Roast Beef

This one's a dilly The lunchtime crowd at Your Gourmet Kitchen, 114 E. Lancaster Ave. in Wayne, knows what they like, and the Roast Beef and Dill Havarti sandwich is it. When Devin Forte and Chuck Crocco bought Your Gourmet Kitchen less than two years ago, they decided not to change the menu too much. "We inherited [the Roast Beef and Dill Havarti] recipe from the previous owners, who actually got it from the owners before that," says Forte. It looks like this sandwich, which brings together Your Gourmet Kitchen-roasted roast beef, bitter radicchio, hot cherry peppers, horseradish sauce and the dill-Havarti cheese, is here to stay.

Paul Klein had been in the deli business for quite some time. One slow, maybe 16-hour day, when he found a few spare moments to really put it all in perspective, he realized it had been more than 30 years. Which was a lot of chopped liver. What most people would think of as a job had become a lifestyle filled with demanding hours and overwhelming pressures. A little more than a year ago, he decided to ease his life a bit, and open a deli-restaurant in Center City. He calls it Pumpernick's.

Their leadership invited 10,000-members of District Council 33 to dinner at the First Union Center last night. They served beef. Not just beef, though. The menu included Caesar salad followed by filet mignon. For those who avoid red meat, there was apricot-glazed breast of chicken with a cherry sauce, fusili, sauteed string beans and roasted golden potatoes. Of course, that wasn't for everybody. That was the menu prepared for the executive council at a restaurant in the First Union Center.

Of all the trials a new restaurant can experience, few are as perilous as the departure and replacement of its chef. The Station Restaurant in Manayunk, however, offers a good example of an establishment that made a successful turn-around from the brink of disaster. When I paid my first review visits to the Station in August, I had not heard that the restaurant had replaced its original chef the very week before. Unknown to me, newly installed Steven Baum was scrambling - not simply to produce another cook's menu, and slowly create a new one, but also to stem the drain on kitchen help that inevitably ensues with another chef's departure.

The day after Thanksgiving isn't just for shopping anymore. It's also one of the more popular days at the gym, due no doubt to the guilty hordes who gorged themselves the night before. But to burn off a typical holiday feast, it takes more than an hour or two of working out, according to exercise experts. Consider these statistics from Bally Total Fitness. In order to work off that once-a-year meal, which typically contains 130 grams of fat and more than 2,500 calories, a 150 pound person would have to: Walk for 12 hours.

The coach is confused. Does he go with the kosher pizza or fast food? He passes the Golden Arches in the maddening midday traffic of North Jersey. "You don't understand," he explains, "Mickey D's and Tamir have never met. " Coach Harold Katz is speaking of Tamir Goodman, an Orthodox Jew from Baltimore who is the most famous basketball player in a yarmulke. He will want a snack when he wakes from his nap back at the Hackensack Hilton. In a few hours on this recent Thursday, Goodman will limp on the court against his mother's wishes to play at the adidas ABCD Camp consisting of top high school players around the country.

Nancy Moses looked around Shank & Evelyn's, at the bustling ballet behind the counter, at the men perched on the nine counter stools, at the folks crammed elbow-to-elbow at the eight tables, and pronounced it "quintessential Philadelphia. " Nancy knows Philadelphia history; she's the executive director of the Atwater Kent Museum, Philadelphia's official history museum. She arrived, helmeted, on a red Yamaha motor scooter. Parked it on the sidewalk (yo, this is South Philly), knew what she wanted for lunch: roast beef combo, side order of greens, diet Pepsi.

Easter dinner is a traditional meal in many households, and most often, the centerpiece of the menu is as established as the family itself. Depending on ethnic background, beliefs or taste, that entree often is roast lamb or beef, baked ham, or some other item chosen to usher in spring. Whatever the choice, it's not likely to change. But you can give that familiar meal a new look and a fresh taste with some different side dishes and sauces. Forget the mint jelly and the pineapple glaze.

After the jokes had been told, the plaques read, and the cop stories remembered, it was retired Audubon Police Chief William V. Taulane's turn. Taulane, who was regaled and roasted by 200 people at the Riviera party house Saturday night, stood at the head table, microphone in hand, and thanked his colleagues and the community of Audubon. "It has been 27 great years," said Taulane, 56, who served 27 years with the Audubon police - 15 as its chief, before stepping down in early January.

For decades, Bung's Bar & Grille, a tiny tavern on Route 130, has been home to locally-famed clam chowder and roast beef - and to generations of local politicians. "We pile in there and have a pizza and hang out," said Kevin McLernon, business administrator in nearby Burlington Township. "We all go. " In the bar's back room, which contains a dartboard and is almost filled up with a wooden table large enough for four, owner Hatch Hiros tells stories of horseshoe contests and scavenger hunts, all the while dropping names.