|
|
|
Archive: August, 2011
Coming to Philly by late October is Soup & Wich, a local/organic-focused food truck serving, as you might've already gathered, soup and sandwiches. Owner Elissa Farina has chef Alex Garfinkel, a vet of Le Bec-Fin, Morimoto and Amada, among other spots, developing a menu that'll feature options like slow-cooked pork, build-your-own grilled cheese and banh mi, plus a selection of soups that'll include pho, ramen, carrot ginger, Thai curry and classic chicken noodle. Soup & Wich is striving for transparency among its offerings, as well, and plans on posting both calorie counts and figures indicating just how local and organic each dish truly is. Home base for the truck is still up in the air, but the team is looking for space around Temple, University City and Center City while they work through the L&I process with the city.
Late last week we mentioned a big round of changes and renovations going down at Center City gay-bar institution Woody's (202 S. 13th St.). Now we hear that the new first-floor bar is set to open on Wednesday or Thursday of next week. After the jump, take a peek at what'll be on the new 32-beer, craft-influenced tap list. Did you ever fathom that you'd be able to catch fresh pints of Southern Tier, Dark Horse, Founders or Russian River at Woody's?
The Farmers' Cabinet, which opened in late March at 1113 Walnut, has hired a new chef to head up its kitchen. (While praise for the F-Cab's beer and cocktail programs has been hot and heavy, kinds words about the opening menu have been harder to come by.) He's Jason Goodman, late of Parc and previously head dude at Meritage, along with stops at Lacroix and Le Bec-Fin. Goodman, who's still wrapping up his tenure at Stephen Starr's bistro, designed the Cabinet's Restaurant Week menu, and should start fulltime with a relaunched menu all his own in early September, according to co-owner Matt Scheller.
The folks promoting the new Colin Farrell vampire remake Fright Night (we're seeing it tonight, shoutout to McLovin and the unique appeal of Toni Collette!) will be canvassing the city tomorrow in a branded food truck, handing out free thematic eats like "Steak Stakes," "Garlic Chips" and "Blood Red Popsicles." You can spot the vehicle in Rittenhouse starting at 10:15 a.m.; it'll then move to JFK Plaza at 3 and finish up its Philly run at McFadden's (461 N. Third St.) at 7:30. Follow the trucks whereabouts via @buzzboPHILLY.
- Adam Erace stretches his wings at Rotisseur, Aaron Matzkin's rotisserie chicken joint at 21st and Chestnut. He finds that the poultry here is "absolutely perfect."
- I vant to stew your bloooood. Here we chronicle our experimentation with dinuguan, a traditional Filipino stew with a slightly squeamish major ingredient: pig's blood. What's that, you wanna skip straight to the recipe? Here goes!
- In Feeding Frenzy: We've got word on openings (Twisted Tail, Yummy Lan Zhou), restaurants to come (Grill Fish Café) and more tidbits.
- In What's Cooking: Nicole Rossi shares details on Reading Terminal Market's Pennsylvania Dutch Fest, a new happy hour at Tinto, a Le Bec-Fin dinner featuring guest chef Kevin Sbraga and more.
- In Agenda: Clare Foran has more on the PA Dutch festivities, and A.D. Amorosi shares some restaurant news in Icepack, including word on the new owners of NoLibs' Homeslice.
Photo: Neal Santos
In this week's food section I wrote a little about my recent experiment cooking dinuguan, a traditional Filipino pork stew whose scariest ingredient — pig's blood — miiiight come off slightly off-putting to some. Look, I get it — it terrified (and fascinated) me as a kid, and it's not uncommon to hear Filipino cooks perform some adorable misdirection on children by telling them that muddy gray-brown color is derived from chocolate. (Ha!) But just as Amy Besa and Romy Dorotan wrote in their book Memories of Philippine Kitchens, one of multiple sources I used to develop the recipe below, the dish sounds totally fucked up but it's shockingly accessible and middle-of-the-road. I understand if you're skeptical, but hear me out. Wait, where are you going?! Wow you can run so fast!
