William$ $onoma

Stopped by yesterday to take a look around and to grab some Green Peppercorns $6 (who else has the good ones?)

They were having a $ALE. The 11" griddle pan regularly $99 was 1/2 price !!! EXACT same pan is 20-25 on ebay(shipping included)

Set of beautiful knives from France were on sale for $2000.

Spontaneous Gustation

Unexpected deals at WholeFoods today

1-41-50 shrimp $4.99. Excellent quality
2-huge and perfectly ripe avocado $1.99 each

We piled shrimp salad in tortillas. Delicioso

!!!!!!!!! They also had Corvina @ 9.99# total deal.

Aratama

Blackfish

Last week we popped over to Conshohocken and dined at Blackfish Restaurant.

The cooking was very good, the dining room was a bit spartan and the service was quite decent. It's a BYOB that is more polished than most. Blackfish Restaurant is worth the trip.

The Garden Party

Everything went fine. The menu was easy to execute but people didn't eat very much. The grilled lamb was most popular, next most popular Isgro's cookies.

There was a lot of love for the ginger margaritas.

Utsu semi

Tilefish too

So good I made it again for lunch!

Tilefish

I spotted a glistening fish filet in WholeFoods this morning. $15.99# it was spectacular. Seared... then lemon, butter and pink salt from AU.

Garden Party Menu

We settled on :

Gravlax and pretty much used this blogger for direction.

Mini Gyro using lamb from WFM and Bitar's pita, GF makes nice tzatziki.

Banh Trang we eat these all the time in warm weather but they are exotic to most folks.

Cannelloni again! Same version with Claudio and Talluto ingredients, leeks,concasse and chicken stock for sauce.

Charcuterie plate with Claudio and DiBruno bros stuff.

Beer, wine and ginger margaritas.

Tinto

Tinto had a 3/4 full dining room even on Monday night. We had cocktails, wine and quite a few dishes. The cooking was very good, and the service was fine. The mirrors in the dining room, frosted candle jars in the bar, the corkscrew collection and all those bottles of wine generate a stylish Martha Stewart-aise vibe. The "Basquaise" theme itself felt art-directed, and Tinto overall seemed to rely on inspiration from Amada. Still we enjoyed Tinto. The duck confit canape was brilliant, and I would like to try the Chestnut soup again...maybe next winter. Perhaps in time Tinto will develop some soul of its own. Right now it's mostly a satellite of Amada.

'Aka shigitatsu sawa'

'Osakazuki'

DiBruno Bro$

DiBrunos has plenty of fans. I stopped in around luch time and trade was brisk. There were some good values and a few ingredients that I would like to try. They had iceberg and romaine for 1$ a head! They had so much stuff in there it was feeling too much like more is more. I did grab some bread and cheese. I find the Walnut St. store is hard to beat for bread selection.

Spring Cooking

Test Cannelloni's. Talluto sheets, claudio ricotta, herbs. Chicken broth with leeks and concasse for sauce.

Blasphemy

Mushroom Cheesesteak


This roll is a 'pretzel' roll, the chipped steak is from Och's.

A not especially satisfying experiment.

Just a Memory

Good thing I had sense enough to pork out on the last really chilly night.

Pork rib roast from WholeFoods was excellent. Dry pasta from DiBruno$ Bro$ very nice. Beans from Iovine were choice.

Things French

A poached egg on top
is not how dishes get French
at any time of day

Garden Party Menu

We've been puzzling over a brunch type menu for our garden party. Needs to be easy and compatible with Japanese Maples vibe. These fennel clams were a test dish. They turned out to be not so great because labor intensive and not so spectacular. We're thinking gravlax, grilled lamb sandwiches, banh trang and meats and cheeses from claudios. Still working on it.

Speaking of (Rittenhouse Square) Cheeze

What the heck!!! They have the zaniest ads in this 'compendium'. Check out this hairdo and collar combo! The caption states "ELEVATE."

Cheezy odors

WholeFoods Markup was promoting itself by pathetically connecting Parm reggiano and the guinness record book. Here's a pair of WFM cheese lovers talking it up.

WFM could step up their game by restoring to the cheese case Grana padano the younger, less expensive and more popular (in italy) grating and slicing cheese. It's a mini mofo that you can not find Grana @ WFM

April Showers

Japanese Maple leaves in Spring

Ballerina

Wexler First Friday

Market Gypsys

A while back I had a connection with a clan that did card reading, palms, fortunes etc. This contact was useful because occult expertise was needed to dowse for high quality fish/shellfish in Reading Terminal Market. After cooking those XXX shrimp from John Yi the other day(world class.) I went back and noticed that there were several premium items in the case. "dry boat", hamachi, good sized rockfish/striper filet and ahi. Although the tuna 'chocolates' were proudly displayed I wanted to give the other stuff a play.

I tested out the hamachi and the striper. It was my first time handling hamachi. I didn't have the astonishing quality of my favorite hamachi dish (hamachi 5). But it was fresh and rich and a decent value for the price. The bass was just as good as WholeFoods Market striper and a little bit less expensive.

I would not eliminate the need for occult skills though. With managements resources trained on pissing wars Reading Terminal Market isn't attending to a legit market issue like the lack of a premium fish vendor in RTM.

Can't Say No to the Dough

I'm a barbarian with these things. Why'd I ever bother with the spinach?

Maple Viewing

WholeFoods Markup Mofo #2 Pirates Navy

"California Conventional"

There are so many delicious oranges around right now why did WFM pilfer the entire pirates naval orange supply

On $$ale for $1 each, the best that can be said for these is that they are seedless. They are good for tossing at the pirate -- give a dunking for $elling lousy oranges.

A Mofo because these are 5x the price of excellent oranges available at the Italian Market and the Reading Terminal and even the ACME Market.

Cochon

I heard a good word about Cochon recently. We decided to check it out a few nights ago. There were three of us and we ate many dishes. The cooking was sure and evenly good. Their 'crispy chicken livers' were so delicious you could go along with the foie boycott no regrets. We had a good time at Cochon and were well fed.

Say Hello to my Little Friend.

At the last minute we decided to make shrimp tempura along with a bowl of soba. These shrimp from John Yi* were really superb.


*Reading Terminal Market