Philly Foods: Famous 4th Street Delicatessen

Happy Easter! Fittingly my friends and I decided to go to Famous 4th Street Delicatessen, a fantastic, pretty, very Jewish diner. One of my friends had gone there at the beginning of the year and reported that the food was mind-blowing and the portions humongous. Both of these rumors were proven to be true.

Famous, as they refer to themselves, had some of the best food I have tasted in Philly so far. I first found them in the Philadelphia Magazine. They were voted Best of Philly for Desserts in 2009. I looked over the menu then, skeptical about why anyone would spend $8 on an eclair. The reason is, as we discovered today, that the eclairs are each a foot long, about three inches across. These Jurassic dimensions apply to the rest of the dishes as well.

I got the pastrami Reuben (first picture), which was stuffed about five inches high with thick, hot, and delicious pastrami.
There was just a layer of Swiss, sauerkraut, and thousand island, but you could taste everything perfectly. The exciting thing is that there is a whole list of Reubens on the menu. My goal (my friends have yet to be convinced) is to try each type of Reuben they offer and determine which is the best there.

One of my friends got the bacon and cheese omelet with breakfast potatos. He reports that it was "as good as an omelet can be," which is pretty good. This was also huge, and he had to bring back about half of it.

Next came the John St Turkey Club. To the orderer's surprise the turkey club was a good eight inches high, packed with lettuce, tomato, bacon and turkey. Only half of that got eaten as well.

We had been slowing down our consumption for awhile, and our waiter (who was so nice) came over with our receipt and the complementary chocolate chip cookies, but we had our hearts set on the infamous chocolate eclair. We split the eclair into thirds and tried to eat the pieces before gravity pulled out the pastry cream. The choux, chocolate, and cream were all wonderfully yummy and balanced. As my friend said "it's surprising that in an eclair with so much cream, the chocolate can still be a star."

Overall, the Famous 4th Street Delicatessen was amazing. The prices were pretty steep, but the amount of food you get for each buck is worth it. The atmosphere is sunny and busy; the loads of families and couples seem all smiles and the staff is nice and responsive. So if only for the HUGE eclairs go to the Famous 4th Street Delicatessen.

I hope that Passover and Easter are/have been great for everyone and that Spring Break is not too distant a memory. Omnom!

Famous 4th Street Delicatessen
700 South 4th Street
Philadelphia, PA 19147
215.922.3274

P.S. Apparently the University of Pennsylvania (I gotta respect all Philly schools) has a food magazine and blog called Penn Appetit. I am pretty sure that every school should have a food mag/blog. Anywho, cheers to them for having one and check it out!

Philly Foods: Square 1682

It's Restaurant Week here in Philadelphia. Some of the people in my dorm and I went out for brunch at Square 1682, a new restaurant on 17th street. The Restaurant Week "deal" was two courses: either breakfast or lunch course and a dessert. I use the sarcasm of quotation marks because the only person who saved money on the Restaurant Week offer was the girl who got the steak. So, get the steak or don't get the deal.




I got the Poached Eggs with Truffle
Oil "atop brioche toast, wild mushrooms, and guanciale sauce." I didn't know what guanciale was, so I have looked it up: Guanciale is bacon from a pigs cheek. Yum. Actually, the dish was really good (especially the bites with all the truffle oil). It was in the plainest of terms, good bread with a poached egg and the typically delicious mushrooms in butter and some herbs, chopped bacon, cream sauce, and parsley. Oh and of course truffle oil. How could one complain?



My dining compatriots enjoyed the French Toast with bananas, pecans, and good old Pennsylvanian maple syrup, the blackened chicken sandwich with bacon, pesto aioli, pepper jack cheese and house-made fingerling potato chips (pictured), and the Texas Longhorn burger with blue cheese. From what I heard, all dishes were highly satisfying. After some sneaking of potato chips, I can personally vouch for their deliciousness.




Next up, dessert. Chocolate tart with ginger and orange ganache. Reportedly very good but very, very chocolatey. Others had apple tart with cinnamon ice cream. Also, said to be sensational, but the ice cream is for cinnamon lovers only. I then had the vanilla ice cream cream puff with caramel and pecans. It was very nice. The caramel was warm, but freezing on the ice cream, and the puff was crispy in just the right places.





Overall, the consensus was that the brunch wasn't bad. However, it was far from sensational. If we had the choice to try somewhere new, we probably would. If you are looking for a solidly vogue and stylish place with food certain to be good with decent presentation, then head on over to Square 1682.







SQUARE 1682
121 South 17th Street
Philadelphia, PA 19103
Tel: 215.563.5008


Omnom!

Has anyone else tried some memorable meals during Restaurant Week?

Philly Foods: Chinese Custard

It seems that in a lot of cultures egg custard appears as some kind of dessert; there's creme brulee, flan, crema Catalana, Vietnamese steamed custard, and of course the egg tart.

These often personal-sized Chinese desserts have a crumbly, flaky, crust with barely a high enough ratio of flour to crisco to stay together. This shell houses a sweet egg custard that can have a thick heavy consistency similar to French custard or a more jell-o like consistency.