On the real though, pork blood and pork liver are the only two quote-unquote "peculiar" elements of dinuguan. (The name derives from the Tagalog word "dugo," meaning blood.) The characteristic funkiness of both ingredients is present in each bite of the stew, but a handful of other important additions do a hell of a job of slicing right through it, and rather dramatically at that. The most prominent non-porky member of Team Dinuguan? Vinegar, specifically rice vinegar. Added in the same stroke as the blood and liver, late in the cooking process, its sour, cleansing personality is imperative. The aromatics of the stew — every recipe's different, but my batch included bay leaf, ginger, lemongrass and long hots — also serve as vital flavor foundations, especially since this recipe requires patience to coax the best out of it.
Look, this is all you need to know: Yes, dinuguan has blood in it. Yes, you'll be able to tell that it has blood in it, but it's just one of many ingredients. No, it's not all you taste. Yes, it is delicious. At least it is to me.
Popped our heads into Cook (253 S. 20th St.), restaurateur Audrey Claire Taichman's pretty-much-complete Rittenhouse demo kitchen and epicurean boutique, yesterday evening.
The space will not open to the public until Tuesday, Sept. 6, but that hasn't stopped them from opening up online registration for the inaugural season of culinary events, the first of which will feature the don Georges Perrier. (Peep September's scheduled classes in full after the jump.) Moving forward, there'll be both daytime and nighttime classes, touching on everything from breadmaking and cocktail mixing to Vietnamese cooking and grilling.
The crew over at Yakitori Boy (213 N. 11th St.) has confirmed to Meal Ticket that they're working on opening a new restaurant at 204 N. Ninth Street, a former restaurant supply store just north of Race. While they're remaining mum on name and concept at the moment, we're hearing that the space intends to serve the R-word: ramen! (Yakitori currently offers a "mini" ramen bowl on its menu, in soy sauce, miso and pork flavors.) Clap if you're one of the many Philadelphians hankering for a brothy bowl of Japanese noodles — pretty sure we met each and every one of you at that February Khyber Pass Pub pop-up. More soon.
Through the summer, we’ll be running monthly installments of more shore recos from a kid who's been spending summers there since he could crawl: our very own Adam Erace.
We were gone for a minute, but we're back, over the slender ripple of a causeway and a big humpbacked bridge that links Longport at the southern tip of Absecon Island to happy, shiny Ocean City just across the bay. This is where we pretend our delay of the second installment of More at the Shore, O.C. to Stone Harbor, was intentional, so as to synchronize with the new season of Jersey Shore. Convincing, no?
"Why wouldn't you?" replied Matt Savastano, the new chef at The Happy Rooster (116 S. 16th St.), when asked why he chose to cook his pork shoulder in straight-up duck fat. "The slow cooking makes the shoulder more tender. And let's face it — anything cooked in duck fat is going to be really good."
- barstool scientist
- Booze
- Brew Revue
- Chef Salad
- Closings
- Coffee
- Contests
- Dealage
- Dirty Dishes
- Don't Front
- Eat This Immediately
- Field Trip
- Food and Art
- Food and Holidays
- Food and Movies
- Food and Music
- Food and Politics
- Food and Sports
- Food and Web
- Food Blogs
- Food Books
- Food Events
- Food News
- Food TV
- Gifted
- Happy Hour Hopper
- How-To
- In Print
- Interview
- Meal Ticket
- Menu Time
- Not So Quickfire
- Notes from the Weekend
- On Wheels
- Openings
- Patio Drinking
- Philly Beer Week 2010
- Photos
- Private Chef POV
- Product Placement
- Recipes
- Snack Time
- Stiff Drank
- SUPPER
- Tea
- Testing
- Ticket Stubs
- Top Chef
- Vegan
- Vegetarian
- Video
- Weekly Candy
- Weird Regional Foods
- We're Here to Help
- Where'd We Eat?
- Drew Lazor's Ill-Advised Rant Factory
- Pregame
- Ill-Advised Ranting
- The Week Without Meat
- Philly Beer Week 2009
- Real Big
- Where'd I Eat Last Night?
- Top Chef Masters
- The Good Word
- Next Iron Chef
- Arterial Terrorism
- Food and Radio
