Archive for the ‘in Philadelphia’ Category
bobby flay claims his first victim
t says: Ok. So we knew that Shake Shack is the hottest thing since sliced bread. g, having spent nearly three years working in NYC, was well aware of Shake Shack’s reputation and did want to go and see Philly’s version, but warned us: “People go there to hang out – not necessarily to eat the best burgers ever.” I heard her, but I just don’t think I listened to her (I have husbandearitis), so I was actually super-psyched when we went there on a whim the other day with cm and k.
August 2012, Saturday Dinner, Party of 4. We went and there were no lines. This made me super-happy. g and I ordered up the mushroom “burger”, classic Shake Shack burger, and, of course, some cheese fries. This is what they looked like:
shack attack!
In the end, we decided that Shake Shack is more like a fancy McDonald’s. The meat does taste a bit more like meat, and the tomatoes and lettuce are real lettuce and tomatoes, but that’s about the extent of the compliments that I can extend to Shake Shack, as there really is nothing further remarkable about in the sandwiches. The toppings are plain (the special sauce isn’t very “special”). The burger was underseasoned. The bread was 80% butter. The mushroom was 5% mushroom and 95% cheese (that had an oddly-congealed texture). The fries were tasty, but I’m not sure if there was really really $1 worth of cheese on it.
And then cm (or maybe it was k?) said it: “Bobby’s is better than this place.” And he (or she?) was dead-on. Better bread, better sauces (and I don’t even really like Bobby’s sauces), better meat, super-way-better toppings, and still <$10 (although I guess Shake Shack is cheaper by 30%). But is that a fair comparison, as one is in West Philly, and the other is in Center City? I guess not, because it’s not like g and I are going to venture across the river just for Bobby’s Burger Palace. Of course, g and I aren’t going to venture 4 blocks to Shake Shack just for a burger, either (we’ll go if others want to go!). In this area, alone, Rotisseur has better sandwiches. VW has way-better burgers. I’m sure Rouge could teach ’em a thing or two (I haven’t had a Rouge burger yet, but some day!). So I just can’t figure out why one would ever wait in line for one of these guys. Gotta be for the shakes (we were a little sugar-overloaded from a previous dessert party, so we’ll have to visit the shakes again later) …
I guess all I can say is this:
When Federal Donuts moves into the area, we’ll forget all about Shake Shack.
the food stands alone at Bar Ferdinand
t says: After hearing about Ansill cheffing it up at Bar Ferdinand, g and I decided to venture out to Norther Liberties, or “No-Libs” as the cool kids call it (I guess “Norberties” wasn’t cool enough). Actually, we had not been there since wandering in after a delightful dinner at Modo Mio a while back … but that’s another story. We picked a Thursday (g and I wanted to try the $40 8-course tasting menu), hopped a cab, and arrived exactly on time …
August 2012, Thursday Dinner, Party of 2. We were seated promptly … which was good … because we were starving. Scratch that. I was hungry. g was starving. So we quickly pondered the menu, but because we were there for the tasting, there really wasn’t much choice (but, as you see the menu below, that was totally fine with us):
it was jamon night!
g and I approved of the jamon-themed dinner (but we wished kp was there to enjoy all this ham) and decided that two tastings and one wine supplement would be enough to hold us over. So the plan of attack for this post is first food, then wine, then service. So here we go …
ham sampler and ham-and-mussels
The first two courses were done quite well. I liked opening up with the sampler because I was really able to taste the differences between the three (and who knew that Iberico would be so sweet – even without the peaches!). g felt the weakest item of the dish was the pickled cauliflower. I disagree – I felt the peaches were superfluous. So we agreed to disagree about the ham pairings, but we agreed that it was indeed a brilliant move to have us taste just straight-up ham – especially because each of them would be incorporated into the dishes that followed. We also both agreed that the mussels were very nice – bursting with bright and lively flavors – kind of like a crudo/ceviche, except the muscles were fully cooked. It’s true that nothing here was otherworldly, but it was a nice solid start for the meal.
