Tripe

Hey mon, know where to get some fooood . . . Jamaican food? Uhuru, jus nort o' Market on 52nd Street, das where. The heady smells of incense and the pulsating reggae music usher you into a narrow store selling Caribbean produce, groceries and lots of Jamaican record alblums. The small, simple dining room is in the rear. Uhuru is the place to go if your sense of adventure includes eating things like tripe, goat, and a very strange looking dish called ackee. Start with one of several exotic non-alcoholic drinks.

The meat cleaver falls with a sharp, swift, bone-cracking sound, separating the chicken into two sections and punctuating the conversation. Chuck Cambria trims some fat from the bird, gives it a neat, clean-cut look, and - in what seems like one unbroken motion - wraps it politely in butcher paper. He's been at his South Philadelphia butcher shop for so many years he can trim steaks, grind beef and pound veal paper-thin while talking with customers or answering the phone. This day he's talking about tripe.

Over the years, I've received a lot of tempting invitations to fabulous events I couldn't attend. I've simply embraced the "no, thank you" reflex as one of the unfortunate yet requisite drawbacks of being a reclusive critic. A recent invitation to a Szechuan New Year's banquet, though, organized by local members of the online gastro-club eGullet, got me to hesitate on the "yes" button a little longer than usual. True Szechuan food is such a rarity in this area, I wasn't fazed by the far-flung locale: Han Dynasty resides at the end of a poky drive up to Royersford.

Yo, Chefs! My family and I love the pepper pot soup from Vitale's Restaurant, in the vicinity of Cottman and Bustleton avenues. They serve it on Thursdays. It is the best I have tasted. Would it be possible to get the recipe? James Tarlton Oxford Circle Dear James, Dave Green, the chef at Vitale's, serves an Italian-American version of pepper pot soup. More traditional renderings of the meal-in-a-bowl soup have been a Philadelphia staple for at least 200 years, since the days when the city traded goods and recipes with the West Indies.

Q. Can you give me the calorie count for uncooked oat bran? Donna Durrer, Portland, Ore. A. Oat bran has only recently become a very hot item and therefore is not listed yet in any of the calorie tables that I've checked, and not even a miller who supplies oat bran in bulk to health food stores knew the answer. The closest reference that I have been able to find is in Barbara Kraus' book "Calories and Carbohydrates," which lists Kellogg's Cracklin' Oat Bran cereal. Whether the calorie content of this cereal is the same as oat bran bought in bulk remains to be seen.

For those friends of pho always searching for a different spot to enjoy this traditional Vietnamese beef-and-noodle soup and its numerous variations, there is Pho 97, on the west end of Chinatown. This is not to be confused with Pho 75, the chain out of Virginia, which has two restaurants in town. Or Pho 79, a Vietnamese restaurant that used to operate near Ninth Street. The folks at Pho 97 say they decided on their name because the restaurant opened in 1997. (And just maybe because Pho 75 - 1975 was the start of the Vietnamese exodus - has been so successful.

When you leave Sam's Cobblestone Restaurant with your leftovers wrapped in foil and tucked inside a brown bag, it's not unusual for you to get instructions on how best to reheat them at home. Sam's also is the kind of place where the servers cater to your whims as if you were a long-lost relative. All of which helps to make this South Philadelphia restaurant a good bet, especially at those times when you feel like giving up the likes of sun-dried tomatoes, portobello mushrooms, and risotto for things such as scungilli salad and tripe.

Ristorante Longano is Jerry Vale singing "Volare," crisp white table linens, wonderful garlic scents wafting up from the downstairs kitchen, waiters and busboys who say "Yo. " If visiting house-guests want an authentic South Philly dining experience, take them here. If you are looking for a small, cheerful, casual Italian restaurant with superb food for the price, discover Ristorante Longano for yourself. This is no one-sauce-fits-all restaurant. What sets Longano apart from other big-portion, low-price, cigarette-machine-by-the-door places is fresh pasta, some unusual dishes (such as black ravioli stuffed with lobster)

Some friends were talking the other day about restaurants. A couple of them asked if there was a dining spot truly representative of a typical, old-time South Philadelphia Italian eatery. Well, I told them, there was a classic: Graziano's Ristorante. One problem. Graziano's is in South Jersey, not South Philly. But once inside, you'd never know. Eyeballing the surroundings and enjoying the menu, it could be 10th and Reed, or 12th and Dickinson. Graziano's, on the White Horse Pike en route to the Shore, has been serving a fine and honest version of American-Southern Italian fare for nearly 20 years.

