Talula’s Table Pop-Up Restaurant
t says: Via her connections with Stephen Starr, Aimee from Talula’s Table (one of our fave places to go, ever!) will be returning to the city for a three-day dinner event at Washington Square. Read here.
Yes, the reservations were all gone in less than 2 days.
Yes, we got one: table for four between 8-9pm on July 1 (I don’t want to give away too many details – we might compromise our anonymity). Boo-yah. On one hand, we are super-super excited for the event – we kind of hope that everything goes splendidly and Aimee decides to open up a Center City outpost. On the other hand, we’re a little bummed it’s not BYO and no definite pricing can be found ($20-29 is quite a range). Well, we’ll let you know how it goes …
PS While I haven’t seen/heard about this yet – I suspect that there has to be some reservation-scalping going on somewhere. I wonder how much the reservations are going for? I don’t quite know how much someone would have to pay me to give up such a precious reservation …
Raw Fish Day: Pod and Morimoto Deliver the Goods
t says: I had the opportunity to visit both Pod and Morimoto recently. Rather than do a full-on review of each, I figure it’d be fun to compare-contrast the two.
I went to Morimoto with cm for lunch (6/2010). The inside was as swanky as I remember, but for some reason, it was quite empty! Who knew that lunchtime would be so dead? I hope this is not a sign that Morimoto is on the decline!
We sat at the sushi bar where we observed some cookery of a squid – very interesting stuff. After staring at it staring at us for a bit, we decided it was time to eat. We each ordered the chirashi sushi. On one hand, this was a little lame, ordering the same thing, but who can say no to ordering sushi when you’re sitting at the sushi bar? I had originally had my eye on the far less expensive pork belly ramen, but I figured that I ate enough pork belly at Percy Street to last me a month; in the name of health, I went for the raw fish. It came with miso soup and a salad that was quite tasty. Neither of us could really identify the components of the dressing, but it had a nice salty and sour flavor. The main dish featured layers of sea-weed, rice, and assorted raw and cooked seafood (the shrimp was cooked). What surprised me the most was the size – there was a lot of fish, and there was a lot of food! I thought I was still going to be hungry, but I was not – I even left some rice because I wanted to avoid food coma! There’s not really much I can say about the dish aside from it tasted like deconstructed sushi. The fish was spot-on, the rice was wonderful (and was studded with small bits of mushrooms). There were these delicate shreds of egg that I’m still not sure how they did. In any case, it was a satisfying meal that made me wonder if I could somehow eat there for lunch every day.
Pod was a little different. Whereas Morimoto’s interior was chic yet edgy, Pod’s was … gaudy. There were a lot of colored lights, which was somewhat distracting given that they do keep the place a little on the dark side. I will admit that the loungey red leather sofa-esque things looked intriguing (I kind of wanted to sit on them), but the rest of the place looked like a cross between Continental and Morimoto. Or maybe that’s what it’s supposed to look like? Cheesy? As we walked to our table, I was reminded of my personal mantra: “I’m never going to Pod unless someone else is paying.” But tonight was different …
The built-in seats (we were seated against a wall, so the seats were built-in like booths) were moderately comfortable. The atmosphere was … “energetic” (fortunately, g and I could lean in so we heard each other just fine). Does this sound like it’s going to be a horrible time? It sure does. But the story took a turn for the better – and there are two reasons why … The first was our server who was very nice and had a great attitude. He made multiple trips to ensure that we were happy with our food and that we didn’t need anything more – I like that. The second, more important factor was the “special” of the day: all-you-can-eat sushi for $25. There were 8 or so hand rolls, 8 or so nigiri, and 8 or so maki rolls that you could choose from; you could choose as much as you like of whichever you like. Me – I’m a big fan of nigiri – rice, fish, and wasabi – that’s all I need (and maybe a half-a-drop of soy sauce)! So that’s what I went for. I tried some salmon, some tuna, some yellow-tail, some eel, some fluke, some sea bass … thirty-eight pieces of sushi later (that’s 34 pieces of nigiri and 4 pieces of rolls that g needed some assistance with), I came to the conclusion that the quality of sushi was pretty good (obviously good enough to eat 38 pieces worth). Furthermore, it’s kind of a “deal”, if you think about it. At Pod, one order of nigiri is two pieces and costs around $6. Of nigiri alone, I consumed approximately $100. Of course, Pod is ridiculously expensive (which is why I refuse to eat there unless someone else pays for it … or if it’s all-you-can-eat night), so perhaps a more reasonable estimate of the damage is $70 (and tack on a few bucks for that roll I helped g with). Still, I think that I made it worth it.
