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Category: restaurant

Restaurant Review – Distrito

It took a while for me to notice that there was a new store underneath the ugliest of the new condo buildings in West Philly up back behind the Aveda school.

And it wasn’t until a few weeks ago that I stopped in to collect a paper menu so I’d know what sort of food they had and what their hours would be. If I had been smart, I’d have had lunch right then – because the guy handing me the menu was the owner/chef. But I didn’t know that at the time, because who knows what people look like?

However, after I got the menus and started thinking it looked like a fun, if pricey, place to try some upscale mexican food, I started seeing articles about and interviews with Jose Garces, the chef. Apparently, this is the same guy who started Amada and Tinto, two classy center city tapas restaurants I absolutely adore. So my expectations went up, and this restaurant went on the short list of places to try.

So there I was this weekend, and I found myself wanting to try a new (to me) fancy farmers’ market and wanting a place to hang out (not my apartment) and read on Saturday. I rationalized to myself that I could only afford one of those, and if I went out Saturday night then I could spend Sunday exercising instead of buying more food (especially since I have plenty of perishables at the moment). To I set out to walk to center city in search of a coffee shop… and then I remember Distrito.

So I went in, and there was a decent crowd of people dining and chatting, but I was still able to be seated without a wait (Saturday night circa 7:30pm)… apparently that’s because this place is huge! There are two floors and plenty of tables. But while both Tinto and Amada are decorated in dark colors with muted palettes, the decor here is bright pinks with greens of aquas. I was seated on a wicker swing. The stairs are lined with mexican wrester masks. Here – have some pictures. But that’s fine. There’s also fairly loud music. And a guy with a guitar singing something completely different at the same time. And a movie being projected (though luckily that one was muted with subtitles). Aight, fine, so they are going for something more lively for the college crowd.

But what is really disappointing in comparison to the other restaurants is the service. At the other places you have a (okay, fine, very attractive) wait staff that is sophisticated and very knowledgeable about the food. They are also very efficient and welcoming (even to people who take the last seating in the middle of restaurant week and still linger over their food). Distrito, however, seems to have been less selective in its hiring practices. These were very average waiters who seemed to have very little interest in either the food or the patrons. In fact, the only interest my waiter seemed to show was toward encouraging me to purchase alcohol to boost my ticket, but it was another waiter entirely who stopped by (after I’d had a long period of reading uninterrupted) to offer me dessert.

You know what? That wasn’t the only thing disappointing. The food wasn’t as awesome, either. It was good, but it wasn’t, “Oh my god, I have to tell you about this amazing food,” levels of awesome that I’m used to from this guy. I started off with something cheap – Tuetano: bone marrow with bacon marmalade, onion, jalepeno, and cilantro ($8). So I got two marrow bones, and there was a toasty crust on top and lots of hot squishy marrow inside. For those of you who haven’t tried it, marrow is almost pure fatty goodness with a dark rich taste. So I scooped some into my 4″ corn tortilla, added some bacon marmalade (really the reason why I ordered this dish. Bacon marmalade! Best I can figure, it’s bacon with a thick balsamic reduction, and maybe a gelling agent, but I couldn’t figure any other flavors), and sprinklings of the other toppings. The marrow melted down and dripped just a little in a good way, and it generally rather tasty. But, oddly, the tortillas did not taste homemade to me… and I would kind of expect that to be a minimum. And then I didn’t run into any other trouble until I finished my 4 tortillas and had to pile on the marrow just to finish the first of the two marrow bones. And then I had to wait and let the marrow cool down while I waited for supplementary tortillas and condiments. Honestly, by the time I was finished my first tapa, I was pretty full. So it’s not that it wasn’t good, but it didn’t have the same sense of balance as I’d expect. Really, this restaurant would be a lot better, if I weren’t comparing it to the others.

But anyway, since I’m not planning to come back for dinner any time too soon, I ordered a second dish – Esquites: sweet corn, queso fresco, chipotle, lime ($5). It come out as a rather soupy corn dish in a glass. And it was tasty. I didn’t taste much chipotle, but the lime was just the right note without being too strong.

Guy came to offer me dessert, and I just ordered a mexican hot chocolate. Mmmmm. This was fairly weak on the chocolate, but I am finding that I tend to prefer that (weird, I know, but hey), and it was all frothy milk from top to bottom.

What else? Oh, I tried the house margarita (Jimador silver reposado, orange, lime – not frozen, with salt – $9), and it was good, but it still wasn’t better than my favorite margarita (embarrassingly enough, my favorite is Chili’s Presidente margarita).

