mrbigjas
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Posts posted by mrbigjas
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Oh Katie, also, Black Sheep at 17th & Locust has recently done some kinda consolidation or hookup or something--they now have the same menu as Dark Horse.
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Ten Stone has very tasty bar food, although all of it is pretty salty. They have great fries. Good burgers, the couple of times I've had them. Quiche of the day was also mighty good the couple of times I've had it--I don't know why quiche isn't bar food more often.
At Tangiers, stick to wings, burgers, and grilled chicken sandwiches.
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Things I've noticed about stovetop grill pans:
1. You better have a good exhaust hood, or your house is gonna fill up with smoke real fast, and will smell like that for days each time you use it.
2. If you get a two-burner one and you have a regular white (for instance) porcelain stovetop, it's going to turn brown by the time you get the pan good and hot. This comes off with soft scrub or barkeepers friend, or whatever.,
3. To make it act like a grill, you have to heat it for way longer than you thought necessary, especially if you have a regular ol craptacular stove like I do.
I agree with everyone else about all the stuff they've said. I have the regular round lodge and the two-burner one, and use them all the time, since my living situation kind of precludes most grills except for this $500 one that I can't afford right now.
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Please, don’t ever do this. Ever. You simply cannot take back a shitty meal. And when it’s not cheap, it hurts that much more.
Words of wisdom, right there. I can think of several I had, in Rome, and London, and Madrid, and not only did they all suck, the fact that several of them cost too much made them ten times worse.
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Note 1: time to put on the old Godflesh CD with "Like Rats" on it.
Note 2: Fistfullaroux is right. The key thing about bait in snap traps, no matter what you use, is to really work it into the trap so the mice have to pull and chew at it to get it, setting off the trap. What I used to use (in my old place; we've been mercifully free of mice here) was the fibrous ends of sweet potatoes. I'd cook up a couple for dinner, and then put the ends with all the stringy stuff, and really mash them into the bait area. In my experience, mice love sweet potatoes--I rid our house of an infestation with sweet potatoes and snap traps alone. It's a good thing it worked, too, because our cat--mighty huntress that she isn't--was no help at all.
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I've never been to tampopo--it's good then?
I don't really eat a lot of sweets, but I have to admit that besides pocky, all those little japanese cookies and whatnot that look like other things are kind of a weakness I have. I buy them and eat a couple and give them away, usually--but I can't seem to stop myself from buying them. Every Burger, those little mushrooms with the cookie stems and the chocolate caps, the pandas filled with chocolate, etc. I buy them all the time.
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So I had some carrots the other day, and I was thinking, why is it that people don't eat carrot greens very often? Other root vegetables: beet greens, turnip greens... hell, celery even, is the greens of a root vegetable (so to speak, I'm painting with a broad brush here; I know about the different kinds of celeries and all). So I ate some raw. They were nice. Bitter, but fresh tasting, not carroty in the same way beet greens taste beety. Didn't make me sick or anything. I'm going to make them more often.
A quick search on the web turned upmostly raw food, vegan, vegetarian, and other special-diet sites, but no "normal" ones. Therefore I would like to claim that if carrot greens become the next hip fad vegetable, you heard it here first.
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I had duck at a dinner here in Philadelphia where the guy basically pan-fried it, but on a really low temperature for a much longer time, say 15 minutes or so, which rendered out much more of the fat than is usually rendered, and the skin was much crisper than it usually is, but the duck remained cooked medium rare. It was excellent.
I've since used the technique on chicken breasts, but since they don't have as much fat of their own, I've done it in an oil/butter mixture. mmmm sauteed chicken with chicken skin chips on top.
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some kinda chinese vegetable (yea choi), think chinese broccoli, but longer
OK despite the fact that you're done:
Is that the stuff labeled Yu Choy in the asian supermarkets? Because I've been eating that stuff like it's going out of style in the last couple weeks...
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As for dry aged beef, yes, Harry Ochs carries it -- at a price. As an example, this past weekend he had aged Delmonicos (rib eye steaks) for, I believe $12 a pound. He had dry aged rib steaks (with bone) for $15 or $16 a pound. Reason: The more expenive dry aged ribs hang at least four weeks before they're cut.
And those prices have gone way up with the beef shortage currently. Dry-aged porterhouse used to be $12.99 a pound, and now it's $15.99. Aged strip steaks used to be $10 a pound, and now they're $13--delmonicos were $9, and now they're $12 or so. With all the articles he has laminated and hanging there, I assume it's due to the beef prices. But it's making buying that fancy beef more painful--the flank steaks are up to like $10 a pound now.
Jin's, I'm fairly certain, relies entirely on the wholesale markets. As for the ripe avocados, if you normally can find them ripe at Jin's I would suspect they have an awful lot that have to discard for going over the edge into battery acid territory.Goddammit, make me back up my hyperbolic statements with facts, willya? OK here's the deal: in the past couple of months, when I've gone there, they've generally had avocados that are pretty ripe. They're not dead ripe; they could use a day, or two maybe if you put them in the fridge, but they're plenty ripe for mashing into guacamole, and even for just eating as is. Would you want them a little riper? In a perfect world, sure. But they're definitely usable that day. Except for this past Saturday, when all they had were super hard ones.
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Jin's rules for one reason: they nearly always have ripe avocados (the except being this past Saturday). If you're having a mexican kinda dinner and you didn't plan your avocado purchasing three days in advance like you need to for 99% of supermarket avocados, this is a great thing.
D'Angelo's has truly great sausages. He also carries that Wagyu beef, but I haven't been able to bring myself to spend $25 a pound for meat yet. YET. I'll get a nice steak from there of these days.
