Teri's: Day & Night

While I've walked past Teri's, the Italian Market diner just south of Washington St., a million times, it wasn't until word got around that Teri's pulled out the linens and candles at night to become a fine dining BYOB destination that I actually took notice.
During the daytime, Teri's serves a very reasonably priced breakfast and lunch (nothing over $8.50). Go on a weekend, like we did, and you can call it brunch!

Inside you'll find a long, narrow diner with aqua booths and green walls, and an open kitchen. Very casual; very diner-ish.

On the menu: eggs, omelettes, pancakes, french toast, sausage, and other breakfast standards; plus burgers, crab cakes, pulled pork sandwiches, and spare ribs.
I went with the French toast with sauteed bananas and cashews (pecans were what actually arrived). I was immediately transported back to Mom's French toast on Saturday mornings, and this is a good thing.

The banana French toast at $6 is Teri's fancy French toast, and it's a more reasonable and sane breakfast than some of the massive dessert-like French toasts out there. But, you know, I think I'll hit up the $3.75 plain ol' French toast next time, 'cause Mom didn't do bananas or nuts.

Oh, and I'll hit up the roasted corn pancakes with chive butter (minus side of glazed ham) next time, too. Knew about these beauties from watching this video, but spaced it when ordering.
My partner had the three egg cheese omelette with spinach, side of home fries, and toast. This omelette was large, perfectly cooked, perfectly seasoned, and stuffed generously, but not overstuffed, with perfectly garlicky sauteed spinach. I'm not an omelette person (too much egg), but this was one of the better omelettes I've tasted.

Home fries are thinly sliced potatoes that are of the kind not cooked to a crisp, and are also perfectly seasoned. I know there are crispy and non-crispy camps when it comes to home fries, but even crispy-boy got behind these taters!
Interested in what goes on in Teri's at night, we hit it up again, this time bringing a bottle of wine to take advantage of their BYOB/no-corkage-fee policy. Teri's also offers a $30, three-course, prix fixe deal in the evening.
Ooh, table cloths and candles are laid out, the server is dressed all in black, and jazz is playing in an attempt to make the diner classy!

No, you won't confuse Teri's at night with other fine dining establishments, but the combo of diner kitch and linen class is so charming and honest, it feels like home -- or your friend trying to spiff up his apartment for that special dinner. So cute!

Our server at night, John, was the same server we had during the day, and whether he's wearing jeans and a t-shirt for the day shift, or all black for the night shift, he is the perfectly attentive and appointed server.
Warm, toasted Italian bread with sesame seeds accompanied by butter was complimentary.We started with eggplant rolatini, an off-the-menu appetizer special of baked, sliced eggplant rolled around herbed Ricotta, topped with melted Mozarella, tomato sauce, and basil chiffonade. With the first bite of this dish, I knew the rest of the night was going to be good. I breathlessly exclaimed, "Excellent," when our server asked how everything was, and I never say that.

Eggplant is a difficult vegetable to prepare because of it's potential bitterness, but the thinly sliced eggplant had no bitterness. And the scant tomato sauce was in perfect proportion, avoiding drowning the delicate eggplant rolls.

Seriously, these eggplant rolatini might be one of the best Italian dishes I've eaten in a long time.
The boy went with the tilefish with white beans and sauteed spinach. Again, everything was perfectly seasoned.
I was happy to see the butternut squash ravioli came with roasted corn and an herbed cream sauce instead of the greasy, butter sage sauce that usually accompanies butternut squash ravioli. At first, it was a little weird biting into chewy, roasted corn kernels with a forkful of ravioli, but it was a happy marriage. The butternut squash filling was sweet and plentiful inside the large pasta pockets.

Service was perfect at Teri's. No rushing from our server, comfortable breaks between courses, and the food was pipin' hot out of the kitchen. We were genuinely encouraged to stay and finish our bottle of wine after the check arrived, and the chef even thanked us on the way out.

Because of the quality of the food (grub's great), more than reasonable prices (a bargain), excellent service (John is awesome), and honest atmosphere (no salvaged European fixtures, or saucy plate flourishes), I don't think I've had a more pleasant dining experience in a long time. I cannot recommend Teri's enough, for brunch or for dinner.

