mrbigjas

I think there's a difference between an ethnic restaurant (including barbecue) and a vegetarian restaurant. The one is rooted in a culture; the other is rooted in an ethical decision. I'm interested in exploring various cultures through food. I'm not so interested in making a moral statement by what I put on my plate. Others differ; that's fine with me. what about a south indian vegetarian place? rooted in a culture that at some point made an ethical or religious decision.... or what about a restauranteur that decides that, say, denmark is the goodest country in the world in every way, and therefore opens a danish place? then it's exploring the culture through food because of an ethical decision! LORD HAVE MERCY THIS IS CONFUSING. i'm stickin to what tastes good.

i'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that so far the peaches and plums are equalling last season in crazy goodness. we picked up some of those pink peaches, let them ripen for just a couple of days, and they were like candy--very very juicy candy. warning: eat over the sink.

i don't really have a problem with fake meat; it's just that i really really like vegetables, is all. thanks for the tip on blue sage, i'll check it out when i'm up there.

i have a few thoughts on this. first of all, like most people i have several friends who are or were vegetarian, vegan, raw food, raw meat only (OK none of these), etc. sometimes i question why they pursue anything but taste all the time, and the only real, rocksolid conclusion that i come down to is that people like to impose dietary restrictions on themselves. i understand that, having been a vegetarian for a couple years a long time ago. and still, if you think about it, even food geeks like us put dietary restrictions on ourselves all the time, not giving in to the easiest and cheapest option at every moment, always searching out something new and interesting and good.... when you take something as basic as nourishment, people are gonna do stuff, and that's all there is to it. either way, what i find interesting about horizons is how do people work within these dietary restrictions they've put on themselves? because really, if you think about it, it's no different than a barbecue place ('everything's gotta be smoked for a really long time') or any ethnic place ('only cook things from this country'). you choose a theme, and you run with it. every restaurant is this way--there's just a bit more of a perceived moral weight attached to this particular theme. so then, if you consider a vegan place as just another restaurant, but with a slightly different theme, the question then becomes: is it worth it to eat there? which in my case means, does it taste good, and can i afford it (and to a lesser extent, even if i can afford it do i think it's overpriced)? and the place passes on all accounts. i will admit that it's not QUITE my ideal of a vegan place, though--in part because oddly enough i felt like there isn't enough focus on vegetables. by that i mean that while it is cool that they're pursuing a different vision, it still tends to fall into the same 'block of protein, some starch and a vegetable side' thing that every restaurant does. when i went i was thinking of a more old-school vegetarian, diet-for-a-small-planet, whole-grain-and-vegetable based thing, and less of a place where you're replacing a piece of steak with a block of tofu. and horizons definitely falls more into that latter category--there's tons of tofu, and seitan, and soy-based 'cream' sauces and stuff. but anyway, all my yapping begs the real question: does it taste good? and the answer is definitely yes. they're making some delicious stuff, generally going for a caribbean and/or pacific rim kind of spicy/sweet/sour flavor profile. i had a block of kochujang marinated tofu. there was bbqed and jerked seitan, and shredded 'pork' tacos. a 'malaysian' cauliflower salad. some things are more successful than others, but there wasn't a real misstep in our meal--everything we had just straight up tasted good, and there was plenty of it. and really that's all there is to it. the dessert was merely OK--they have a good selection of aged rum instead, if you're of that mindset, which i am. oh and speaking of alcohol, i don't know from vegan wines, but i do know that when you're working those kinds of flavors, you have to pick carefully, and they have plenty by the glass. recommendation: the wine on their list that will go with the majority of their menu is the ch. lascaux rose, which rocks at six bucks a glass. don't fear pink wine! and in case you're wondering about filling up without meat, let me assure you that the portions are more than adequate--too large, even--which i'm convinced is in part because after all, there's only so much you can pay for tofu in this country and everyone knows it, so things have to appear bountiful. i was ridonkulously stuffed when i left, and i brought half of my entree home. so yeah, i hope that makes some sense. (edited for clarity)

sweet. now, i can't remember--is 2003 the vintage of the decade, century, millennium, or since christ's birth?

i really try not to judge too much, i really do. i just find this incomprehensible. for instance, you can go to the king of prussia mall and wait like two hours for cheesecake factory, or you can go across the street to desi village and have good indian food, pretty much right away. is it that part of the thing IS the wait? that it becomes a night out?

hey, so were we! i don't know that i'd call it the best food in the city, but it's miles ahead of any other vegetarian place that i've been, and really i shouldn't even be limiting it to comparisions with other vegetarian places--it's damn good food by any estimation. it's fantastic to have it in town. i'll be back for sure. (edited for clarity--and again, to say that i have more to say about this, some of which addresses andrew's points below, but i don't have time right now...)