croquette
Don’t let the picture fool you – the croquette was tiny. And to be honest, it was underwhelming in flavor. Yes, good crunch. Yes, a nicely textured filling, but just make the thing a little bigger so you can stick some more ham in it or something. This was my weakest dish of the night (but hey – it was fried and crispy, so you bet your bunsen burner that I ate it with a smile!)
pork rillette
This pork terrine was amazing … but not because of the pork. Don’t get me wrong – the terrine, itself, tasted fine, featuring a variety of different textures/types of ham in one single slice – so that made me happy. But what took this dish to “the next level” was that red jelly-like smattering you see in the upper left. That, my friends, reminded me of a cross between cranberry sauce and sangria, and it was ridiculous in combination with the salty-savory pig. And when you mixed it up with some of that unidentified brown sauce on the bottom, it had this odd feeling of Thanksgiving – not necessarily the exact flavor profile, but it definitely filled you with a sense of cozy comfort.
The salad was kind of unremarkable so I’m not going to show the pic. The surprise was that it was accompanied by what was essentially potato stix. I might carry around potato stix with me in the future just in case I come across any boring salads while I’m at work …
The last three dishes had pics that were taken with such low light that there’s no real point in me posting them. Which is a shame. Because the two savory dishes were VERY good. As far as Merluza was concerned (i.e. it’s like cod), it was a fantastically cooked piece of fish – I mean I didn’t even know that fish could have that kind of texture! (In my mind, it was as perfectly cooked like how a sous vide steak is perfectly cooked). And the accompanying potatoes and sauce added such beautiful subtle flavors. And then there were the albondigas (read: lamb-pork-cow meatballs) which were also kinda-sorta-insane. They weren’t fancy, and texturally, they weren’t much (in reality, I prefer my meatballs a little softer), but there’s something about their flavor, when mixed with the smokey-tomato-based sauce that instantly captivated me. I had the urge to slap those meatballs on a hoagie roll and devour it with my bare hands (I assure you that no such thing happened in the restaurant – I stayed with my fork and knife). The meatballs lacked subtlety/complexity, but that was perhaps its strength, as no thought was required except one: “these are so yummy”.
The dessert was fine – I mean, it was a cookie and some lemon curd. The cookie was unremarkable, but lemon curd (like ham/bacon) makes up for a lot of sins. I was shocked he didn’t do some kind of choco-bacon concoction to finish off the ham-themed dinner, but whatever …
Ok, so, the service … the service was horrendous. g and I recall that they are a tapas restaurant where the dishes normally just come out of the kitchen as they are ready. We would have been fine with that concept, however, because we ordered the wine pairing, there needed to be appropriate progression of plates for the pairings (i.e. we had four glasses of wine that were each paired with 1-3 specific courses) so that each wine hit the table with certain courses. They failed this task several times – but in all kinds of ways. Some times we’d have the wine but no food. Other times we’d have the food but no wine. And still, there were lengthy gaps between courses and at least twice did servers attempt to give us food that we had already seen or straight up wasn’t something we ordered. The table next to us, who also ordered the tasting and pairing, even had things completely out of order! And I assure you that our server, at any given time, had no idea what courses we had had, which ones were coming next, or even what glass of wine we were on (at one point she tried to convince us that we had already had our second glass of wine when we had just finished our first … and then she never came back with the second glass like she promised …) On one hand, I could excuse them for “just being a bar”, but seriously, if the food is going to be this good, you kinda-sorta-havta step up the service, otherwise patrons who actually are going to your establishment for the food (i.e. like us) are going to be a little turned off.
And now for the wine … the wine was horrendous as well. ARGH!! I will list the badness:
1) The xarel-lo was way too light to tango with the terrine, which had such booming flavor due to the pork and the accompanying sauces. That terrine screamed for a heavier white or a light red or something! After a bite of the food, the xarel-lo tasted pretty much like water (it was best paired with the salad … which really didn’t have much going on, so you could actually taste the wine). It’d be different if it was zippy or fruity or something … but it had nothing to offer. Failure.