But what worries me is that we were one of only two tables dining in during our brunch visit, and during our dinner visit. Show Teri's some love and get on down there. Don't sleep on this gem!

Teri's
1127 S. 9th St., Philadelphia, PA 19147
267-761-9154
Breakfast/Lunch: 7am-3pm, 7 days a week
Fine Dining: 5pm-9:30pm, Wed-Sun
BYOB

Buttercream Cupcake Truck

I was eagerly peering into Jefferson Square park this past Saturday, waiting for Kate Carrara and her Buttercream cupcake truck to appear at the Cupcake Bandit Film Festival. Once spotted, I was there with wallet in hand.

Kate, or 'the cupcake lady', is just as cute and friendly as could be! At this event, she was selling mini, regular, and jumbo cupcakes that she bakes at the Philly Kitchen Share kitchen and sells out of her roaming, cupcake-styled, remodeled mail truck.I grabbed two regular cupcakes ($2 ea): vanilla with chocolate frosting, and chocolate with peanut butter frosting. The cupcakes are made from scratch, but Kate has mastered the formula for baking up cakes with a moist, light, fluffy texture reminiscent of box mixes (admit it, you love cake from mixes). The chocolate frosting was the smoothest frosting I've ever had, and the peanut butter frosting was light and airy.

Fond memories of childhood bake sales (when parents actually made goodies, instead of picking up from the grocery bakery) danced in my head as I gobbled up the Buttercream cupcakes.Be on the lookout for the cupcake truck around town and at events. Location and cupcake updates are tweeted at @buttercreamphl. The Buttercream truck is your new bff!

Buttercream Truck
Philadelphia, PA
267-505-7486

AC Food & Wine Fest Winners Announced

My lovely assistant, the random number generator, spit out the following five numbers:

8, 16, 18, 20, and 28

Come on down, Amy Williams (8), Alissa (16), Apples and Cheese Please (18), Alyssa (20), and Devon (28).

If Blogger had numbers next to comments this would have been so much easier, but, rest assured, I quadruple checked, and then had another person check to make sure each person's name and entry (first commenter = #1, etc.) matched with the randomly generated numbers.

Winners, please be sure to contact me in a speedy fashion (show's next weekend!) at mac.and.cheese.review (at) gmail.com with your name and address to which you'd like to have tickets mailed.

Thanks to all who entered.

Atlantic City Food and Wine Festival Ticket Giveaway

I've got five pairs of tickets to give away to the Grand Market event at the Atlantic City Food and Wine Festival!

The Atlantic City Food and Wine Festival is a four day festival going on July 30-August 2, featuring food and wine tastings, beach soirees, celebrity appearances and cooking demonstrations hosted by the industry's elite, including Emeril Lagasse, Tom Colicchio, Ted Allen and Guy Fieri (just to name a few).

What I'm giving away are tickets to the Grand Market event (more info here) that goes down Saturday, August 1 and Sunday, August 2. The Grand Market event is held on the expo floor of Bally's Atlantic City, where you can stroll amongst local and celebrity chefs, tasting their signature dishes; sample wines; and purchase foodie items. Should be a tasty way to spend the weekend!

If you want a pair of tickets, leave a comment between now and Saturday at 5 p.m., when I’ll pick five winners by randomly generated numbers. Be sure to check back this weekend to see if you won and contact me (I'll put up an address), so I can get some info from you and have the tickets mailed to you. Five pairs of tickets! Your chances are pretty good.

Layer Cake Tips

Making layer cakes frustrates the hell out of me. It's so hard to get them to look in real life like they do in books and magazines. I am aware of food styling tricks and cheats, so never beat myself up too much over appearances, but, dang, how come I'm not perfect?

I was so proud of myself for making the above pictured chocolate peanut butter cake* posted by Deb of Smitten Kitchen, and, hot damn, if mine didn't come out just as gorgeous as hers. (Patting own back.)

I've learned a few tricks to layer cakes that make the construction of a beauteous cake easier, and I will never not do these steps:

Freeze cake layers - Wrap each individual cake layer in three or more layers of plastic wrap, and freeze them before assembling the cake. It's so much easier to handle frozen cake layers without the fear of soft cakes cracking and crumbling in your hands. This also lets you break the cake making tasks into parts: bake cake one day, make frosting and assemble the next day (or some later date; the cake will keep in the freezer for weeks).
Obviously not the chocolate peanut butter cake, but I had these pics on file.

