mrbigjas

i wonder if other thai places do that. i mean, siam lotus, when they reopened, the newspaper articles said things like they had gone back to thailand for a few years and come back. you'd think they'd be into it. erawan got a decent amount of publicity for that for a little while, from the newspaper article and the folks over on chowhound--for a while there it seemed like a group was going like every week for one of them dinners. i always meant to do something like that, but then i felt lame.

man, what a classy title i gave this thread. maybe we should change it to 'reviews and discussion' hahahahaha

this is true. i was given some of it a couple of years ago -- it's fantastic stuff. unfortunately my stash is gone now. fortunately they grow great saffron here in pennsylvania, if you can find it.

i must take issue with this post. after all, chaps by their very nature are always assless. anyway, one more note about matyson's lunch: the sandwiches are $9-10; the entrees are like $14 or $15. salads are $8-10. it's downright cheap. the only thing that remains dinner-style pricey is appetizers -- a rock shrimp tempura on a little crab salad was $10 and way small. man, sometimes i wish i worked downtown.

hit up matyson. it was crowded! with lots of business types discussing business. fun time, very good food, although the bread on the cuban sandwich was overtoasted a little. i forgot how much desserts rock there--i'm not a big dessert lover, but we ordered up their lemon souffle tart, topped with a raspberry fool, and it was great. thanks y'all.

Rouge serves some of the worst food in Piladelphia. Not just bad but insulting. I will actually pay you not to eat there. ← sweet, how much?

thanks matthewj, but i'm looking for something kinda nicer. since we don't have the kid and don't have to get back to work, i can spend some time and money for once...

infernooo, since no one else has answered this post either way, i will: that is indeed what we generally call a flank steak here in the US. i buy them all the time; it's one of my favorite cuts of beef. what we call a skirt steak can be seen here or here. it's significantly thinner than what you bought and as you can see the grain runs across rather than along it.

thanks for the responses! capaneus, you know i never looked up your screen name before, but i'm glad i have now. anyway, lacroix is an interesting option -- we have a gift certificate there that we were going to use about three weeks ago, but the ice storm kept our babysitter at home. FY(and everyone's)I for future reference, apamate is only serving dinner and weekend brunch nowadays. too bad, but i could see it coming. it was always dead in there during the day. now, matyson... i haven't been back in a couple years probably. it's one of those places that i went to a couple times when it opened, and had great meals, and i just haven't gotten back. that's a really good thought. jeff, monks is a good idea, and maybe monday lunchtime it wouldn't be annoyingly crowded. if we're going more casual maybe that'll be the answer. v, i don't know that i wanna hit up rae the day after laban reviews it, even for lunch. and last i checked, tria didn't open till about 4. they may have changed that. i wish osteria was open at lunch. snackbar would be fun (and close to home) but since it doesn't start serving till 1:30... hm... i could always hit up amada now that i think of it. this is an interesting thing to think about, really. i don't think i've ever been in this situation before -- kind of a 'what restaurant do you trust at the most off-hour of the entire week' dilemma? i mean, what restaurant that isn't mama's vegetarian, which probably won't be open tomorrow since passover is starting in the evening...

imagine it's a monday, you're off work, the boy's in day care. you were thinking of going to the home opener but you don't have tickets, so it's lookin like a free day off for the two of you. where would you go to lunch? price not really no object, but not that much of a concern. just something really good, preferrably downtown. a lot of places are closed mondays, is part of the reason i'm asking. the other is that i've been out of the nice dining scene for a while.

thanks for the tip matt, i'll check for it in bitar's next time i'm down there.

black cherry wishniak?

wow, that looks like a big pain in the ass. no wonder everyone buys it. maybe i'll just use phyllo. or maybe i'll go up on an assouline-finding mission...

same question from me.

i've been there as early (or late, depending on how you look at it) as 1 on a saturday and they were basically closing up.

well, i wasn't asking generally, i meant specifically. this week i want some of that brik pastry, but i don't want to mail order it. where can i get some? (modeled on the DC thread where to get stuff? where, whenever you have a question about where to get something, you post it and people can help if they know where to get it.)