2) The Montsant was a classic Spanish red from Montsant – there really is no other way to put it. It’s bold and in your face with stewed fruit and a twist of very-nearly-aggressive backbone/bitterness. It’s a wine that puts some hair on your chest (and was served a little warm, so the alcoholic burn was kickin’!) And then they pair it with the fish and the meatballs. The problem is obvious: Montsant + fish = stupid (in my book – feel free to disagree). I’m not saying that you should never pair red wine and fish, but I am saying that this particular red wine completely blew the fish out of the water. All of the subtlety and complexity of the food was completely masked. Failure.
3) The dessert wine … ugh … the dessert wine … Just because you have a dessert wine doesn’t mean you just blindly pair it with whatever you’re serving for dessert. This dessert wine = super-sweet and rich. Lemon curd = super-sweet and rich. And two sweets don’t make a right – they monkey-knife-fight each other. Maybe the cookie and the wine would have been alright, but the lemon curd forced us to make a decision: lemon curd or wine? Result = we abandoned half our dessert wine – the lemon curd was more delicious.
So as you can see, the food at Bar Ferdinand was actually quite wonderful – and for the price, it was very-nearly-a-steal! It’s a shame that the service and wine could use lots of improvement. I’m sure the service will get better as they get used to the idea of meal progression and pairings. But as for the wine, well, I don’t know who made those selections, but let’s just say that I know of a certain Spanish wine enthusiast that would be more-than-capable of taking over Bar Ferdinand’s wine program and selecting wines that would actually complement instead of fight with Chef Ansill’s delicious food … and he’d probably do it for little more than his love of wine, alone … right, a?
gettin’ my coma on at sabrina’s
t says: After working a 16-hour shift from 7pm to 11am, what’s the first thing that you would do? Most people would probably go home and sleep. But not me. And certainly not my coworkers, either. We’re super-humans. Well, either that, or we’re plain ‘ol silly … and hungry … Collectively, it was decided that we go to brunch. After a few back-and-forth emails/texts/conversations, we chose to venture to Sabrina’s in University City (closer to Drexel than Penn). The journey was a dangerous one, as one of us almost perished on the way due to desert-like heat and Louisiana-like humidity. We were able to rally our spirits when I confirmed on my iPhone that we were indeed 1 block away and not lost/drunk somewhere in Bangkok.
July 2012, Brunch, Party of 4. After sitting down “in that round porch thingee”, we perused the menu and decided that we should choose four different items and divide them equally. It’s been a while, so I can’t remember what they were, but I can tell you that three of them had Batman-related names (probably in honor of the new film). What I can show you, however, is a pic that was taken of a plate adorned with precisely 1/4 of each of our items:
why have just one dish when you can have four?
What is above is a pancake dish, a French toast dish, a frittata dish, and some kind of “chihuahua” dish. My memories about each is fuzzy, but what I do remember is that everything was quite delicious. The French toast used less cream cheese than past stuffed French toasts I’ve had at Sabrina’s, which I find to be an improvement (who wants to eat a hunk of cream cheese?), while the pancakes were doused in some kind of crack-like citrus-based glaze that everyone loved (drawback: there wasn’t enough of it – only the top pancake was covered in it … resulting in many-a-stranded bottom two pancakes). I had no qualms with the two egg-based dishes (although I think that maybe as a whole, they were weaker than the sugar-laden bread-based ones – they didn’t have punchy flavors that I can remember), and the potatoes were wonderfully fried. And … well … that’s it. It was a large quantity of delicious food – great for putting an immediate smile on your face and a coma on your brain. Nice job Sabrina’s. I still don’t think it’s worth waiting in line for on Sunday morning, but definitely a superb weekday brunch!
remembering lolita
t says: The other day, a and v and I decided that we wanted to go to a BYO for dinner. We originally thought of the semi-BYO GTC … but they were just too busy/cool to seat us before 9:30pm. We were hungry and didn’t want to wait. Kanella was booked ’til 10pm. So what were we to do? As we wandered towards 13th street, either a or v thought of Lolita. While normally a place I associate with BYOT (bring your own tequila), they also don’t object to wine, either. I hadn’t been in a super-long time (i.e. circa ?2006?), but I was game – it was threatening to rain so I was happy to get indoors pronto. So off we went …
July 2012, Saturday Dinner, Party of 3. g was said she couldn’t make it – she was busy in NYC. We came, we sat, we ordered, a made an ATM run, and we ate. Here’s the dillio (sans pictures) …
a says:
-Tequila-Lime Smoked Salmon Tostaditas: I thought this was the best “bite” of the night. The salmon was very good and went better with the fresh veggies/fruit than I expected. The crisp of the tostada added another layer.
