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Archive: August, 2011
- The Happy Hot Dog Man! Producing edible wiener humanoids guaranteed to give you night terrors for life!
- What is it with people and stealing pork? I told you before about a guy who stole a pig leg right out of a meat truck, and now a guy from Carlisle, Pa. is stealing racks of ribs. Donald Noone, while highly intoxicated, tried to pilfer ribs from a Giant by sticking them down his pants. Worst part: This was the second time he was caught doing it. Are those dry-rubbed or are you just happy to see me?
- Last week, the Philadelphia Daily News published an awesome article about the development of the Philadelphia restaurant scene. Use the PDF chart (I love charts!) to track the paths your favorite restaurants and chefs took on their journeys to food-filled glory.
- I am sharing this with you because I had to see it, so it's only fair that everyone else sees it, too. Plus, who knows? You might really want to learn how to cook placenta.
- Way to go Hershey's, marring our fondest chocolate memories with your unfair labor conditions. After a huge walkout, a Hershey’s packing plant is being investigated for taking advantage of hundreds of international exchange students. When they complained about strenuous work and low pay, the company threatened to deport them. You’ll never look at your candy bars the same way again. (More about this story on the Naked City blog.)
Last month Brion Shreffler told you all about Mexican barbacoa, but the new Upper Darby restaurant that shares its name with that meaty tradition has a much more focused approach. Barbacoa (62 Sherbrook Blvd.), open for about a month, specializes in pollo alla brasa, or Peruvian roast chicken.
Owner Robert Hayes, a DelCo native, first experienced these chicken shacks while living in Arlington, Va. — the D.C. metro area has a bunch of Peruvian pollo options, but Hayes didn't know of much like it in Philly. He slow-roasts his chickens, flavored with house marinades, for an hour and a half over oak; he also offers churrasco-style steak, regular and sweet potato fries and cole slaw. Barbacoa's proper grand opening will be this coming Wednesday, Sept. 7; Hayes says that he's location-shopping for a second restaurant on the Main Line and hopes he'll eventually land within city limits.
Photos: Courtesy of Barbacoa
Filmmaker Ken Burns, whose dense, infinitely detailed documentaries deal with patently American topics like baseball, jazz and war, is taking on one of our young country's most notorious courses with Prohibition, a three-part work that will debut on public television in early October (more info below). This Friday, Sept. 2, at 6:30 p.m. WHYY is hosting a free partial sneak preview of Burns' doc at the Great Plaza at Penns Landing (Chestnut and Columbus). The doc's co-director, Lynn Novick, will be in attendance.
Naturally, the event, part of WHYY's Connections Festival, will be appropriately wet.
Phoebe Esmon, top boozehound at Farmers' Cabinet and president of the Philly chapter of the United States Bartenders' Guild, tells Meal Ticket she and her USBG ilk will be pouring Philly Distilling-based thematic cocktails at both public and VIP bars. At the main watering station, look out for a timeless Tom Collins or an Income Tax Cocktail (Bluecoat gin, sweet and dry vermouths, OJ, Angostura bitters). In the ticketed VIP, open only to WHYY members, they'll pour tipples like classic 2-to-1 martinis, the Prince Farrington Cup (XXX Shine, maraschino liqueur, Pimm's, lime, ginger ale, Angostura bitters) and Izzy Einstein Punch (Bluecoat, Vieux Carré absinthe, maraschino liqueur, lemon, peach, green tea, soda). For the latter two originals, Esmon shares, the USBG adhered to ingredients and ratios cited in Prohibition-period cocktail manuals.
Via whyy.org:
Prohibition is a three-part, five-and-a-half-hour documentary film series directed by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick that tells the story of the rise, rule, and fall of the Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and the entire era it encompassed. The culmination of nearly a century of activism, Prohibition was intended to improve, even to ennoble, the lives of all Americans, to protect individuals, families, and society at large from the devastating effects of alcohol abuse. But the enshrining of a faith-driven moral code in the Constitution paradoxically caused millions of Americans to rethink their definition of morality. Thugs became celebrities, responsible authority was rendered impotent. Social mores in place for a century were obliterated. Especially among the young, and most especially among young women, liquor consumption rocketed, propelling the rest of the culture with it.
