There is more to New York City and Philadelphia than cheesecake and cheesesteaks, but don't tell that to the U.S. Senate.
The most powerful elected representatives from both New York and Pennsylvania have made a polite World Series food wager on the eve of the baseball match-up. If the Phillies win, Sens. Arlen Specter and Bob Casey will get New York cheesecake. If the Yankees win, Sens. Chuck Schumer and Kristen Gillibrand get Philly cheesesteaks.
What cliché and unoriginal choices, especially since both those old standbys can be found in the food court of any American mall. They don't accurately reflect the soul of either city. What two foods best sum up these two complex metropolises?
The Kite and Key in Philadelphia. Photo: Kite and Key.
A weekly look at the draft selection in beer-friendly bars across the country.
Celebrating Independence Day is a big deal all over America, but especially so in the City of Brotherly Love where that famous Declaration was signed.
Want to up the ante? Name your bar after one of our best-known founding fathers. (Kite ... key ... Ben Franklin ... get it?) The popular Philadelphia watering hole Kite and Key seems on top of its North American of events, including our brethren to the north. Those stopping by for Canada Day will find a firkin of Yards Brawler, boasting a touch of maple syrup.
But the big event hereabouts is July Fourth, and Kite and Key will be pulling pints of -- what else? -- Yards Ales of the Revolution. Inspired by colonial beers or brewed from actual historical recipes, brews like the unique, rosemary-like Poor Richard's Tavern Spruce Ale or highly drinkable Thomas Jefferson's Tavern Ale are about as close as one can get to a taste of history. Kite and Key will be offering up Yards on tap throughout the Independence Day holiday weekend.
Superb chicken wings and the current Kite and Key draft list, after the jump.
Being a beer writer isn't as fun and easy as it looks. Most weeks I spend more time staring down a computer than a pint. I do say "most weeks," however. This coming week will not be one of those weeks.
From Friday, March 6th through Sunday, March 15th, Philadelphia will be host to Philly Beer Week 2009 -- a 10 day extravaganza featuring over 650 events from well over 100 participants, including dozens of different breweries and brewers crashing the city limits and some points beyond.
They've tagged the event "America's Best Beer-Drinking City," and though that title can certainly be debated, the official Philly Beer Week website lays out some compelling evidence to back their claim. A quick look at the event map makes you wonder if there's anywhere in Philadelphia not involved in Beer Week and the list of events is nothing short of overwhelming.
I'll be in town tomorrow (Friday) until Wednesday, March 11th, blogging about events along the way. My first stop will be the Opening Tap if you want to come follow me around. But better yet, check out phillybeerweek.org and see what strikes your fancy. As a former Philly resident, so many of these amazing bars have a special place in my heart, I wouldn't even know how to start playing favorites. You'll probably see me everywhere, because almost anywhere you can get to is worth the stop.
Swallow, a Philadelphia BYOB, relaunched their menu today and their new offers are specifically designed to take the current economic downturn in mind. They've ditched their previous modern Italian menu and have replaced it with an entire menu of macaroni and cheese.
The menu allows you to design your own entree. You first pick small (base price $5) or large ($7) dish and then determine which two cheese you'd like. For an additional $2-3, you can choose three veggies, meats or herbs to mix into your mac and cheese. In addition the build your own menu, they have a selection of favorites that you can pick from if you're feeling overwhelmed by the number of choices.
This is the first time I've heard of a restaurant scrapping an entire menu in response to the economy. It could either be a brilliant move or a tragic misstep.
A weekly look at the draft selection at beer-friendly bars across the country.
For years now, Philadelphia has been making its case as the best beer drinking city in America. And I have to admit, as a former Philadelphian, I'm certainly biased. However, I'd also have to agree: Philly's really been on the cutting edge with beer for quite some time.
Case in point is a bar like Race Street Cafe: Not the most recognized beer bar in all of Philadelphia (that would probably be Monk's) or the one with the most extensive selection (which is perhaps Eulogy), but a bar that I constantly reference in conversation. Why? Well, it's indicative of a larger attitude towards beer that Philadelphia bars embrace.
Tucked away on what is more or less a side street near an I-95 on-ramp in the shadow of the Ben Franklin Bridge, the Race Street Cafe isn't drawing any people in with location. Instead, they pride themselves on having a truly "hand-selected" draft list. At 15 taps, it's an efficient size, and there's not a Budweiser or Heineken in the bunch. Every time you step into Race Street, you know you'll be presented with a carefully selected variety of drafts, specifically picked by the staff themselves and lovingly hand-printed in chalk on the blackboard.
Sometimes less is more, and knowing that every draft was chosen with care makes a somewhat more limited list that much more appealing because you know anything you try will be excellent. It's a trend that's been growing in bars across the Philadelphia area and the nation as a whole, but not many bars I've been to do it as well as Race Street.