Trim Cake - We all know about leveling the tops of layer cakes so they sit flat, but also trim the sides. For whatever reason, you can bake cake layers in straight-sided pans of the same diameter, and carefully center them on top of each other, yet the sides will be wonky. Trim them!Wax paper - Y'all know to stick strips of wax paper or parchment paper under the cake before applying frosting, so the serving platter doesn't look a mess, but I'd be remiss if I didn't include this tip.

Crumb Coating - Frosting a cake is the most frustrating part for me, because all those cake crumbs get in the frosting, even after you've brushed the crumbs off, making for a homely cake. A crumb coat is the initial thin layer of frosting that coats the tops and sides of a cake, where you try your darnedest to not get crumbs in the frosting, but it'll happen anyway, then you stick the cake in the fridge, walk away, and come back in 30 minutes to a slightly stiffened frosting that is ready to receive the final, thick, glamour coat of frosting. Crumb coat once, and you'll never not crumb coat again.

* This chocolate and peanut butter cake is da bomb, and every bit as rich and wonderful as Deb describes it, but do note that this cake is not suited for warm weather. After sitting on an outdoor buffet table on a gorgeous, sunny, summer day for a few minutes, the ganache melted into a syrup-like consistency and slid off the cake (the top picture with ganache flowing over the side is how it's supposed to look...but things got worse). Then the butter, cream cheese, and peanut butter-based frosting gave way, and there was a cake avalanche at some point after it was cut into. I don't beat myself up too much. Cake disasters happen.

Mas Cantina

What's this? Another post on Cantina los Caballitos, the South Philly Mexi-bar that holds the honors of having the most posts on this blog of any other restaurant? Nope. It's a post on Cantina Dos Segundos, Cantina los Caballitos younger sister restaurant in Northern Liberties.

Cantina Dos only differs slightly in the food menu from the South Philly location (although brunch is served daily at Cantina Dos, but only on the weekend at Cantina los Caballitos), and all the fabulous margaritas are still there, as are the relaxed vibes, so I can't say it's worth going out of your way to visit Cantina Dos if Cantina los Caballitos is closer. But I was already in Northern Liberties, and a pitcher of margaritas sounded right on!

I have my favorites at Cantina -- vegan fajitas, big-ass bean and rice burrito, and Mexican corn on the cob -- but decided to try something different.Not on the South Philly menu, the salad of julienned green papaya, papaya escabeche, avocado, red onion, radish, cilantro, and papaya seed vinaigrette is a snazzy, snappy, fresh salad with lots of flavor and acid, and I was glad I tried it, since their nopales salad I've tried on previous occasions has left me bored. Papaya salad: upgrade!
The vegetarian sopes with vegan refried black beans, lettuce, salsa verde, salsa rojo, queso fresco, and crema are also not on the South Philly menu, but are not an upgrade. I've been spoiled by eating many sopes in Mexico (sopes are one of only a few vegetarian items on Mexican menus), and these fluffy corn cakes lacked the density and corniness of the sopes in Mexico. Also, the vegan refried beans (not visible in picture, but are underneath all the toppings) were watery and the beans were almost non-existent. Yeah, as much as I love Cantina, I'll admit that not everything there is stellar.The boy had the special of the day, grilled baby octopus in garlic oil sauce. He loooved these! I, on the other hand, a person who is not at all squeamish -- talk about poo or maggots all you want while I'm eating, or skin a deer in front of me; I don't care -- covered the view of his plate with the basket of tortilla chips. All I could think about while he happily chewed was these critters crawling out of his ass in the middle of the night and attacking me in my sleep Alien-style. TMI! And TMM (too many magaritas)!

Cantina, whichever one you visit, is always a good time.

Cantina Dos Segundos
931 N. 2nd St., Philadelphia, PA 19123
215-629-0500
Open daily, 11-2am
kitchen open 'til 1am
brunch served daily, 11am-4pm

Pig Out BBQ Pit

A reader recently called my attention to the fact that Pig Out BBQ Pit, with locations in downtown West Chester and Glen Mills, serves vegetarian barbecue alongside the normal meat barbecue. I said, "sign me up," and then did little poking around the internet to find their menu and see what others had to say about the place.

