mrbigjas

hey phil's post just reminded me that i never reported back on this: it totally works. sure they're not as totally light and crisp as when first fried, but they're definitely good enough to make it worth the effort.

thanks for the info, tim. that's a good restaurant right there.

the binchotan comes in a 500g pack, and the sumi comes in a 10kg pack...

in case you don't feel like reading the whole thing, the upshot was 'order it from new york.'

weird, deliciousitaly.com isn't resolving for me right now. anyway, considering the trouble i had last night flipping a fritatta made with seven eggs and entirely too much sauteed fennel and leeks, i imagine the answer is 'very very carefully.' those diavolicchio peppers that mario describes on his site sound remarkably similar to these finger-length curled red chilis i get at the vietnamese market. they're noticeably hot but not remarkably so, and perk up almost anything. i think i'll sub them in.

quick q: if i stop in there tonight at like, a little before 7, are me and the mrs gonna be able to eat at the bar, or is it going to be insanely annoyingly crowded? basically i don't have a res, don't feel like making one, and figured since it was early maybe we'd swing by up there. but if it's still packed and going to be a pain in the ass, i'll go another time when i've planned ahead a little more.

the last couple of times i was at sahara grill, the meat entrees were pretty bad. like, overcooked to the point where it seemed like they'd had things grilled up already, and put them back on the grill to reheat. the other stuff was good though. i've wondered about that place for a while now, but have never been. is it good?

haha, not so much talked me into it, as listened to me whine about how i could only get old overholt, beam and michters here in PA without doing an SLO, and then mentioned it. i was like, sounds good, sign me up.

at standard tap the other night, the mussels came with spicy italian sausage rather than chorizo. while the mussels themselves were still small and tender and cooked perfectly enough that i could twist them out of the shell with a fork using only one hand, without destroying them (i.e. overcooked and mushy) or splashing the juice on my clothes (i.e. undercooked and holding on too hard), the absense of chorizo took them down a notch in my book. let's hope this is temporary.

i can't believe it's been nearly a year and a half since i've been back to southwark, but we got over there again a couple weeks ago with a couple of friends--a picky eater and his wife, who longs for anything that's not the same four things that he eats day in and day out... we figured southwark would be a good compromise -- there's always a piece of steak or chicken on the menu, after all, and the cooking there has always been straightforward enough that they wouldn't 'goop it up,' as my mother in law would describe it. so, one thing hasn't changed: the bar is fantastic. i would spend a lot of time here if i lived down there and didn't have the boy to take care of. had a great manhattan, and after some discussion, i might have ended up signing myself up for a special order $100 bottle that the bartender was putting together. we had great appetizers: some snails with small cheese-filled crepes (delice de bourgogne), a nice beet salad, some roasted fingerling potatoes. following up on these, i had a shad&roe special, and there was a rabbit with beans, and lamb that i didn't try, and a flank steak. all (that i had) tasted great, but some execution glitches kind of marred the dinner for me. on the service side, there were pretty long delays in taking orders and bringing drinks, as well as between apps and entrees. my shad was great but the roe was pretty much overcooked, while the steak that my friend ordered medium was pretty far to the rare side of medium rare (the bacon and brussels sprouts it came with were great, though). the meat was cooked perfectly for someone like me, but not so much for him -- being the 'never send anything back' sort, he kind of ate the edges off of the rarer pieces... anyway i'd still recommend it, but with a few more reservations than before. i mean i really enjoyed the food and the restaurant in general, but had some rough edges that would make me pause before recommending it to someone who might be upset by the sort of things i mention above. and i would enthusiastically recommend it to someone who loved cocktails. the bar is great. in fact, i wonder if my impression this time around is based on being at a table, when the last few times we were there we sat and ate at the bar. i find you almost always get a more attentive, more pleasant, less... well, less formal and more personable experience when you eat at the bar in a decent restaurant. it's why i always prefer it. hm....