Let's take a look at what is on draft today at the Race Street Cafe in Philadelphia...
Last night, I had dinner at Friday, Saturday, Sunday. It's a restaurant that is a throwback (but in a very good, comforting way) to the 1980's. It takes up the bulk of an old brick rowhouse on the edge of the Rittenhouse Square neighborhood, the downstairs dining room is lined in wood paneling and mirrors (thus the eighties feel) and diners are perch on scarred chairs or along a padded built in seat that runs the length of the wall. Neither fancy, nor cheap, the food is the sort of stuff that you might make at home if you had enough time or inclination to use that much butter.
While they've never done their own cookbook (like their now-shuttered former peer The Commissary), they've posted one of their most popular recipes on their website. I had this Cream of Mushroom Soup last night and it was one of the best things I've eaten in weeks. Smooth, but not in a way that resembles baby food, the mushroom flavor sings and the shot of cognac gives it a welcome, warming buzz. If it tastes as good in my kitchen as it did in the restaurant, I may be saying good-bye to my previous muchroom soup favorite.
As we head into the end of August, things are slowly grinding to a halt in my office. Half of my department is out on vacation and the halls are eerily silent most of the day as people wilt from the heat or the desire to be sitting by a pool. However, one office in Philadelphia is beating off the summer doldrums with a little friendly competition. Food competition that is.
This is not the first guac off I've heard about this summer, I also have a friend who works at a local medical school who planned one for some of her students. So if your workplace is feeling a little sluggish this summer, ask everyone to bring in some guacamole and a bag of chips. You'll have things perked up in no time.
Here in Philadelphia, we don't have to stray far from Center City in order to get a hit of Amish country. There are number of Pennsylvania Dutch vendors at Reading Terminal Market who sell jams, jellies, local honeys, fresh produce, meats, cheeses and some of the most amazing baked goods. However, normally the PA Dutch merchants don't call much attention to themselves and stay tucked back in one corner of the Market.
However, this weekend, the PA Dutch merchants take over the whole Market for the 19th Annual Pennsylvania Dutch Festival. The fest was canceled last summer, due to some unrest at the Market, so it's doubly exciting to see it return this year. Starting today, they'll set up the festival in Center Court and it will feature handmade crafts including quilts, woodcrafts, paintings, hand-braided rugs, wooden toys, and cedar chests. Available foods will including chicken pot-pie, donuts, ice cream, pies and canned fruits and vegetables. On Saturday, they'll have a mock barn raising on Arch Street, building a garden shed on the city street as well as a country auction.
If you're in the Philadelphia metropolitan area, I highly recommend coming into Philly to check out the festival. Be prepared for crowds and come with an empty stomach!
The show The Next Food Network Star has a formula. It starts out with a set number of contestants and over the course of weeks, all the contestants are eliminated, save one. That last person standing wins a deal to make a 13-episode series for the Food Network. However, this season, the execs at the Food Network seem to be messing with the formula a bit. Not only did they advance three contestants to the final round, now they've announced that finalist Adam Gertler (famous in Philly circles for his short-lived restaurant The Smoked Joint) is also going to be getting his own show.
Called Will Work for Food, he'll be learning what goes into a variety of food industry jobs and passing this knowledge along to the viewers. Examples of the kinds of employment opportunities he'll be investigating include potato chip inspector, shark feeder and dog-food taste-tester. The show premieres on September 30 at 9:30 pm.
Tonight, Ben Franklin and Betsy Ross are getting married. If that last sentence made you sit up a little straighter and blink with confusion at your computer screen, you're not the only one. You see, the actors who play Ben and Betsy all around Philadelphia are actually the ones getting married and it has become something of a public relations spectacle here in the City of Brotherly Love. So much so that their wedding has become a public event, at which the mayor is officiating and for which a gorgeous, 4th of July-themed cake has been baked.
The cake, conceived and baked by local sugar/flour/butter artist Zoe Lukas, is what interests us most around the Slashfood office. Lukas has created a three-tiered confection that is perfectly draped in white fondant and decorated with ribbon and handmade paper fireworks (what else could one want for a 4th of July wedding). There's an interview up on uwishunu, a local Philly blog, in which Lukas delves into the creation of the cake and how she designed its unique, yet traditional look. Check out the Whipped BakeshopFlickr page for the rest of the cake pictures.
There used to be a restaurant in Philadelphia called Treetops. It was several floors up in the Rittenhouse Hotel, looked out onto the park, was pretty fancy and was one of my grandmother's favorite places to eat. She was a pretty fancy woman, so she and the restaurant went well together.
Treetops made their own, deeply ruffled potato chips that they served with every sandwich. The first time I had one of these hand cut, freshly fried chips, the top of my head nearly flew off with the amount of flavor and crunch that the single chip delivered. While the chips pictured above don't have the same ridging as the chips from Treetops, they look like they have similar heft and flavor. I'd like nothing more than to be able to reach through the computer screen and grab a few to crunch on right now. For those of you who'd like to try making these at home, you can find the recipe here.
