Midtown Village is kicking off a special Wednesday night promotion where retailers, restaurants, bars and galleries are offering special discounts and will be stay open late.

Check out some of the food related deals after the jump.

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The Center City District’s mid-May email arrived today with a swell coupon. No, we’re not talking about the free lip balm from Kiehl’s, although maybe we just did. What we’re trying to focus on is the Bindi coupon for a free pitcher of Indian-inspired mixer. Bring your own vodka, rum or tequila and mix it all together.

The current mixes mentioned on the web site are:

• nimbu-pani - Indian style pomegranate-ginger lemonade
• mango sharbat – mango puree, lime, green cardamom

Each is a $12 value.

Bindi Coupon [Center City District]
Bindi [Official Site]

Today marks the beginning of Midtown Village’s Holiday Week. From today through Sunday, the  Midtown Village shops, restaurants and bars will be offering discounts.

Check some of the food and drink related coupons after the jump.

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We here at Foobooz headquarters are very finicky about our tomatoes. We try not to be but about 11 months out of the year we find ourselves pulling them off sandwiches or completely ignoring them like a culinary wallflower. But this time of year we open our heart to the tomato. It’s local tomato season and a couple local restaurants are capitalizing with special menus.

Tonight’s barbecue menu at Lolita’s is chock full of tomatoes from the garden shot of gazpacho, to lamb, chorizo and shrimp skewers.

And at Matyson it’s all about the “fruit of the vine” with their 5 course tasting menu this week. Say hello to heirloom tomato Napoleon and pan roasted filet mignon with bacon, green onion grits and smoked tomato coulis.

UPDATE: Bindi has gotten in on the tomato craze with their Farmers’ Market menu for the week. There’s heirloom tomatoes in every course.

Full menus after the jump.

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Throughout the summer Bindi’s Marcie Turney and her chefs will be shopping at the Headhouse Square Farmers’ Market to shop for ingredients for their weekly tasting menu. The three course family style menu is available Tuesday through Thursday for $35 per person.

This week’s menu after the jump.

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duross & langel at 117 S 13th Street gets a lot of the inspiration for their soaps from their business neighbors. They also offer workshops and throughout the summer the are combining the workshops with a taste of the “flavors” that inspired the soaps and lip balms. Each Wednesday night in July and August, from 6 to 8pm everyone is invited to experience the process of making soaps and balms while sipping on a margarita from Lolita or sampling Capogiro’s limoncello sorbetto while brewing a fresh batch of limoncello soap.

Schedule after the jump.

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As part of the Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corporation’s gay tourism campaign, “We Your People,” the fine folk at GPTMC have put together a nice profile on Valerie Safran and Marcie Turney (Bindi, Grocery, Lolita and Open House) and their 13th Street neighborhood. And yeah, no mention of Midtown Village!

Valerie Safran and Marcie Turney [gophila.com]
Thirteenth Street [Official Site]

Craig LaBan visits Marcie Turney’s and Valerie Safran’s Bindi and finds a thoughtful update to Indian food.

Turney’s pork vindaloo, though, may be Bindi’s best example of a refined classic. The typical slow-stewed meat is upgraded with yieldingly soft seared tenderloin. And the meat’s aromatic crust of black cardamom, clove, cumin and nigella seeds sparks against the hot and sour gravy, a vinegar- and wine-tinged brew that unfurls with sweet spice on the tongue before a final whip-crack of chile heat. A comforting puree of creamy cauliflower and a sweet mango-date chutney cushions the vindaloo’s bold flavors.

Three Bells – Excellent

An update of Indian cuisine, faithful to authentic flavors [Philadelphia Inquirer]
Bindi [Official Site]

Adam Erace turns his eye towards Marcie Turney’s and Valerie Safran’s Indian BYOB, Bindi.

Though Turney trained with cookbook author Julie Sahni, the dishes aren’t particularly traditional. The menu is a romantic marriage of Indian ideas and American ingredients, producing offspring like samosas stuffed with parsnip and paneer, and yellow dal soup enriched with Green Meadow Farm butternut squash.

Fans of Lolita—Turney and Safran’s Mexipolitan flagship—will notice parallels: the cash-only policy; the youthful staff sporting all black; the exotic BYOB mixers, like lip-puckering pomegranate lemonade and summery cardamom-spiced mango sharbat; and a tendency to go a little crazy with spice and sauce.

Bindi [Philadelphia Weekly]
Bindi [Official Site]

Elisa Ludwig checks out Marcie Turney and Valerie Safran’s Bindi and finds it a bit more tentative, especially when compared to the pair’s Lolita across the street.

Still, there are plenty of good ideas at work. Among the most memorable is something you would never see in India: short ribs. Hindu dietary preferences aside, it’s a luscious concoction, the beef braised to tangy, sweet disintegration, the sauce seeping into chunks of potato, with fine shreds of carrot kosambri salad adding cool crunch and slivers of pickled onions cutting the richness with vinegar tang.

Curried Away [City Paper]