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have you been to that takeout vegetarian place next to B+B's?
heard good thing about that from someone somewhere, but not enough info.
I've had the vegetarian meatball sandwich from them a couple of times. It was good--in fact the second time I had it was because I was craving it. Takes a good long time to get anything you order though. I fully admit also that I have a weakness for vegetarian food that imitates carnivore food--TVP and soy "cheese" "steaks", fake bacon, tofu meatballs... I don't know why, because I like the real things, too.
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Yeah I did read that thread, and it was one of the most interesting things I've read on here.
But that's why I put "authentic" in quotes--I don't really believe in the concept, and I was just trying to clarify something, I'm not sure what.
But anyway, personally I'm psyched for Pico de Gallo's opening. I hope they have the same beef stew tacos they do at El Rey Sol--and only two blocks from my house. Get a couplea tacos and meet me at bob & barbara's; we can wash them down with specials and feed the leftovers to Smokey.
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Corkage is $35 at Lacroix.
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Have you been to El Rey Sol? Authentic isn't exactly the word I'd use for it. Cheap and mighty tasty, yes. But "authentic" like veracruzana or something, no.
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Anyone had a burger at Ten Stone yet? I enjoyed the one I had there a few months back. And they have had really god fries there the two times I've gotten them--a little salty, but I like my fries pretty salty.
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I've wanted to go to Tartine as well, but every time I think of it the timing isn't right.
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4) deux cheminee and vetri are both good options. being former townhouses, the small rooms have no choice but to be conducive to romance. having never been in either, i cannot comment further. anyone?
I went to Deux Cheminees a couple years ago. It was excellent, but a little stuffy, formal, and the food as everyone knows is classic french, with lots of cream sauces and reductions. If you're not used to that sort of food, it can sit real heavily. When I was there, it was dark enough, it was quiet enough, the service was excellent if formal, and all told it ran us a little over $200 for a couple. Maybe closer to $250. It was nice, but it was a while ago, so I don't have much more to say.
I was at Lacroix this past June, and while it is relatively lively, is still an expensive hotel restaurant, and as such is not lively like, say, Django or one of those smaller, louder restaurants. The tables might be a little closer together than you'd like for real romance, but if you can get one that overlooks the square, it's real pretty. But the key thing: the food. Three courses plus dessert for $55 is... well I can't quite bring myself to say it's a bargain, but I'll definitely say it's not overpriced by any stretch of the imagination. Everything we had was exquisite, just perfectly done. And if you're bigger eaters than we were, get four for $65 or 5 for $75. I've heard good things about the cheese cart, but we didn't have it. Service was excellent--attentive but not obtrusive. Wine was kinda pricey--a bottle of gewurtztraminer I was getting for $10.50 or so at the liquor store was $40, or $10 a glass.
I can't say enough good things about our experience there. We had a great time.
(Edited to say: you said Vetri, and I babbled about Lacroix. Um, duh? I'm leaving it anyway, since I haven't been to Vetri in about three years).
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Where can we go in Philly for a romantic anniversary dinner when our budget (including wine) is about $200? We like pretty much any kind of food.
That's cool. What's your idea of romantic? An intimate place, dark, eclectic, where the two of you can eat with one hand as you hold hands with the other across the table and gaze longingly over the small candle? That's more like Astral Plane. Somewhere big and fancy and nice, in a gorgeous old building where you can sit in the middle of several hundred people and pretend you're the only ones there? That's more like Striped Bass. A little neighborhood taqueria where... oh wait, there's no way you can spend $200 at Veracruzana.
Um, yeah, anyway--what kinda atmosphere defines romantic for you?
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a fruit i don't know (shape, color and size of plum, seed inside is shape of football).
What plum shape and colour because plums come in several shapes and colours? I'm guessing this unknown fruit is good since you had two? I love different fruit. Apples are so out except when cooked.
very, very, very deep dark red. darker than burgundy, almost purple.
spherical.
What's the flesh like?
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Don't listen to 'em, Herb. As my mother-in-law used to say to my wife (say this in a screeching southeast Texas accent): "It doesn't help the starving children in China if you get fat!"
(Of course, this was the 80s, and we'd shifted our focus from the starving children in China to the starving children in Ethiopia, but the m-i-l isn't one to accept change very readily)
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I believe you, and even agree. I salt it sometimes--as you said, if I'm going to use it soon, and not reduce it for keeping (I live in a small rowhouse in Philadelphia, so space is kind of at a premium and nearly all the stock I make gets reduced for freezing).
But, I mean... look at college inn's regular chicken broth nutritional info. That's craziness.
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So we were talking to the bartenders in Bob & Barbara's on Friday night, and I remembered that they were the ones who told us that the place was run by the El Rey Sol people.
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Or . . . I'll supplement my basic stock with canned chicken broth. Shhh . . .
You know what I don't understand? Why can't I buy no-salt-added chicken broth? Or rather, why do I have to search high and low for it? How come every can or box or whatever of chicken broth has like six pounds of salt in it? Drives me nutso. Actually what I should say is that it's forced me to make sure that I always have my own stock around.
Lets talk about bar food.
in Pennsylvania: Dining
Posted
Overall I'd have to say maybe--I don't understand the consistent rave reviews that Monk's fries get. They're too small, and often not crisp at all. Ten Stone's are more like how I like my fries.
Standard Tap's pork sandwich is a thing of rare beauty. Most of their menu is great stuff, which I might like better than Monk's overall. Their mussels might be my favorites in town.