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mrbigjas

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  1. mrbigjas

    Loie

    yeah, when it first opened i stopped in there a few times, always after wine tastings, which i was going to relatively often right around then. the burgers were good, although consistently cooked 1-2 levels rarer than requested. and they made a killer salad lyonnaise.
  2. mrbigjas

    Loie

    there's definitely still a rittenhouse/cc west scene, made of people who go to loie and rouge and walnut room and whatnot. if folks are feeling more jersey/clubby, it's tragos, and the new place upstairs from byblos, and continental west....
  3. mrbigjas

    Loie

    it is? i always considered it basically a rittenhouse area scenester place. and i don't mean a scenester place for people who live in the rittenhouse area, but basically the same sort of category as rouge and walnut room and whatnot. in other words, the kind of restaurant that would do just this sort of thing, not worrying about repeat business, knowing it will always be crowded. after all it's owned by the same group that owns noche and drinker's, and the always insufferable bar noir.
  4. your friendship aside, if steinke's just a tool for the board to exercise their political pull and be petty and vindictive, then your faith in him is certainly misplaced, until he quits as a matter of principle. no it's not. it's a good sandwich, but the roast pork scores extra points for being the classic.
  5. yes it is! i'll pass this along.
  6. i didn't even know they had an upstairs bar! very interesting, thanks lisa.
  7. mine did! maybe not at a month old, though. he loves it now, though as he is nearing a year old. it's an expensive path to set down, andrew.
  8. the color purple in vegetables seems to be water soluble and affected by heat, too. i don't have my mcgee here to look it up, but my experience cooking purple okra, purple green beans, purple cauliflower, purple carrots, they all turn green in boiling water, or in steam, or in hot oil. well, not the carrots. they turn orange. i tried adding acid -- you know how adding vinegar or lemon to red cabbage when you cook it keeps it red? -- but that didn't help. edit: but i haven't roasted those things to see what would happen in heat with no liquid. i should, but i feel like the purple of the thing and the brown from the roasting would make whatever it is look like a bruise, and that's not real appetizing... on the other hand, regular eggplant skin and grapes don't lose their purple color when you cook them, so maybe there are a couple different purples.
  9. congratulations! now, i have a question: my favorite knife needs salvaging from the years of abuse I gave it before I knew how to take care of knives. but, I live in (well, just outside of) center city. Can you help? What are my options?
  10. rich, is that part of the bar semi-private? I'm suddenly unsure of whether they want to have it in an actual private room or not. how about that place tir na nog at 16th & arch? that's big. anyway, i've passed these ideas along to the organizers, but of course am open to listening to others; I will report back on what they decide.
  11. well to be fair, kitchen kapers is a chain, but they're a chain that started here and is based in cherry hill. and if you are going to have a kitchenware shop in the terminal, what are your local non-chain options besides fosters, who just left, and fante's? has fante's shown any interest in branching out in their 100 years?
  12. hey thanks! putting aside my horror at the usual irish pub scene*, it would be perfect for something like this if it was off-hours. and i haven't been to the public house, but it's pretty big, so i bet they could work something out. the cantina is a little far--but i wonder if your suggestion of the continental would hold true for the one on 18th street, alec. it's a pretty big place, but i don't know about private rooms. that would be fun, if they do have them. anyway, i'll pass these along, and we'll see what folks think. *(except for the christmas night scene, which i highly recommend for awesome peoplewatching, everyone dressed up from christmas dinner and drunked up on christmas wine, blowing off steam after spending a few days with their families, out and looking to score even more desperately than usual. it's great; i can't recommend it highly enough.)
  13. OK a get-together for happy hour, of a tuesday evening in mid-august. A group of 15-16 people from various organizations in the area who all work in the same field, getting together to ostensibly talk business and the trials and tribulations we all face, but just as much to all get to know each other and be all convivial and have some drinks and whatnot. people will be coming from fairmount, from old city, from south broad, from downtown. so really the more centrally located the better. our initial thought was mcgillins, since they have the upstairs room. but tuesday night is wing night at mcgillins, which is apparently very popular, and they don't think they can handle our group. we had a thought of a room at an inexpensive restaurant -- like vietnam palace, which has an upstairs room where we could drink 33s and gorge for a while -- and that's still a possibility but one that runs the risk of not having that kind of welcoming, out-for-drinks-with-colleagues kind of feel to it. this is supposed to be social as well as business, after all. anyone have other ideas? friendly bar type atmosphere, but has some kind of semi-separate room that is not so crowded that we couldn't snag it at happy hour time?
