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Archive: May, 2012
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.)
Le Cochon Noir (5070 Parkside Ave.), the barbecue-and-blues venue Jamal Parker opened in 2010, smoked its last rack of ribs yesterday. An excerpt from the closing announcement on LCN's Facebook:
Man, we really had a blast! Thanks... thanks again for believing in us and simply for being there. We're sure gonna miss the fun times we had together. Listen, do me a favor... keep in touch! Feel free to shoot us an email (info@lecochonnoir.com) should you get the urge to swing through and use the space with some friends for a private show, to throw a special event or some other occasion. We'd love to hang! Hey, we promise to do the same and keep you up to date on what we're getting in to.
About that: Parker says he'd love to use his competition smoker to launched a food cart-style barbecue operation in the city. "[It] could be coming soon if things pan out right," he says.
Photo: Drew Lazor
Beer Cakes, which we mentioned two weeks ago, is in the development stages, but it turns out we don't have to wait to try some of Lexi Malmros' literally intoxicating cupcakes. Melissa Torre of Cookie Confidential (517 S. Fifth St.) has forged a partnership with Malmros; the two creative bakers now share a kitchen and storefront. Beer Cakes will make its formal at the shop on June 7 and 8 — the tail end of Philly Beer Week, fittingly. From 4 to 10 p.m. that Friday and Saturday, swing by to taste a cupcake and sample the beers Malmros uses to scratch-bake the sweet treats. Eventually, Malmros hopes she and Torre can push back the closing time of Cookie Confidential to midnight or even 2 a.m. to catch folks leaving the bars with a hankering for dessert.
Malmros hasn't released the flavors of the cakes she'll be serving yet — keep eyes on her Twitter feed and her website for forthcoming details — but you can expect to pay about $4 for a standard-sized cupcake, $1.50 for a mini and $15 for a sampler of 12 minis. Torre will still have her full Cookie Confidential inventory available for your sweet teeth.
Gotta love any email that contains the phrases "old-school Chinese," "housemade ginger beer" and "tiki menu." Those and more were in a message bartender-about-town Katie Loeb shout out in regards to her plans for the new University City outpost of Han Dynasty (3711 Market St.).
The former Chick's, Oyster House and Tapestry gin whisperer is drawing inspiration from the classic Chinese-restaurant cocktail Rolodex: Suffering Bastards, Flaming Volcanoes and other retro Sino-American elixirs that always seem like a good idea at 3 a.m. in Chinatown. Just don't expect cloying fruit punches; Loeb is updating the recipes with from-scratch syrups (passion fruit, orgeat), sodas, cordials and house-infused spirits. Lemongrass, for example, is currently imparting its exotic floral flavor to vodka, the base of a Chengdu Mule capped off with the aforementioned ginger beer. We also like the sounds of the Sino-Rita, a reposado margarita infused with tangerine peel and rimmed with a mix of raw sugar, salt and the Handynasty favorite, numbing Szechuan peppercorn. Look for the new cocktail list to be live in a few weeks.
Monday, May 14
The West Philly location Sabrina's opens its Spencer ΣTA Burger offshoot.
Ben Puchowitz at Matyson does Asian street food right.
Tuesday, May 15
Allagash teams up with a.kitchen.
Getting loaded on the Philly Junk Food Tour.
Wednesday, May 16
The Travel Channel comes to Philly to shoot at Jake's Sandwich Board and Hot Diggity!
Thursday, May 17
Running down the contents of CP's May 17 food section.
Friday May 18
Whipped Bakeshop makes cool Sixers cookies to root on our team.
Brunch is on at Route 6, Rittenhouse Tavern and Tapestry.
Rice & Mix, a new quick-serve from the owner of Giwa, opens in Center City.
- Picking up where Jim's Pancakes left off, Nathan Shields has begun blogging the pancake art he makes for his children. On Saipancakes, he posts pics of each batch of themed pancakes. A few of the many cool ones: bugs, dogs, dinosaurs and mythological monsters. The former math teacher has also made some educational flapjacks (above), like fractals, protozoa and mathematical constants. Nathan's kids are lucky. Maybe we'll invite ourselves over the Shields house for breakfast sometime.