A little birdie told me that my info was wrong (I thought it was owned by the Radicchio people) -- the birdie says that a couple of the Radicchio waiters defected to open up their own place. i thought i'd heard that from someone else besides you--must be several people misinterpreting things....

could it be this? from the site:

in part, yeah. it's kind of like a reverse hoagie or something--meat wrapping cold cuts wrapping bread (and cheese).... actually tonight we had it as leftovers, and a night in the fridge did wonders for the cohesiveness of the dish, so i'm gonna go ahead and post a pic, because i have a new camera: edited to say that you can totally see the issues here: bready filling too big, gaps in the meat wrapping, etc. what you can't see is the deliciousness. mmmmm

yeah that's the ticket! rereading it, my post sounded more disappointed than i really was--it's just that it's obviously supposed to be a big presentation sort of thing, and it wasn't. i think it was this steamed 'gran biscotto' from dibruno's, but it might have been this roasted version. i'm pretty sure it was the steamed one, because of the texture. it was herbal, and tender, and ... well, just great stuff. i only bought three little slices though, and i really need more.

mmmmm goat. a couple notes: 1. the broth is referred to as consome both there and at taqueria la veracruzana, where they serve the pieces in the broth, which gets interesting when you're fishing them out of there. not as difficult as the duck noodle soup at nan zhou, because you have a fork, but a messy situation nonetheless. 2. that was crema on the spaghetti, not queso fresco. a weird combination indeed! 3. their pico was excellent, and the salsa verde had the nice addition of little chunks of avocado in it. good stuff. thanks andrew--good idea!

why every restaurant in the world doesn't have a vinho verde available for $4 a glass at all times is beyond me.

it's run by the folks from radicchio, i'm pretty sure.

well, i was going to suck up my failure and post a pic of tonight's dinner, but i've decided against it. besides the ever-popular batali caponata, and a whole pile of the most brightly-colored rainbow chard i've ever seen, i decided to go ahead and make this recipe for a big ol' braciolone from about.com, because why not. but it didn't work out so well. when i pounded out the meat (pork, since i couldn't get a veal breast) it didn't hold together so well, which necessitated some interesting trussing. this, of course, resulted in each piece of the roll basically opening up as i cut it to serve it, the stuffing mixture falling apart, along with the egg slices. combine that with my inexperience with my new camera, and really the photos belong on the regrettable dinner thread. but the taste was fantastic. after all, when you layer a shell of meat with mortadella, salami, and a great prosciutto cotto (which i'm going to go back and get a whole bunch of soon), and then stuff two kinds of cacio in the filling, how far wrong can you go? but really the thing that makes it so enjoyable is that, after you cook the thing with the tomato sauce, the sauce has taken on a great meaty flavor, and yet is in actuality still pretty much just tomatoes. anyway, verdict: i suck at this sort of thing, so it doesn't look so good, but it does taste so good. it's too bad--after missing out on half of this month so far, i set aside a good part of the afternoon, and had hoped to be able to post up some photos of something fun. oh wells. at least we have tons of leftovers... i'ma make some of that sardine pasta later this week, and rumor has it a timballe may be in my future, so the month may not be a wash yet.

yeah

a few notes, for your planning convenience: jj's grotto doesn't exist anymore. it's now medusa, a dive bar that i'm pretty sure doesn't serve pizza. i don't think london has pizza on their menu anymore, although i could be wrong--although if you're going up there, you could do a hell of a lot worse than rembrandt's. they may not have ever made a best of list, though.

this is interesting--i had always assumed that the maraschino was part of it. as an aside, from that page you posted, sam, what's gum syrup?

i use dale degroff's recipe from the art of the cocktail. i've made it with bourbon without the rim and loved it, but i'm thinking the sweetness of the bourbon and sugar together might overwhelm me if i had. i'll have to try it.

not coincidentally, guess what i made the other night? the key word in the recipe is 'gently'--if you boil the mixture, it starts to taste less like pure sweetcorn, and more like this corn pudding my family makes, which is delicious in its own right, but is something else entirely.

So do you know if they will remain green when ripe? I want to let her know how to tell when she can harvest them. they remain mostly green when ripe. the top of them gets yellower, but the darker green patches remain that color, and the yellow background fades toward light green at the bottom. i don't know what to tell you about how to know when to harvest them, though, for that very reason. i do know about their flavor when ripe--noticeably lower in acid, and kind of a more rounded, sweet-spicy flavor than a regular tomato. a lot of pulp. they make a great addition to a caprese salad or something, because their flavor is so different from a regular red tomato. i buy them all the time in the summer for that very reason.

over in the "inspired by studiokitchen" thread, percy did a cauliflower ice cream. i didn't have his, but i did have it at studiokitchen back in the day, and it's damn good.

they might be green zebras?

were a lot of things there... uh... pureed?

on sunday at a fancy brunch here in philadelphia, we had gnocchi with guanciale and wild asparagus. not specifically sicilian, but damn good. this week i made green beans in sort of a caponata-esque preparation, with the sultanas and pine nuts and vinegar and sugar and herbs and oil and cinnamon and whatnot. i could have sworn i read this as a recipe somewhere in one of my books or on the web, but i can't find it anywhere. maybe i'm crazy. but i was thinking of you guys.