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Archive: August, 2011
Tonight, Jose Garces' Tinto (114 S. 20th St.) will launch a new weekly happy hour, dubbed "Tinto Tuesdays," that'll feature special pricing on Basque snacks for $2 and drinks at $5 and under from 5 till 7.
Diners can choose from a varity of pintxo (say it PEEN-choes — the Basque equivalent of tapas), including baby artichokes with lemon and Idiazabal; pickled tomatoes with sheeps' cheese; Spanish octopus with smoked paprika and confit potato; sardines with piquillo and egg; and short rib motadito with pickled guindilla chile. Drink specials will include a $5 speciaity cocktail, $4 glasses of red and white wine, $2 select draft beer and half-price sangria.
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.)
Dear Friend of Meal Ticket Neal Santos, CP's immensely talented staff photographer and co-proprietor of Farm 51 in Southwest Philly, is a fellow Filipino — which means he possesses an unshakable genetic affinity for sodium-laden canned meat products. Here he shares his very own recipe for Spam musubi.
Spam is in my blood. Long before I considered myself a photographer or "urban farmer," I was eating Spam for breakfast, lunch and dinner. My Filipino parents stockpiled our pantry with cans of the good ish: Vienna Sausage, Ligo Sardines, BumbleBee Tuna and, of course, Spam.
I'd eat Spam and egg, Spam and rice, Spam sandwiches, Spam spaghetti, Spam salad, Spam pizza, Spam and cheese. We'd have it raw, fried, deep-fried, boiled and microwaved. There wasn't any combination of Spam plus something else that we haven't tried.
We all tend to roll our eyes when out-of-towners ask for directions to the South Philly cheesesteak joints to get a so-called "real taste" of Philly. From now on I'll point them in the direction of Meal Ticket's own Drew Lazor, who's written a "City Dozen" — aka a piece highlighting 12 of his favorite Philadelphia-based spots — for Saveur.com.
That's not to say that a cheesesteak can’t hit the spot after a night of heavy drinking, but we all know Philly has a dining culture that eludes many outsiders — thankfully this piece highlights local gems like Mémé, Café Estelle, Tai Lake, Krakus Market, Café Lutécia and more. Hopefully it'll help the rest of the country see why we take such pride in our city. Check out Drew's favorite digs and sigh in relief that yes, Philadelphians definitely know how to eat!
RHUBY, the organic rhubarb-based Art in the Age spirit we first mentioned in July, will begin appearing on Pennsylvania state stores this week. Not sure on an exact day — these things often roll out in stagger-step — but keep your artisanal liquor-lovin' eyes peeled. In the meantime, scout out AITA on Facebook. They're firing off some preemptive fan-created RHUBY cocktail recipes, including this dope-sounding mix-up of the spirit with Fever Tree tonic and Bitter Truth lemon bitters. (Look at the color of the stuff!)
Photo: basilandco.tumblr.com via AITA on Facebook
City Paper and Meal Ticket are the official media partners of the 2011 POPPED! Musical Festival, scheduled for Friday, Sept. 23 and Saturday, Sept. 24 at FDR Park in South Philly. While the music lineup for the two-day event is alluring on its own — looking forward to The Shins, Pretty Lights, The Hold Steady, The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, Rakim, Girl Talk and many more acts — the festival's Food Bazaar, a collection of local food vendors, trucks, carts and full-fledged restaurants that'll be feeding the hungry masses, will be just as a big a draw. Set in a separate area away from the music, the Bazaar will feature both GA and VIP options; we're proud to be lending a hand in curating the lineup, along with Philly Homegrown, The Food Trust, chef Corey Fair of Modern Farm Table and POPPED! organizer Alexis Rosenzweig.
Monday, August 8
The new owners of Xochitl have rolled out a brand-new bar menu.
Word on a new chef and new approach at Adsum.
Tuesday, August 9
For one night only, Little Fish is turning into Little Pig.
Nicole Rossi rounds up all the best Taco Tuesday deals in Philly.
Wednesday, August 10
Pitruco will soon take Neapolitan pizza mobile in West Philly.
Jersey Shore enthusiast Adam Erace runs down his picks from Ocean City to Stone Harbor.
Yakitori Boy is opening a ramen shop in Chinatown.
Thursday, August 11
Pics inside Cook, Audrey Claire Taichman's upcoming demo kitchen and culinary boutique.
