mrbigjas

butt-age?

as i reported elsewhere there was a 50-60 minute wait at tria last week. and that included bar seats. so i guess someone's keeping track of things in such a way that they could have bar reservations as well as seating charts...

what, has this cold weather been keeping you guys away? wimps. gelato knows no seasons. why just last night after a fiery dinner at miran, we braved the 15 degree weather and the ice and the drunken idiots staggering and drooling and getting in fights (none of whom were wearing coats btw), to stop in and get a cup of ginger and bacio. a strange combination, you might think, with the hazlenuts and the chocolate and the ginger, but you know what? it was fantastic. it was like those fancy chocolatiers who put just a little spice or something interesting in their chocolates, that you don't expect. the boy got a little bit of fior di latte, and it made him thirsty enough that he guzzled a bunch of water and then puked part of it up. this was his second gelato experience -- his first was last week (chocolate banana and date/cream cheese), and as you can see i suspect this is going to turn into an expensive habit...

thanks for the report lfabio2007. sounds like it needs a while to shake out. i'll attribute the service errors to first night weirdness, but how do you have unfresh fish on your first night?

man oh man. sometimes i read something on here that makes complete sense to me, and then i realize just how crazy it would look to someone who had other priorities in life. and this is one of those times.

i don't see that it matters much, at this point. it was a good program. sure it had its flaws, but it was overall a good thing. but as far as i'm concerned, no more newman, no more chairman's selection. at least not one that i'm interested in -- and i say that knowing that my taste in wine didn't mesh with the program a lot. the palcb is going to have to do a lot to win me back over, even to the extent they did. south jersey: land of cheap gas and good wine stores. remind me again why people bust on it? total wine, i'll see ya soon. you too, moore bros. and for the booze.... ok i'll probably still get liters down on delaware ave, but i wish they'd fix that goddamn web inventory system. they're showing 7 bottles of my favorite bourbon at 19th & chestnut, and 12 at 12th & chestnut, having been at both of those stores in the last couple of days? THEY AIN'T THERE.

don't forget several brunellos that will probably be starting to get awesome when the chairman's selection program is just a faint memory.

have i waxed rhapsodic about the haemul pajun there recently? seriously, you might think you've had a good one before. or you might think of it like i think of nachos: basically ok, but a too-filling appetizer that serves no real purpose. but i'm tellin ya you haven't had one like she makes. i can't tell what elisa ludwig knows about korean food, but she got that bit right. every haemul pajun you will have in this city after you have that one will be a rank disappointment.

that's the jawn all right. man i gotta get back there. the problem is, they're open till all hours, so it's hard to know if they'll be there early enough for us to go with the boy... it's a former white tower, not white castle, though.

since i missed the original steak tasting, the thing about this one was how much more beefy the flannery steak was. so in a way it was the first tasting for me. where the difference in flavor really shone was in the sous vide preparations, where other flavors were introduced. with the whole foods steak you could really get the flavor of the hazlenut oil and bay laurel. while you could still taste those things in the flannery steak, its own beefiness beat them out. charcoal grilling does make all the difference, though. the browning from the intense heat, combined with the slight smoke flavor from the charcoal, make up for the quality differences in the meat. OK it doesn't QUITE make up for the difference. if you're eating the two grilled steaks side by side you can tell. but if you weren't. i gotta wonder if my hood's powerful enough to suck out the CO from one of these mini mini (7" x 7")versions of a konro grill. i mean, a grill that size would take like two charcoal briquettes, i got a good vent directly to outside.... damn. anyway, i agree with andrew that the pan-seared steaks were rarer than the others. i wonder if they had been in there longer, cooked to a little less rare, would they have more of a crust like the grilled steaks did?

haha, doing the statue/sandbag swap with the flannery and whole foods steaks... more tomorrow.

whoa, goose chitlins

i find that a lot, if not all, of the essential biting radish-y-ness is lost when you braise them. i mean, they still taste pretty good, but they don't taste like a lot.

13th street somewhere.

ok i realize i've been out of the going out loop for a while, but when did tria get SO EFFIN' POPULAR? with someone watching the boy for a while, we stopped by on friday evening thinking we'd get a nice glass or two -- and the wait for a seat of any sort was 50-60 minutes. uh, i don't think so. but dang, no wonder they're opening a second one.

hasn't philadelphia always been kind of the epicenter of the whole belgian beer thing in the US? having volunteered at and/or attended probably about fifty beer events over the last 15 years or so, i've heard that said and seen it written numerous times.

the best mussels in town as far as i'm concerned are standard tap's. but that's not a belgian bar, so it's neither here nor there. what's wrong with the beer at eulogy, rich? is it that you think the selection is lame, or they serve it in the wrong glassware, or too cold, or what? i mean, they don't make it, they just serve it. i did used to find it funny when they had that menu that said THE BEST 100 BEERS YOU'VE NEVER HEARD OF and it had miller lite and yuengling lager on it, but they don't have that anymore.

they do indeed, with a minimum order of $15. and they do it in 45 minutes just like they say they do. and when you order, they bring you a gift certificate for $1 off your next order... unless you order $40 worth of food like we did on friday, in which case they gave us a $3 one. i just wish golden coins could travel. i wonder if i heated up my oven, and put the golden coins in there on a couple layers of brown paper, if they'd refresh well. hmm.... is it worth $8 to find out? i think it is.

use the img tags around that url. dang that makes me hungry. i love that sandwich. but i get so tired trying to convince people from out of town that it's good. people, it's just salt on salt. what could be wrong with that?

the best thing about john's is that he grills the roll for his egg & cheese sandwiches, instead of .... well, instead of doing nothing. that makes for an awesome sandwich. why, if i weren't already at work i'd go get one RIGHT NOW.

yeah those were good. snyder's also used to make buffalo wing flavor, and coney island hot dog flavor, and a couple other meat flavors. no more, though. sad.

i love the strange world of meat flavored potato chips and had high hopes when i was given a promo bag of those cheesesteak chips last year at a phils game. but those things suck. they mainly tasted like liquid smoke and salt. ugh.

by reading and reading and more reading, and then drinking and drinking.

oh also they serve the sauce on the side when you get it to take out, so it doesn't get soggy. great idea.

they fry the whole breast, then slice it. it rocks.