Notes from the Weekend is a Monday Tuesday (this week) feature that sees the members of Team Meal Ticket compiling all the food/drink highlights uncovered during prime eatinÂ’ time, Friday to Sunday. Consider this a place for good deals, great dishes, wicked cocktails, recipe triumphs (and tragedies), bizarro conversations and more. WeÂ’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.)
Rachel Burgos: RB
Adam Erace: AE
Drew Lazor: DL
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| Photo | Drew Lazor |
Friday: A plan to grab a "quick bite" at
fish (1708 Lombard St.) turned into a full-fledged, multi-cocktail meal at the bar. Oops. Dug into an amazing spread of rock shrimp with tender gnudi, lobster and mushrooms in a duck fat bernaise (above; also, hell yeah!) and tuna atop pineapple fried rice with a peculiar and delicious vanilla vinaigrette. Also got to try a bite of the rich, pistachio-studded duck mortadella
Mike Stollenwerk made for
his recent James Beard dinner. A meat sighting at fish is as rare as the
coelacanth, which is a fish.
—DL
Friday night, I had some girlfriends over for spiked Arnold Palmers made with
sweet tea vodka and some bodega lemonade. We got delivery of a steak pizza and some jalapeño poppers from
J & J (Ninth and Federal), both awesome. Their poppers are made with cream cheese, not cheddar, something I didn't think of until my friend wondered out loud. We eventually staggered over to the
P.O.P.E (1501 E. Passyunk Ave.) for a friend's belated birthday/welcome home party, where I enjoyed
Dogfish Head's Punkin Ale on tap.
—RB
Friday, I gathered evidence for my theory that the
Piazza, not Sunnydale, is the actual portal to Hellmouth. Started with quick bite at
Apollinare, where I watched a 70-year-old paesan' try to pick up the blue-fingernailed bartender by saying he was friends with
Tony Danza, an apparent regular at the restaurant. (For thoughts on the food, you'll have to wait till my review next week.) Then, spying little kids with
Capogiro cups, I popped over to the too cute-and-crowded
Nana Petrillo's for a cone of ciocolato scurro.
—AE
Saturday was super-duper low key. Had a
Wawa coffee and sandwich for breakfast, ran errands, made boxed
Velveeta mac 'n' cheese for lunch (classy!), then watched
Pedro Almodóvar movies while eating leftover steak pizza for dinner. It was still mad tasty.
—RB
I discovered on Saturday that
Artisan Boulanger (1646 S. 12th St.) now brews
Counter Culture, which made for a fair-trade Vietnamese iced coffee laced with eco-responsibility as thick as sweetened condensed milk. Also scooped a two-inch-tall croque monsieur sold by the half, cream puff shells and pistachio croissants I gobbled on the curiously traffic-free drive to the shore. I swooned over the salt-tinged, almost citrusy sweetness of the green pistachio paste. I swerved while savoring the endless layers of buttery pastry, brittle of ancient Egyptian papyrus. I almost hit a Honda. This is not an advisable way to drive, but fortunately I'm an expert in the road-head-for-food-nerds department.
—AE
Heard "Money Ain't a Thing (Thang?)" and "Can I Get A..." for the first time since my soph hop at my brother
Andrew Erace's 25th birthday bash at
Borgata's subterranean
mur.mur. Which brings me to my preemptive hangover strike I will share with all of you now: cereal. I know, the thought of milk entering a bellyfull of tequila sounds like a recipe for a volatile chem lab experiment, but one small bowl before bed has never failed me.
Special K with Red Berries, you are my savior.
—AE
In my opinion, there are few restaurants as consistently tasty and welcoming as
Mémé (2201 Spruce St.), and a Saturday dinner solidified this yet again — I scraped the hell out of a long marrow-stuffed bone and sawed through a juicy-ass pork T-bone with bacon succotash and half a grilled peach while chef
David Katz took his PJs-rocking baby son around the dining room to say hi to guests. When you're here, you're family. No unlimited salad and breadsticks, though. Stop being so cheap.
