mrbigjas

welcome cherie! i think i met you once, when i was somewhere with katie.

one of my great downfalls in life is that i like nearly everything, and can see the value in most anything. this leads to great indecision when i'm at restaurants, because nearly everything looks good to me. so the anser to your above questions, to me, is no. there's much to be said for a nasty ol mcdonalds cheesburger. or a bowl of cup noodle with enough sodium in it to melt the snow on a highway after a blizzard. or a cheesesteak, american with.

i was kind of picturing a situation like this myself. the guy saying 'no, i'm not opening a mexican restaurant, i'm opening a cuban restaurant--we're serving cuban tacos, cuban quesadillas, cuban nachos, cuban maragaritas... what, too close? did i say cuban? i meant french. we're having les tacos, las quesadillas, le marguerite...'

friends of ours who don't live too far from you always order from crovetti's at 8th & federal (she thinks that's where it is). we've had it a few times when over their house, and it was good.

i like me some white castle cheeseburgers. yeah, i know you purists will tell me they're nothing like the real thing. but when the nearest white castle is over 50 miles away through the wilds of new jersey, you have to take what you can get.

Everytime I think to myself "Maybe I should order up some of that tasty Wagyu beef from Lobels", a quick study of their website reminds me that I am no Donald Trump. i'm in the same situation. and then after that, a quick look at my hair in the mirror makes me say, thank god i'm not.

i've always said south-wark...

well i know y'all are fascinated with what i ended up doing. i'm not that used to cooking whole grains so i decided to treat it kind of like beans. kind of. anyway, i put some in a pot with a bunch of water and brought it to a boil, and then put a lid on and let it sit off the heat for about an hour or 1:15 or so. at that point several of the grains had kind of opened up, but the majority of it was chewy and not inedible. so then after draining it i cut up some slab bacon into lardons, cooked, drained most of the fat, put some shallot in there, and when it was soft, i put the spelt in and added some chicken stock, thyme and some fenugreek. then i let it simmer for probably another hour. i was checking it along the way in case it became too soft or started to disintegrate or something--i wasn't sure what was going to happen. anyway, it didn't fall apart or get much softer, so as dinnertime neared i turned up the heat and then added a few handfuls of baby spinach to wilt into it, and simmered off most of the liquid. the result was, if i do say so myself, freaking delicious. we had roasted chicken and sugar snap peas with it, but this could easily have been a meal in itself. edited to say actually it was a little too salty for my taste--when i initially boiled it i used salted water for the same reason that i always have with beans, and that combined with the bacon probably pushed it over the edge. note to self: grains take less salt than beans.

i just want to take a second and point out here, in case you're directing this at me, that i'm not complaining about the prices of wines in general--that's craig laban's territory to fight out with barclay prime. rather, as someone who has only gotten into the whole wine drinking thing within the last three years or so, i'm still in the stage where i'm learning how to figure out when restaurants are charging fairly or not--considering not only the price of the wine but everything else involved. and that's why i'm asking questions. of course living in a city where so many of the good new restaurants are BYOBs doesn't help with the learning process. (also to me, love my goat tastes like ass, and besides it costs $7.99 a bottle retail, so i still say it was an OK example above)

Because they're not deep fried. ← Right... is there any way to deep fry an egg? I have some time on my hands, maybe I should give it a go! ← there sure is. jacques pepin tells how to do it in 'complete techniques.' oil at 360, warm two wooden spatulas in the oil so the egg doesn't stick, and use them to shape it as it cooks. apparently other than that it's basically just like poaching an egg, except you cook it for less time. i've never tried it so i can't vouch for it. i do believe, however, that st. jacques can do no wrong, so i have faith that it would be delicious, and that you should try it and report back.

ok, congratulations! and if you've solved my dissolving roll problem, you will hold a place in my heart forever--just above the blocked artery that's sure to take my life at age 50 as a result of the pork...

that's good thinkin. but i like the juice. oh the agony of being indecisive.