ETA: Foodzings has pictures of the food I ate. And here is another food blogger’s visit. Both these people said nicer things than I did.

So Distrito is a solid Meh, Whatever. Too fancy to go there casually, but too casual to go there for fancy.

Hell’s Kitchen

No, not the one in New York.

A bit before the third Lord of the Rings movie was publicly released, I went to Minnesota to visit an internet friend and see the third movie. And while there was a lot of good food on that trip, some delightful culture (highbrow and lowbrow – including a delightfully communal book arts center), and some wonderful people – the one thing that really stuck (other than how much I wish to see that same friend again – because she’s amazing) was this restaurant we went to for breakfast near the end of the visit (because if it had been earlier in the visit, I might have attempted another meal there).

Now before I talk about this restaurant, let me assure you that fine dining in the twin cities is an art form. In fact, I don’t think I have been anywhere else that has taken the business lunch to such a high art form that most restaurants have black and white cloth napkins so that they can match the color to blend in with your suit pants, be they khaki or pinstripe.

So – Hell’s Kitchen

Full of kitsch. Not only is it full of hellish glee, but for breakfast all of the servers are attired in their pajamas and other nightclothes. And they seemed happy.

There were some hard choices on the breakfast menu. My friend chose the Lemon Ricotta Hotcakes, and they were some of the finest pancakes I have ever stolen off of someone’s plate. I tried something completely out of character. I mean, I’m a bagel girl – I think everything breakfasty tastes better on top of a bagel. If I’m getting an omelet, it’s going to be cut into little bites and mushed into the cream cheese on top of my bagel. You get the idea.

Instead, I decided to be daring and I tried the hot cereal. No, really. Well, not really, since it wasn’t really oatmeal or farina or grits. Nope, it was rice. Wild rice with roasted hazelnuts, dried blueberries, sweetened cranberries, heavy cream, and maple syrup on the side. And this converted me to the warm cereal side of the cold morning breakfast side of the force.

It’s almost cold enough to be fixing this – and I’ve got some wild rice in the pantry and a recipe that needs some cranberries coming up.

Tinto

I swanned into my old college library, flamboyantly (and possibly unnecessarily) saved the day, and then I absconded with [redacted]. We went back to my place and talked about sundries and nothings.

But the reason we were getting together was for Center City Restaurant Week and our reservations at Tinto – OMG! We ended up not talking too much at the restaurant because we were having way too much fun eating. And since we shared everything, including the cocktail but not the desserts, I’ll just list everything we had (it’s a Basque tapas restaurant).

Cocktail

Mairritze: Leblon Cachaca, muddled mint, lime, blood orange

First Course

Le Moulis: served with thinly sliced tart green apple, a square of quince jelly, a dab of artisanal honey, and a small spot of powdered hot red pepper.

Jamon Serrano: Just prosciutto. Well, okay, not just – we had thin flatbreads and baguette slices, and it came with a delicious egg salad. But it was really an excuse to indulge in prosciutto. Also, it was good with the apples that came with the cheese.

Montaditos de Panceta: pork belly, honey laquer, shaved apples. It was pork. It was fat. It was salty and sweet and greasy and I was so glad it was on a thin slice of baguette because otherwise its sexy juices would have been lost, and I’d have had to lick the plate. We thought this was going to be the best thing all night.

Montaditos de Pato: duck confit, black cherry, bleu de basque spread – Guh! We were wrong – the food just keeps getting better. Crispy skin, sexy duck meat – and the cherry! Okay, so I went first, and since the cherry was out to the side, I ate that off first – and it was shockingly juicy and tart. My dining companion, however, smooshed her duck a bit and then split the cherry so that she could spread it over the duck… the flavors were delightfully complimentary. But really – the duck! I love duck! I have eaten more than my fair share of the duck of the world (and shall continue to do so), and this was right up there.

Brochetas de Pollo: chicken, garbanzo puree, truffle jus, thyme marinade. They don’t mention the grapes, and they really should. Each little skewer alternated chicken, grape, chicken grape – and they were all seasoned and grilled together. Grilled grapes (when seasoned and all juicy from the chicken) are amazing. The garbanzo puree (thinner than your average hummus, so I’ll forgive them their fancipants) gave it a smoother, more filling, mouth feel and the truffle jus… well, this was the first time I have been impressed by anything truffle. It was like the essence of outdoor grilling, but there in a pool on the plate.