—DL
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| Photo | Rachel Burgos |
On Sunday, I suggested to my boyfriend that we do a "Mexploitation" day, so we started out with a
Cantina los Caballitos (1651 E. Passyunk Ave.) breakfast. I got the huevos Mexicana, which was actually pretty bland — white rice, black beans, and a scrambled egg/tomato/onion/jalapeño mixture, served with three tiny tortillas. Snooze central. After that we went to see
Machete, which was so full of general bad-assery that I think I high-fived someone sitting next to me after a beheading. Post-movie, the friends we went with were hungry and on a quest for delicious beer, so we headed to the
Foodery in NoLibs (837 N. Second St.). Eventually ended up at
P.Y.T, where I had my first-ever adult milkshake — I opted for the Caucasian because it was a reference the
The Dude. It was bangin', made with vanilla vodka and vanilla ice cream, though I can't see spending $10 multiple times on a drink that will fill you up and not get you tipsy.
—RB
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| Photos | Drew Lazor |
Sunday, blew way too much cash on stupid home things at Target (why do I have to keep buying shower curtain liners?! shower curtains should just come lined), but I made up for it with an impromptu stop at the
Taco Loco truck at Fourth and Washington. One campechanos taco, one tripa taco, a couple veggie beans/rice ones for the meat-ducking girlie and we forgot all about how we spent 15 fruitless minutes looking for scrubby dish wand heads. Screw you, Target.
—DL
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| Photo | Adam Erace |
Sunday, stuffed myself at the annual
Erace Family Fish Fry in Ventnor, where fire captain/avid fisherman cousin
Michael "Mims" Iraci — he changed it back to the pre-Ellis Island spelling back in the day, thus not dooming his sons to a childhood of blackboard eraser puns — cooks up all extra fish he's caught and frozen over the summer. Think fried fluke, broiled striper, blackened catfish and because this is a gathering of 40 Italians, baked rigatoni and this pan of veal sausage and peppers.
—AE
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| Photo | Drew Lazor |
Monday night, stopped into a super-quiet
Kraftwork (541 E. Girard Ave.) and threw down on the veggie board (
AE loves this, too), a traditional pork/prosciutto/sage saltimbocca scattered over with mushrooms and the meanest, ripest tomato salad you ever did see. Los pomodoros aren't going to stay this amazing for much longer, so take advantage while you still can.
—DL
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| Photos | Rachel Burgos |
Monday I spent all morning making my way to North Jersey for a family dinner. Between SEPTA and NJ Transit, my commute was hellish thanks to "holiday schedules" and late trains. I eventually made it to
Loucas in Edison (9 Lincoln Highway). We all shared an appetizer sampler that included eggplant rollatini, a caprese salad, shrimp in garlic sauce, stuffed portobello mushrooms, and clams with bacon on top (yessssss!). After all of that, we still ordered dinner; I played it safe and got a seafood capellini. Since we were celebrating mine and my twin's birthday, we were treated to a dessert of crème brûlée with two candles in it. Everything was delicious, and meals are just better surrounded by my loud, hungry, amazing family. In typical Jersey-family-get-together fashion, a cousin had sent over a batch of fresh tomatoes from his garden for everyone. I grabbed a handful and can't wait to use them.
—RB
This is probably locavore heresy, but microwaving is a really lazy and awesome way to make good corn on the cob. Just stick some shucked ears on a damp paper towel and zap the things for roughly a minute per ear. It comes out piping-hot and juicy and ready to be buttered and salted. Don't tell Alice Waters.
—DL
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| Photos | Adam Erace |
Monday, ended the summer with
Mack & Manco's on the Ocean City boardwalk, where the pizza seems to get more expensive every season, no? Two large pies and five drinks — the only acceptable sip is the fountain Pennsylvania Dutch-brand birch beer — cost $60 with tip. Yikes! Really, this is just useless haranguing, because I'd fork over my whole pitiful savings account for these cheese-and-nostalgia-soaked pies. While the price changes, their flavor stays the same. After, I hit up classic
Kohr Bros. for their new flavor, dulce de leche. (Great job targeting the Latino market, guys!) Get it solo, or twisted with coffee soft-serve, though jimmies aren't up for debate. A sweet way to put a cap on summer 2010.
—AE
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| Photo | Drew Lazor |
This, despite its slightly brittle leafage, is the perfect cherry. I feel like it should be tattooed on the collarbone of some cute rockabilly chick instead of just chillin' on my kitchen table.
—DL
