Category — Dining Out

Like barbecue, meatballs, and a number of other family recipes, fried chicken is a sacred thing.  Everyone has their favorite, whether it be from a local eatery or from their own recipe box.  I try not to limit myself to a single “best ever”, but my short list definitely counts Jestine’s Kitchen, in Charleston, among the top three.

Just as with Wild Wing, we made it a point to hit up Jestine’s Kitchen when we found ourselves back in Charleston.  It is, quite simply, the best place in town for straightforward soul food along the lines of collard greens, grits, fried okra, mac and cheese, red rice, and fried chicken.  There are other offerings, as well, blue plate specials bringing the best of daily available ingredients to the table.

By way of background, Jestine Matthews was born in 1885 and lived to be 112.  She worked as a laundress and housekeeper in Charleston, eventually finding herself in the employe of the Ellison family.  She became lifelong friends with the family, and the Ellison’s granddaughter, Dana Berlin, founded Jestine’s Kitchen with the family recipes that were handed down through the generations.

Meals at Jestine’s Kitchen start with a basket of freshly baked cornbread, accompanied by a bowl of butter that’s swimming in honey.  True Southern cornbread is only slightly sweet, with a rough quality that puts its overly sugared, cakelike Northern counterpart to shame.  Service, as you would expect from an operation as personal as Jestine’s, is quick and personable - everyone loves working here, and it shows.

We both ordered the fried chicken plate, and split an order of the fried green tomatoes as an appetizer.  As is the case with many Southern culinary practices, fried green tomatoes takes something that is ostensibly healthy and transforms it into a gut busting artery clogger, by dredging it in flour and frying it in a substantial amount of butter.  The result - tender green tomato slices, sweet on the inside and slightly crispy on the outside - are worth writing home about.

The fried chicken plate at Jestine’s Kitchen is no joke.  Accompanied by two sides of your choice, you are presented with nearly a half-chicken’s worth of parts - a breast piece, a leg, and a wing or two, that almost make you regret having ordered an appetizer.  The chicken is molten hot, having emerged from the oil only moments before hitting your table, making you wait a little longer than you are accustomed to before digging in.  But, after dutifully picking away at your sides (the wonderful fried okra, which is an acquired taste for some, and the sticky, gooey macaroni and cheese), you finally experience fried chicken nirvana with your first bite.

As all remarkable fried chicken should, the coating on these pieces shatters into little bits when you bite into it, yielding tender and moist meat.  You move from the dark meat, the leg, to what is usually the challenging part, the white meat, to find that this preparation is impeccable.  This is what fried chicken should be, always.  As intimidating as the initial presentation seemed to be, in short order you find yourself facing an empty plate.

Now, usually, after such a grand meal as this, one would seek to retreat to a state of moderation and ask for the check.  But, given that this was our first return to Charleston, and Jestine’s Kitchen, in over ten years, it was unthinkable to consider leaving without ordering the Coca Cola Cake.  To make a long story short, Coca Cola cake was born out of World War II, when shortages of sugar compelled home bakers to substitute Coca Cola in their recipes.

The cake, served with a chocolate frosting and some whipped cream, is an eye-opener for anyone who’s never had it before.  The Coca Cola lends a different kind of sweetness to the dessert, one that is more subtle than cakes that use white or brown sugar.  This is probably why the cake goes down so easily after such an epic meal.

Having gotten to Jestine’s Kitchen early, by the time we left there was a line of about a dozen people that had formed outside.  The restaurant has such a good reputation, and is so highly regarded both locally in and guidebooks, that arriving during the primetime lunch hour usually means waiting outside (the place is too small to have an indoor waiting area).  The line moves quickly, though, and there is a large fan installed to help folks withstand the Charleston heat and humidity.  Whatever you do, though, don’t leave the line and go elsewhere, because Jestine’s Kitchen is certainly worth every bit of the wait.

Yes, I’m getting around to trip updates from the Charleston excursion.

If there’s ever a mecca for wing eaters, it’d be the Wild Wing Cafe.  At any given moment, Wild Wing has over 30 different types of wings, ranging from five or six different heat levels of your standard buffalo wing, to alternate flavors such as Thai, Lemon Pepper, or Garlic.