Main Line Today voted Pig Out "Best NC BBQ" in 2009, but, interestingly, over on WC Dish, a great food blog focusing mainly on West Chester eats that also has listings of restaurants where readers can comment, had widely conflicting opinions of Pig Out, and even a comment from the owner speculating that the negative comments were from jealous competitors.

So what's the real deal? Were there comments from those out to sabotage, and possibly even comments from those close to the owner hyping the place (oh, both happen all the time), or was it all just simply people with differing opinions? (Update: Do check out the comments on this post!) There's only one way to find out, and that's to go and form your own opinion.
First, we had to choose which location. The Glenn Mills location in a renovated 18th century blacksmith shop won out simply because they offer two free beers (Bud, Bud Light, Miller Lite, or Yuengling Lager) to diners who choose to eat on the premises. Free beer does not apply at the West Chester location.
Even with free beer, no one seemed to opt for the dining in option at the Glen Mills location when we were there, but there was a brisk takeout action going on when we first arrived.
The haul: Two small vegetarian spicy chicken sandwiches, coleslaw, twice baked potato with cheddar cheese, mac and cheese, corn muffin, and Yeungling beer.
But wait...these are real chicken sandwiches!

When ordering, we originally asked for the vegetarian bbq sandwiches, to which one of the two college-aged boys had to ask the other if they even had any. They didn't. He said they had the chicken. (Just so I get you straight here, in the vegetarian bbq department, Pig Out offers what they call a vegetarian bbq sandwich and a vegetarian spicy chicken sandwich) So, to be clear, since the boy said chicken and not veggie chicken, I said, "So, you don't have the veggie bbq, but you've got the veggie chicken?" Then proceeded to order two veggie chicken sandwiches. This was obviously very complicated for the two boys.

It turns out, the Glen Mills location had neither the veggie bbq nor the veggie chicken. We were not charged for the sandwiches, although the boys did briefly argue (not in a heated way) that we did order the chicken. Not cool.

Stuck my finger in the honey mesquite sauce and spicy sauce topping the sandwich, though. The honey mesquite is the redder sauce to the left, and is an extremely sweet ketchup-based sauce with mustard tones. The spicy sauce is the darker sauce to the right, and is also a very sweet ketchup sauce, but less so than the mesquite sauce, and not really spicy. The spicy sauce tastes exactly like the barbecue sauce from Kraft.

Other barbecue sauces available are mild, hot, raspberry chipotle, and buffalo wing sauce. Absolutely no vinegar or light tomato sauce available on the menu, which begs the question, how did Main Line Today award Pig Out BBQ Pit "Best NC BBQ" when there are no North Carolina-style barbecue sauces at Pig Out?If getting served chicken wasn't bad enough, the corn muffins are the kind you buy from Costco -- very little corn meal and dessert-like sweet. Does any one eat these things, outside of business meetings and desperation?
Does that mac and cheese look gluey? It is. And bland and a little chewy. And unbelievably, it's not the worst mac and cheese I've ever had. It's barely passable, though.
I laughed when my partner ordered the twice baked potato with cheddar, but this small, limp potato was the best thing we ordered. It's kinda hard to mess up a potato (well, you can under cook it) with cheese on top.
The creamy and sweet coleslaw tasted like it came from one of those large food service containers, and I wouldn't be surprised if it did.
And this is what we left behind. We ate the twice baked potato because it was the best thing, and we ate the mac and cheese and a few bites of the coleslaw because we were starving.

Needless to say, I was very upset with driving out to Glen Mills and not getting to try the veggie bbq, but I was even more upset about the sides. The Costco muffin (or what ever brand it is) is just unforgivable. What we could eat of our meal was comparable to a meal in a school cafeteria.
I never got the veggie bbq sandwich I originally wanted, and thought the review would be incomplete without trying one, so called the West Chester location first to see if it was available before trekking out there. It was, so we headed out thattaway.

This time the owner was at the helm of the register in West Chester, and was much more engaging and, well, intelligent than the two hapless boys at the Glenn Mills location. The owner asked for our feedback on the vegetarian bbq sandwich and vegetarian spicy chicken sandwich, since he's never tasted them.

