mrbigjas

wish i coulda made it--tasting notes, anyone?

it's a week where a lot of restaurants serve 3 courses for $30. i'm always torn about whether to bother going or not, since so many places simplify their menus so much that i wonder whether i'm getting a real taste of the restaurant or not.

it's still pretty bizarre, i have to admit. more thickly sliced than some i've had, and it came dry. the dressing was slightly smoky, salty... good stuff. i've never had that sauce with this dish before, and i wonder what it was. almost pinkish, thick, and with a serious vinegar tang to it. i think that was the one they listed on the menu as 'glazed ham.' i don't know how to describe it except as a standard kinda soup that you often get served with a meal like this in both vietnamese and chinese restaurants. a very light broth.... it's like, in soups like this, in my experience, the ground pork, shrimp and tofu are all variations on 'nearly flavorless' and they serve as a great first course or almost a palate-cleanser between courses. i love them, but i would understand if people think they're bland. the bright orange omelette down there on the right was the highlight of this dish for me. very good. advertised as crabmeat, if i remember right. i think they said it was basted with oyster sauce. but i could be wrong. i'd go back too--but earlier. by 930, we were the last people in there and they were noisily putting chairs and tables away for cleaning.

i'm with holly on this one. another tipoff is the misuse of quotation marks.

i seem to remember seeing various things in various places--chef's market down at 3rd & south seems to carry several of those sorts of things, for instance, although i developed a dislike for the place a while ago and haven't been back in recent memory. the spice terminal in the terminal does as well. i know i've seen marmite and vegemite at spice terminal--in pretty dusty jars, though... katie's recommendation for whole foods isn't a bad idea either. i think i remember seeing hp sauce there, and possibly pickle, although i could be wrong. i can picture digestive biscuits on a shelf somewhere in my mind... was it the new dibruno's? nah, can't be.

for 30, wouldn't upstairs at tre scalini be fun? kewl. a little more upscale but they have a big upstairs room at paradiso you might could check out. london has an upstairs room that can seat 55 or so.

i noticed the same thing in barcelona--the boqueria and other markets were piled high with produce of every kind that i never saw in a single restaurant.

oh, good memory--i think lacroix does suggest a jacket.

that's viet huong next to nam phuong. we've been a few times--i posted about it. but i haven't had the banh mi.

one of the things about philadelphia that some people like (like me) and some people don't (like my in-laws) is that the vast majority of restaurants don't have a dress code. so while many people may be a little more dressed up than you are, there's barely a restaurant in town that will turn you away for wearing jeans, especially nice jeans--and in general, if you're fashionably dressed, you're good to go. don't worry about it for a second.

i love nam phuong. i like vietnam palace slightly more, but other than that nam phuong is my go-to place whenever i'm with a few people. next time you're there try the bitter melon soup. they remove the seeds and stuff the melon with a ground pork mixture, in a light broth. service is always kinda brusque and rushed, but i've never considered that a negative for some reason. it seems appropriate there, for such a big place turning out so much food. if you guys do a ba le trip next week...

isn't verjus grapes, by definition? either way it was a truly great dish. we'll see, but david a wasn't doing any cooking on friday and the food was great, so it would seem that the guy can hold his own...

today: peach with southern comfort and hazlenut. i considered going with the almond, but the hazlenut turned out to be the choice of the afternoon. imagine a hazlenut butter sandwich with peach jam. yeah, it was like that. interesting flavor tried today: hot pepper. there was a habanero in the tray, and it had that fruity, almost red bell-peppery flavor that habaneros have, but the afterburn i was expecting didn't happen. also lime/cilantro was being snarfed by many today. i thought it was overly cilantro-y and not limey enough--i had thought about going with it and the hot pepper, but i'm glad i reconsidered.

so all your raving about pif prompted us to go last night, evan. k had the entrecote; i had the pot au feu, which came with a nice pile of brisket, a slice of tongue, and a marrow bone. all was delicious. but the appetizers were key--a sweetbreads verjus that paired perfectly soft yet crisp sweetbreads with a tangy verjus that cut right through... i'm still thinking about it today. k had hamachi, which was marinated and served nicoise an dwas really excellent as well.

what he said. i don't even get it wrapped up to walk the 10 feet over to a table.

i can't believe it too me several weeks to see this--smithy, we used to have a dog who ate vegetables. she loved peas and green beans especially, although she wasn't shy about picking tomatoes. she used to walk along the rows eating the ripe fruit off the plants, leaving the unripe stuff. very discriminating.

sounds like a heck of a visit, ed. come back anytime. --james

cloves will indeed numb your mouth...