Second Course

Moules Basquaise: mussels & chorizo in sauce basquaise. This little bit of mussel stew had us sending for two more mini dishes of bread so that we could properly appreciate the tomato-based sauce. Lovely, tender (naked) mussels, but I would expect nothing less. It nurtured all of my fond childhood memories of mussels and it made my mouth all tingly with just a nice warmth of spicy hot.

Pulpo: spanish octopus, confit potato, piquillo pepper paint, lemon powder. I totally nabbed the slightly burny tentacle on top. I have gotten so used to fancy restaurants doing elaborate presentations to undo the chewiness of octopus that I was surprised to find this one still a bit chewy… and yet also surprisingly, that didn’t get in the way of my enjoyment at all. The pepper paint really was just a schmear across the plate as if it had been spread with a paintbrush, but MMmmm tasty. And the lemon powder straight was a bit like a pixie stick, and you wouldn’t think it would work, but it really perked up the dish and complimented the squishy seafood nicely. Also, mollusk pride!

Brochetas de Gambas: shrimp, chorizo, grape tomato, espelette chile. Whole shrimps – seasoned, on a skewer so that they wrapped around and has a tomato and tiny pieve of chorizo nestled between the head and tail on the skewer. I couldn’t figure out how to eat it together at all, though, so I had a tomato/chorizo skewer and then a gnawed into the shrimp separately. And I got my dining companion’s shrimp head as well. It had very tasty brains. I did my best to eat the exoskeleton in yummy, crunchy bites right along with the rest of the shrimp – it make me happy, so I figure it was the right thing to do. This was the dish that finally ended up with me having a greasy spot on my shirt… but I had been doing really well up until then.

Merluza en Salsa Verde: sea bass, cockles, salsa verde. So this was the only sad note of the evening. Since we had a 10:30pm reservation (since I didn’t know I’d be sneaking out sick, and because I only made the reservation one or two days ahead on restaurant week), they brought out all of our second course at once (whereas the first course had trickled in as prepared)… or it was because it was all seafood and took about the same amount of time to prepare. Either way, by the time we got to this plate, it was no longer piping hot. Only the cockles really suffered, but while I had popped one in at the beginning and it was a buttery little morsel I had to dig out with my tongue will all appropriate sexual metaphors, but the time we really devoted our attention to it, they were just little chilled seafood bits. The sea bass, however, did not suffer. It was tasty and flaky and had a lovely brown seasoned crust on top. We used up the last of our flatbreads on this.

Dessert

Gateaux Basque: traditional basque cake, pastry cream, black cherries. This was my dining companion’s dessert. She seemed to like it. And even though the cherries looked like exactly the same ones as were on the duck, she said they tasted completely different (not tart, but very sweet), so I guess they had two separate marinades.

Bananas y Azafran: chocolate cake, caramelized bananas, saffron crema. It was more like chocolate fudge. Smooth, silky, and devastatingly dense. And they didn’t spare the saffron in making the crema, you could clearly tasty the iodine, and that helped clear the palate a bit. And the bananas… my only complaint was that there were only three slices, but it all blended together and added the sweetness, which the cake alone hadn’t needed.

my weekend

My weekend was a little busy…

Friday
I went to play D&D with friends. Some canceled.

Instead, we went out to dinner. We passed by the Jazz in the Park, which we could have listened to if we had sat outside, but opted for the immediate seating available inside, instead. Food was a bit dubious – I had shrimp that had the texture of steak. Later, I ate my back up salad because it was the blueberry salad I’d been planning for a few days.

And then we watched Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, which I had never seen. I caught a whole bunch of references that had been tossed around at nerd camp.

I did not go to Salsa dancing, but I think I shall try to get there on the 22nd, if anyone would like to join me.

Saturday
Got up and made the one reliable thing I have that’s good for a pot luck where I’ll have a few hours without refrigeration before serving: asian pickle (as taught to me by Meghan – thinly sliced onion, carrots, and cucumber, tossed together with some rice vinegar and sugar).

Went to exercise. I missed yoga but caught pilates.

Picked up [redacted], headed up to GeeksDoItBetter, and had an awesome papermaking workshop. I kept trying to make thinner paper, but it wasn’t as well behaved as the thicker ones. Others were disappointed, however, by how much thickness they lost as they drained the water from the pulp on the screen. Despite how new we were, our paper turned out as well as most amateur paper I have seen.

