Food

A friend and his fiancée who are moving to town were here for the past two days taking a look around. My friend works in the restaurant industry and wanted to check out some places to potentially work. This meant I ate much food which was way fancier than my usual food consumption in much fancier place.

On Monday night we went to Pod, which looks like a brightly colored space disco. I don’t want to put any copy written pictures on my site here, but if you google pod Philadelphia you get a good selection of pictures to choose from. I had wild mushroom fried rice and wild mushroom dumplings. The drinks were named after colors… I had the purple which tasted like grape fanta. I like fanta so it worked out quite well. The bathroom was amazing, as Steven Starr always does with his design. It was sort of like a hallway of glowing doors with small red lights for occupied and green for vacant. The inside was very much like an airplane bathroom, but with a much higher ceiling and lit in the trademark ever changing color of the whole restaurant. The pictures of the bathroom hallway didn’t make it on their website. I guess that is a reason to visit.

Then on Tuesday, we went to go to Striped Bass, which I knew was fancy pants. Sandy wanted to go because the chef has won all these best young chef awards. I wanted to experience super fancy food. I didn’t do vegan, so for those of you with a high expectation of my eating habits, please forgive me. I had yellowfin tuna tartar with tapioca pearls, scallion pancakes, and kimchi. I had a lemon cucumber cooler… I think it was vodka based with cucumber juice. I love cucumber juice drinks and plan on making them myself. Sandy had a trio of foie gras, one in popscicle form with a blood orange, chocolate and peanut butter, the other in a Rubenesque form with pumpernickel bread and even a little pickle, the third a barbequed foie gras with beans and a little cornbread muffin with jalapeño butter. Heather got a soft shelled crab in a thai coconut broth.

We followed that up with a trip to the Continental Midtown roofdeck. Good drinks and a plate to fries. It was a great night to be outside, but after the fancier places, this place, which was my pinacle of fun fancy dining is something I'm becoming accustomed to. Am I a yuppie yet?