-Tamal De Humberto Con Huitlacoche, Pollo Y Mole Rojo: A crowd pleaser that has been on the menu for as long as I can remember. Well described as comfort food. The best part is soaking up the remaining sauce with the masa “hiding” at the bottom of the tamal.
-Carne Asada A La Lolita – Described as the best dish on the menu and I can say it is definitely a winner. The beef was cooked perfectly, had a tiny amount of heat, a nice cumin bite, and was cut nicely by the guacamole. I didn’t love the fried yuca “fingers” that provided the steak’s base but the sauce and plantain chip paired well. This is a very solid dish but I have the underlying feeling that something is missing.
-Vaca Con Budin De Papas – t thinks he won (t interjects: I don’t “think” I wont – I know I won …), and I would tend to agree (t boasts: Buzinga!). This dish had some great flavor (t agrees: Yea – it was a surprisingly well glazed, nice-and-tender hunk of meat – highly recommended!).
-Enchiladas Verdes Con Portobello Enchipotlados – v went vegetarian and was not disappointed… v jumps in: On my dish… the sauce was light…not creamy crap that most Mexican restaurants pile on dishes. The portobello mushrooms were fresh and flavorful. t echoes: Yea – it felt some comforting, but it didn’t feel “heavy” – quite nice!
back to a:
-Tres Leches De Coco, Chocolate Y Nueces – One of the best desserts in the city. If you haven’t had tres leches or love it, get there soon and save room for this. With a cafecito, this can’t be beat.
-Budin De Con Chocolate, Canela Y Nueces – An interesting take on bread pudding, this was solid but not knock-your-socks-off. Though there was no rum listed in the dish, I enjoyed what I thought was a rum-like quality. The tres leches is better but I still kept coming back to this for another bite. (v suggests: Eat the bread pudding when you are having a bad day!)
-The wines: We brought one red and one white – both that we had were solid, cut-above-the-rest table wines. The red was CMS (Hedges Family blah blah) and was a nice blend from Washington that makes no attempt at being complex. The Cabernet (C) gives it a cola punch, Merlot (M) good fruit, and Syrah (s) spice and richness. Take this to a dinner when you know there will be red meat but not much else. t, as become his M.O. of late, went for the esoteric. t pontificates: Yes – I brought this white pinot noir from Italy, inspired by a white pinot noir that we had in Oregon. It wasn’t sock-rockingly good, especially when compared to Erath’s, but it was fine. It had a Chardonnay richness without being Chardonnay. It was a good way to prepare us for our last bottle of that Erath sitting in my cellar – it’ll be making an appearance soon!