So, what’s the conclusion? If I’m picking out a place to go to eat, I’m going to choose Morimoto nearly every time. The atmosphere is better. The food is great. And really, for $20, I had a very nice lunch – the kind of lunch you could bring home to mom … Be that as it may, even the mighty Morimoto may have trouble if faced against a Pod all-you-can-eat night. The fish at Pod, while maybe not quite as awesome as Morimoto (I had some fluke that was a little dry, but the yellowtail and salmon were great!), was still solid. The volume of fish consumption is just so much larger at Pod, and unfortunately, size matters. Consequently, Morimoto and Pod hold two special, yet different, places in my heart. One, I’ll go to when I’m looking for great-tasting food – it’s the food that I actually wouldn’t mind paying a lot of money for. The other, I’ll go to when I’m looking for the ability to eat myself into oblivion … on a budget.
GTC: Pasta Challenge
t says: We went to GTC again this past Friday as a follow-up to the last time we went. You see, last time, we went with a bottle of white and opted for some white-friendly dishes, vowing to go again to sample those items that escaped our wrath. This time, we went with a red and sought some red-friendly dishes. I’ll tell you right now: it was quite the tasty and educational experience.
6/2010, 5pm, Party of 2. We showed up with a bottle of Spanish red and went straight for the margherita pizza and the pappardelle with lamb ragu. The pizza was great – thin and delicious (and the red sauce wasn’t too sweet – hooray!). But forget about the pizza – let’s talk about the pasta. Now, this pasta dish had beautifully thin, wide, and al dente noodles. The lamb ragu was also cooked superbly, with plenty of soft shreds of lamb amidst a sauce that had some unique other ingredients (e.g. sunchoke). But, something was … missing. It seemed that the noodles and sauce were winners on their own – but there was something about the dish that was a little lacking. The pasta dish as a whole was not quite at the level of Melograno‘s pastas. I think it has to do with the way the pasta absorbs the sauce. At GTC, the pasta, itself, didn’t have much “taste” to it – it actually tasted just like plain pasta, thus, the pasta was a vehicle to transport sauce. Meanwhile, at Melograno, the pasta takes on the flavors in the sauce, meaning that every strand is preciously delicious. It was amazing to me how such a seemingly small difference could lead to such a large impact on the dish. Don’t get me wrong, though- we ate every last noodle, shred of meat, and drop of sauce (seriously – I used the table bread to search and destroy any drop of sauce that remained).
In conclusion, the meal was great, the service was great, and the price was kind. Yes, I am being overly critical about the pasta, but really, it was quite good overall!
Percy Street BBQ: Father’s Day Success!
t says: We went to Percy Street for Father’s Day (we celebrated it a day early). Our dad, sr, liked it once already, so we figured that bringing two dads and their respective families at the same time would be a nice challenge for Percy Street. Because we’ve covered it already – here’s the short version …
6/2010, 5pm, Party of 8. Percy Street easily handled our party, seating us all at a long table near the windows. Although the AC was on, they also opened the windows, so the restaurant was a little on the warm side. I would have preferred it if they attempted to save the planet and their money and just close the windows! Why do Philly restaurants insist on doing this? If it’s hot enough that you need to turn on the air conditioning, then it’s too hot to open the windows!! One, or the other … not both!
The food, on the other hand, was excellent. We got the Lockhart for the table. All the meat was tender and had delicious smokiness. The pork belly was still phenomenal. They also had a new spicy bbq sauce that was very good! As before, the sides were solid, but not necessarily to-die-for. Finally, the desserts were all great as well, with the majority of the table going for the berry cobbler and me going for the bing cherry ice cream sandwich.
You know, nothing brings together families like eating with your fingers and getting spicy sauce all over the place. The fact that all the food was delicious, plentiful, and not horrendously expensive ($24 pp) was icing on the cake. I sense that Percy Street has set a new bar for Father’s Day get-togethers.
