk online and keep a cabinet full, but it would be nice to be able to run out and buy it for a reasonable price. Thanks.

Melograno would be a good choice too, but you have to be careful on the weekends even if you get there early. I hate waiting around, so I usually go on weeknights, but we wanted to take some friends before a show a few weeks ago. We were already in the neighborhood, so we cruised by at 5 and asked what we should do to ensure a table. We were told we'd be absolutely fine if we showed up at 5:30 when they started seating. We came back at 5:25 to find a substantial line already formed. We did manage to secure one of the last tables, but a significant number of people who were behind us in line did not. And, of course, if you don't get a table in the first stampede, you have to cool your heels for a loooong time. The fact that it goes from empty to full in 5 seconds means that there's not another de facto "seating" until 7 or so.

Does it have to be sushi? The new Jose Garces place, Tinto, is at the corner of 20th and Sansom. I've enjoyed it both times I've been there, and if you were looking for less than a full meal you could sit at the bar and just try a few things. Capogiro is across the street if you wanted dessert or something after the show.

Medjool is usually a type of date, and I know I've seen it as a flavor at CG before. Although for all I know Medjool figs might be a flavor too. If you did have Mejool Dates and Cream Cheese as a combination though, I think I'll have to take my girlfriend for a slice of her childhood. Her father used to make that as a sandwich for her lunch in elementary school. She loved it, but it didn't have much trade in value in comparison to a Twinkie.

I had a great meal there the other night, but we had some of those strange service issues too. My general feeling on service is that if it's friendly, I can tolerate anything. The service at Osteria was incredibly friendly, so the weirdness didn't put a damper on the evening at all. It was just, well ... weird. The left hand didn't seem to know what the right hand was doing most of the time, and there were a lot more than two hands involved. The only issue that started to really bug me was that one of the food runners, though eminently friendly, bumped the corner of my chair relatively hard every time he walked past us. Admittedly my chair was in something of a tight spot, but you would have thought he would have been watching out for me after the 3rd or 4th time, let alone the 14th or 15th. The food was really excellent and incredibly springy, and the sommelier pointed us to a great wine choice. I'll just try to sit in a corner next time.

This doesn't have anything to do with "accepting mediocrity." It has everything to do with the necessity of picking one's battles. It's probably the case that I should, after applying the aforementioned principle, just keep my mouth shut. But here goes anyway: I am not accepting anyone's mediocrity, because I do not go to those restaurants. And I fail to see how complaining about them here, unlike simply not patronizing them, somehow gives someone the moral high ground. If, in saying "Who gives a crap," I'm falling down the slippery slope of "accepting mediocrity," what do I have to do to avoid that slope? Say mean things about them on this board? Actively campaign for change in these establishments? Firebomb McDonald's? I don't accept mediocrity in what I eat. I seek out places that don't accept mediocrity in the food they produce. The battle I've picked is to control what goes in and out of my mouth and, to some extent, try to pass some of that along to friends and family. There will always, always, always be Bennigans and TGIFriday's in the world. There will always be people who don't give a shit about what they eat. And even if you somehow manage to be morally offended by that, don't you see that there are other, far greater moral offenses in the world more deserving of a personal crusade? In the end, it's just food, and I refuse to assign it cosmic significance. It's something I care about, and will continue to care about. But beyond trying to introduce friends and family to my view of things, I just don't see how it's worth my time to evangelize to the world at large. Or, as it were, preach to the choir on this board about how much Applebees stinks. If I really thought telling people who frequent eGullet that TGI Fridays is a bad place would change the trajectory of a single atom in the universe that is American food culture, I would do it. But it won't, so I don't.

It's not clear from the posting, but do you think it's possible he got the pork sandwich without the spinach and provolone? I can see how that might be pretty boring, but add those two and I can't imagine how anyone could write it off as "beige food."

I'm not shocked. My guess is that the "many people who sing the local organic fresh-real food song and dance" aren't bellying up to the bar at Applebees or TGIFridays very often. Why should they care? It's not like there are in-depth threads here discussing the inadequacy of training the "chefs" at Applebees receive. Or how the beverage service at McDonald's has really gone downhill since it went self serve. If I don't go get drinks at these places, why should I care?

Just to play devil's advocate for a second- The article does distinguish between "more upmarket" bartenders and the graduates of this school. It says right in the beginning that these kids are heading out to work at Appleby's TGIFriday's, etc. While it might be nice to live in a world where one could saunter in to a Chili's and find someone of Katie's caliber behind the bar, that's just never going to happen. And I've been to plenty of bars supposedly "more upmarket" than those mentioned where the bartender had no idea what they were doing. This place probably does actually do the world some good, in that it cuts down on the blank stares and undrinkable beverages handed out by bartenders around the city and the suburbs. Now, I think I understand why this article rankles. It's not its content, it's the simple fact that it was printed, when there are hundreds of more interesting alcohol related stories that could have been told in the same place. It certainly does read like space-filler to me. I think the right answer isn't mixology school reform. It's getting in gentle contact with the person that wrote the article and suggesting some more interesting alcohol related stories lurking around the city. I think she might be glad to have them. Just my two cents.

Wasn't that reasoning, to simplify greatly, "A handshake's a handshake, damn it!"