mrbigjas

aw, we'd miss ya.

not sure what you need help with, but it sounds like you pretty much have it down: a similar technique to making salt-baked shrimp. deep fry the chunks of thigh until cooked. then stir-fry salt, garlic, chopped chili and green onion in the wok--dry, no oil--and when it starts to smell good, put the chicken back in and cook till it's all heated through. that sounds good as a matter of fact. maybe i'll make it tonight too.

just a side note, having just read back through most of this thread: you guys know that beef doesn't have to be graded, right? i mean it has to be inspected and passed, but grading it prime, choice, select, etc is voluntary, and costs money, so some places don't do it. a lot of smaller butchers don't do it, either, because they don't want to pay for it.

5th & bainbridge, cary neff.

we stopped by ansill last night, after not having been there for probably six months or so, and the menu has indeed changed from back in the day. it's now divided into hot and cold sections only rather than the cured/fried/egg/vegetable sections they used to have. andrew, i'm sorry to say that the osso buco sandwich is no more, having been replaced by a lamb shank sandwich. and... i know this may sound sacrilegious, but it might be better. big shreds of incredibly flavorful lamb on a thick piece of bread that gradually soaks up a salty, meaty broth... my god. it's a sin how good this thing is. the crispy pig's trotters have been brought over from pif. boneless, formed into disks, breaded and fried till crisp, they're gelatinously delicious. served in a bowl with a few giant leaves of parsley and some pickled onions. the bruschetta buckethead mentions is indeed da bomb. a big piece of bread, piled about 1/2 in thick with the pesto, covered with shavings of ricotta salata.... good. a gazpacho with crabmeat, and some marinated white anchovies to start the meal were a great start to the meal. there are some larger dishes on the menu -- a ribeye for two for $25, for instance. but the key thing is this: happy hour from 6-8 nightly. yeah 6-8 p.m.! last night the specials were $1 oysters (i forget the variety but they were super briny, less cleanly metallic than others i've had. they were kind of long and thin), $5 proseccos, $3 draft beers (try the kostritzer schwarzbier with just about anything on the menu), $5 1/4 carafes of house wine... it was a nice deal. i'd go just for the oysters. the bartender said they were experimenting with some house-made potato chips, but chef ansill said that they don't have a fryer, so they're not sure they're going to do it. i recommended that they install a fryer and fill it with clarified butter like michel richard has down at citronelle. i don't think they took me seriously. i had a nice talk with david about a lot of things while we were there, and at one point asked what made the steak at pif so f'in good. he said two things - SALT. AND PEPPER. proper seasoning is everything... then he mentioned putting a little demiglace in the pan while it finished cooking. and a wad of butter as well, while it's cooking. yeah, salt and pepper and butter and demiglace... ok i'm starting to think the steak is unnecessary. p.s. finished with an epoisses that was nose-clearingly pungent. very nice indeed.

we stopped by last night as well, but didn't eat there because of the lack of a liquor license yet... next time.

all right, next time i'm down there i'll check out the roast beef, if i can stay away from the combo. and yeah, the pepper hash is good stuff. the weird thing about pepper hash is that i always think it's going to be spicy and it never is. and i know it's not -- i know how to make it and recipes for pepper hash don't call for hot peppers, but green or red bell peppers. and yet every time i'm like, pepper hash.. mmmm hot.

i was at the game last friday night way up in the nosebleeds, and i got a hot dog and.... it was good! like, really good. it caught me off guard because in the past couple of years i've found the dogs at the park to be terrible. so if you're up near section 432 or so, you might get something decent...

i had a roast pork at johnnie's hots last week. ok this is a weird complaint, but it was too herby. i'm sticking with the dogs and sausages and fish cakes there from now on. other things are good enough, but i don't agree with you that they're the best in town, rich. i mean, obviously the folks at johnnie's hots care about what they do -- it's a great place and i go there often enough. but sometimes i don't like the end result as much as i do at other places. and it's not even that they do it badly for the most part; it's just that i'd do it differently.

so far this year, based on general trends of what i'm finding at the farmer's markets and the terminal: 1. strawberries sucked. i'm sorry, but it's true. some smelled OK, but generally they were relatively flavorless and what flavor they did have was sour. 2. cherries: sour tasted good but weren't as picturesque as last year. last year they, like, glowed. i got them from kauffman's and livengoods this year. sweet cherries from kauffman's are good. i find bing cherries kinda boring but they seem to be OK too. 3. blueberries are good not great from almost everywhere. my question about them is: why do blueberry boxes always have english and french on them? other fruit doesn't, but blueberries ALWAYS do. and it's not just the ones from michigan or wisconsin or whatever, that are up there by canada. it's all of them. what's up with that? 4. early plums (like those yellow ones that north star is selling that turn glowing orangish red after about four or five days -- oh and also like the sugar plums that kauffmans is selling) are GREAT. my god. 5. early peaches are insane too. i've had early yellow varieties from north star and haltemann's in the terminal, and a couple other places have the white peaches. i recommend NOT eating a big ol yellow peach and then following it up with a white one, though. yellow peaches are so intensely peach-flavored, while the white peaches are so flowery and perfumey, that it's kind of nauseating. i had to wash it all down with whiskey. 6. i have high hopes for tomatoes. i had one of those dark purplish red ones from north star this week that was really pretty much everything a tomato wants to be, except for its color resembling a bruise more than anything. ate it as a tomato sandwich last night. my god. 7. apricots are dry; i've gotten them from kauffmans and from ... another fruit vendor at the sunday farmer's market that i can't remember. on the left, about 2/3 of the way down. but anyway, i always find them to be that way though. i'm wondering if i just don't like them fresh all that much. why am i writing this? i don't know. gotta yap about something, and i haven't been out as much as allayous. i love summer. what have you found that i should check out? and where?