Top Chef vs. SYTYCD, Talula’s Table, and Father’s Day
t says: Top Chef DC debuted last night. That Kevin dude from the Philly area (i.e. Jersey), has quite a resume – I’ll cheer for him. That Angelo guy needs to be put in his place. In any case, I hope you watch! We’ll be watching So You Think You Can Dance on Wednesdays, but I’ll catch Top Chef on the re-run (it used to be on at 10pm – why’d they change a good thing?)
Talula’s Table is coming to Philly for three nights at the end of June courtesy of Stephen Starr. Personally, I feel like now that Aimee doesn’t have Bryan holding her down (zing!), maybe she’s testing out whether she wants to come back to the city. Of course, this is entirely speculative and I’d say has a 51% of being false, but we can dream, right? In any case, I snagged some reservations, so we’ll see how it’s done!
Lastly … here we go … it’s Father’s Day. g and I are going to test Percy Street BBQ and see if it can stand up to two of the least critical food critics ever … our dads! It’ll be a double-family event (and celebrated a day early on Saturday). I hope they don’t try to open the windows because it’s forecasted to be hot and humid. Air conditioning, please!
Max Brenner: Chocolate Pizza and Chocolate Soup
t says: We went out looking for some place in Center City with drinks and dessert. Naked Chocolate is wonderful, but they have no liquor license. West Philly was too far away, otherwise we would have considered Capogiro. Instead, g, kp, and I went to Max Brenner. Here’s the short-and-sweet tale …
6/2010, 9pm, Party of 3. It was melting outside (stupid humid summer nights), so we were relieved that the inside was well air-conditioned. Of course, they also opened the windows to the joint – so we were confused. Do they want the chocolate to melt? Do they like stressing their air conditioners? Do they like paying PECO a ton of money? Or maybe they just hate the environment? Or maybe they wanted to mock me as they sat us in the warm part of the restaurant after we knew quite well that they were capable of cooling the place sufficiently …
The ambience … in a word … dark. We could barely read the menu. It was definitely someone’s idea of a joke to have those tiny candles on the table be our sole source for lighting. It was also super loud … which is weird, because the space is quite open (and the windows were open), so we’re not sure why it felt like we were in a shoebox BYO at peak dinner time. Maybe everyone was experiencing a sugar-high?
kp and I split the half-order of the chocolate pizza with “the works” (marshmallow, peanut butter, and bananas). Holy crap. It was great! Of course, it was unbelievably rich – but because of this, it was also very economical as we were barely able to finish it (kp had to abandon some of the crust). But, in reality, I guess we could make this at home. As a matter of fact, kp now has possession of two pizza stones, so we might just go ahead and try it one day. Ok, so it wasn’t an ingenius invention … but it was tasty.
g had some sort of “euphoria sundae”. On one hand, it had similar components to what was on our pizza … except it was supposed to be on top of ice cream. Well … much to g’s discontent – ALL of the ice cream had melted! She was basically eating a cool soup. This was a major disappointment for her, as she was expecting a cold, refreshing dessert because it was so warm in there! Good flavors (she really liked the caramel sauce), but poor execution.
For drinks, I had the chocolate milk … it was “ok”. It wasn’t as nearly as cold as I would have liked (it was supposed to be over ice, but there was not a single cube in it!). kp had the tiramisu cocktail. The Courvoisier was quite potent in it, but I’m not sure if he’d ever really complain about too high an alcohol content (ask him about his “Grape Monster”).
In conclusion … If you go, the best dessert in my opinion is the pizza, as it is quite filling and inexpensive. If you get ice cream, make sure it’s cold. Alternatively, if you just stock up on chocolate, peanut butter, caramel, bananas, and marshmallow, you can open up your own Max Brenner in your living room.
GTC: A Flammenkuche by Any Other Name …
t says: g has “summer Fridays”. Basically, every Friday between Memorial Day and Labor day is a half day at her workplace (the idea is that you work a little extra Mon-Thurs, and then earn the ability to cut out early on Friday). Crazy, right? Well, wanting to never look a gift horse in the mouth, we decided that it would be good to go out of our way to celebrate!