When I was a young kid, my family lived in Los Angeles. However, every summer, my mom would pack my sister and me up and we'd head for Philadelphia. We'd spend weeks living with my grandparents, five people in a two-bedroom, one-bathroom apartment (the same apartment I live in now). My dad would stay in LA to work and take care of the dog.
It was a time towards which everyone looked forward. My mom enjoyed the opportunity to get away from smoggy Southern California (although humid Philly wasn't exactly a good trade), my dad liked having the house to himself for a while, my grandparents loved having us within hugging distance and my sister and I, well, we looked forward to the treats. Particularly the water ice.
There was nothing like Philadelphia water ice back home. You could get Sno-cones or shaved ice, but water ice was smooth and fruity and perfect to cool you down on those muggy days. The only problem was that my grandfather was a cancer researcher who had done a lot of work studying food coloring. When he was around, we weren't allowed to get any red flavors of water ice, which was torture for two girls who only wanted strawberry or cherry-flavored frozen treats.
When I moved to Philly after college, I didn't have anyone monitoring my water ice consumption and for that first summer, I ate mango and passionfruit water ice nearly every day (the flavor assortment has grown considerably over the years), often in place of dinner. These days, I try to hold off and save it as a special treat, one to savor and turn to on those hot summer days. I haven't had any yet this year, but it's going to be another hot day today. It might just be the perfect day for my first cup of smooth, fruity, wonderful water ice.
Here in Philadelphia, we are lucky to have a small, local chain of bakeries that is devoted to making true artisan bread. Metropolitan Bakery believes in letting bread have a long, slow rise and each one of their loaves, rolls and baguettes are shaped by hand. They've been around since 1993 and back in 2003, for their 10th anniversary, they published a cookbook that is filled with their signature recipes that have been scaled down to make them appropriate for the home cook.
The Metropolitan Bakery Cookbook isn't just a vanity publication, created for the glorification of a bakery. It is a book that was obviously carefully crafted and systematically thought out, as it is really interesting to read and designed to be used. They've included recipes for all their favorite products, including their French Berry rolls and (my favorite) Millet Muffins.
In addition to the recipes, they've included picture layouts that show off their pastries and breads in all their luscious glory, along with pictures that detail how to recreate their signature twists and designs (on page 77, there are step-by-step pictures to show you how to cut, twist and fold the dough for the Cinnamon Swirl Danish). Admittedly, for those of us lucky enough to be fairly nearby a Metropolitan location, we probably won't be turning to this cookbook for much other than incentive to make a visit to the bakery, but for those of you who once visited Philadelphia and got a taste of Metropolitan pastries, this might one you could add to your collection.
A Rochester staple, the garbage plate is a whopping stack of (get ready): two hamburger patties and two sides (home fries, macaroni salad, or beans), mixed with ketchup and hot sauce, with a roll on the side for good measure. It originated at Nick Tahou Hots' restaurant over 50 years ago - y'know, before we were worried about stuff like obesity and heart attacks. College kids used to come in and ask for a dish with "all the garbage" on it.
But - gasp - a restaurant in Philly has added the Plate to its menu, with a few changes: fries and mustard pan sauce replace the traditional home fries and hot sauce. Could it be as bad - er, good - as the original?
The words "artisan fudge" have a way of making my mouth water. Add some cute retro packaging, a ribbon and get 'em a little melty, and I'm in heaven.
Betty's Tasty Buttons began as the creator's Grandma Betty's fudge recipe, and has expanded into some gorgeous offerings, including fudge sauce and cajeta, a Mexican slow-cooked caramel made from goat's milk. It's great over ice cream, cakes, or even spooned into coffee.
The fudge flavors, though, are what keep the people coming back for more. With a base of organic sugar, local butter, milk and organic or fairly-traded chocolate, the unique flavors include lava (spicy); lavender mint (lovely and smooth); molasses bourbon (chocolate with sass); and green tea...check out the full list here.
Betty's is based in Philly, and as we know, fudge isn't shipped that well (though I'm sure exceptions could be made for the jarred products). Get 'em while they're melty.
Being a beer writer isn't as fun and easy as it looks. Most weeks I spend more time staring down a computer than a pint. I do say "most weeks," however. This coming week will not be one of those weeks.
The show The Next Food Network Star has a formula. It starts out with a set number of contestants and over the course of weeks, all the contestants are eliminated, save one. That last person standing wins a deal to make a 13-episode series for the Food Network. However, this season, the execs at the Food Network seem to be messing with the formula a bit. Not only did they advance three contestants to the final round, now they've announced that finalist Adam Gertler (famous in Philly circles for his short-lived restaurant The Smoked Joint) is also going to be getting his own show. 
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