Coming to Wild Wing immediately after checking in at the hotel, we were fortunate to find ourselves arriving on Wild Wednesday, which is their way of saying ‘2 for 1′ on the wings.  Charleston is, after all, a college town, so there’s lots of deals to be found that are appropriate for a college student’s budget.  We each ordered a dozen, with two varieties per order for a total of four flavors.  The hardest thing about coming to Wild Wing is figuring out which kinds you want.  We ended up getting Gold Rush, Garlic! Garlic! Garlic!, Lemon Pepper, and CHINA SYNDROME.

I’ve only recently discovered the joy of drinking beer.  About fifteen months ago, I enjoyed my first glass of Yuengling, and a large part of that experience is due to the wonderful mess that you see pictured here.

This, my friends, is the roast pork sandwich at Nick’s Original Roast Beef in Springfield, PA.  If you’re wondering about the roast beef, it looks largely the same and is just as addictive.

Nick’s is the place we always go to for lunch when we are on our way to the airport, whether to fly out or to pick someone up from out of town.  Located about five minutes off of I-476, it’s about 20 minutes away from Philadelphia International Airport, and where else can you get a decent quick lunch with that degree of convenience?  Not Center City, that’s for sure.

Nick’s has been around for over 60 years, with the original location still in operation in South Philly and the Springfield spot open for 10 years.  We’ve been to both, and the experience is identical - go to whichever is closest for you.

As with most institutions, there’s a way of ordering your food at Nick’s that makes it possible for any one person to order a pork or beef sandwich that’s a good variation on the one being eaten at the next table.

First, let me lay down the basics.  At their essence, a sandwich at Nick’s is a stack of meat on a kaiser roll, with gravy.  Ordering it as a ‘combo’ just means slapping a slice of provolone on it.  Then it gets more complicated from there.

Overboard, which is how we like it, is with extra gravy.  Not just a small dollop, mind you.  I’m talking a sandwich that is so literally soaked in gravy that the bun just barely holds together.  Yes, it sounds disgusting until you try it.  The opposite of Overboard is Wet, which means less gravy (but, why?).

Operation means digging out the excess bread from the bun so that it doesn’t interfere with the meat, cheese, and gravy.

On the Outs means the inclusion of the crusty bits of beef from the outside of the roast, in other words, the best part, where the vitamins are, etc.

A Topper is a small portion of sauteed broccoli rabe, which, if you’re eating roast pork, is probably required by law.

The last bit of advice I have to give is this - get the gravy fries.  They’re perfect fries to begin with, but you throw some meaty gravy on them, and they become something else entirely.  What’s happening in my mouth?  Something wonderful.

And, as you may expect, all of this pairs brilliantly with beer.  We had tried a few beers here and there in the past, but it was this one singular moment last year, with this one beautiful mess of a sandwich, where everything clicked and beer suddenly made sense.

And, once I get around to offloading the camera, I’ve got a slideshow where beer is making a lot of sense to me.  Lots and lots of sense.  As you can tell, I’ve started my Charleston trip recap, starting with the place we ate right before leaving town.

Is it possible for a restaurant to break your heart?

Seven years ago, or thereabouts, a tiny storefront tucked away off of Philadelphia’s eclectic South Street was transformed into Django, a BYOB that would go on to revolutionize small bistro dining in a city notorious for its ridiculous markups on wine.

Owned and operated by the husband and wife team of Bryan Sikora and Aimee Olexy, Django enchanted diners with its homey atmosphere, superb service, and Sikora’s outstanding and innovative cuisine.  Django reaped the rewards, garnering Best New Restaurant and Best Chef in Philadelphia Magazine that year, along with a mention in Gourmet magazine, which contributed to regional and national recognition of the restaurant.  The best thing about this was that none of these accolades were hype - it was all very much deserved, corroborated by Sikora’s ability to turn out excellent fare and Olexy’s masterful command of cheese selection and front-of-the-house management.  Whenever you see a cheese plate in Philadelphia today, it’s because of her influence.

