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- Adam Erace is impressed by chef Anthony DiRienzo's cooking at Starr seafooderie Route 6, even if management ID'd him as a critic and gushed/hovered a bit unnecessarily. His can't-miss dish is the chicken-fried lobster tails, but there are plenty of other strong Maine-to-Maryland dishes to get into.
- In Feeding Frenzy: Nomad Pizza and Paris Wine Bar are new this week, while Bierstube is still wet behind the beer ears in Old City.
- In What's Cooking: V-Day plans galore, including a kid-friendly pizza class with Marc Vetri, baking classes at Whipped, an anti-Valentine dinner at Teri's and more.
- On a more serious note in News: Isaiah Thompson reports on an apparent city crackdown on feeding the homeless who live on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, and if it's connected to the impending debut of the new Barnes Foundation.
Photo: Neal Santos
View galleryWHERE YOU AT? MilkBoy (1100 Chestnut St.) has been open for about six months now, the newest member of a family that includes older siblings in Ardmore and Bryn Mawr. Philly's the baby, but it's got a serious leg up on its Main Line counterparts: a liquor license. They had a tempting draft list when I showed up with some girlfriends for happy hour around 4:30 one evening last week. We sat at the bar (specials apply to booth sitters, too), and I was glad I did — our bartender was extra-generous, letting my friends and I try a sample a few drafts before committing. I ended up with the smoky Williamsburg Alewerks Washington's Porter; friends grabbed a Mission Shipwrecked IPA and an "Auntie Maxie" cocktail, a combination of Absolut wild tea, Barenjager and lemon sweetly served in a mason jar.
On Monday we told you a little about Russet (1521 Spruce St.), which Andrew and Kristin Wood are opening on V-Day. Though the BYO's food will be ever-evolving due to its aggressive local focus, we did manage to snag details on a few dishes that'll likely appear on the first draft of their dinner and brunch menus. The most glaringly delicious-sounding is their black truffle-topped roasted marrow (!), but here are some other peeks from dinner/dessert ...
Yards Brewing is rolling out its annual one-off beer in conjunction with the 2012 Philadelphia Science Festival, and we all get to vote on its name. This year's brew will be a weizenbock, a strong unfiltered wheat beer. Each proposed moniker is a twist on a different scientific theory or principle:
- Heisenberg's Drunken Principle
- Avogadro's Numbeer
- Bucky Ball Bock
- German String Beer-y
- Science FestivALE
- Atom Blonde
The beer will be on tap and in bottles at select bars/restaurants throughout the city from April 20 to 29. You've got until 10 a.m. tomorrow, Feb. 9, to vote for your favorite. For more information on each name, check out the PSF's blog. Yes, drinking can be somewhat educational.
We were on City Food Tours' website yesterday getting info on their upcoming Valentine's Day aphrodisiac dinner event and couldn't help notice that the dude tenderly hand-feeding a lady in an accompanying photo looked familiar as hell. If you ever hit up Frequent Meal Ticket Haunt Oyster House (1516 Sansom St.), you know that that's definitely the Center City seafood shop's ever-gracious owner, Sam Mink. Moonlighting as a stock photo model and not telling us, dude?! Turns out he's buddies with the City Food Tours owners and helped them out with a photo shoot about five years ago. Strong work, Mr. Mink. Fully expecting this shot to make its way into a thematic pic roundup formatted similarly to Women Laughing Alone with Salad.
Photo: zerve.com/phillyfoods/phlval
This week, Fish (1234 Locust St.) joins the Philadelphia happy hour force. Starting out strong, Mike Stollenwerk's restaurant is offering three select craft beers for $3, Anjos Vinho Verde and Cantine Povero Tralcio Rosso for $5 and the cocktail of the day for $6. From Monday to Friday, happy hour runs only from 5 to 6 p.m., but they make it up to us on weekends with additional dealage from 11 p.m. to midnight Friday and Saturday. I might have to push back my Happy Hour Hopper exploits to capitalize on these late-night specials.
Photo: Drew Lazor
Philly food-event collective BigBite, which has put together a number of inspired, high-energy amateur cooking competitions over the past few years, is taking that next step in 2012, landing a real-deal venue for its third annual Philly Chili Bowl. Scheduled for Saturday, March 3 at the Fleisher Art Memorial (719 Catharine St.), the cookoff is currently running registration for its 20-contestant field, the members of which are required to cook six quarts of chili, any style. Sponsored by Herr's and Narragansett, the Chili Bowl will double as a fundraiser for Project H.O.M.E.; it's $10 to compete and $5 to eat/drink/vote in the hotly contested "People's Choice" category.