They're a Philly product, known for decades as Goldenburg's Peanut Chews. Goldenburg's was acquired by Just Born of Bethlehem, Pa.--the makers of Marshmallow Peeps--and the Peanut Chews were dressed up in new packaging minus the Goldenburg name. A big ad campaign this spring announced the change locally. They are still widely available throughout the Philadelphia region. ← except they changed the formula and they taste totally different now. goldenberg's: RIP just born: FU

i like ba le a little better, but that may just be habit. really O's bread is better because it's just a little fresher. the real question to me is how they compare to cafe nhu y at 8th & christian--the tiny place that makes what has always been my standby. and to tell the truth, i have a good impression of them compared to that place, because the last time i got one from nhu y, i got the chunk of head cheese from the end of the loaf or something and it had gristley chewy bits in it and stuff. i like that sometimes, and it's part of the nature of the ingredient, but i wasn't in the mood for it. again--like the tofu sandwich at O--not really his fault, but still. ordering a sandwich at nhu y, and then sitting around for 10 minutes while he re-crisps your bread while watching vietnamese soap operas on the TVs in the 10 square feet of waiting space is, in its own way, kind of superior to sitting at a real table listening to ricky martin... a friend recently told us that the banh mi at cafe viet huong (which i've posted about on its own thread) are his favorite in town--and as i've posted, they make their own bread there as well. but i haven't tried them yet. viet huong's bread is really really good, if specifically vietnamese, to my senses. it's got that rice flour kinda super crispy crust, very light soft interior; like sarcone's but more delicate. i think checking them out, and soon, is still in order. O's sandwiches are really tasty, though.

yeah, the 19th street future store is what i meant. i mean, i have no problem with it--as far as i'm concerned if i'm never more than 2-3 blocks from a capogiro outlet i'd be pretty happy. i was just wondering if they weren't worried about cutting into their own business. but hey, it's all good.

whaddya know, since philadining reminded me of its existence, we also stopped by Ô' yesterday as part of our traveling around town. nice place, good sandwiches. good shrimp summer roll--a ground shrimp version, with a fried noodle in the middle of it providing a slightly surprising but not offputting crunch. tofu sandwich wasn't half as good as the special--it's really the combination of the pate and the meats, offsetting the sharpness of the pickled vegetables and peppers that is the basis for the greatness of banh mi (to me). the marinated fried tofu is fine, but it's really kinda missing something. i dont know that it's their fault. as an aside, today i found out what happens when you save a summer roll overnight--the wrapper starts to go back to its dried state. mmmm plasticky.

you know, in retrospect that makes perfect sense. i mean, you poke holes in potatoes when you bake them, in eggs when you boil them, etc. really i'd think i would have known better, wouldn't you? and yet none of the recipes ever state this, so it just didn't even register that i should. but next time i'm TOTALLY gonna remember.

here's what happened to me sunday: all the recipes i've seen for baba ghanouj start with roasting the eggplant, whole, in the oven (or over charcoal, if you have that, which i don't). in fact, i've done this several times before with no problem. but this weekend i was roasting a nice big eggplant for a batch of melitzanosalata when suddenly from the oven i heard BANG! hisssssss. i opened it up, and sure enough, the eggplant had committed suicide, exploding and sending chunks of itself all over the oven. most of it was still intact--and i had to turn the oven up to 500 anyway to bake pitas, so the little bits i couldn't pull out got burned up with no problem--so alls well that ends well. but that one sure did catch me off guard. i wonder why it happened.

i keep seeing this thread show up in the active threads search, and i keep reading it as 'fried samosa party' and i think, man, what a great idea!