What? Shouldn't you taste what you serve?The vegetarian bbq sandwich is made of a shredded dark "beef" that my partner said had a brisket-like taste. We got the hot bbq sauce since the spicy was not to our liking. The hot bbq sauce is still a sweet ketchup-based sauce, but actually is spicy (hotheads will think it's not hot, wimps will think it's hot), and is the better of the three sauces we sampled.

Sandwiches are served on a soft hoagie roll, which suits the fillings fine. I know this is hoagie territory, but hoagie rolls are not the best bread for all sandwiches. A soft hamburger bun would do nicely here, providing less bread and a more authentic Southern barbecue experience if that's what Pig Out is aiming for.
Same sauce and same roll for the vegetarian spicy chicken sandwich, but the veggie meat is lighter and has breading on it, from, I assume, when it was a whole breaded chicken patty or nugget before it was shredded. The breading soaked up the sauce and became this weird, gunky, saucy substance.

If you have to go vegetarian, get the veggie bbq sandwich and skip the veggie chicken. (And I did tell the owner that the veggie bbq sandwich was better than the veggie chicken, and that the breading on the chicken was weird.)
We also tried the potato salad, since we missed it the first go round. Very creamy (almost soupy) and very sweet...just like from a large food service container! Now, I'd hate to call the potato salad and coleslaw food service items, if they're not, but I've never tasted coleslaw or potato salad that tasted like these except for when they did come from a food service container.

The vegetarian sandwiches are decent, although nothing you couldn't make at home with some soy meat, a hoagie roll, and a bottle of barbecue sauce. The gesture to the vegetarian community is nice, though.

Of course, the true testament to a barbecue joint is the real meat, but I can't speak to that. For me though, the true testament are the sides, and Pig Out failed miserably. Obviously they don't think it's worth the effort to make all of the sides from scratch, but it makes a world of difference. And it's easy, too. Well, maybe not as easy as buying from Costco.

Gordon Ramsay, are you out there? Pig Out needs you.

Pig Out BBQ Pit
138 Glen Mills Rd, Glen Mills, PA 19342
610-361-8200
Sun-Thurs, 11am-8pm
Fri-Sat, 11am-9pm

134 E. Gay St., West Chester, PA 19380
484-887-8107
Sun-Wed, 11am-8pm
Thurs-Sat, 11am-9pm

Cappucino Brownies

Gosh, I think it's been over a year since I've made brownies...and that's just not right.

When I saw the recipe in July's issue of Bon Appetit for cappuccino brownies -- those are brownies flavored with coffee, topped with white chocolate, and sprinkled with cinnamon -- it spoke to me. The white chocolate and cinnamon mimic the frothy top of a cappuccino. Isn't that cute.

Normally, I'm a believer in plain-Jane brownies, but, seriously, I won't deny any fancy-pants brownies that would like to fly into my mouth.

And before you white chocolate snobs dismiss these brownies, just get over yourselves already. White chocolate adds a nice, concentrated, sweet umpf to desserts. Here, it's like frosting, but white chocolate.

Cappucino Brownies
adapted from Bon Appetit
makes about 16 2"x2" brownies

*I had to bake these brownies for about 15 minutes longer than the suggested baking time, so do check on your batch.
*These are fudgy, soft brownies. With the warm weather, I enjoyed these much better refrigerated. Even frozen, they were soft enough to eat.
*These are also rich, sweet brownies. I cut these in half (not pictured) after my initial divvying, because they were a bit too much. Yep, I'm getting old.

Brownies
nonstick vegetable oil spay
1/2 cup butter, diced
3 ounces unsweetened chocolate, chopped
1 1/2 cups sugar
3 large eggs
1 tablespoon instant espresso powder (I subbed 2-3 tablespoons instant coffee powder)
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup all purpose flour

• Line 8"x8" baking pan with tin foil, leaving overhang on two sides. Repeat with another piece of foil in the opposite direction. Spray foil with nonstick spray.
• Over very low heat, stir together butter and chocolate in a large saucepan until melted.
• Remove from heat, and stir in sugar, then eggs, one at a time. Stir in espresso powder, vanilla, and salt. Stir in flour, and transfer batter to pan.
• Bake in a preheated 325 degree oven for about 35 minutes, or until puffed and dry-looking and a tester inserted in the center comes out with some moist batter. Cool completely before icing.
  

