Rick Nichols visits Clark Gilbert’s Gemelli and hopes the Italian “with a nod to French” BYOB in Narberth puts down some deep roots.
He is a seasoned chef, under his belt stints at the Four Seasons, Tony Clark’s short-lived Square Bar on Rittenhouse Square, Avalon in West Chester, and the elegant, now-departed Taquet in Wayne.
But he is the first to point out that the menu here, his first truly solo venture, is not the wheel reinvented: He offers a proper Caesar salad (add $2 for white anchovies), and the braised-veal-cheek-and-tuna-tartare classic called vitello tonnato. The salmon rests on ratatouille and puttanesca sauce.
Rick Nichols celebrates the resurgence of the art of the cocktail at Village Whiskey and other purveyors of adult cocktails.
[T]his is a place, especially on a quieter weeknight evening, to reunite with the well-made cocktail. Bartender Keith Raimondi will be happy to oblige, fashioning a proper Old Fashioned (dousing the sugar cubes first with house-made bitters), a moody Vieux Carre (rye, cognac, sweet vermouth and two kinds of bitters), or for a sip of the city’s roots (and provided you are not about operate heavy machinery), a sneaks-up-on-you Philadelphia Fish House Punch, which involves peach brandy, cognac, dark rum, and other accents, peels and spices that mask those initial ingredients.
So there is food, an abbreviated raw bar, a fabulous Cobb salad, a good pulled-pork sandwich with whiskey (of course) barbecue sauce.
But this is a place, especially on a quieter weeknight evening, to reunite with the well-made cocktail. Bartender Keith Raimondi will be happy to oblige, fashioning a proper Old Fashioned (dousing the sugar cubes first with house-made bitters), a moody Vieux Carre (rye, cognac, sweet vermouth and two kinds of bitters), or for a sip of the city’s roots (and provided you are not about operate heavy machinery), a sneaks-up-on-you Philadelphia Fish House Punch, which involves peach brandy, cognac, dark rum, and other accents, peels and spices that mask those initial ingredients.
Rick Nichols is at the opening of Kong, the new Hong Kong street food restaurant at 2nd and Fairmount in Northern Liberties. Nichols gives an early review of the food, salt and pepper softshell crab was missing the spice but there are other dishes that already going full bore.
[W]hen Kong is cooking, it’s just pure fun: My wife and I gobbled down a dim-sum plate of candylike deep-fried asparagus spears with hoisin dipping sauce ($5). Moments later, we demolished a bowl of stir-fried egg with crab, asparagus, lap cheong and rice ($8), which appears to be big with the staff as well.
Craft beer made the cover of the Philadelphia Inquirer yesterday as Rick Nichols details the recession defying success of local craft beer.
[Dogfish Head] beer sales are up a phenomenal 40 percent over last year, 45 percent if you include its first foray into the Nevada market.
What is more remarkable is that those aren’t unremarkable numbers for local craft brewers. At Downingtown’s award-winning Victory Brewing, sales were up close to 30 percent; at smallish Sly Fox near Phoenixville, hovering close to last year’s 38 percent gain.
How much does Rick Nichols like the Korean tacos at Ansill? Well he was spotted eating the strange hybrid after his Thursday story ran about the “astonishingly good” tacos!
Rick Nichols profiles Basil DeLuca of Villa di Roma and what goes into making those handmade meatballs.
The meatball-making is the province of one man and only one, Basil DeLuca, 56, the middle of the three sons of Domenic (”Kaiser”) and Carmela, Villa di Roma’s founders. Basil does not merely oversee the meatballs; he hand-forms each one – up to 400 a week – singularly and painstakingly and possessively at that counter.
They have become beloved meatballs. And while cooking may not have been the life Basil would have chosen if his father had not mandated it, he is proud of these meatballs – made to the precise standards of his tutor, Uncle Sammy – and of the following they now have.
And in late August or early September, you’ll be able to purchase these meatballs from a new storefront down the block.
Rick Nichols visits Mark Bee’s “beer garden” at Silk City geographically nearby the Piazza at Schmidt’s but half a world away in vibe.
In short, the space is the goofball fantasy of one man’s imagination – old tubas on the wall stuffed with flowers, wrought ironwork (by metal worker Jason Roberts) shaped into rickety bones for the stair rail and spiky webs over portholes in the curvy walls, beer kegs as seats: the slaphappy anti-design, in other words, of an anarchic anti-developer. The unapologetically unhinged Piazza on Spring Garden.
Did I mention the sense of contentment and otherworldliness that descends beneath the strings of lights, the birdbath-size fountains dribbling, the potted plants riffling in the breeze? There are few spots in the city more laid back to drink beer or sip a Negroni, or, have I mentioned the stylings of the chef, Jay Henson, back in town (where he once headed the kitchen at the Happy Rooster) after a five-year hiatus at the Shore (the Inlet at Somers Point, Bobby Flay’s place at the Borgata, etc.)?
Rick Nichols had his nose pressed against the glass as he waited for the third generation of Minks to open this latest version of the Oyster House.
By 4:55 p.m., Sam Mink, at 33 the latest family member to run the haunt, had final words for the servers: Please, he implored, keep refilling the big goblets of oyster crackers; and mind the horseradish pots, too.
No spotlights swept the wet sky. No evidence of an event planner was in sight. Sam’s father, David, in a maroon polo shirt, swept off the front doormat with a hand broom.
This was the softest of soft openings. But old customers had no trouble sniffing it out.
Happy hour starts next week. It’ll run Monday through Friday, 5 to 7 pm. One of the oyster varieties will be $1 a piece and all wine, sparkling and otherwise will be $5. Draft beers will be $3.
Inquirer food columnist and Foobooz crush object Rick Nichols goes to 12 Steps Down? 12 Steps Down? Yep, becuase the divey bar has “astonishingly better than your standard bar fare.”
Sunday is the big day of the weekend. There’s the big bike race and lots of other things to do. Here are a couple, check out the Foobooz Calendar for some more.
It’s the Female Chefs Dinner at Alison Two. Join 10 female chefs for a night of cocktails and tastes from around the world. Cost is $55 per person. Find more information here.
And finally, eat something good and don’t forget to tip your waitstaff.
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Rick Nichols had his nose pressed against the glass as he waited for the third generation of Minks to open this latest version of the Oyster House.