mrbigjas

there used to be a bar in west philadelphia called the track and turf tavern, and it was the only bar i've ever seen with meister brau on tap. slowest bartenders ever, old tvs in the corners tuned to philadelphia park horse racing, old men sitting around in the afternoons watching the races.... it's different now.

i'm gonna go ahead and say pif. nice place, small, chef-run, byob, basically french in concept, with ingredients purchased daily from the italian market nearby. in those ways it represents a lot of the dining trends in philadelphia all at once. alternately call django and try to see if they have any cancellations that day.

wait, when you guys say 'worth every penny,' what are we talking about here? $1000? $2000? more? i mean, if you don't mind saying.

i'm right there with ya, alphaiii.

caroline bay. it tastes... like a nz sauv blanc. it was about $12 or 13 if i remember right. truth be told i didn't notice the screw cap until the cashier was putting it in the bag. see, i'm observant like that.

Yes - Burgess tends to hang onto their stuff until they deem it's "ready". ← ha, what does that say about the 2000 that's all over? drink now, it says to me. i picked up three bottles of it tonight, and will report back later. tonight i also picked up my first bottle of decent wine with a screw top, a new zealand sauv blanc which is mighty nice.

we always ate it with syrup, but not maple syrup--pancake syrup. mainly corn syrup you know. as i've gotten older and my sweets intake gets rarer and rarer, i've come to prefer it with ketchup--or ideally, mixed with a runny egg yolk.

a few years ago, a friend gave me a bottle of this stuff. i haven't had any in a while, but i just rediscovered the bottle in my basement, and i'm having some tonight. here's a link for those of you who don't know what i'm talking about: 1800 edicion del nuevo milenio here's the thing: the french oak aging is obvious, and seriously there are all these oak-aged-whiskey kinda flavors going around in this thing: the vanilla, the honey, etc. but it takes a good four or five tastes to get past that and start tasting the agave. to me, tequila tastes most similar to black pepper, and that's kind of masked by the other flavors. anyone else had this and noticed something similar? maybe i'm just not familiar with tequilas as 'anejo' as this one.

they sure did. imagine my surprise when we ordered a leffe and a dekonnick's before dinner, and got $14 change from a twenty. no wonder i had like six more of them.

here's the basic deal: it seems to me you're not slicing it thickly enough. slice the scrapple just about 1/2 inch thick, or maybe even a little more. put into a cold cast iron or nonstick pan. put the heat on medium, and in about 15-20 minutes (flipping about 1/2-2/3 of the way through) you end up with scrapple that is crusty on the outside, creamy on the inside, and the requisite thousand degrees inside. it does take a little while, but basically there's not too much to it besides keeping the heat at the level where the outside doesn't get burned before it's hot all the way through. it's kind of a balancing act between your stove burners and the thickness you slice it--but not a real precise one.

put me in the 'it's probably neoguri' category. if the packet was red instead of orange like in that pic viaChgo posted, it could have been the spicy version. it seems to me that about 10-15 years ago when i first ate it, neoguri used to have those colored fish cakes in it, and it doesn't now. but i could be wrong. mmmmm neoguri.

rlibkind is dead on with this one. brasserie jo is an excellent place.

if you go to veracruzana on sunday i recommend the goat soup very highly.

it's true! my wife asked about it, and they said it was basically dairy prices and gas prices that caused the increase.

it ain't a dollar no more--they raised their prices this week. madeleines went from .40 to .60, and palmiers went from $1 to $1.35.

damn that's pricey. and i don't mean the $100 cheesesteak either.

what's the difference between these two? i've always heard them described the same way. edited to say: i mean the difference in the cooking, not the difference between a porterhouse and a delmonico.

carrot top, when you come to town head over to johnny's hots on delaware avenue, where you can still get a combo. you'd be surprised how good it is. damn, i'm craving one now.

it'll get some more this year, probably. it's the 75th anniversary, and they're doing a whole garden restoration there, fancifyin' up the place and whatnot. also there's a gala for it next week. it IS a great little museum, and if they end up bringing the barnes to the parkway i bet it'll be more noticed along with everything else.

wait has barclay prime opened yet? any preliminary reports?

this isn't really true anymore in my experience. giordano's is closed, and several other places, but george's was open all summer (i didn't look this weekend when i was down there), and a bunch of the other places are too. sarcone's (bakery and cafe), dibruno's (regular and pronto), claudio's (but not the mozzarella part), fante's, anastasi, the spice corner, anthony's coffee, gleaner cafe, esposito's, cannulli's, cappuccio's, orlando's, several fish places--not to mention the mexican and vietnamese places that are open all the time. it's quieter than saturday, sure, but still worth a visit if you ask me.

if you're going in the morning, their croissants and palmiers are damn good. as all puff pastry things, they get worse as they get older. but they're mostly still good in mid-afternoon. of course, that's not so good for your party. their madeleines really are great, as are their fruit tarts.

i don't know what andrew was saying, but from my understanding scrapple comes mainly from the head. that recipe i posted really does seem to be pretty much the real thing, conceptually, although the writing is a bit cutesy.

thanks, behemoth. i think i'll give that one a try. ladybug, that's kinda what i'm worried about--i'm not sure what to expect. but i figure, i have this bag of olives, and it's not like it's that much effort after all, to put them in brine and change it every week. if it fails, then i'm ok with that.

i know you guys are dying to hear my latest scrapple findings from this weekend. well, there aren't any, because i ate the leftover chicken livers from friday night at pumpkin, and in addition i roasted a chicken, which means that i sauteed that liver in butter and sauced it with cognac, because no one else around here is gonna eat it, and i'm not about to toss it. with that amount of organ meat already in my system, i figured topping it off with scrapple wouldn't be the best bet for my health.