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Food and Web
Love us some anonymous food tweeters here at Meal Ticket, and this one's a new fave: The Sorry Thomas Keller account (@SryThomasKeller), comprising the honest admissions of a cook working in a kitchen whose standards might appall the French Laundry legend. Mission statement: "These tweets are an open apology to Thomas Keller and every other great chef out there. We could be like you all, but thats a lot of work."
Out-of-state craft beer just got substantially easier to obtain. You can thank Sean Nevins, who dreamt up Philadelphia-based Beerjobber.com, an online marketplace and home delivery service for brewery-fresh craft beer. On Feb. 13, consumers can begin creating Beerjobber accounts, profiling their personal tastes by way of a survey. After that, the site automatically generates a list of brews that align with the surveyed drinker's palate. Once clicked and paid for, your order will show up on your stoop in five or fewer days.
It's taken Nevins and his team years to wade through the mire of state beer laws, but they've been met with success — as of this week, consumers from 35 states are legally able to have beer shipped directly. And Nevins, a Philly native, made sure Pennsylvania was one of them.
The Philadelphia edition of national food blog Eater went live this morning at philly.eater.com. Joining established outposts in cities like NYC, Chicago, LA, San Fran, Portland and DC, our version will be headed up by Collin Flatt, who previously ran NBC's defunct The Feast (now owned by Daily Candy) and Phoodie. "At Eater Philly, you won't find original restaurant reviews, recipes, or too much food porn," we're promised, "but we have you covered with unique reporting, curated round-ups of what the food people around town—and the nation—are talking about, and commentary on the absurdity of it all."
Eater's local launch coincides with the rollout of a Philly edition of its sister site Curbed, the real estate blog launched in 2004 by Eater co-founder Lockhart Steele. That site's edited by local writer/blogger Liz Spikol.
Joe Beckham's Loco Pez (2401 E. Norris St.), which Adam Erace gave a nice nod to back in November, is rolling out a tacos-for-a-buck promotion, but it won't be a static weekly situation, as is the case for many tortilla fillers. "For a while we were planning on doing a Taco Tuesday thing," says Beckham, "but then we thought it would be more fun to randomize [it] and link it to our Twitter and Facebook." That means you need to keep your eyeballs on the Fishtown Mexi bar's social media to catch exactly when you can cop carnitas for four quarters (it was yesterday, most recently).
Photo: Neal Santos
You've been to pub crawls — but how about a Dishcrawl? The West Coast-based startup is hosting its first event in Philly on Tuesday, Jan. 24 from 6:30 to 9:30 p.m., organized by ambassador Michelle Cryder.
"I've lived in Philly for the past five years and I recently spent about six months in San Jose. Dishcrawl is huge there, and the concept immediately made me think of home," says Cryder. "We've got so many incredible restaurants in easily walkable neighborhoods, and I loved the idea of giving people an opportunity to get a crash course in a certain neighborhood's food. I think it's a great way for food nerds like myself to get to know their city and have a pretty rare opportunity to actually meet the people preparing it."
Food-fixated iPhone users now have a new hyperlocal toy to play with — Chefs Feed, a "mobile app cooked up with credibility" that takes restaurant and dish recommendations from chefs in major U.S. cities and places them in your touchscreen-savvy fingers. (Droid and BlackBerry versions are in the works.) The Philadelphia version, curated by Meal Ticket's own Adam Erace, launched the other day and is now available for free download. Erace surveyed 25 local chefs/professional food-type people, coaxing their five favorite Philadelphia restaurant dishes out of them, along with reasons why they picked them; each chef's picks are set up in a quickly browseable format (see above), complete with restaurant contact info, a quick link to a Google Map and so forth.
Right now, featured Philly chefs include Jonathan Adams, Pierre Calmels, Jennifer Carroll, Jose Garces, Georges Perrier, Mitch Prensky, Kevin Sbraga, John Taus, Marcie Turney, Marc Vetri, Peter Woolsey and others. Fifty more are coming, says Erace.
Nate Adler, whose short-lived Kitchen at Penn (now Roost) peddled some promising eats around the Ivy League last year, is back in the food game with The Walkin Kitchen, a "culinar-e-magazine" he launched with girlfriend Sanae Lemoine this month. "It's a place where writing, art and music can come together to enhance culinary art and recreate food experiences," says Adler of TWK. "Not just top 10 sandwiches or top 10 pizzas."
If the Twits are any indication, Jamonera (105 S. 13th St.), the Spanish wine bar makeover of Marcie Turney and Valerie Safran's Indian BYO Bindi (it closed in September), is getting close-ish — hearing they'll open by early January. Not too much info floating out there just yet, but keep an eye on their website and Twitter account for cryptic and possibly Dexter-themed updates.
Photo: Jamonera on yfrog
UPDATE [06dec11]: Peek at the copper bartop/interior, courtesy of Safran, after the jump.
A tipster pointed us in the direction of remii.net, a splash page for a private "Chinese karaoke club" at 932 Race Street (formerly House of Chen). Look familiar? Every single thing on the site seems to have been swiped directly from The Franklin Mortgage and Investment Co. (112 S. 18th St.) — and Franklin proprietor Mike Welsh is not happy about it. "They've completely ripped off our [site] in so many different ways I can't count them," says Welsh. It's not an exaggeration — the logo, the font, the "a drinking establishment" tagline and even the imagery and geography of the page are 100 percent harvested from the cocktail cavern's thefranklinbar.com. (Here's a bigger view of the screengrab above.)
A new food-centric social networking tool is launching in Philadelphia in this month: Grubwithus is aimed at those who enjoy connecting over food. The site is working with local restaurants to host family-style, prix-fixe meals that diners sign up for online. The catch? No one at the table has ever met before, which should make for an interesting experience (at least that's the aim). Each individual pays ahead of time on the site and the cost includes tax and gratuity to avoid annoying check-splitting after dessert. Some Philly restaurants that Grubwithus is currently working with are Distrito, Nan and JG Domestic.
The founders of the company came up with the idea when they realized how hard it actually is to meet like-minded people in places like bars or clubs — they've always felt that friendships are best made over food. Also, one of their investors is Ashton Kutcher, who would be happy to come and awkwardly take pictures of you with his Nikon COOLPIX during your meal.
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