i'm a music snob who knows what i hate before i even hear it. also i think fat bottom girls by queen is the greatest rock song ever written. also i hardly ever see any movies but still have opinions about everything hollywood puts out. however, i am still looking forward to coquette for the reason i stated above, and will happily go there for a nice grilled sardine or two. and maybe a roast chicken. and if the fries are good and the steak frites is an onglet, really that's all i ask. i'll head down at some point. edited: p.s. i just wanted to use the phrase 'clamquilles st. jacques' real quick. ok.

well it hasn't actually opened yet, there's still time! maybe y'all can score a free meal of horse on horseback or whatever for your translation help...

as far as i'm concerned, they could write the menu in romanian for all i care. if the food is good and what i'm looking for at a price point and atmosphere that i like, then i'm all for it. we have too little regular ol' french food in this town. but i'm down with your rant anyway. if you're going to put together a themed restaurant menu, at least try to keep to the theme... edited to add: what's up with the plats du jour, though, that are significantly more expensive than regular dishes? for two or something?

it goes beyond that! when my wife and i wanted to try the new pulled pork but still wanted regular pork, they split up the meat AND the toppings on one sandwich (neither of us eats a whole sandwich at once). edited to add: dinic's sausage sandwich is nothing to sneeze at either. where do you guys get your sausage?

i've walked by little john's but have never gone in. pete's famous is one of several pete's famouses up in that area. greek pizza = not good. one time i saw a delivery driver backing out of there whose car had strobes instead of backup lights. that was a fun mod, but i'm not sure how useful it is, really. that's pretty much all i got, except that if you don't mind walking a good 1/4 to 1/2 mile, parking's not that bad. i mean, after all 1/2 mile is only five blocks. if you don't mind walking a little ways, mama's vegetarian is an israeli falafel place on 20th just below market. that would be about four blocks from the academy or the franklin institute. it's really good.

my favorite bit from tonight's show was when rock was recommending a mac & cheese with something fancy in it. and then brad was all, yeah we could call it cassoulet! rock was like, uh, why not call it what it is? next thing you know, it's on the menu as 'truffled cassoulet'. next thing you know after that, dude's booted off. i mean, it was hilarious -- that doesn't even make sense. you can't just call one dish by another's name. tonight's menu: we take zucchini, deep-fry it with sardines and sharp cheddar, wrap it in a vietnamese rice paper wrapper and serve with a extra bacony dipping sauce. it's called 'spaghetti and meatballs.' hahaha this show is hilarious.

thanks for this post. don't get the wrong impression, it's still my favorite pork sandwich in town, and i've eaten them from a lot of places. i prefer a roll like... well, basically sarcones. with a good crust on them. and it seems they used to be that way and then they weren't. anyway, don't worry, it's all good.

dammit. if only you'd called earlier. however, that 8 p.m. closing time is good for the boy. i gotta get down there.

as an aside, i stopped by rick's today as well to sign the petition and decided what the hell, might as well get one. as i said earlier in this thread, it had been years since i had one from there, and i couldn't even remember what they were like. and you know, it wasn't bad. i mean really. compared to the other tourist places, the meat tasted better than the last time i went to either pat's or geno's or jim's. it wasn't as chewy as geno's, and unlike the last time i went to pat's, it didn't have big chunks of gristle in it. the onions did suffer from the mass production syndrome of basically steaming from being in huge piles, but what are you gonna do. but anyway, it was a perfectly acceptable cheesesteak, and if someone came to town for a convention or something and wanted to try one nearby, i wouldn't hesitate to say go ahead. it's not the best one in town, but as a basically decent example of the genre it totally does the trick. also the boy loved the cheese fries.

i was just gonna say, i can't believe you can get shots like that in that amount of light. it was DARK in there last night. i mean, not in an unreadable menu way, but dark.

i keep meaning to go! but i haven't been able to schedule things yet.

try this one .

i like the roast pork at dinics, and always have, obviously. i've eaten dozens of them. i think the spinach is great, and while everyone's distracted by broccoli rabe's existence, maybe we're all forgetting that only here can you even get garlicky sauteed spinach on a sandwich pretty much at all. at least i've never seen it in any other city i've been in. (edited to add: and that's a GOOD thing, because after all if spinach is on a sandwich it's gotta be good for you, right? it's spinach!) and i've never had dry or flavorless pork there. the one thing i wonder (and maybe since joe spoke up here the other day he can tell me if i'm imagining things or what) is that last summer sometime? maybe spring or fall, but either way last year, the bread seemed to change, and start to suck more than it used to. it used to be more of a hoagie roll, soft inside and crustier outside, and then somewhere along the way it seemed to change to more of a ... i don't know, the texture became more like the sandwich rolls a grocery store sells. softer. less of a difference between inside and outside. but maybe i'm trippin. i could be wrong. i still eat them, although it's been a while recently for no reason that i can figure out. i'll have to remedy that this saturday.

wild turkey rye is good stuff. i love it. what's up with the fact that it was never available in PA except for special order, and then suddenly it was on closeout for $16, though?

so i just got a call from the dude who's putting together an order for the black maple hill rye (there's some kind of minimum order, so he was gathering names of people who would go in on an order with him). LCB cost for the 18-year: $103.99 plus tax, bringing it to $114 and change. when i was over in jersey on sunday as i mentioned above, canal's had this same bottle for $95, and i briefly considered buying it, having forgotten that i had promised dude i was going to go in on this order. luckily my more frugal side prevailed and i didn't splurge, so i'm not sure what the cost would have been with tax, but i'm sure it was less than that. so the moral of the story is: whiskey is good, but always comparison shop before making large purchases.