As word spread and the restaurant became more and more successful, weekend reservations became harder and harder to secure, and Django instituted a 30 calendar day rule for reservations, prompting many to hover over their redial buttons at 10am each morning, waiting for the magical window to open.  Even when we were successful at getting through to a live person, by the time we had reached the reservations desk the only available openings were frequently either 5:30pm or 10:30pm, which we gladly accepted.  Despite having countless other amazing restaurants in the city to choose from, whenever we had to schedule a special occasion dinner, or had out-of-towners coming to visit, there was never a question where we would go.  Over the next few years, we racked up a nice collection of anniversary and birthday dinners at Django, and made it a point to stagger reservations across each of the four seasons, just to see what changes would come to the menu.

Then one day, Sikora and Olexy sold Django and left Philadelphia.  On the heels of the birth of their first child, they had decided to give up the daily hustle of the Philadelphia restaurant scene, cashed in their chips, and rode off into the sunset.  It was a classic Michael Jordan move, retiring at the top of your game.  Our hearts crumbled, with our remorse only magnified by a visit to the restaurant after the deal was done, when we discovered that Django the Great had, with the departure of the original owners, become Django the Very Good.  Sikora and Olexy were the heart and soul of Django, and when they left, much of that heart and soul went with them, and the establishment felt more like a business than the personal experience that it once was.  It was still a very good bistro, but there hung a very palpable void in the absence of Sikora in the kitchen and Olexy in the front of the house.  Lacking the personal touch that was the hallmark of the “old” Django, the restaurant soon faded into the rushing waters of the BYOB scene that it had originally pioneered.  Today, I’m sure that it’s still a good bistro, but in a town now filled with BYOB bistros, it no longer stands above the fray.

After their departure, months passed, and there were rumors here and there, of Sikora and Olexy relocating to New Jersey, or perhaps clear across the state to Pittsburgh.  Their absence from the Philadelphia BYOB scene was quickly filled by more and more new and upcoming bistros offering homey atmospheres served by small kitchen staff, profiting on the template that Django had originated.  Still, after having tried a few, we were still not swayed from our opinion that Django did it first, and Django did it best.  We had all but written off seeing the duo back on the food scene when, to my surprise, I heard that Sovana, a small bistro in the heart of Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, mere minutes from Philadelphia, had acquired a new chef named Bryan Sikora.

So, on the occasion of my wife’s birthday two years ago, or thereabouts, we trekked through the lush valleys of the Mushroom Capital of the World, along small winding country roads and shot straight past Sovana, which is located in a small shopping center, facing inward.  Turning the car around, we managed to find it fairly quickly and arrived shortly after the 4:30 start time for the dinner service.  Sovana does not require reservations, and the outgoing voice message states that they would always honor walk-ins, although it would be possible to make a reservations request.

My first viewing of the menu felt like a culinary homecoming.  I saw menu items that I thought I would never see again after the end of the Sikora/Olexy era at Django.  Goat Cheese Gnocchi, Wild Boar Ragu, the best dishes that ever graced the menus of Django were now at Sovana, and largely retained the same qualities that made them such standout successes at Django.  The space, with a high-ceilinged industrial vibe, took some getting used to, but the meals that we had enjoyed with such enthusiasm were still there.  To be sure, there was definitely a different feel to Sovana than Django, as Bryan Sikora was now an employee, not an owner, Aimee Olexy was nowhere to be seen in this new endeavor, and the staff went about their duties with businesslike efficiency.  The no-reservations policy did yield some visits when we were relegated to waiting at the bar for over an hour, but overall our experience at Sovana was good, though not as good as Django.

We managed to have three meals at Sovana before the wheels of change turned again.  A subsequent call to the restaurant some months later yielded a hostess, obviously new to the position, who was unfamiliar with Sikora’s name.  She checked, and there was no “Bryan Sikora” working at Sovana, not anymore.  And the void came rushing back, although, seeing that Sovana never came close to achieving the approachability of the original Django, it hurt far less this time around.

This time, though, it was not too long after Sikora’s departure from Sovana that there were some news items regarding the next chapter of their endeavors - a small gourmet shop in downtown Kennett Square, right on Main Street, in a location that formerly housed a shoe store.  Delays and the usual hassles of opening a business meant staring at an “under construction” version of the shop’s website for weeks past the anticipated opening date.  But waiting for the shop to open was better than not having any news at all.