I'm honored to return to the judges' panel this year, joining a serious murderers' row of Philly eaters — Di Bruno's owner Emilio Mignucci, chef/restaurateur Kevin Sbraga, Cook executive director Lily Cope and resident judge/People's Republic owner Joe Bernstein. We'll be determining who takes home the Philly Chili Bowl trophy, as well as another sweet prize: two seats to any upcoming class at Cook.
Registration closes Feb. 29, or sooner if BigBite reaches its 20-chili limit. Here's all the info you need.
A few weekends ago, I encountered a culinary artifact while brunching at Santucci’s (901 S. 10th St.) — the brûléed grapefruit. The halves of citrus sat on chef Bobby Saritsoglu's "Italian Breakfast" plate of speck, candied nuts, fresh bananas/blueberries and ricotta, their thin, torched-sugar tops looking like the frozen surface of a citric lake you’d be wary of skating on. Shattering the brûléed barrier and excavating segments of bittersweet fruit one by one, I relished the retro joy of it, feeling very much like a first-class passenger aboard the Titanic. What a civilized way to energize for racquetball below the poop deck.
It’s peak season for citrus in Texas, California and Florida, and grapefruits right now are heavy, ripe, juicy and fragrant. White, pink or ruby red, any variety will stand up to the broiler or blow torch in this recipe, which I’ve been tinkering with since brunch at Santucci's. I’ve seen formulae that call for butter and others that incorporate spices, but this is the one I like best. Concentrated bursts of blue flame from a crème brûlée torch is the best method for even sugar-browning, but no need to run to Fante's; you can also just turn your broiler up as high as it will go and get your oven rack into the uppermost slot for a comparable effect.
Fresh off he and partner Shawn Darragh's successful (and reasonably porky) Roundeye Noodle pop-up, Matyson chef Ben Puchowitz is running a five-course, pig-based tasting at his restaurant (37 S. 19th St.) from today through Thursday. He's rocking pork rillettes; crispy pig tails with apple/cuke kimchi and Korean chili sauce; pork and clams in a miso/sake broth; choucroute with housemade sausage; and blood orange tart for dessert, all for $45.
Oh, and the word on Roundeye, which we also mentioned in the Jan. 30 edition of Notes from the Weekend — Darragh tells Meal Ticket that they're currently meeting with a handful of potential investors, and that they have a second pop-up event planned for Matyson at the end of this month. There's also talk of a separate takeout-based pop-up, which might be a friendly alternative to those who struck out in line the first time around.
Photo: Albert Yee, from "Hands That Feed Us: A Peek into Our Foodshed"
Notes from the Weekend is a feature that sees the members of Team Meal Ticket compiling all the food/drink highlights uncovered during prime eatin' time, Friday to Sunday. Consider this a place for good deals, great dishes, wicked cocktails, recipe triumphs (and tragedies), bizarro conversations and more. We're eager to share our notes, but especially excited to read yours.We encourage you to leave notes from YOUR weekend in the comments. Have at it! (View past NFTW installments at citypaper.net/notes.)
- barstool scientist
- Booze
- Brew Revue
- Chef Salad
- Closings
- Coffee
- Contests
- Dealage
- Dirty Dishes
- Don't Front
- Eat This Immediately
- Field Trip
- Food and Art
- Food and Holidays
- Food and Movies
- Food and Music
- Food and Politics
- Food and Sports
- Food and Web
- Food Blogs
- Food Books
- Food Events
- Food News
- Food TV
- Gifted
- Happy Hour Hopper
- How-To
- In Print
- Interview
- Meal Ticket
- Menu Time
- Not So Quickfire
- Notes from the Weekend
- On Wheels
- Openings
- Patio Drinking
- Philly Beer Week 2010
- Photos
- Private Chef POV
- Product Placement
- Recipes
- Snack Time
- Stiff Drank
- SUPPER
- Tea
- Testing
- Ticket Stubs
- Top Chef
- Vegan
- Vegetarian
- Video
- Weekly Candy
- Weird Regional Foods
- We're Here to Help
- Where'd We Eat?
- Drew Lazor's Ill-Advised Rant Factory
- Pregame
- Ill-Advised Ranting
- The Week Without Meat
- Philly Beer Week 2009
- Real Big
- Where'd I Eat Last Night?
- Top Chef Masters
- The Good Word
- Next Iron Chef
- Arterial Terrorism
- Food and Radio
- February
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- December 2011
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- December 2010
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