ok so capaneus started the 'where to get rare produce' thread, right here. and dagordon started the 'where to get fancy meat and fish' thread, which may someday end up being more useful than as a simple 'well, you can't' reference--maybe it already has with the recent posts about those chickens that are so good. anyway, it's right here. so here's installment #3: where to get specialty products? i'll start: i was reading in the NYT today, that adaptation of the joel robuchon recipe for langoustines fried in brik pastry, which it said was available mail order from levillage.com. well, i like things fried in dough, who wouldn't? and that stuff sounds good. but who wants to mail order a few pieces of dough? not me. a quick google turned up that no one makes their own, just like no one makes their own phyllo. so i thought, well, what the hell, maybe someone around here sells it. anyone know of a place? p.s. edited to fix coding and to clarify a bit further, i know a lot of the answers are going to be 'dibrunos' or 'assouline'. but here's a bad example of the kind of thing i'm trying to find: a couple of years ago, before midori mart, if you were looking for instant korean ramen (shin or neoguri), some nori, kimchi, or a 100-pack of chopsticks in center city, you used to be able to just go to 20th & spruce, where kitchen USA had all that stuff right next to the lorna doones and cans of folgers. i thought that was pretty cool, that the korean owners sold korean convenience store stuff along with american. ok that's not real high-end specialty, but it's something you can't get in wawa or superfresh. see where i'm going? ok good.

my rosemary is not, sadly. and my thyme actually looks dead. i thought it was really hard to kill thyme, but apparently being out in a pot this winter did the trick. only my second thyme plant in nearly eight years in this house. oddly enough, tarragon is poking up through the soil. now that i thought was easy to kill, and yet it seems to have survived. i'm at a loss to explain it...

the former. my wife was there recently for lunch and said it was uninteresting at best.

yes. the stall at the terminal is very much fast food/food truck style. it's weird, you can't seem to get some peking duck there without it being thrown in a styrofoam container with a bunch of noodles and having broth poured over the whole thing. or else you can get a peking duck roll. so they have all these nice ducks hanging up and you can't get them the way you'd want them. i mean, they're not on the menu that way. i guess you could ask. at the restaurant, you get the breast/skin with the pancakes for one course, and the rest of the meat stir fried with vegetables for a second course. in addition, their dumplings suck, which they don't at the restaurant. and also the... you know, it's just... it's a fast food lunch place, not the real deal. so yeah, you're right. not the same at all.

oh i beg to differ on that. i've always preferred the food at the palace to the food at vietnam, even when it was dumpier inside. edited to say: you know what we should do, is have a vietnam/vietnam palace smackdown. early and late dinner, order the same dishes at each, see which one rocks more. pause to purge in between meals.

ok this may be a dumb question, but is the double pour a pittsburgh thing? i noticed it at several places when we were out there summer before last: signs saying "all our shots are double pours!" and even when we were in a bar that wasn't the type of place that would put a sign like that out, we'd get poured doubles whenever we'd order a shot. i mean, maybe it's all just coincidence and i'm making connections in my head where they don't exist, but it was remarkable enough that i noticed it at the time.

i think they're generally from 3-4 pounds. the one i bought was about 3 2/3 pounds.

ok on a slightly more serious note: dagordon may have mentioned the meadow run farms chickens they sell frozen at fair foods. i know we've discussed it; not sure if he posted about it here and i don't feel like reading this whole thread again. what i do know is this: those chickens rock the house, even though they're frozen. i bought one, defrosted it, and didn't even do all those things that people do to chickens like brining or pre-salting or anything. just roasted it as is with the usual herbs and butter and olive oil and salt. and it was fantastic. the dark meat was flavorful, the breast wasn't dry (maybe a leeeetle rubbery from being frozen, but eminently edible)... great stuff. probably about the best chicken i've bought here in town, like, ever. i was reminded of this today when i bought a rotisserie chicken from a local place up here and it was all pasty, as if it had been brined and then overcooked -- you know how birds can be dry and moist at the same time? how it tastes ok but feels like you're eating papier mache? it had that going on. and it was... i feel like it was about average for a rotisserie chicken that you buy. i mean, there was nothing notably wrong with it, except that it sucked so badly compared to what i had last week. anyway, the only complaint i have about those chickens is that the giblets (besides the neck) aren't included. and that i can't get them fresh. if you ever say to yourself, gee, a normal 4-lb chicken costs $6, could a $13 one be worth it? try it once and see. this is good.

aaaah, i was imagining, if dry-aged means aged in a dry room, and wet-aged means aged in it's own juices, then butt-age means... oh god