Sunday
Dragged my ass out of bed at 9am and went to my parents’. Had sticky rice, mango, melon, and blackberried for breakfast.

I sewed a couple pamphlets my mother wants to attach to the (now) framed maps they accompany.

Took home some peaches and some tomatoes & hot peppers from my parents’ garden.

Came home. Unloaded.

Met up with [redacted] for Indian buffet (I ordered off the menu).

There was amazing weather. We were getting torrential rain, but in bands with beautiful sunny skies in between. Oddly, it was dry everytime I needed to walk somewhere (but the drive home from my parents’ was a bit treacherous).

While we were at dinner, we got a call telling us to look outside at the double rainbow. By the time we left, however, it was gone. But the sky was just amazing – clear and sunny with late evening’s dying rays lighting up the threatening green half of the sky in iridescent shades of gold. [redacted] rightly said that the tall buildings in the skyline all looked like mica.

Then we went to World Cafe Live to see Bitter:Sweet with and because they had raved about this group. And rightly so. I bought a CD. Go have a look – they have good music *and* awesome stylish performances. They’ll be in Boston tonight (sorry – short notice!) and DC tomorrow, but other than that most of you will probably miss this tour. They were talking about trying for another tour in April. Their soups are always good, so I had that. [redacted] had the eggplant fries, now that the knows that anything (even eggplant) is good if it is sliced thinly and fried – but, really, these are lovely – the eggplant is all mellow, like butter, inside a thick, crispy batter.

And it was so lovely by the time we left (clear and cool – for once in August), that I decided to walk home. A third of the way there, I was distracted by and sucked into a random dance party in the street. So I went in and danced until a little after midnight.

Monday
This morning was pretty amazing, too. I had quit the dancing early because I was worried that my thighs would be sore in the morning and that my knee would get swollen – but no ill effects at all.

We worked extra hard in pilates this morning, and I managed to do an exercise I hadn’t been able to do before (on of the ones where you roll your self up from a completely flat starting position).

And then I sat out on my porch enjoying the unusual cool weather and eating fruit. The property was getting its lawn mowed, too, so I ended up drinking water and attempting to chat with the guy mowing it while he took a break. We were doing really well with the smiling and nodding pleasantries, but he ended up saying he wished I spoke Spanish instead. But I did get him to talk a little bit about Guatemala and could understand his pidgin pretty well – just not so much with producing my own.

And then I went to work, and the world reverted to Monday.

Kanella

An adventure in center city led to a lovely lunch. Let me tell you about it!

Kanella! It’s a Greek Cypriot kitchen.

And there was cuttlefish on the menu! Prepared some way other than “in its own ink.”

Sadly, I was in a rush, so I did not order the cuttlefish, but the (very cute) server told me that it is often an appetizer, so when I make reservations I should ask to make sure they would have it.

Instead, I had the Spanikopita. There was more feta than spinach and it had a lemony tang… and while neither of those are my first choice in how to prepare the dish, I was still delighted by the flavors and textures. If I say it was creamy goodness (with a little bit of tart) exploding in my mouth – you guys will take that as a good thing, right? I think even the phyllo dough had flavor! Slightly nuttier than the average phyllo.

It came with a delicious salad, which would have made me quite happy on its own, and a mound of greek yogurt – sexy, tasty, creamy greek yogurt.

Because I was eating at 2pm, there were only 4 other tables filled, so I got to talk a little with the server and owners/chefs. They have only been open three months. The owners/chefs are from West Philadelphia. And they already fill up with reservations most nights for dinner.

In addition to loving the fresh foods, I also loved how it was decorated – it’s a bit like Lourdas, in Bryn Mawr, with the white washed walls and blue trim (possibly required for 78% of Greek restaurants in a geographical area), but it goes even further with rough-hewn wood tables and benches. Over the doorway is a massive bundle of the eponymous cinnamon, and the windows are lined with potted plants – some floral and some herbal (and looking like they might actually be used in the cooking). There’s even a lemon tree. It was strange to have the restaurant be air conditioned because it felt as though it was an open air taverna… a fairly fancy one.

So I’d love to go back there. I’d love to share this restaurant with you guys. I’ll warn you now that the dinner entrees went up to $26 & market price, but there weren’t any appetizers over $10 so I’d propose a dinner of appetizers and salads (at least for my part). And I can’t tell you what they’ll have because the menu seems to change daily – they had just printed up today’s dinner menu and brought it out when I got to see it.