Pancetta can well be eaten uncooked and often is - sometimes the cured belly is rolled, then it is sold sliced, just like other salumi to enjoy as an antipasto, or stuffed in rolls. For that matter, lardo, pure white back fat cured in salt, garlic and spices (such as the outstanding lardo di Colonnata), is similarly eaten uncooked, simply sliced thinly, a delicious and favourite nibble with a good glass of wine. to add to the terminology fun, when i was at a wine bar in rome, they referred to this on the menu as bacon di colonnata.

that's an admirable goal, and if i know you at all you'll succeed. and i'll come and drink it. i just believe that there are markups and then there are MARKUPS. and marking a $15 bottle of wine up to $40 or something is fine, and to be expected. but when a place marks everything up so high that the only thing a diner can get for under $45 or so is bully hill 'love my goat' or something they pour out of a box in the back, then it's doing its diners a disservice. i guess it's what you're saying about 'several price points,' really. as someone who tries to drink half-decently on the lower end of the scale the majority of the time, i appreciate it when a restaurant makes the effort to have something for someone like me. (edit: disservice, not misservice)

hey in other pizza news: did you guys see where joe's pizza on 16th street had a fire? they're closed for a while. apparently if you need your joe's fix you can go to their other location on 17th & chestnut, but i've never been there.

i have another question relating to this review: has craig laban given up his quest for anonymity? i mean, don't you think that calling the sommelier over and telling him that $65 for a $15 bottle of wine is outrageous, and the guy lowers the price for you, makes you kind of memorable? at least memorable enough that if you were the sommelier and read that review, you'd remember the incident? or is it just that everyone in any higher-level position in the local industry knows who he is anyway?

greg, where is this restaurant? because i think i need to go there, and soon.

katie: thanks for the info. as i get more knowledgable about this stuff, it helps to have a basis on which to judge things. andrew: i only have one or two friends who can do this sort of thing--one of them lives in saskatchewan, and the other in new york, and neither of them comes to philadelphia very often at all. so this was definitely a rare experience for me. part of the reason i looked up the LCB price of the wine was that i was kinda stunned by the menu prices. i mean, i know the world is expensive and i'm totally ok with that (and with my not being able to afford that), but whoa. $800? i.... yeah. philadining, or anyone really: is craig laban still doing his decibel rating? i haven't seen it in his recent reviews, but i thought he was reporting on it a while ago.

what's the standard markup at high end places? we were at le bar lyonnaise the other night and our host bought a bottle of 2001 ch. rayas ($120 from the state store, and $300 there) and a bottle of 1986 haut-brion ($3something from the state store, $800 there). that kinda caught me off guard--i thought it was pretty standard to mark up about 100%, but that's more than that.

i went to john's today at long last. i'm still going with dinic's as my favorite, but dang that's a good sandwich. the only problem i had with it was.... the sarcone's roll. while i firmly believe that the flavor of the roasted sesame seeds on a sarcone's seeded roll will enhance any sandwich, sarcone's bread is too soft to really stand up to a roast pork sandwich. by the time we got it to our car the bread had pretty much disintegrated on the bottom. i'm thinking that sarcone's is really better for a drier sandwich, like a hoagie or at most a cheesesteak. but a roast pork, roast beef or tripe sandwich is going to trash the bread.

grotto pizza is naaaaaaaaaasty or at least the ones in bethany beach are... i don't know if there's a difference between various locations or franchises, but we used to order from grotto when we were down there in the summers, and i gradually grew to hate it.

thanks for the report, andrew. i do miss tartine, but yours is the second or third good report i've heard about southwark. and kip was a real nice bartender when i ran into him at fergie's. i hope they continue to succeed.

your pops is a man of good taste, i must say.

dmitri's is a great option if you get there early enough to not have to wait forever. however, i can heartily recommend the food at the 23rd st. location, AND they have a bar, and it's bigger. the atmosphere of the original is missing, but it's a good place to go nonetheless.

hm, i've never heard anyone pronounce it bouillabuck... ← In case anybody here doesn't know this, the verb "baiser" (pronounced beh-zay), means, well, let's just say that it's nothing to do with cooking. ← oh the FRENCH f-word! while my post was a joke, i have to admit that i actually didn't know what Tess was talking about.