In 2007, on a blustery winter day when the warm rays of summer are a mere memory, and the thaws of spring not even a thought on the horizon, Bryan Sikora and Aimee Olexy debuted their new gourmet shop named after their daughter, Talulah’s Table.  Like Deadheads following the band, we just had to go and check it out, especially since the shop is only a pretty 30 minute drive through the countryside from where we live.

One of the things that’s particularly appealing about Kennett Square, and about small town centers in general, is the fact that the main drag is not a collection of franchises like Burger King and Starbucks.  Main Street in Kennett Square consists of a variety of small, independently owned shops and eateries, and makes for a nice strolling afternoon, provided it’s not 20 degrees out.  Which, on this particular afternoon, it was, and we had to hop over mounds of ice and snow to get to the front door from the car.

Talulah’s Table falls in line with the general Kennett Square aesthetic, and the first thing that you notice when you walk into the shop is that comfortable, homey feeling about the place, with a preponderance of wood floors and shelves and the smell of fresh-brewed coffee.  This effect lasts for all of about five seconds, before you dive headlong into exploring all that Sikora and Olexy have to offer in their latest spot.  In general, the merchandise is displayed on wooden shelves lining both sides of the room, with the coffee/pastry bar and register taking up the front of the rectangular space, with small coolers offering cold drinks and grab-and-go sandwiches next to it.  There are sections of the store dedicated to jarred items, chocolate, dried pasta, various oils - the typical items that you would expect to find in a gourmet shop.  It’s a place where you could stop by every so often to stock up on high end items, or find yourself there every morning grabbing a coffee and danish before heading off to work, or even every evening, picking up the components for dinner.

Things get more interesting as you head towards the back of the store.  On one side of the room are display shelves stocked with various breads and rolls, and next to that is a tap for olive oil - yes, you can bottle your own here.  A freezer case holds frozen house-made pasta and pasta sauces, and then as your eye follows the room in a counterclockwise fashion, you come upon the cheese display and your budget just flies out of the window.  I am so completely not kidding.

The display case at the back of the store, where Aimee Olexy’s hand-selected cheeses share space with her husband’s prepared food options, is the kind of display case that you would put on your desert island list, if your desert island had electricity, trees made from bread and crackers, and was surrounded by an ocean of red wine.  If she’s available, Olexy is more than happy to answer your questions about the cheeses, and will solicit your unique likes and dislikes in order to tailor her recommendations to your taste.  One of the best things we we ever did was to take the day off from work, drop by the shop, give Olexy a budget limit and just have her create a picnic basket of charcuterie and cheese.  That, and a baguette, made for one of the best lunches in the picnic area outside of Longwood Gardens.

One thing that I haven’t mentioned is the large oak table that resides in the center of the store.  When Talulah’s Table first opened, it had been announced that the table would be made available for private dinner functions, after the shop had gotten established and found its groove, and that was all that was said about that.  It would serve as an opportunity for Sikora to continue the tradition of a dinner service, but without the pressure of serving hundreds of courses each night.

Little did we know that, within a few short months, a seat at that table would be the hardest reservation to get in the United States.

Next Week: Part Two, Chasing Talulah’s Table

Yay - Excellent food, superb bottled beer selection, and friendly servers and staff.

Meh - Layout, at least at dinner, is somewhat confusing, ‘market’ area needs more variety of items.  Some food items are priced appropriately, while others court the realm of ‘ridiculous Main Line markup’.

Summary - Definitely recommended for the food and beer, although it would be wise to keep an eye on the prices, as the bill tends to go high quickly if you aren’t careful.

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We recently had an opportunity to stop by the Maia Market and Restaurant in Villanova for dinner.  Having previously experienced the talents of chefs Terence Feury (Striped Bass in Philadelphia) and his brother Patrick (Nectar in Berwyn), we were looking forward to seeing what the two would do together on this Main Line collaboration.

Maia occupies two floors, with the first floor dedicated to a grab-and-go gourmet market and bar area and the second floor reserved for tablecloth-and-good silverware fine dining.

When we first walked in, the sense of the space was overwhelming.  We were greeted by the hostess and told her that it was our first time visiting, and we wanted to walk around and check the place out.  We wandered through the first floor, stopping to check out the coffee and pastry bar, and slipped through the bar area to the ‘market’ portion of the restaurant.

