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Archive: December, 2011
Team Meal Ticket is excited to welcome a few new voices to the oh-god-I'm-so-full fray. After the jump, get all the particulars on two names you'll be seeing quite a bit of over the next few months.
More than two years after he rolled out Honest Tom's Taco Truck, Tom McCusker has moved on up to a brick-and-mortar restaurant in West Philly (261 S. 44th St., 215-620-1851). Open daily from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. with extended hours coming in the near future, the shop starts the day with GreenStreet coffee and breakfast tacos (scrambled eggs, potato, cheese, bacon, salsa, guac), moving into tacos and burritos by lunchtime. Though there is a table and a handful of counter stools are coming soon, he's banking on mostly takeout business for right now; local delivery will start after the new year. McCusker says his eventual plan is to bust out the front of the shop and introduce a 8-foot-long communal picnic table that will spill out onto the sidewalk for a little fresh-air seating.
McCusker will continue to run his mobile taco operation on Saturdays at Clark Park, but won't be back at his usual Aviator Park haunt until this spring. By that time, he says, the Honest Tom's truck will be tricked out enough to allow him to offer both tacos and burritos to walk-up customers.
Monday, December 12
In Riva is new in East Falls and we've got the opening menu.
Oddfellows Café, from the owners of Spruce Street Espresso, opens right after Christmas.
Tuesday, December 13
Wednesday, December 14
Guacamole Mex-Grill is open in West Philly.
Northeast Philly's Jake's Wayback Burgers location hosts a grand opening.
Truffles like crazy at Fond with Lacroix this January.
Thursday, December 15
What's in City Paper's food section this week?
More details on Ultimo Coffee's seond location, coming soon.
Twin restaurants Rocchino's and Azione are now open in Old City.
After years of development, Pickled Heron is finally opening in Fishtown.
Oh Cannenbaum, oh Cannenbaum ... Percy Street's beer can Christmas tree is badass.
Friday, December 16
South Street's La.Va is now a part-time BYOB in addition to being a coffee shop.
Cuba Libre's Guillermo Pernot is bringing Cuban chefs to America for the first time in decades.
Kanella's beet falafel is one thing you should eat immediately.
Swine and dine at Brauhaus Schmitz with a whole hog dinner.
Please watch this awesome video of Gordon Ramsay. Just watch it.
- Gordon Ramsay is quite the romantic. It's probably best if you close your eyes and just listen to the audio the first time through. It's almost like Gordon is really talking to you, that way. (h/t @jessecornell)
- Why everyone should work a service job on Thought Catalog. Nailed it.
- Moonshine is suddenly exponentially less cool now that it's actually killing people in India.
- If you want to read about a completely pointless argument and watch a commercial with an adorable child in it, here's an article about how Burger King thinks McDonald's is degrading its brand.
- The Year in Ron Swanson: an Internet Tribute. No one man represents moustaches, meat and masculinity better than Mr. Swanson himself.
- Cheerios lets kids make "Cheerio-themed comics" on their website and doesn't set up a filter to weed out the dirty stuff. Do they really think kids aren't going to draw raunchy comics? This is 2011 man.
- Why didn't this list of the cheapest bars in the most expensive cities come out earlier? This could have saved me millions of dollars. Seriously, millions.
Got 12 people? Got $37.50 each? Then get yourself to Brauhaus Schmitz (718 South St.), where chef Jeremy Nolen has started offering suckling pig dinners. (You don't have to have 12 people; the whole thing goes for $450 total.) He stuffs semi-boneless young hogs with housemade sausage, roasts them and serves them with family-style sides like spaetzle, spuds and sauerkraut. "When guests arrive, the table [is set with] sliced bread and herbed butter and an assortment of housemade pickles: mushrooms, pickled beets and eggs and cucumbers," Nolen says. We'd go just for that. For an additional $20 a head, there's all-you-can-drink draft Spaten, Hausbrau and Hefeweizen for parties, too. Deal! Give a call (267-909-8814); all Brauhaus needs is a week's notice.
Photo: Courtesy of Jeremy Nolen
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
Since the beginning of 2011, the team at Cuba Libre (10 S. Second St.) has rolled out more than a few surprises. While executive chef/co-owner Guillermo Pernot was busy prepping new piqueos (tangy ceviches, delightful baby octopus) and re-done Cubano classics (arroz con pollo with Manzanilla olives and asparagus salad), owners Larry Cohen and Barry Gutin were plotting their takeover of Marathon's 10th-and-Walnut location with chef Matt Levin. Just last week, though, Pernot, after travelling to his wife Lucia's hometown of Havana for culinary research (Pernot is Argentine), accomplished a longtime goal: bringing native Cuban chefs to Philadelphia for "Pop-up Paladares" dinners starting in January.
"This visit is a big deal, as it took a year to get approval from both governments and it's the first time a chef from Cuba has come to the U.S. to cook since the embargo was in put in place over 40 years ago," says Gutin of the pop-ups, named after the restaurants that are often set inside a chef's own home. The first chef in the series (Jan. 11-13) is Luis Alberto Alfonso Perez of Cuba's El Gijonés, Bar Oviedo, La Terraza and Asturias. I recently spoke to Pernot in more detail about the historic series.
La.Va Café (2100 South St.), already a purveyor of tremendous Israeli comfort food, is stepping up its dinner game. Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights from 5:30 to 10, owners Victor and Liron Agiv convert the coffee shop into a full-service sit-down BYO with food from chef David Zaga (Four Seasons, Marathon Grill, R2L). Patrons can still grab coffee to go during these times, but tables will be reserved for diners digging into Zaga's grilled beef kebabs with green tahini, pan-roasted branzino and marinated short ribs. Full menus for tonight and tomorrow's service after the jump.
For most of us, Christmas is about one thing and one thing only — the birth of our Savior excessive drinking in the name of the season. NO mom, it's totally cool that I destroyed a 12-pack and canteen of nog by myself in 45 minutes, I'm just holding it down like Fezziwig, nawmean? NO, I'm not going to let Uncle Jim drive me to the ER to get my stomach pumped, why do you hate fun so much? What we're trying to say here is much love to Percy Street Barbecue (900 South St.) for marrying holiday mirth with unchecked booze consumption in the most direct way possible via their 8-foot-tall "Badass Beer Can Christmas Tree."
Percy GM Aric Ferrell and staffer/artist Desiree Howie spent something like 12 hours drilling the tree's PVC pipe trunk and feeding construction marker flags of varying lengths through the holes, on which they suspended more than 400 empty cans culled from Percy's peerless craft can collection. The end result, which we got to see with our own eyes last night, is shiny and glorious and makes us much thirster than that stupid tall one at Rockefeller Center. Well-done, Percyites.
Photo: Drea Rane
It was March of 2009 — right after Watchmen came out, not sure why we remember it like that — when we first wrote about married chefs Todd Braley and Daniela D'Ambrosio's plans to open a French-ish BYO called Pickled Heron (2218 Frankford Ave.) in Fishtown. They targeted a summer '09 opening, but that came and went. To be honest, we thought the restaurant was off the table altogether. But look! Close to three years later, the couple is all but ready to go — D'Ambrosio (no relation to our Felicia) says she and her husband will open to the public this coming Tuesday, Dec. 20. Here's to sticktoitiveness, Valdeon-smeared flatbreads and housemade pork rillettes! Check out the cash-only BYO's opening menu after the jump (click to enlarge) and call 215-634-5666 for reservations.
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