White Chocolate Ganache
6 ounces white chocolate, chopped
5 tablespoons heavy cream
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon

• Place white chocolate in a microwave safe bowl.
• Bring cream to a simmer in a saucepan, then pour cream over white chocolate. Stir until chocolate is melted. If needed, microwave on low in 10-second intervals until white chocolate is melted.
• Chill for about 25 minutes, or until ganache is slightly thickened but still pourable.
• Lift brownies from pan, turning out onto a work surface, and remove foil.
  
• Pour ganache onto center of brownies, and spread to the edges. Sprinkle with cinnamon.
• Chill until ganache is set, about 2 hours, then cut into pieces.
  

Beard Papa's Cream Puffs

Popped into Beard Papa's while in NYC to see what the fuss is about with the Japanese cream puff chain with locations only sparsely dotted here and there in the US...and none in the Delaware Valley! You want what you cannot have, and I wanted some Beard Papa's cream puffs when the chance arose. Cream-filled pastries, be they eclairs, Boston cream pie, or Bavarian cream donuts, are at the top of my list of favorites, so I knew I'd enjoy some Beard Papa's.

Daily made, fresh choux pastry puffs filled to order with cream are the main game at Beard Papa's, although they do offer some other goodies. The vanilla cream puff is the original flavor, and a rotating cast of flavors like chocolate, greet tea, coffee, and pumpkin are also up for order. With advice that some of the more adventurous flavors are not the best, I stuck to chocolate and vanilla for my first foray.The chocolate cream puff is dusted with cocoa powder and generously filled with Beard Papa's own unique mixture of custard cream and whipped cream that is not as thick and decadent as the cream in most eclairs, but more pudding-like. Be careful biting into one, or the filling will ooze out any crack and onto your hand. The choux pastry is softer than most eclairs I've encountered, making Beard Papa's cream puffs seem light and airy...well, for something filled with cream!I saved the original vanilla flavor dusted with powdered sugar for last, and this really is where it's at! Same soft pastry shell with pudding-like cream filling, but with classic flavors. Start here, then repeat next time in a city with a Beard Papa's.

Watch the cartoon Beard Papa's story here.

One Lucky Duck

Had some really good eats in New York recently, despite the fact that we traveled on a whim and didn't do any research into restaurants. One of those places was One Lucky Duck, the teeny-tiny raw foods takeaway with three teeny-tiny tables that's around the corner from and connected to the kitchen of Pure Food and Wine. Pure Food and Wine is one of New York's most hyped raw food restaurants, but, alas, it's only open for dinner. That's how we found ourselves around the corner at One Lucky Duck, essentially Pure Food and Wine's takeaway venue.

I've been interested in a raw food diet for a couple of years now, and have only recently started purposely trying to incorporate more raw food meals into my diet (going solid for even a week would never happen with my zero willpower), for no real reason other than I'd like to eat a little more healthfully. I have no intention of giving up cooked food, but am simply looking at raw foods as a new type of cooking...or, I guess, that would be non-cooking.

You probably eat raw occasionally without even thinking about it. That smoothie with bananas, berries, and ice: raw! That salad with lettuce, cucumber and tomato dressed with vinegar and olive oil: raw! Well, maybe the olive oil and vinegar you used weren't technically raw, but there is raw olive oil and vinegar out there to be had.