Check out our recipe for dinuguan, Filipino pork blood stew. Wait, where are you going?!
There's a new chef at Walnut Street's Farmers' Cabinet.
Friday, August 12
Woody's — yes that Woody's! — now has 32 beers on tap. Check out the brand-new tap list.
Here's the deal with Soup & Wich, a soup/sandwich truck coming this fall.
MilkBoy's new Philly location is finally ready to go.
Sunday, August 14
Todd Rodgers and Bruno Pouget of Noble (2025 Sansom St.) have made the difficult decision to close their two-year-old Center City restaurant. Business was on an uptick, but a few weeks ago they began negotiations with Stephen Starr, who months back had personally toured the space, curious about its setup and rooftop garden operation. The two sides officially came to terms this past Friday. (Rodgers and Pouget still own the building and will continue to do so.) The transition from Noble to Starr's not-yet-public plan will happen fast — Noble will be closed by tomorrow, but all staffers will be offered preferential interviews within the Starr organization, for either the new concept or concepts elsewhere in the company. Stay tuned for official details on what Starr aims to do with the space.
UPDATE: Since it's out there — Noble will be converted into Il Pittore, soon-to-be-former SRO corporate chef Chris Painter's long-planned Italian concept that's so far had false starts at both 627 S. Third and 1221 Locust. It's slated for an October opening.
MilkBoy (11th and Chestnut), the first city-limits foray for Tommy Joyner and Jamie Lokoff of the Main Line-based MilkBoy Studios and coffee shops, will soft-open this Monday, August 15, at 6 a.m.
The concept's spread out across two floors — ground level's got coffee, a bar and lunch/dinner seating for 56, while the upstairs, which'll debut in mid-September, will host shows, open mics and karaoke. (There's also a bar up here.) The first MilkBoy outpost to hold a liquor license, the space will start out by offering Counter Culture coffee during the day (La Forza will be their house espresso) and booze from happy hour time till 11ish — six crafts on tap, 20 in cans (no bottles; there'll be mounted can crushers so drinkers can smoosh their own empties), pony buckets and 15 or so signature cocktails.
The following Monday is the tentative launch date for lunch and dinner, the menus for which are still being finalized. Expect a lot of the vegan- and veggie-friendly fare available at MilkBoy's Ardmore and Bryn Mawr locations, plus simple pleasures like fries and grilled burgers (neither café has a fryer or a grill). And here's a coup for those who love a good swag get — soon, everyone who comes through will get a free branded MilkBoy beer koozy, the classiest of all frosty beverage receptacles.
MilkBoy's struggles with union protesters have been well-documented by local media, but how's this for a bit of forward-looking kismet? See the last photo above: During construction, the owners uncovered a long-lost vintage dairy bottle in perfect condition.
- As you are all aware, there’s been intense rioting going on in England. In the midst of all this mayhem and violence, some have gone out of their way to protect others, like the staff at The Ledbury, a 2-Michelin-Star restaurant in Notting Hill. When looters swarmed the place, the kitchen pretty much said "Oh no you di’nt!" and chased them out. Kudos, valiant restaurant staff.
- The amount of times my friends and I have geeked out about one fantasy novel or another is innumerable, especially A Song of Ice and Fire (the series of books on which the HBO series Game of Thrones is based). Now I can geek about the food, as well. Serious Eats has started a blog that chronicles the journey to cook all the dishes mentioned in the series (horsemeat sausages, anyone?). Be careful, though. The blog contains spoilers.
- Hey mom-to-be. Want your kid to eat vegetables? You best start eating them, too. Philly's Monell Chemical Sense Center, located in Philadelphia, claims your child’s food likes and dislikes develop while still in the womb. Julie Mennella, who studies taste in infants at Monell, says that the amniotic fluid surrounding the baby is flavored by the foods and beverages the mother takes in.
- Japanese food iPhone cases (pictured above). I cannot begin to emphasis how inconvenient these are. Or how much I want one.
- Alton Brown has always been skeptical of Twitter, but when someone impersonated his wife and even used a family picture as their avatar, it was one step too far. He deleted his account, but not before calling the imposter a "sick, low life scumbag."
- On a far more serious note, the food crisis in Somalia was officially labeled a famine by the UN in July. Now Anderson Cooper is saying the crisis was preventable. Here's a short piece explaining his reasoning as well as clip of him reporting from Kenya.
Photo: toxel.com
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