In all, I think that Lolita had some surprisingly-good food – it was better than I remember! True, it doesn’t get a ton of love in the press nowadays, but I’m happy that a and v have convinced me to put it back on my radar. If you haven’t been to Lolita recently, definitely give it a whirl – it’ll make you forget all about your previous reservation at GTC …
little fish dominates summer sundays
t says: So I had to work the night shift for a week. I have to say that it was the weirdest experience because to me, it felt like one extremely long day with some short naps interspersed throughout (i.e. I’d wake up and there’d be light outside, and I’d go to sleep and there’d be light outside). I did well on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday nights. Friday night was the hardest – I just couldn’t keep up my usual enthusiasm and focus. But Saturday … Saturday I was gung-ho. Why, you might ask? Because Saturday night shift meant that I was going to leave work on Sunday morning … and Sunday was date night! To celebrate, g and I went to Little Fish, one of our favorite places to go for seafood. Armed with a chilled bottle of Alexana Riesling we had picked up from Oregon, we hopped into a cab and rode off to 6th and South-ish …
July 2012, Sunday Dinner, Party of 2. Oh Little Fish. Your restaurant is so cute and quaint. It’s not quite Bibou-small, but it’s pretty darn small. And it’s relaxed, too. The servers donned their tattoos and strutted about with an air of “home” (and they were on top of their shiznit, too!) – it’s just what I needed to make me feel at ease after the week. I glanced at the menu (i.e. the chalkboard on the farm wall) and prepared myself for the series of dishes. OH – I forgot to mention – when you go to Little Fish on Sundays, there’s only one option: a 5-course, $33 fixed price meal. If you don’t like it, then get out. They have two seatings – 5:30 and 8 (?or is it 8:30? I forget). Even if there was something on the menu that I didn’t particularly want to eat, I’m pretty sure I would have lacked the oomph to get out of my seat and seek out another last-minute Sunday dinner option. Fortunately, the menu looked pretty good:
And now, on to the food:
My first leafy green in weeks …
So we started with a pretty simple salad. On one hand, it was a simple as simple could be (arugala, tomato, cheese), but on the other, it was really the first green thing I had eaten in at least a week, if not longer – so for me, it was like a plate of some sort of exotic vegetable I had never seen. So yes, it was tasty (plus, arugula tends to have that pepperiness to it – so it is more exotic than romaine after all). Was it blow-your-face-off-good? No. But when’s the last time arugala+cheese+tomato blew your face off?
fluke
Now THIS dish, on the other hand, blew my face off. Seriously. I was not expecting it. I figured, “ok, well, they’re going to have to have some sort of raw fish preparation, and chances are that it’s going to be whatever leftover fish they had from the week (from what Kitchen Confidential has told me, Sunday fish in restaurants are suspect because no one delivers “fresh fish” on the weekends), so I set my expectations pretty low … but this was magic. It was sweet (watermelon), spicy (tamari), fresh/zippy (scallion), savory (brown sauce … soy?), and it was all perfectly balanced with the briney essence in raw fluke. Wonderful. As I sipped our Riesling (which was also wonderful), I remembered how Little Fish doesn’t screw around with namby-pamby flavors. Thank goodness.
scallop
This was the second dish to blow my face off (i.e. if I still had some remnants of a face after the first dish). So it started with a perfectly cooked scallop (an absolute requirement for any place trying to bill itself as seafood-centric). Check. Add a richly flavored corn-essenced gravy. Check. Toss in some mushrooms that were so good that even g ate them. Check. Add some green beans that were cooked-yet-crisp-yet-deeply-flavored as well as some cornbread croutons. Check. The result was this weird concoction were something as light as a scallop was made to feel so rich and earthy that it almost made me wonder what sort of mysterious grass-fed, hoofed beast these scallops must have come from. To borrow some language from some of my favorite people [of which to poke fun]: amaze!
tuna
But alas … the meal wasn’t perfect – but not because chef failed at cookery – quite the opposite, actually Above you see a perfectly cooked piece of tuna … and nearly-perfectly cooked chickpeas (I prefer them a little softer) … and a perfect mix of cucumber/onion/some-kinda-sauce … but they were assembled in such a way that for the life of me I could not taste the tuna at all. GASP! Nooooooo! <Ok, I’ll stop being over-dramatic.> I think that after the previous two courses, this one came out the weakest – and it really had to do with the balance. Despite the size of that healthy slab of tuna – it just couldn’t lend enough flavor to compete with the quantity of sauce and other stuff on the plate; it got lost in the jumble. I’m sorry Little Fish. You were so close!
chocolate cake
So, after we remembered out experiences with the coffee cake the last time we were here, g and I knew that we shouldn’t underestimate their dessert prowess. But unlike “coffee cake”, this dessert seemed like it was going to bring in a new twist: chocolate and beets. I was skeptical. Don’t mess with my chocolate by putting crap in it it doesn’t need (citrus, berries, and bacon are acceptable). I am glad to report that this dessert was awesome. Not – it wasn’t as sensational as the coffee cake, but it was a nice, filling dessert with moist chocolate cake (as moist and fluffy as a boxed cake, but not as sweet), with some creamy whipped topping (I forget what it was flavored with) and that beet sauce that turned out to be a wonderful accompaniment (kinda like how raspberry+chocolate works – this works in the same way – the beets came off as kinda-fruity, which was great!). So in the future I might flirt with chocolate+beets some more.