Today, I had first suggested going to Tweed – it was new and offered small plates of roasted chicken and a wild boar pasta (these have g’s name written all over them) as well as a variety of burgers (i.e. hamburger, lamburger, duckburger) that I thought held great promise. I made the reservation and was all set to go. Then I noticed that opentable said it was “business casual”. Wondering what this meant, I called them up to inquire more …
t: “Hi, what’s your dress code?”
tweed: “We’re casual … jeans are ok -”
t: “Oh, great … that’s -”
tweed: “with dress shoes and a blazer …”
t: “Ummm … ok … see you later tonight …”
Not more than 10 minutes later, I cancelled our reservation. Who in their right mind is going to wear dress shoes and a blazer to dinner consisting of a burger, pasta, and chicken on a night like this? Yea, we’ll go to Tweed … in the fall … Instead, we wanted comfort (I wanted to wear shorts). We wanted BYO, so we could bring a bottle of chilled grenache gris. We wanted to not break the bank – we were considering eating burgers for crying out loud! Where to go? Vic Sushi? Nah, too hard to linger there. Melograno? Nah, we needed to go to someplace new … or maybe someplace kinda-new.
We chose to go to Garces Trading Company. Yes, we went there for lunch once, and they have been in the news lately, but today we were in the mood to try out some of the more substantive dishes. Dinner was going to be new … to us.
So, we put our wine into the neoprene sling, grabbed our keys, wallets, and cellphones, and headed out the door. About 25 minutes of walking in the beautiful weather (with the not-so-beautiful angry traffic on Locust), we were finally there. Having just come off a dinner at Distrito, it was time to test Iron Chef Garces’s more casual dishes …
6/2010, 5pm, Party of 2. We were seated immediately – 5pm is a great time to go on a Friday. Trust us. At 6pm, it was completely full. As we stared at the menu, we were faced with major problems. Everything sounded good. The only way to make a decision was to promise ourselves that we’d be back tomorrow (whether or not this actually happens, we’ll see). So we chose what we felt were warm-weather foods (and would go well with our white wine). We ordered the Tarte Flambee pizza and the linguine and clams.
Our first dish was the pizza, which sounded very similar to Flammekuche we had at Cochon. When it arrived, it turned out that indeed it was very similar, but there were some noticeable differences. The cippolini onions weren’t caramelized, rather, they looked like they were sweated. There was no mysterious orange sauce, but there was more bacon and parsley. It was also shaped more in an oval (it reminded me of a super-sized flatbread at Amada). The crust was thin with a nice balance between crust and give. And it tasted … the same, but different. Yes, you get sweet onion, creaminess, and salty bacon, but it tasted more “subtle” than Cochon’s. It was creamier, the bacon had a milder taste, and the parsley worked beautifully to brighten up the dish. It was a more mature version of the pizza. But then, it came down to the critical question …
t: “So … someone tells you you’re going to die tomorrow, and you have to have pizza between now and then … which would you choose?”
g: “Hmmmmmmm … I think it’d be Cochon … but it’s really close …”
Our second dish was the linguine and clams. The clams were tiny, but there was an additional plop of crabmeat atop a bed of pasta, peas, and bacon. Another delicious dish. To me, it tasted a bit creamier than what I think of when I think of “linguine and clams” – it was also far more buttery – unctuous even. g loved it. I thought some aspects were great (I’ll be adding bacon and peas to the next time we make spaghetti and clams), but I felt the dish to be a bit heavier than I’m used to – kind of like a carbonara. g felt the lemon added enough zip to make it feel light and summery. This was interesting because normally I’m the one with the higher tolerance for rich foods – I guess you’ll have to go and try it yourself!
I do want to mention, however, that after we demolished our pasta (we shared the large order), I then found the perfect use for all of that buttery sauce … the table bread!!! I sopped it up and it added a nice creaminess to the sourdough that they gave us when we first sat down. Beautiful.
For dessert, we went for their chocolate peanut butter mousse “bomb”. The chocolate ganache shell was divine, and the chocolate cake was moist and delicious. The peanut butter mousse was very light and tasted only faintly of peanut butter. I kind of wanted a big peanut butter punch like in Tastykake Kandy Kakes, but this was still very good, because that ganache easily carried the dessert to awesomeness.
As we finished up our bottle of wine (one of our “missions” for the night), we realized that the meal, in its entirety, was great! In the end, it cost us a bit more than eating at Melograno, but the same as eating at Melograno and Capogiro (for dessert). As we walked/hobbled home, we were full … and happy … and looking forward to tomorrow …
after dinner sneeze 