ok i just had a realization: maybe if you're used to a cheesesteak being lubricated by whiz (oh god that doesn't sound good), you expect less cheese than if, like me, you've always preferred the american. american isn't as runny as whiz, and really a steak can hold plenty more of it. so to me, it's fine, but to someone who prefers whiz, maybe it seems excessive. hm.... i think a light bulb just went on here, like when i first realized that there's a difference between fast food burgers and big ol steakhouse burgers. very interesting. goddammit, i NEVER get that right. it really seemed like a sarcone's seeded to me, and i thought i had read that before.

happened to stop down at john's today for lunch. and two things: 1. people can overreact. the folks at John's are brusque and maybe easily annoyed, but they're not rude. there are lots of places like that in the world. edited to add: i mean the guy is standing there yelling ANY NON-GRILL ORDERS? ANYONE ORDERING ANYTHING THAT'S NOT FROM THE GRILL? and there's 20 people in line there and the staff is working hard. and you go up and say 'can i get a cheesesteak' from that guy you think he's not going to be annoyed? come on. 2. it's a fan-friggin-tastic cheesesteak. seriously. one of the best i've had in a long time -- i don't get down to john's that often, so i usually just get the roast pork, which i prefer. but today i took the plunge, and even though it was easily twice what i usually eat at lunch i finished most of it. sarcone's roll, hollowed out a little and packed with meat. whoever said they use too much cheese is just plain wrong. damn that was good.

you can get baby artichokes at wegmans in jersey. i made mario batali's artichokes with garlic and mint. it was pretty good but i've said it before and i'll say it again: i have yet to have an artichoke that it's worth my time to clean. i'll microwave them and eat them as is, but as far as cooking, i keep buying and buying, hoping i'll have that great revelation, but every time i'm like...... eh, these are pretty good, but a lot of work....

mamma maria's! you ever see her show on the tv? it's fun. the restaurant has very mixed reviews on every site i've found though.

nice job. to quote mike from the young ones: that was a highly articulate outburst, there. my problem with situations like this is severalfold: 1. bruni (and others) never follows up in his own comments. many bloggers do this; i suspect they are used to the print world, where you say your peace, and people react, and we all move on. blogs, such as they are, invite conversation. kind of a bummer that we won't hear from him again. 2. when a douchebag like that poster #11 puts up something like that, it always gets my dander up and i get inarticulate. i think bruni's point is well made though. i mean his main point about how places get to be all this way about stuff. sorry he had to use a bad experience here as an example. p.s. i'll still go to john's. i think their pork sandwich is damn good.

in one of those 'where did those come from?' moments, o.k. lee had nice-sized purple artichokes today, 3 for a buck. i bought six.

i'ma try to get there too, in the morning, with the boy. scrapple seems like perfect baby food to me, as long as it isn't all fried up so it's cool on the outside and 9000 degrees inside. i mean, what the heck, get him started on the road to lipitor early....

i haven't heard much about the fountain lately. i'd be interested in a report back!

i don't know the answer to your question. i do know this: our deer park coolers at work developed algae over time and had to be replaced. also i definitely got a bad bottle here and there, that basically smelled like an old algae-covered pond. also, the reason you don't like the taste of your tap water is because water in this city doesn't taste good. i'm pretty much used to it, having drunk it my whole life, so i just brita it. but even i noticed that it goes through periods where it tastes noticeably worse than others.

it's here: http://www.philadelphiaweekly.com/view.php?id=14455

here's a sweetbreads topic from about a year and a half ago.

thanks! i'll check it out. that one tastes kinda like listerine, but if listerine were 70% alcohol.

well, gabriel lewis wins the prize: or at least partially. diacetyl is a component of the butter flavor they put in popcorn and the like, and also the source of 'popcorn workers lung.' OMG maybe i shouldn't be cooking with it!

i don't use clarified butter in a hollandaise. jacques pepin told me not to. of course he also told me that reduced stock was a demiglace, and it turned out that was wrong, technically speaking.

i bet you're right about the flavors, but i haven't heard back from wegman's yet. how could that be? don't they see that this is a matter of national importance? re: neutral flavor, i don't know -- as i said, i never thought about it all that much before. i never was going for a neutral flavor, but a basic butter flavor you can fry with. i just read cookbooks and follow them. about older fats frying better, russ parsons explains that one in 'how to read a french fry.'