More Later
Lunch at Geno’s with celebrities. Pics here.
Archive for 22nd July 2007
Good Morning!
It’s 52 right now back home in the mountains. It’s 71 here in Philadelphia now.
Today, we switch hotels, then I head to Geno’s for a gunblogger lunch with Wyatt, Sebastian, and Bitter. After that, no plans yet.
Apparently, we’re missing a big crime wave back in Centre County.
Food So Far
Friday evening
Friday night we were tired, and didn’t have much time to do any research, so we made a serious error and relied on the blurbs in the hotel magazine. We ended up just around the corner at El Vez.
When a “review” of a restaurant includes descriptions such as, “hip, young, brash,” it’s a good idea to stay far away, but like I said, we were tired and hungry.
It was obnoxiously loud, so loud I couldn’t hear the waitress. It was full of people on cell phones, which I couldn’t figure, since I couldn’t hear myself think. But yuppies on cell phones is another good indicator to stay away.
El Vez is supposed to be a Mexican restaurant, and their speciality is supposed to be guacamole. It turns out they do six or seven “specialty guacamoles,” another indicator that we should have left.
We ordered the “original.”
It came in a molcajete, with chips and a red salsa. I give them points for actually making the guacamole when we ordered it. It was cool, not cold, and chunky. It would have been very good, had it had more cilantro and less lime. As it was, the lime overpowered everything, including the avocado.
And folks, this is exactly why I strenuously object to citrus juice in guacamole. Lime was the predominant flavor. Citrus easily cloaks the rich avocado, which is supposed to dominate guacamole. But at least it wasn’t the ice cold, perfectly smooth nastiness most restaurants serve.
The tortilla soup, like the guacamole, easily could have been very good, but for one flaw. It was, for normal palates, inedibly salty. I know this because I like my food saltier than 99% of the population, and the soup teetered right on the upper limit of saltiness for me.
The carne asada was excellent, thinly sliced and done just as I had asked, served over the house version of rojas, sliced roasted poblanos and (there) mushrooms, and drizzled with a guajillo sauce. I grudgingly applaud them for the asada, but everything else, well, not so great.
The final insult came with the check, at just under a hundred bucks, about the same as a meal at the Frontera Grill in Chicago would have cost.
Folks, this ain’t the Frontera, and the chef at El Vez ain’t Rick Bayless. You will never forget a meal you have at Frontera, because everything is memorable, and it’s well worth the expense. El Vez is, in my opinion, a waste of money.
Saturday
We did the historic district, beginning around 8:30 am, and had three places in mind for lunch. We walked past the tapas bar and cuban restaurant and decided to to to Karma, the Indian restaurant for lunch.
All I can say is everything I had off the buffet was extremely good. Karma is on Chestnut, almost all the way to the Delaware, and I recommend it if you’re in the area.
I’ve bitched enough about Chinese in Centre County that it shouldn’t be surprising that we wanted to go to Chinatown (just up the street from the hotel) for dinner. The question was where, given that there are probably over five hundred restaurants in Chinatown. We ruled out anything southeast Asian (Thai, Malaysian, Burmese, Vietnamese), only because we can get pretty good Thai food at home. But that still left hundreds of choices.
We kept seeing the URL for Chinatown splashed all over signs as we walked past the edge, so when we got back to the hotel, I pulled it up.
Somebody really needs to work on this website. The first problem is only about fifteen restaurants are listed. The second problem is that most of the links don’t work. And the third problem is, well, here’s a quotation so you can see for yourself:
Sichuanese cook in lawei pots heaped with chilies and prickly ash. Food cooked a short time in lawei pots is mellow, but as the night wears on and long forgotten entrails are dredged up, mouths numb and patrons sweat.
Good for amusement value, but not every informative. So I used Google and found this review and discussion of Four Rivers. This line in particular caught my eye:
My wife made me bring this dish back to San Francisco every time I went back to Philadelphia.
I don’t know if you know this, but despite all its other flaws and weirdnesses, San Francisco has incredibly good restaurants, particularly Chinese. It also seemed from the reviews that Four Rivers might be a real Szechuan restaurant, one thing they did not have in San Francisco when I have been there (though they have just about everything else, including real Hunanese restaurants). So Four Rivers it was.
The Chinese no more make or eat food from other regions than anyone else on the planet, so why anyone would expect a restaurant staffed by Cantonese to know how to make Szechuan or Hunanese food, I do not understand. My rule for Chinese restaurants is order what they know how to make.
Usually, this is Cantonese. There are quite a few northern Chinese restaurants, but not many western Chinese. Four Rivers is a Szechuan restaurant.
My first clue was that I saw things on the menu I had seen in Szechuan cookbooks, but never on a menu, and no Cantonese or northern Chinese dishes. We ordered Chengdu Chicken, Chicken in basil, and after I asked what it was, Hunan Pork.
The Chengdu was the first to arrive, and it looked deadly, thinly coated with a bright orange sauce, with flecks of bright red chilis everywhere. Looks were deceiving. Oh, it was spicy, but not as spicy as it looked. Chicken, green onions, garlic, chilis, vinegar, and Szechuan peppercorns, no detectable sweetness or cornstarch. It was remarkably delicious, one of those things you’ll remember all your life. The chicken in basil came next, and it was likewise memorable. Chicken with carrots, broccoli, and peppers, with sesame paste and basil leaves. It was not spicy, but it was excellent. The Hunan pork came next, in a rich black bean sauce. It was extremely good, though it was not so much better than what you could get elsewhere that it stood out.
Perhaps the rule for Chinese restaurants applies to Szechuan and Hunan: Don’t order Hunanese at a Szechuan restaurant.
We got a lot of food, far more than we could have eaten. And here’s the zinger: three huge dishes full of three entrees, two of them so amazingly good we’ll never forget them, cost only thirty-four bucks.
Four Rivers is excellent, and I highly recommend it to anyone who finds himself in Philadelphia. It’s just a door on Race Street in Chinatown, and up a flight of stairs. It’s small, there is little decor, the floor is very old linoleum, and only one of the staff when we were there spoke or understood any English. But God, what food.
We’ll definitely eat there the next time we come to Philly.