The Maia Market consists of display cases containing a number of varieties of charcuterie, pates, and cheeses.  You can see the potential there, but it needs a bit more diversity before it can reach the status of ‘market’.

The overall feel of the market area of Maia evokes a showroom type of atmosphere, with a handful of the very finest ingredients, displayed in quiet reverence behind glass, with a Maia employee behind the counter who is very eager to speak about the goods in the finest detail.  Three loaves of bread, baked on-site, displayed on a shelf, are dusted with flour to exhibit a monogrammed ‘M’.  I can see how one could call this a ‘market’, but it’s a market dedicated to Main Line folks who don’t cook.  Ever.  The kind who spend $50K outfitting a kitchen with the best of everything, but who will never turn a single burner on.

When I think of an upscale market, I tend to think about DiBruno Brothers House of Cheese, or Tallulah’s Table out in Kennett Square.  I like diversity.  I like variety.  I want to be able to pick from dozens of cheeses and other specialty items.  Granted, Maia has a worthy selection of pates (most impressively, a truffle and sweetbread one) and a moderate selection of meats, but as far as cheese goes, they’ve got a cheddar, something from the gruyere category, and a couple of bleu varieties.  Again, it’s a food market for people who don’t cook.  It’s all top quality, but it’s just not that many items.

If there is one shining superiority about Maia Market, though, it is the selection of bottled beers in the cold case.  It is stunningly vast, consisting of local selections such as Victory, somewhat local breweries like Ommegang out of New York, and extending to wonderful imports from around the globe.

Time to talk about the restaurant portion of Maia.  After looking at the menus for upstairs and downstairs, we decided to grab something to eat from the first floor and just sit at a table to enjoy our dinner.  We stood at the spot under the sign that said ‘Order Here’ and watched as servers and other employees rushed past us in all directions.  After a few moments, we thought that we were doing something wrong (ASKING FR FUD - UR DOING IT WRONG) and stopped one of the employees to ask if someone could take our order.  He looked at us in a puzzled sort of manner, and then spoke to someone else, and then said that someone from behind the counter would take care of us.  We waited a bit more without much success before I resorted to going up to the nice girl at the hostess station.

As it turns out, we were doing it wrong.  The ‘Order Here’ sign, and the menu posted next to it, was only for lunch.  If we wanted to eat dinner, we’d have to be seated with menus.  Some of the lunch menu items, such as the burger, are unavailable for dinner.  Others, like the hot pastrami, are available, but at a higher price.  Food-wise, my only complaint about Maia Restaurant is that while most of the dishes are priced appropriately, like $8 for the pate starter and $19 for the steak frites entree, other dishes seem far overpriced for what they are, Main Line notwithstanding.  The pastrami sandwich, officially labeled the ‘House Smoked Snake River Farms Kobe Beef Hot Pastrami Sandwich’, is $14.  A neighboring table ordered it, and I snuck a peek - it looked like a decent hot pastrami, but even with Kobe beef, asking $14 for it is kind of a stretch, especially for an item that doesn’t necessarily reflect an outstanding level of artistic skill on the part of the kitchen.  And I speak from the point of view of someone who’s smoked a lot of barbecue.

We ordered the Maia House Country Pate as a starter, and the Choucroute and Roasted Hangar Steak Frites as entrees.  Enough of my bitching about the confusing layout and inventory of the market -  the food in the restaurant, from our experience, absolutely shines.

The Country Pate ($8) was a nice thick slice of pate served with a frisee salad and mustard.  It tasted as a good pate should, very rich with a good mix of flavors that paired very well with the sharp tang of the mustard.  And, as could be expected, all of this paired nicely with a glass of Ommegang Hennepin.

My Choucroute ($15), consisting of knockwurst, bratwurst, and frankfurter, was not at all what I expected, but in a good way.  Instead of a large platter of sausages, I was presented with a smaller plate, with a small crock of wursts nestled in what I would describe as the very best sauerkraut I have ever tasted.  Next to the crock was a smaller container of whole grain mustard, and next to that were a few poppy seed rolls, split.  I believe the intent was to eat the wursts hot dog style on the rolls, but I went the route of slathering mustard on each bite of wurst and kraut, using the rolls as a palate cleanser.