  14. Location, Location, Location! Any seller of a decently made cheese steak will mint cash at that location. Rick makes a decent cheese steak, and it's obvious from how hard he's fighting that he doesn't want to give it up: it's a great business. No reason to believe that TL, or any other competent maker of cheese steaks, wouldn't do as well. ← consider the fact that he bailed out of penn because of a rent increase, though. hey i don't know, i'm just speculating, throwing stuff out there. you got one guy who does a good business there and has for 25 years, and you're booting him to bring in another guy who has opened and closed like six branches of his business in the last five.
  15. this is what i'm really wondering about. someone already posted mentioning all the failed tony luke's ventures around town, including the one at penn, on 18th street, in new york. who's to say that this one won't go sour too, and then what?
  16. hey now, they've always had sharp provolone.
  17. p.s. another note: if you look at old cookbooks, a lot of flank steak recipes involve braising them; even stuffing and braising. i'm thinking of a recipe in jacques pepin's complete techniques that i don't feel like looking up right now. also vaca frita, the great cuban dish, is often made with a flank steak that is braised before frying. my personal theory is that it was just years before it kind of registered with everyone that you can defeat the toughness of the steak by cooking it less and slicing across the grain... and at that point it's considered 'steak' rather than 'beef' and therefore the price went up. that's what seems to have happened, anyway. i'm sure someone will be along to prove me wrong or something, but until then that's my theory and i'm stickin to it. (edited to actually make my point)
  18. wait did something happen i didn't hear about? tre scalini isn't gone, they just moved. didn't they?
  19. flank is usually $8.99 at ochs. it used to be cheap until people realized it's the best cheap steak cut, at which point it got expensive. kinda like happened with chicken wings. edited: i don't mean to imply ochs raised their price on it; i mean the price of flank went up everywhere.
  20. i have not been there, no, but i'll check it out one of these weekends -- i have a trip upstate planned soon, so maybe i'll head by there on my way out of town. it's out of the way but not too far. sigh... goodnoe's...
  21. best in recent memory? high praise indeed. really i should just keep in mind that if i can't smell a pile of canteloupes from about 10 feet away, they're not going to be good.
  22. you know, i've been thinking about it and i have indeed been shopping less at the terminal than i have at the farmers markets around town. but it's summer! they aren't going to be here in the winter and i'll be back there more, then. either way, interesting article, although he does make his point by choosing the products that will make it for him. for instance, he mentions that the d'artagnan duck breasts cost $25 a pound 'uptown.' the only place that sells them for that much is dibruno's, where the prices of d'artangan and other products like that are laughably high. you can get d'artagnan duck breasts at the super fresh at 10th & south for half that (or at wegmans for that matter, but it's not in town, so nevermind). not that i wouldn't get them from griggstown anyway. the duck breast we got from them last week was fantastic. (their quail rock the house too; we had them tonight). but the whole 'almost everything i need is here -- cheaper' part is bullshit, sorry. the farmer's market is expensive, and there are no two ways about it. $3.50-$4 a pound for tomatoes. $5/dozen for eggs from the one lady. capogiro is there, and they charge $4 for a small cup of gelato. this is not a cheap place to shop. however, i didn't know the terminal had been courting the market and been shot down. that's very interesting.
  23. has anyone had a decent canteloupe yet this year? i've had two or three from various places inluding livengoods and one of the vendors down at headhouse square, and they've all sucked. basically they smell ok, but they don't smell strongly, and then i convince myself they'll be OK. 'this one smells good, just not so much. it'll be fine.' and then it tastes like nothing. bleah. anyway, a bad year for canteloupe?
  24. those are the plums i was talking about in that other thread on summer produce. wait till you see what color they turn.
  25. hey i said that upthread! well, basically that.
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