Michael Poole of Fairmount's Trio (2624 Brown St.) says he and partner Van Chau are about two to three weeks out on Isabel (2601 Pennsylvania Ave.), their Mexicali-flavored BYOB in the 2601 Parkway condo complex.
Last spring, Poole and Chau were in the running for the subsidized Girard Coalition/MM Partners LLC Mexican project at 2711 W. Girard Avenue, but it never came full circle. (The space was being looked at but never blossomed; it's now a bike shop. MM Partners now say they have a taqueria about four to six weeks out at 2730 W. Girard.) The partners decided to try and land a space on their own and came across the long-vacant Coffee Room Cafe.
"The neighborhood's been crying out for good Mexican food since we've been here," says Poole, who will be Isabel's chef. The menu, which is late in its development stages, will been heavily Mexican-influenced but not overly fettered to tradition, similar to how the guys handle Asian food at Trio. It's a 30-seater, which includes room for a six at a dining bar; the huge Parkway sidewalks will also translate to ample outdoor seating some time after Isabel opens.
In case you haven’t already checked 'em out, this week is the last week to try the Tuesday night "Dump Dinner" and Wednesday night "Twin Lobster" deals at Oyster House (1516 Sansom St.). Beginning at 5 p.m. tonight, the dump is a seafood boil full of shrimp, blue crabs, mussels and clams with potatoes, smoked kielbasa and corn for $19 a head. Buckets of High Life Ponies are available at three for $5, six for $9 or nine for $12. Wednesday's lobster deal, meanwhile, runs from 5 to 10 and features a pair of pound lobsters fresh from Maine's Ready Seafood. The lil' guys are steamed and served with drawn butter and corn on the cob for $26.
Over the weekend, I hooked up a tomato tart that was pretty solid for a self-professed non-baker. If sifting dry ingredients and stand-mixer attachments have the same unnerving effect on you, this is a recipe you’ll dig; the open-faced tart comes together in about an hour, only 10 minutes of which is spent physically doing something, and results in a real showstopper that’ll have dinner guests prostrating themselves at your seemingly talented feet.
Chef Joey Chmiko's nationally hearted fried chicken caused plenty of panko-breaded ennui when it flew the coop at Resurrection Ale House (2425 Grays Ferry Ave.) this past winter. But perk up, pollo fanatics — RAH co-owner Leigh Maida tells Meal Ticket that the dish is on its way back. On Wednesday, Sept. 21, the bar will celebrate its second anniversary, and to mark the occasion Chmiko will serve nothing but fried chicken from opening till 5 p.m., after which point he'll crank out complimentary small bites for the crowd. Starting the next day, Sept. 22, "The chicken is back on the menu full-time," says Maida. "Maybe not forever, but for a while." For what it's worth, the team decided to yank the popular dish from rotation in the first place to remind people that there's plenty of other stuff to like on Chmiko's menu.
Photo: Zach Radel
UPDATE: Toughie? The mason jar beer glasses are a big clue. This place was mentioned by name on Meal Ticket veryyyyy recently ...
UPDATE: By very recently, I may mean the post directly below this one. *whistle*
Notes from the Weekend is a Monday 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.)
Chicken.Org (534 S. Fourth St.), the organic poultry eatery from the owners of the nearby Burger.Org (326 South St.), has opened its doors. (We first mentioned it in late July.) The certified glatt kosher restaurant, which keeps a mashgiach, or kosher supervisor, on-site, offers chicken every which way — sandwiches, wings, chicken meatballs, rotisserie-style whole birds, honey/sesame — plus sides like hummus, cabbage salad, rice and roasted sweet potatoes. Aesthetically it's done up in a similar fashion to its burger-serving counterpart (also glatt kosher now), with plenty of eye-rubbing greens and oranges everywhere.
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