My wife’s Steak Frites ($19) was a perfect example of what steak frites should be.  The steak was presented, sliced and fanned, with a dash of butter and fries.  Steak frites should not be the most tender thing you’ve eaten - it should have a little bit of chew to it and a lot of flavor, and this describes what we had exactly.

Our server was good, and seemed to enjoy his work, which makes all of the difference between great service and acceptable service.  Plates were cleared promptly, glasses were refilled without asking, and an offer for a second plate of bread was gladly accepted after we had finished the first.  Overall, each of the employees that we met were really good at making eye contact, and seemed content in their tasks.  Good training makes a big difference.

We decided against seeing the dessert menu, because I wanted to grab coffee and croissants from the pastry area.  Unfortunately, when we got there, the pastry selection was a little lacking, and there were no croissants to be found.  We ended up not getting anything else, and instead stopped at Rita’s for custard on the way home.

We picked up a menu for the upstairs dining room, and from what I can see, it looks like the Feury brothers are taking all of their experience with seafood and going all out, which should translate to off-the-charts awesome.  Of the ten entrees on offer that evening, only two weren’t seafood.  The prices are in-line with upscale Main Line dining, and it definitely looks like something that would be on our radar in the future.

The first time we ever had Shanghai soup dumplings was in a little dive of a restaurant in Chinatown, NYC.  It was one of those places that has the names of the dishes written, in Chinese, in black marker on sheets of white copy paper taped to the walls.  For those among us who don’t speak or read the language, a much less interesting selection of items was provided by way of the formal printed menu.

Anyway, this place had an article about soup dumplings taped in its window, and they sounded interesting enough to take the $3 gamble.  Basically, Shanghai soup dumplings are steamed orders of dim sum that contain a volcanic-hot filling of pork, sometimes crab, and broth.  Once you learn the art of eating them without burning your lips off, they are absolutely amazing.

So, for the time that we lived in New Jersey, we would find ourselves in Chinatown every so often, and we’d always stop by the restaurant and overorder on soup dumplings.  After moving to Pennsylvania, our trips into NYC became less frequent, as did our intake of dim sum.

We’ve since found some excellent soup dumplings at Margaret Kuo’s in Wayne, but given how it’s kind of a high-end place, it’s not the kind of place you just happen to drop in whenever you have a hankering for dim sum.

Imagine our delight, then, to find that Dim Sum Garden, down by the Convention Center in Philadelphia, had Shanghai soup dumplings.

It is a rule of thumb that the worse a Chinese restaurant looks, generally the better the stuff that comes out of the kitchen.  Dim Sum Garden does not disappoint in this regard.  It is located in the tunnel that runs underneath the Convention Center on 11th Street, right next to the bus depot where all of the cheap NYC to PHL Chinatown buses collect and drop off passengers.  You need to walk through a cloud of exhaust fumes to get to the restaurant’s front door, and when you walk in, it looks like your average Chinese takeout joint, with a few tables and some counter space, all under bright white florescent lights.

We sat down and were pleased to find that there was table service, as a waitress said she’d be right with us.  Each of the tables has three small mugs - one for “dumpling sauce”, one for “ginger sauce” and one for “chile sauce”.

We ordered one order of pork soup dumplings and one of the pork and crab, along with a few other items for sampling - pork and chive dumplings, some siu mai, and an order of fried rice.  The food took a while to come out to us, which is a good sign - means they’re making everything to order, and nothing waits around.

The chive dumplings, siu mai, and fried rice debuted first.  The dumplings came across as fairly standard, and maybe I am confusing them with potstickers, but I expected them to be a little crisper - still, the chives were good and fresh, and we were starving, so it all went down easily.

The siu mai were not the typical pork-kind.  Instead, they were large pieces, stuffed with a mixture of meat and sticky rice.  All in all, they were delicious and made even better with the addition of either the dumpling sauce (thicker and sweet) or the ginger sauce (thinner).  Neither of us touched the chile sauce, as it was basically a vat of red pepper flakes floating in oil.  The fried rice was kind of bland, which was easily resolved with more sauce, but I wouldn’t order it again.

Finally, the soup dumplings arrived, and met our expectations completely.  The waitress asked us if we had eaten them before, obviously prepared to deliver a warning about popping one whole into your mouth and burning your esophagus.  We said that we were soup dumpling veterans, which seemed to make her happy.