In the end, g and I had a superb meal. Sure, there were a few mis-steps, but when you consider consider how reasonably priced it was, it’s one helluva-deal! Our mouths were happy. Our stomachs were happy. Our wine was empty. It was a great night. Thanks Little Fish!
Supper’s fried chicken shows promise
t says: So I recently talked up Supper’s Fried Chicken Tuesdays to some friends, thinking that it’d be a great deal … even if it only half lives up to the Food & Wine hype. But perhaps it was foolish of me to make mention of the “deal”, as I, myself, had never had this mysterious “pastrami-brined/seasoned” fried chicken. I began to fear that maybe Supper would make me eat my words … so the FTC got together on the first convenient Tuesday and did some top-notch investigative reporting …
July 2012, Tuesday Dinner, Party of 4. kp kinda-sorta-forgot to show, so we were down to 4. While we missed kp, we knew that we had to soldier on … for the sake of the blog! We’d have to raise a drumstick in honor of our night-shift-working friend …
veggie teaser
Feeling that perhaps we needed some veggies to blunt the inordinate amount of fried chicken we were about to consume, we decided to go for some appetizers. Above, you see the pickled veggie tray. First allow me to draw your attention to that egg-salad-looking-concoction in the center. That, my friend, is their house-made ricotta with some olives. Let it be known that this stuff was surprisingly good, with a creaminess and lemon zing that reminded me almost of a lemon curd (but not as sweet). Good stuff for sure. As for the other pickled veggies, they weren’t bad. I can’t say they were at all that mind-blowing, but I guess it is nice to get exactly what you ordered: well-executed pickling of tomatoes, beans, okra, and rhubarb.
a also ventured the gazpacho. As gazpachos go, it was a pretty impressive with surprisingly bold vivid flavors for a cold soup. We discussed it a bit, and it seems like everyone had comments about it, but I’m not sure there was a single conclusion on what was successful/lacking. For instance, I found the acidity to be quite refreshing, but v felt that maybe it was a bit too harsh. a wondered whether the bacon was necessary, but of course, in my opinion, bacon is always necessary. I found the corn flavor (“corniness” as I called it) to be quite a pleasant surprise, whereas I feel like others appreciated it but were not-so-surprised. In the end, I think we all liked one thing or another about it, so I suppose that makes it a successful dish?
bring on the chicken (on a very large plate) …
… and the sides: slaw and smokey potato salad
Don’t be misled by the pictures above – there was actually a substantial amount of food – all of it just happened to be served in ridiculously large plates/bowls (much to my chagrin – all that wasted space!). I firmly believe that there was plenty of food for two people, so the two orders was more-than-enough for the four of us (I only shot a picture of one order above). So let’s dissect the chicken first. The skin was hands-down amazing. Super light, super crisp, firmly adherent to the chicken, and full of that pastrami seasoning that really brought a complementary element to the chicken. Beautiful. The chicken, itself, was “ok-to-good” at the least and “good-to-very-good” at the best – I think it depends on which cut you happen to pick up. The white pieces were a smidge over-cooked (kinda like how every piece of chicken I cook at home comes out), while the dark ones remained nice and juicy. Thus, the chicken, like the appetizers, was also controversial. While I felt that the skin could more than make up for the chicken cookery, g felt quite the opposite, as no amount of fried magic can distract her from the meat, itself. a and v fell somewhere in-between g and me.
