Octopus

The week of Feb. 1 marks the opening of Maru Global (255 S. 10th St., 267-273-0567), Philadelphia's first quick-serve eatery focused on takoyaki, the puffy, fried crepe balls. The Japanese street food is traditionally studded with octopus, but Tokyo-born chef Ryo Igarashi and his wife, Nicole, both local restaurant veterans, are offering multiple varieties, including Philly cheesesteak, pizza, spicy shrimp, barbecue, and sweet-and-sour miso. The original, based on scallion and red ginger, can be made to order with shrimp, chicken, sirloin, or octopus.

If you aim to dethrone Dmitri's legendary grilled octopus, you'd best have a few tricks up your sleeve. And it appears that Estia does, and does: Its extraordinary octopodi is sourced from Portugal and Spain, cleaned and tenderized with sea salt in a dedicated washing machine (that's right, just the rinse and spin cycle), braised in red-wine vinegar, and grilled over charcoal. Over the fire it's basted with the house vinaigrette, which slowly caramelizes, yielding a crackling, sweet crust.

When Joyce Wallacavage tells you her son Adam "isn't normal," it's cause for laughter - and admiration. "Thank goodness he's not normal, whatever that is," she says. It's hard to explain exactly what she means, but after meeting Adam, you know it has something to do with being creative and funny and sweetly different from probably anyone else you know. Adam Wallacavage (his surname is Lithuanian, with the accent on wall ) is 38 but looks younger. He has green eyes that don't always find yours, an ironic manner that confuses - Is he serious?

The Octopus's Garden - Mayetta's Fish House may seem like a paradox from the moment you lay eyes on the place. The cuisine is healthy without tasting the least bit like you're in a health-food restaurant - which it emphatically is not, according to the owner. And the design of the 4,400-square-foot restaurant is environmentally state-of-the-art with its huge solar panels on the roof and its geothermal heating and cooling systems. But the painted clapboard and stone exterior lend a very welcoming, old seashore kind of feel to this Ocean County establishment.

There's really only one way to skin a cuttlefish: very carefully. You want to remove the spine and the innards without spilling the ink sac. But oops! Pippo Lamberti, the exciting young chef at Positano Coast, who has gathered us together on this August afternoon so that we may learn to cook with cephalopods such as cuttlefish, squid and octopus, accidentally breaks the sac. Too bad, but not a disaster. Ink from cuttlefish (and squid) is often used to tint risotto or pasta, but that's not what Lamberti, 25, planned for today.

Admit it: There's a food fight inside you that's just dying to get out. And if you're going to throw food in New Jersey, what better weapon than a tomato? That gem of the Garden State will be the object of mass affection Sunday at the second annual New Jersey Tomato Festival, at Wiggins Park in Camden. The idea, says Ira Shaffer, president of the Gloucester County Business Association and event chairman, is to educate people about farming and to promote an initiative to have the tomato named as the state vegetable.

For decades now, friends and family have known where to find Jack McFadden on a Friday or Saturday night. He's probably standing at a bar, or at the edge of a room, as statuesque and calm as an English butler. McFadden, 55, has almost had to be what could be described as the eye of the storm - he's in the restaurant business. During a 15-year period through the 1980s, he owned three hugely popular establishments: The Restaurant & The Bar in West Chester, the Marshallton Inn and the Oyster Bar, both in Marshallton, West Bradford.

Somewhere in the afterlife, there will be an irate octopus waiting for Dmitri Chimes. The 49-year-old restaurateur jokes uneasily about this, but there has to be some kind of catch, right? "I often wonder about how I'm going to have to pay in the future," he says, "for all this octopus I've sold. " It is an unlikely scenario for conservative Philadelphia: Former rock guitarist for '70s groups like the Broad Street Dirt Band and the Burning Dogs turns tiny neighborhood restaurant into a local phenomenon; menu includes basic Greek seafood specialties, including boatloads of grilled octopus.

Since it opened last July, people around my neighborhood have been talking about the Butcher's Cafe. At the north end of the Italian Market, the BYOB restaurant has the reputation of a homey neighborhood spot. It quickly took the place of Litto's Bakery & Caffe across the street, a similar family-run BYOB that closed a couple of years ago. The second we walked in the door, I got a sense of what makes it so popular - it's like going over to a friend's place to eat. The host sat at the front desk with a glass of red wine next to the reservation book.

Joe Louis Arena may be a comfortable home to the Detroit Red Wings, but it's been nothing but a nightmare for the Flyers for years. Going into this year's Stanley Cup finals, the Flyers are 0-6-2 in their last eight games in Detroit. They haven't won there since November 1988. In 53 games in the Motor City since 1967, the Flyers are 18-25-10. "I don't know The Joe very much," Flyers center Eric Lindros said. That ignorance may indeed be bliss. The Flyers played at Joe Louis just once this season and tied the Red Wings, 2-2. At home, the Flyers are 30-13-12 against the Wings.