The tarts are cooked until they just begin to caramelize, browning on the edges of the shell and custard. When you bite into the tart you get a taste of every flavor it has from less cooked to more, from buttery crust to the bright custard flavor of egg yolks. That sunny flavor is really important to have in the egg tart. Don't settle buying tarts without that taste, because they are really easy to make (if you have an oven, but I'm working on other methods). The only recipe I can vouch for is from the cookbook Every Grain of Rice by Ellen Leong Blonder and Annabel Low, but I'm sure that there are many more out there.

I got the egg tarts in the picture from KC Pastries Inc. in Chinatown. They were 75c each. At about 2 inches across that's not too bad. These were definitely not the best egg tarts I've ever had, but they were still perfectly addicting (ones that were coming home for Thanksgiving may have never made it that far...)

Besides egg tarts KC, as well as many other bakeries, have some variety of a custard stuffed bun. Remember char siu bao? Well, these are the same idea except filled with custard instead of pork. KC's version of this was pretty weird; the custard's taste reminded of eggnog and was lighter than I'm used, too. If you dig eggnog, though, you have a winner. For a really good custard bun (really good being thick, yellow, eggy custard) go back to Mong Kok Station Bakery where the winning char siu bao were.

Omnom!

• KC Pastries: 109 N. 10th St. in Chinatown. Great cakes, too!

• Mong Kok Station Bakery: 153 N. 10th St. in Chinatown. Has incredible buns of almost any variety. You want to get there decently early because they do sell out of a lot of stuff. Do NOT buy cakes from Mong Kok. Stick to buns and what is in the glass cases perpendicular to the street only. There is one kind of hidden which faces the street. Nothing sells from there and stuff gets old and spoiled.

The Philly Cheesesteak Classic: Pat's? or Geno's?

Figure 1. Pat's: both with cheese whiz, one onions, one peppers
No Philly visit or, in my case, four year residence is complete without the ultimate comparison of Pat's and Geno's Cheesesteaks. So, without delay I went for the comparison of the two rival establishments (located right across the street from each other in the Italian Market) and waited in the HUGE lines which were spilling out across the streets. Pat's is the original cheesesteak place. They started as a food cart business in 1930 and soon became a big hit for their chopped meat sandwiches. Geno's started in 1966 and ... that's about it. Now, there is a pretty legendary rivalry between the two and between people who put their love with one or other. It's actually really silly, but most everything good in life is.

So, which is in fact the better cheesesteak?

First, you should know that both have the same bread, so the competition really does come down to the cheesesteak aspect. Pat's had a lot and huge pieces of meat [fig. 1]. The cheese whiz (which you MUST get to really appreciate the Philly cheesesteak) was fine, you can't really screw up cheese whiz, but not enough for all the meat in the sandwich. Unfortunately, Pat's meat was also really thick and kind of overcooked, so it was pretty chewy.

Geno's was really surprising [fig. 2]. They season their meat really nicely. I didn't even realize that Pat's didn't have seasoning until Geno's. Their meat also had thinner and better consistency than Pat's. They also had a decent amount of cheese =)

Figure 2. Geno's: Both with onions, one cheese whiz, one American. Go whiz.

You've probably guessed which I would recommend, but I'll state it officially for the record. The MiniFridge and Microwave officially says that Geno's is truly "the Best."BUT, is Geno's the best cheesesteak in Philly? I happen to know it's not, but I'll keep you updated with new places as I get to them. For now, head down to the city of brotherly love and omnom.

Geno's

1219 S 9th St
Philadelphia, PA 19147-5005

+1 215-389-0659‎

Pat's

1237 E Passyunk Ave

Philadelphia, PA 19147-5060

Get Directions

(215) 468-1546

Philly Foods: Char Siu Bao

Oh, char siu bao! What a food! This is the fabulous, delicious, probably really unhealthy, pork bun. It's pronounced kind of, kind of like Chaucer (as in Canterbury Tales) with a New England accent, i.e Chauceh, and the bao is pronounced bow. Congratulations, you've just learned a pretty tonally inaccurate

Cantonese phrase.

Anywho, bao are a sweet, eggy, white bun filled with chunks of barbequed pork, barbeque sauce, and onions, and then painted with more egg for that perfect glaze. Best part is that for the often (especially in Chinatowns) bao are cheap. I've found two bakeries (which are basically right next door two each other) which both make really good bao.

• Mong Kok Station Bakery: 153 N 10th St in Chinatown. Huge bao, pictured. Very sweet. 80 cents. You want to get there decently early because they do sell out. The bakery in general has great food and nice people. The decor is also pretty fun.

• Lhong Ghang Bakery: 127 N 10th Street in Chinatown. Smaller bao and not as sweet (sorry no picture, I was really hungry), but has huge chunks of pork, which the Mong Kok ones do not. These are only 70 cents. Once again nice food and people. I would also recommend their egg custard cake which is a thick yellow egg custard in a pan fried mochi; really yum.

If I stumble upon better bao than these, I will let you know. I realize most of you aren't actually Philly-dwellers, so I'll be sure to get a recipe up this week, too. However, if you happen upon some no matter where you are, for the most part they're pretty good. Some bakeries will use pork fat chunks instead of actual pork, avoid these! That is not what bao should be.

So, go, explore, omnom.