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Eat This Immediately
Back in March we told you about Kiki Aranita and Chris Vacca's snack truck Poi Dog rolling out on Temple's campus. We got our first taste of their legit Hawaiian plate lunch this today, and the chicken katsu definitely qualifies for E.T.I. status. The golden brown poultry plank is the cutlet of our dreams, encased in a thick crunchy brown shell and served with two scoops of white rice, one of macaroni salad flecked with carrots, parsley and potatoes and a cup of sweet and tangy katsu sauce (the secret: guava) we poured over the whole thing. Don't miss the banana lumpia for dessert, dunked in a coconut chocolate sauce inspired by Hawaiian haupia pudding. Eat this immediately!
If you've ever torn through a sandwich at Ultimo, you know the glory of a Four Worlds Bakery baguette. The fine crust that busts into crispy chards... The dense interior that fights back... It's one of Philly's best pieces of bread, baked by Michael Dolich at his Woodland Ave. headquarters, but who knew the West Philly yeast whisperer also makes a really great pretzel? Not Meal Ticket, until we stopped in recently and snagged one of the chubby twists still warm from the oven. Properly salted but not caked with kosher stuff, the pretzel had the perfect texture; much like Dolich's baguette, its taut, snappy crust yielded to a soft center. So grab a bottle of spicy brown, and eat this immediately.
Winter is gone, and so are most of the strong dark beers that make the season warmer. There's still time, however, for a last hurrah before succumbing to the light and crisp beers of spring. Why not sing that liquid swan song with Dark Horse Reserve Special Black Ale?
View galleryHidden beneath the Huntingdon El stop in Kensington's "Little Saigon" is Café Thanh Thanh (2539 Kensington Ave.), which has been serving up home-style chicken pho and other specialties for close to 11 years. They've built up a loyal following of mostly Vietnamese patrons who line up outside of the tiny restaurant every morning ahead of a busy lunch rush. But what exactly makes their chicken pho so damn good, besides its status as the quintessential hangover cure (you'll be doing wind sprints in no time)?
Rich Landau hasn't eaten meat in something like 20 years, but that doesn't mean he doesn't think about it. Daily. "If I were to eat meat tomorrow, it would be one of those giant corned beef specials from Famous," says the Vedge chef, indicating the preferred height of his sandwich (tall) with his hands. He's got the next best vegan thing going, though, with his spice-cured carrots, a setup Landau describes as "a warming cold dish." That warmth arrives in the form of strong seasoning — slender Lancaster baby carrots are roasted on low heat in an elaborate spice blend (mustard, fennel and celery seeds, clove, cumin, paprika, etc.), cooled, then quick-smoked over mesquite and applewood chips. Emboldened with a pastrami-like personality, the righteous root veg stands in for salt-cured flesh. The accompanying buzz-up of white beans, mustard and sauerkraut comes off like a tangy Eastern-Euro hummus; stack it all up on slices of house-baked rye and you've got a smart-as-hell vegan dish that eats like Landau's Jewish-deli pipe dream. "This hits home for me," says Landau. Us too. Eat this immediately.
Photo: Drew Lazor
Tripe and tendon junkie Scott Schroeder might give digital shit to vegans, but his South Philadelphia Tap Room (1509 Mifflin St.) and American Sardine Bar (1801 Federal St.) serve some of the best animal-free fare in town. Example: the vegan butternut squash stew headlining the menu this week at ASB. Homey, cold-dispelling and aggressively seasoned with salt, cumin, cayenne and olive oil, it tastes like something in Schroeder’s wheelhouse, but when asked about it, he immediately deferred to his second-in-Sardine-command, Amanda Smith. "I got the idea for the stew from a friend's grandmom's recipe for kabocha squash soup," she says. "I figured it would work just as well with butternut, especially if the squash was roasted first to give it a little more flavor since it's vegan."
After roasting the cubed squash with whole garlic cloves, Smith adds it to a pot of sautéed onions, whole canned tomatoes and dried garbanzo beans. Forty-five minutes later, the chunky stew is ready, garnished with a swirl of quality extra-virgin you can really taste and feel. While most chefs are content to purée their butternut, Smith get extra points for bringing in a different spoonable context. Eat this immediately.
Photo: Courtesy of American Sardine Bar
Pretty much everything the Pitruco Pizza truck serves is ETI material, but there's something not on their regular menu that deserves your special attention. You don't need a password and a secret handshake to get your paws on the fresh-baked bread made by pizzamonger Nathan Winkler-Rhoades; just send the Pitruco guys a friendly email inquiring about the secret yeastables.
They've got focaccia and baguette in production at the moment, and your best bet is ordering ahead of time, as they stock bread on the truck only sporadically and it usually sells out fast. That's because said carb bombs are good — real good. The endearingly wonky focaccia comes blistered and golden, a chewy, buttery disc dressed with olive oil and sea salt. Their traditional baguette is slender, baked dark and crispy, with a malty touch and a little woody smoke flavor Pitruco-fying it.
"The focaccia is better," says Winkler-Rhoades, but for me, picking a favorite is Sophie's Choice tough. The best part is the price: Pitruco will charge you just $3 for one of each. Pay up and eat both immediately.
Photo: Alexandra Weiss
If you're looking to incorporate the choco-hazelnut miracle that is Nutella into your breakfast, Chhaya Café (1823 E. Passyunk Ave.) has a solution: a Nutella muffin that is just as good as it sounds.
The batter has an understated vanilla sweetness, keeping it just outside of the cupcake category; it's the recipe chef/owner Vernana Beuria, aka V, uses for all her muffins. A thick ring of the super-sweet spread crowns the snack, which also has a gooey Nutella'd center (the stuff finds its way into waffles here, too). But it's the intoxicating consistency of the muffin top that truly catapults this thing out of the run-of-the-mill snack category — incredibly crispy on the outside, moist on the inside. At $2.25 a pop, you can certainly afford two. Eat this immediately.
Photo: Katie Linton; h/t @ThrillyNick
Yes, the ink's barely dry on the rezzie book at Valerie Safran and Marcie Turney's new Jamonera (105 S. 13th St.), but that doesn't mean a dish we had at their recent staff tasting is not legit ETI material. Submitted your cephalopod approval: their pulpo y ensalada rusa, a restaurant interpretation of an all-too-common Spanish dish.
We promised you more on this in the most recent Notes from the Weekend and now we're delivering — the beet falafel at Kanella (1001 Spruce St.) is straight ludicrous. "I believe the falafel here is the best in Philadelphia," says chef/owner Konstantinos Pitsillides, never one to veil his culinary thoughts. Though debates like that are subject to eternal deep-fried argument, it's hard to disprove such a claim after you try these balls, a dish from Pitsillides' Sunday mezze that'll make its way onto the a la carte menu soon.
The idea of marrying beets with falafel — Pitsillides incorporates cubed beets into his quietly garlicky base mixture, a combination of both garbanzo and fava beans — originates with Pitsillides' grandmother, who housed an Israeli friend in her home on Cyprus for a number of years. It took six months for the chef to get his version right, but he's nailed it — the welcome crunch of the crust (thanks, peanut oil) opens into a moist, improbably light and almost fluffy interior, its friendly beet-accented flavor and hue a 180 from the parsley-green falafel innards we're most accustomed to. Eat this immediately!
Photo: Drew Lazor
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