Andrew Fenton

According to Campbell's website, the lower sodium chicken noodle soup has 140 mg of sodium per can; the regular has 890 mg per serving (1/2 cup = about half a can?) Unfortunately, they don't list ingredients online, so it's hard to tell whether they use a different salting agent, or just less of the same one.

Oh yeah, the pork and peanut dumplings were pretty good. I'd forgotten about those. I'd be willing to give them another try, on a Sunday. Two strikes, y'know...

As always, nice pics, Phil. I was under-impressed by Saigon Maxim. The fried dumplings were excellent. They have a portable fry cart that comes around to finish them off, which is just brilliant; I think I need one of those for my own house. And the deep-fried bacon-wrapped shrimp nuggets were great. (How could they not be?) But everything else was only okay, I thought. Many of the steamed dishes were over-steamed and gummy, and none of them really rocked my world. It could be because it was Saturday; the place was fairly empty, and there wasn't a lot of turnover or a huge amount of variety. A Sunday trip might be more satisfying, I don't know.

It really is. Osso buco is one of my favorite dishes-- maybe my favorite dish-- and this is a great take on it. I especially like the variation on gremolata: pickled garlic, whole parsley leaves, a little bit of sweetness to brighten things up... Tremendous.

I definitely have to give Ansill credit for keeping up the quality. Thursday was the third time I've been, and it was just as good as the first. The shirred eggs are, if anything, better than before. My complaint about them had been that the foie gras was a little extraneous-- it didn't add much to the dish-- and was a little overcooked. This time around, it was perfectly cooked; and there were two pieces instead of one. Still extraneous, but very tasty. New to me was the osso buco sandwich, which is really extraordinary. A pile of melting, gelatinous meat, with a deep, rich reduction that suffuses the brioche. It occurred to me, as we were eating, that Ansill is a place that really gets the idea of small plates. At a lot of restaurants, small plates just mean, well, a smaller version of something. But Ansill's dishes fit perfectly with their size. You wouldn't want more than a couple of the eggs; they'd be too rich. A few bites of bone marrow crostini are ideal; more would be excess. Ditto the osso buco-- it's actually quite substantial, and I wouldn't be able to eat much more than there was. Oh-- and to answer the lingering Bread Question. This time around, they gave us a basket of bread with a crock of butter dusted with pink salt. My favorite part of Pif's service, and I was delighted to see it imported from the mothership.

I haven't the froggiest-- er, foggiest idea-- how to prepare frog sashimi. But for this question: you could look at this thread from about six months ago. It's not all goofing around, really.

Well, you know I just can't restrain myself... anyway, fools are more or less the same thing, too. Still, to give the verrine its due, while I've seen many preparations of sweet layered foods served in a glass, I haven't seen very many savory foods. (In a crockery dish or a cup, sure. But nothing that's as visually compelling as the dishes in the article.) And I suppose "verrine" is something of a play on "terrine": a preparation that also often comes in layers.

Pshaw. Where I come from, they call those parfaits. Kentucky Fried Chicken sells them. So does Dairy Queen.

Pierre, it sounds as if Da Ruggero, on the southern edge of the city, might fit the bill well. It's a Slow Food-recommended osteria, with basic, high-quality Tuscan food (ribollita, bollito misto, etc.) I had a lovely meal there back in the spring. It's not tourist-free (this is Florence, after all), but it's far enough off the beaten path that non-Italians who eat there are pretty serious about food. And of course, you have to go to Nerbone. This is required: there will be a test upon your return.

More like salt on mushy salt. It is a good sandwich, no doubt about it, but I can't help but wonder if it couldn't be made better, like with a really crispy fried fish cake.

I think that CAB is a trademark, rather than a specifier of a particular breed of beef. The trademark means the beef meets certain standards. It's both. Angus is a breed of cattle; CAB is a trademark referring to a subset of high-grade Angus. An explanation, at the CAB website.

If it makes you feel any better, a good pizza on the Via dei Tribunali in Naples now commands the outrageous price of around 5 euros. Unfortunately, we're not in Naples (and I curse the fates for it nearly every day!)

The seafood bisque describes on the menu what was in it. Do people not read menus anymore ? Hold on- is the seafood bisque on the menu? I'm pretty sure it wasn't when I was there; and it doesn't seem to appear in the menu photos that Percy took. Granted, menus change-- but it sounds to me like this was a special. In which case, the server ought to be able to describe it.

My understanding is that "natural flavor" typically means MSG. (But maybe in this case, it's delicious, all-natural Soylent Green. Who can be sure?)

Yes, I think that the British have always had more of a predilection towards meat-flavored crisps than Americans. Anyway, taquitos.net, the canonical online source for salty snack foods, lists twenty kinds of beef chips. They also have a review of the Herr's steak chips here.

(Actually, he said it about wine. The beer thing is a misquotation, though a very common one. Anyway, the main point-- that wine, beer, cheese, bread and other products of yeasty goodness are miraculous-- is beyond question!)

That's one degree of separation too many, Andrew. yes... right... you win the prize! for catching my deliberate error! yeah, that's the ticket... mmm... bacon...

The pizzas are good-sized: one makes a fine main course, or you could split it as an appetizer among 2-4 people. As to price: it isn't cheap. But it's hard to have top-quality ingredients and preparation and still do things on the cheap. Beyond that, I'd encourage you to go back and read the many posts on that subject that have already been made in this thread.

Well, I'll have to give it a try, won't I? General Tso's is one of those dishes I usually avoid. But this sounds really good.

Rest assured that the fat will only coat your beans with flavor. (After all, any loose fat would float to the surface; I don't think beans exert any particular gravitational force.)

It's funny how my restaurant-going occurs in streaks. The missus and I have probably been to Rangoon more than any other restaurant in Philadelphia; for a while, we'd head over there probably once a month or so. But it'd really been a while. I think, too, that it's a place I tend to enjoy exponentially more when I'm in a group. There are several dishes I feel like I have to order-- but I'll be just as happy if I only eat a little bit of them, as long as I get some. More people= more things to sample= more happy me...

Ah, I thought the chicken was the brown stuff behind the white and green stuff. So is the chicken fried with a white/tempura coating? Surely they don't steam it...

Is that white stuff on the General Tso's cauliflower? Never seen that before...

too funny! As we were walking home, we walked by Restaurant M, and stopped in to have a drink and talk to Katie Loeb. (Who mentioned that she'd seen you walking by not long before.) Philadelphia is a small town... and no coincidence that it's the hometown of Mr. Kevin "Seven Degrees" Bacon, I think.

I was in the neighborhood yesterday and since I'd never been there, decided to stop in for lunch. Since I was in a little bit of a hurry, I just had a sandwich: ham and cheese on a baguette. It was a very good Serrano ham sandwich; but even more than that, it wins the Oscar for "best use of olive oil on a sandwich". It's fruity and herbal and pairs well with the ham and cheese. I asked the waitress about it; she told me that they infuse parsley into their oil. It's really good stuff.