The Brew Lounge and Lew Bryson report back from opening night at Local 44. [Brew Lounge, Seen Through a Glass]

Foodzings checks out Ms. Tootsie’s on South Street and has plenty of good things to say. [Foodzings]

There’s tea for two at Chadds Ford’s specialTeas Tea Room. [StellaLand]

The Beer Lass has a very beery-eyed look back at 2008. [Beer Lass]

I Am Beer Wise made it to the opening of Limerick’s Craft Ale House. [I Am Beer Wise]

Artisan Boulange Patissier garners raves for their “flaky, chewy, airy buttery and melty in the mouth” croissants. [Fries with that Shake]

Foodzings visits the huge Wokano on Washington Avenue. [Foodzings]

David Snyder has one of the most exotic meals of his life as he dines on duck tongue, jellyfish and more at Wokano in South Philadelphia.

But the most challenging dish, by far, was the fried pig intestine. Four-inch-long tubes are sliced in half and marinated in a secret sauce, deep-fried and colored to give the crispy skin a bright red hue. The flavors, at first, were deceptively pleasant — a sweet and spicy blend akin to a light barbecue sauce. Even the texture, in comparison to some of the other dishes, was relatively benign. But the unrelenting aftertaste — which can only be described politely as an unholy decay — was so profoundly haunting that the experience will never be far from my thoughts. Whether it was in spite of or because of the finish, though, a number of us still went back for seconds.

But don’t worry, there’s safer things on the “American” menu.

Wokano Wild Side [City Paper]

Neil Stein talks to Dan Gross, noting the wine wasn’t for him, and he’s still working on a restaurant at the Morris Hotel near Washington Square and a possible conglomeration with developer Carl Dranoff on South Broad. Dranoff has a green building planned for Broad and Bainbridge. [Philadelphia Daily News]

11th and Washington is set to be the location of Wokano, a 200-seat Chinese restaurant set to open “no later than the first of September.” [Feeding Frenzy, City Paper]

Newbold has a new bar. The former Noah’s Ark has been replaced by Station Bar & Grill. The new spot offers a serious beer and food menu. The chef wants to keep his name out of the press, who the devil could he be? [Bite This]

Penn’s campus will be getting another decadent offering to go with their soon to open Naked Chocolate Cafe. The third Capogiro will be opening in the Radian building at 39th and Walnut. Capogiro is also getting a 15,000 sqft production kitchen. We hear that will be in East Falls. [Food and Drinq]

We can just imagine the Citizens Bank Park peeps showing PETA around the ballpark trying to distract them from the cheesesteaks and Schmidters. Maybe it was how they explained no fries were injured in the production of Chickie’s and Pete’s crab fries. It must work because for the second straight year PETA has named CBP tops in Vegetarian-Friendly-Ballparks. [PETA]

White table cloth dining on Frankford between Susquehanna and Dauphin? That’s the plan at Pickled Heron. A 50-seater run by two Ritz-Carlton alums hoping to open in November. [Food and Drinq]

Joseph Poon is back, this time at 108 Chestnut Street with Joe’s Peking Duck Original 1984. Poon was originally looking at the old Griffin Cafe on the 200 block but structural problems ended that idea. [Food and Drinq]