Those are simple raw dishes to make, but the lengths that some raw foodists go to make some foods -- soaking nuts and blending them into creams, sprouting grains, dehydrating flax slurries to make crackers -- is more than I have patience for, or proper equipment for in my own kitchen. And that's why I was excited to have Pure Food and Wine's kitchen do the prep for me.These spicy Thai lettuce wraps with mango, pea shoots, carrots, cabbage, cashews, and tamarind sauce were great, and not unlike lettuce wraps found at non-raw food restaurants. The outer wrap was actually a collard (or maybe a cabbage) leaf oiled and lightly massaged to make the leaf more tender. The spicy sun dried tomato tortilla wraps with corn cilantro guacamole, tomato-lime salsa, and cashew sour cream were my least favorite, and I would not order them again. The sun dried tomato wrap was a bit salty, and that's a lot of guacamole! Even eating just one was a bit much, so don't ask how one eats all three. Since I'm not on a 100% raw food diet -- heck, I'm not even on a 10% raw food diet -- I don't need to fat-load on avocados and nuts like raw foodists do to get fats and feel sated. I have baked cookies and bread for that. I did enjoy the cashew sour cream, as it reminded me of Tofutti sour cream, and for some reason I just love Tofutti sour cream. Remember back on Top Chef season 4 when the lovable spaz, Andrew "I've got a culinary boner" got kicked off for making raw sushi (not with raw fish, but with all raw vegetables) as a healthy lunch for fatso cops, and Padma and Tom were less than thrilled? Well, I thought it was a brilliant idea, and afterward was just dying to try raw sushi, so jumped at the chance to try One Lucky Duck's sushi rolls.

There's not much different with a raw sushi roll than a regular veggie sushi roll other than the soy sauce is unpasteurized, the nori is untoasted, and, well, you gotta substitute something for the cooked rice. One Lucky Duck subbed grated jicama and pine nuts for the rice (Andrew used parsnips and pine nuts), and the results were quite nice. There was a slight textural difference with the "rice," but nothing that would make me twist my face like Padma and Tom. Really, the raw sushi was almost identical to normal sushi. I even dug the raw slices of ginger. Oh, good God, the raw desserts looked decadent. And they had decadent price tags! Most single servings of desserts were in the $5-$12 range, but a square of tiramisu will set you back $15!

Yeah, nothing at One Lucky Duck is cheap. Raw food restaurants ain't cheap, people. But it can be amazingly good...and good for you.

One Lucky Duck
125 1/2 E. 17th St., New York, NY, 10003
212-477-7151

Supper's Deviled Egg Happy Hour

Never before has any advertised happy hour special gotten me in a door, but Supper's July 1st 5-8pm happy hour special of twelve different deviled eggs (all twelve for $9) and a can of Sly Fox beer for $3 (y'all know I hate beer, so I could care less) did the trick. I even marked it on the calendar. That's how much I love deviled eggs!

Now before we go any further, the above deal (twelve for $9) was only for the opening night of Supper's July month-long deviled egg happy hour. For the rest of the month, Supper will be offering a rotating menu of four different deviled eggs and can of Sly for $6.

Not all of the deviled eggs are vegetarian, but the server checked with the kitchen, and they agreed to leave meat off where they could (they goofed on a couple, but ain't no thang; it's the thought that counts), and possibly double up on a few to make me a full plate of twelve.Here's a list of the twelve deviled eggs on the menu:

• Black truffle
• Sriracha with peanuts and coriander
• Safron with salt cod and roasted garlic
• Smoked chile with corn-red onion salsa
• Chevre with asparagus
• Pistou with ratatouille
• Horseradish with steak and Roquefort
• Scotch Deviled Egg with country sausage
• Wasabi with uni and crispy nori
• Lobster with dill crème fraiche
• Braised bacon and cheddar
• Curried with cauliflower and mint

Winners: I can't say that any one deviled egg had me breathless, but Supper is the winner for offering twelve deviled eggs, for sure! Deviled eggs are a comfort food, so I think you'll always favor your version, or your mom's or aunt's. Leaders of the pack (for me, at least) would include: curry deviled egg; wasabi deviled egg; and Sriracha deviled egg (didn't get any heat at all, but the pickled veggies were nice).

Losers: There were no real losers, except a few of the fillings were too salty.My partner was aghast that I'd eat twelve deviled eggs, but it was no prob at all! The only ones I left behind were the duplicate black truffle deviled egg (shh...don't tell the fooderati, but I think truffles are overrated and overpowering); half of the smoked chile deviled egg with corn-red onion salsa (tasted like bacon, so stopped after one bite); and half of the lobster deviled egg with dill crème fraiche (there was lobster in it).

Yay, Supper! I could shower you with kisses for offering twelve deviled eggs. Get on it, y'all, if you're even the slightest deviled egg freak.

Supper
926 South St, Philadelphia, PA 19147
215-592-8180