The mixed feelings persisted when evaluating the sides. I quite-liked the smoky potato salad, but g felt the potatoes to be undercooked (g held no punches today). Meanwhile v was quick to point out that while she enjoyed the sides and the chicken, she just couldn’t quite justify this particular combination of flavors. In retrospect, I kind of agree – I felt that each component was good on its own (the chicken, the slaw, the potatoes), but it’s not like putting them together resulted in a symphony greater than the sum of its parts … but maybe we’re being too picky? I mean, come on, it’s two-people’s-worth of food for $25 – that’s a good deal, right? <Insert a moment’s pause while I stroke my fake beard and ponder this question> Hmmmm. <Insert squinty eyes and a cocked eyebrow.> I’ve decided: “a conditional yes”. FedNuts has better chicken, but not-as-devilishly-crisp skin. “Pastrami” is not one of their flavors, but I’m sure that if they put their mind to it, they could get a similar taste with a juicier product. However, Fednuts lacks the sides. However, they have donuts. However, they’re far away. So, three howevers later, I guess it’s a tough call … but surely as soon as FedNuts opens a closer branch, they will completely eclipse Supper’s chicken in my mind (I prefer donuts to sides – you may feel differently … but I doubt it). Perhaps a better comparison would be between Supper and Rotisseur, as they both do “normal” sides. Right off the bat, Rotisseur has better chicken, but lacks the skin-advantage because it’s not fried. Supper has better sides. Rotisseur is BYO. Supper has more seating. Agh! It’s too hard to declare a victor! You know what would settle all of this? Simple. Make a time machine and go to Meritage circa 2010 for their Korean Fried Chicken – still my favorite fried chicken of all time. Actually, I wonder if Chef Colle (or her sous Anne Miller – actually, is she still sous at Meritage? No idea.) still does Korean fried chicken every now and then. If it’s the same as it was two years ago (and if the sides are still as good as they were back then), then they could totally out-chicken all these guys. Oh well … I guess you’ll just have to go to all these places and decide for yourself.
bistro la baia … stepping up their game
t says: g and I wanted to meet up with to Bistro la Baia with some of the old gang recently and eventually landed on going to Bistro la Baia. It was a tough decision because everyone had their requirements. dz enjoys filling pastas. I wanted something byo. g wanted someplace we’ve never been before. smn was probably happy enough just with the idea of going out to dinner at all, with all the crazy schedules she has been enduring recently. Normally we’d go to Melograno, but they’re a little pricey. While g and I are often full after a plate of their super-awesome pastas, normal-sized people often wish there was more quantity to be had. We finally landed on Bistro la Baia – a place that seems like it’s been around forever, but we just hadn’t had the chance to visit. Now, when we suggested it, w’s fiance had his doubts about Bistro la Baia, as they disappointed him once in the past – I believe he said something like “their food sucks … well … it doesn’t suck, but it’s very ‘middling'”. He tried his hardest to find alternatives (Modo Mio was booked …), but in the end, he was a good sport and went along with our plans.
July 2012, Friday Dinner, Party of 6. g and I arrived first, to be greeted (if you call it a “greeting”) by the older, larger gentleman who seems like he’s running the front of house. He was terse – sparing not a single pleasantry before showing us our seats. The place, itself, looks a bit “tired”. The floors are creaky, it’s unnecessarily dark, and the decor/tablesettings were plain. I looked at g and muttered, “ok … time to buckle up … this might be painful …”. As the rest of our party arrived, we found that our “host” was gruff to pretty much everyone. To illustrate his demeanor, I’m going to finish off this review as he would have …
The food. It’s good. Not great. But good. w’s fiance admitted something like, “the food quality here has really improved. I think they stole people from La Viola”. I find the quality to be similar to La Viola – not the most superb pasta textures or flavorful sauces, but definitely has a feeling of “home”. Oh, wait – that’s too descriptive. Sorry – back to being gruff: big portions, moderate pasta cookery, moderate flavors, no surprises or squeals of delight (except from dz … who loves pasta more than any Italian I know … which is funny … because he’s not Italian …).
The service is no-nonsense. You order the food. It comes out. Done. Their attitude was refractory to my offer of a glass of wine from an Italian pinot nero I brought.
The prices were reasonable – g and I spent ~$55 and were stuffed (and I had leftovers to eat a full lunch today).
Result: Bistro la Baia … it’s not fancy and it’s not foodie-heaven … but it is food. Bring some friends and some wine and have fun like we did!
Is that gruff enough for you … ?
after dinner sneeze 