- Mental Floss posted this article on what is actually being served in elementary school cafeterias around the world. France clearly wins with roast guinea fowl and vanilla flan on kid's lunch menus. U.S. and U.K. lunches seem to be hit-or-miss and the caboose of this train is the Eastern Bloc.
It's been about three weeks since Rice & Mix (1207 Walnut St.) got fixin' on the opposite side of Broad from owner Yong Chi's Giwa (1608 Sansom St.). Chi, who opened that quickie Korean restaurant in 2006, says franchising has long been a goal of his, but he realized Giwa's menu was too varied to spark in markets lacking a familiarity with Korean cuisine. Since bibimbop — the popular mainstream specialty of pork, beef or chicken mixed with egg, rice and vegetables, often in a lava-hot dolsot (stone bowl) — accounts for 70 percent of food sales at Giwa ("That clearly says it all," says Chi), he figured a separate concept focusing on this dish would have broader appeal.
Around three times the size of Giwa, Rice & Mix (first mentioned here in the fall) operates on a burrito shop or Subway-style point-and-shuffle system — you can watch R&M build you a custom bibimbop bowl or select from a menu of four predetermined favorites. Other menu items include dup bop (simply meat over white or multigrain rice in a bowl), jap chae (the most famous Korean noodle dish), galbi (grilled short ribs) and, soon, bulgogi cheesesteaks and Korean fried chicken. A slew of traditional banchan, or Korean sides, are available to go, too. Full menu after the jump (click to enlarge). Hours: Mon.-Sat., 11 a.m.-9 p.m.
- Route 6 (600 N. Broad St.) is rolling out brunch for the first time this Sunday from 10:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. Seafoodish choices from chef Seth High include crab and salmon benedicts, a smoked fish platter (peppered bluefish, smoked salmon or whitefish salad) and a Hangtown Fry with fried oysters, bacon, scallions and jalapeno. Menu here (PDF).
- Rittenhouse Tavern (Art Alliance, 251 S. 18th St.) is officially starting brunch service tomorrow. The menu, created by chefs Nick Elmi and Ed Brown, features a.m. dishes like Anson Mills stone-cut oatmeal with caramelized brown sugar, hanger steak and eggs and customizable buckwheat pancakes (plain, with berries or with pan-seared foie gras). And since brunch cocktails are a must, RT's compiled a nice list that includes a Stoudts Pils beermosa and the "Royal Hawaiian" (Gordon's Gin, Velvet Falernum, lemon, pineapple). Their brunch runs from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays. Here's the menu (PDF). —Alexandra Weiss
- Tapestry (700 S. Fifth St.), too, launches brunch Saturday. The beer bar's service, which runs both weekend days from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., boasts options like a Grafton cheddar cheese biscuit with a poached egg and sautéed spinach and baguette French toast and buttermilk pancakes with Vermont maple syrup. Full menu (PDF). Bartender Chauncey Scates is also offering a special brunch cocktail list. Tappy just landed a KoldDraft ice machine, too, so look out for those adorably cubic non-melting jams in her drinks soon.
Photo: Neal Santos
Best of Philly 2012 voting is upon us, and best-burger contender Pub & Kitchen (1946 Lombard St.) is giving away free Churchill sliders today for the masses to sample. They did the same thing last year for Philly Mag's "Best Burger Bracket" and the tactic worked; P&K's La Frieda beast (above) beat out Village Whiskey's Whiskey King burger for that honor. They'll put out 400 sliders starting at 4 p.m., a time that happens to coincide with the bar's $1 oyster and $3 local draft happy hour. The petit patties will be free, and all the P&K crew asks in return is for you to vote for the Churchill every day until the polls close on Monday.
Photo: Drew Lazor
Zoë Lukas of Whipped Bakeshop (636 Belgrade St.), armed with the best eye in the biz, has whipped up created these boss 76ers cookies ahead of our team's matchup with the Boston Celtics in Game 4 of the Eastern Conference semis tonight. If AI2 and Co. can shoot as sweet as these jawnies taste they just might be able to even up the series against Rajon Rondo and his preposterous post-game jacket collection.
Photo: Drew Lazor
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