Here’s the technique for eating a soup dumpling - using chopsticks, tongs, or your fingers, lift a dumpling and place it into the well of a Chinese soup spoon.  It’s going to be mad hot, so if you have tongs, all the better.  Now, carefully nibble a hole into the top doughy twist of the dumpling dough, so that you can let the steam escape.  If you want, you can dribble some soy or other sauce into the hole.  Blow on it and resist the urge to eat the dumpling until it cools off a little, because otherwise you’ll burn your tongue and not be able to taste anything for the rest of the meal (yes, been there, done that).  When it’s sufficiently cooled off, pop the thing into your mouth.

The soup dumplings were really great, especially after quite a long period of soup dumpling drought on our part.  While the dough could have been a little thinner, the fillings were especially top notch, especially the crab, which was far more delicate than I would have expected from a hole-in-the-wall bus station dive.

So, if you find yourself downtown for a convention and craving Chinese food, while everyone else goes into Chinatown proper, you can scurry the other way into the tunnel and treat yourself to Shanghai soup dumplings.  Someone can correct me if I’m wrong, but to my knowledge I know of no other restaurant in PHL Chinatown that serves soup dumplings.

Most of our economic stimulus payment is going to go towards painting our living room and padding our savings, but we couldn’t resist splitting off a little chunk of the money into a nice evening at a good restaurant.

The restaurant that I speak of is Teikoku in Newtown Square, PA.  I’m not at all prepared to give a full review at this moment, and probably won’t be until we return there again.  For now, you’ll have to make do with a review of the two Kobe beef entrees that we ordered.

Kobe beef is regarded as the finest beef in the world, and if you’ve never had a chance to try it, you may think that all of the hubbub is marketing hype.  The worst part of this is, this may become a self fulfilling prophecy simply because Kobe beef, originally from Kobe in Japan, is becoming bastardized by variations from other countries including, now, America.

True Japanese Kobe comes from Wagyu cattle that are raised in accordance with strict traditions which include a diet of sake and beer, and massaging that purports to result in more tender beef.  It may be marketing hype, but they’re doing something right over there.

Like most things when they become diluted and start to enter mainstream channels, the quality has begun to suffer, and “American” Kobe-style beef now appears on menus more and more frequently, compelling diners to pay higher prices for not-much-higher quality beef, then leaving them to wonder what all the fuss is about.  It’s a sad day when a mall food court restaurant advertises a Kobe burger on its menu.  It’s similar to what happened with Black Angus beef a few years ago - it started as a specialty item in steakhouses, and now it’s a fast food staple.

We had the fortune to try Kobe beef for the first time before the Australian and American versions started to take hold.  It was Valentine’s Day, a few years back, and we had gone to Morimoto in Philadelphia.  We had ordered the Omakase, and as the steady stream of dishes progressed from light to more weighty items, we were served a small, grilled Kobe steak.  It was as tender as butter, with the finest marbling of fat, giving way to an intense beef flavor that put every other beef dish that I’ve ever had, in my lifetime, to shame.  Yes, it’s really that good.  Until now, I haven’t had the opportunity to have Kobe again.

True Kobe beef works best in simple preparations that let the quality of the beef shine through (and not, say, ground up and served as a burger).  You have trust your sources, and Teikoku is definitely a restaurant that would serve a genuine Kobe steak, although they do make a trendy concession in the form of a Kobe cheese steak.

We ordered and shared two of their Kobe selections.

Kobe Beef Hot Rock

As I’ve said, Kobe is best in simple preparations, and you can’t get any simpler than the Kobe Beef Hot Rock at Teikoku.  The platter consists of a small portion of thinly sliced, raw Kobe beef, a citrus-soy dipping sauce, and a big, square sizzling rock.  You place the beef on the rock, let it sizzle just a little bit, and then eat it.  Having it this way definitely allowed us the opportunity to compare it with Morimoto, and, for what it’s worth, it was on par with what we had in Philadelphia.

Kobe Beef Steak - 5oz

Another simple preparation, the Kobe steak is grilled, sliced, and served with a shallot sauce.  Just as interesting were the fries that are served with this dish - Japanese sweet potato fries, glazed in honey.  Overall, a nice upscale variation on steak and fries, and definitely recommended.