So, yes, they're on the list, no question. Along with the Indian fare at new Bindi, over on 13th. And Paraguayan brunch at Arbol Cafe at Second and Poplar. And the meat-curing fad that's going on, it appears, in half the restaurant kitchens in town.
I'm on the hunt, as well, for vegetable love, having dipped a toe in the nouveau vegan (and vegetarian) scene. (Stay tuned for reports from Royal Tavern and haute Horizons.)
But there's no getting around the perennial detour: It's the leftovers, in this event, 2007's unfinished business; the stragglers still waiting to get their due.
A scribble - never actually acted on - in last year's pocket diary says to find out how Reiker's, the Fox Chase meat market, concocts its subtly spicier (is it clove?), brothier, vaguely German-style snapper soup.
Another puzzle: Is the greasy, old-Philadelphia street-cart fishcake rousing itself from oblivion? (I'm starting to see curbside stirrings.)
Another: What's up with fruity, scarce Castelvetrano olives, which are threatening to upstage the fresh Lucque, my current olive pet?
That's just a sampler. Other pending investigations: Will Philadelphia food ever evolve a theme like, say, Tex-Mex? Will New Jersey's produce grow fat off the Salinas Valley's sins? Whither the native pawpaw?
The fact is I did get my fair share last year - a tour at the front during the city's foie gras wars (currently on low simmer); the epiphany that "local" crab these days is from Indonesia, the Chesapeake fishery having been overworked; a jaw-dropping taste of my first Scotch egg (hard-cooked, jacketed with ground pork, deep-fried and dipped in hot Colman's mustard) at the Whip, the horsey-set tavern south of Coatesville; an entire - and delicious - snail dinner at Le Bec-Fin; and a judge's seat at the maiden outing of Reading Terminal Market's oddball Scrapplefest.