Variety meats are on their way out. Out of the country, that is. The volume of variety meats exported to the foreign market increased eight percent in the first half of 1985. Most of that good "offal" stuff - brains, hearts, kidney, kiver, etc. - went to Mexico, France, Japan, the United Kingdom and Egypt. Sales to the United Kingdom were up 57 percent, to France six percent, and to Mexico 48 percent. In these places, variety meats continue to provide an inexpensive source of protein, along with a lot of just plain good food.

RADIO BIG MOUTH Rush Limbaugh has taken another verbal swing at the first lady, this time accusing her of being a hypocrite during a family ski trip to Vail, Colo. Get this: He took issue with her short-rib lunch. Really, Rush? The idea of this plus-size pundit even thinking of implying that Michelle Obama is overweight is downright laughable. What reality is he living in? And when's the last time that Limbaugh stepped on the scale? Those 90 pounds he reportedly lost in 2009 are back, and from the looks of things, he and his treadmill once again aren't on speaking terms.

IKNOW WE have freedom of speech and the press in this country, but does that mean you have to publish such disingenuous tripe as Georgia Makiver's Sept. 27 letter "A League of His Own" ? OK. We get it. She doesn't like President Obama. But come up with some legitimate criticisms at least. And why lessen the criticism by insisting it was black conservatives who criticized Obama first? If her criticisms are valid, she won't need that support as the evidence will stand on its own. Besides, who says the black conservatives were correct?

Over the years, I've received a lot of tempting invitations to fabulous events I couldn't attend. I've simply embraced the "no, thank you" reflex as one of the unfortunate yet requisite drawbacks of being a reclusive critic. A recent invitation to a Szechuan New Year's banquet, though, organized by local members of the online gastro-club eGullet, got me to hesitate on the "yes" button a little longer than usual. True Szechuan food is such a rarity in this area, I wasn't fazed by the far-flung locale: Han Dynasty resides at the end of a poky drive up to Royersford.

What exactly is the change we're supposed to believe in this election year? That Barack Obama represents a new kind of politics? Or is change tied to hope, as in we hope he re-morphs from typical negative-ad-slinging pol back to magical new Obamassiah once he's safely elected president? Does Obama even know? In his ad "Plan for Change," Obama decries the "petty attacks and distractions" of the campaign. "Bitter partisan fights" won't solve our problems, he says. What will?

I've heard one too many colleagues' detailed description of a fantastic vacation splurge to a foreign country. So, what do you do when the page on your passport is destined to remain as pale as your office tan? That's the beauty of Philadelphia. You can, at least, experience exotic fare. A little jaunt up Roosevelt Boulevard to Olney and I was indulging in a little dining getaway at Seo Ra Bol Restaurant. I was lucky a Korean friend came along to interpret. But first, I needed a little fourth-grade geography refresher.

Not since "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" has there been anything like it. The media have descended on Philadelphia. Journalists far outnumber Republican National Convention delegates, maybe even protesters. They're everywhere, armed with notepads and tape recorders and laptops and cameras and microphones - and expense accounts. They range from the proverbial ink-stained wretch on the Podunk Gazette to the talking heads on cable networks. Some are themselves celebrities; even the delegates would rather get a glimpse of Peter Jennings or Katie Couric than of any politician, the candidates included.

Dorothy Devone says she has always cooked everything fresh, right from the beginning. She admits that it takes some time and effort, but the results make it worthwhile. "It might take a little longer when you cook from scratch, but it's a whole lot better. " Devone has been practicing that philosophy for 20 years at Devone's Family Tavern Restaurant, along the Black Horse Pike in Williamstown. I've run into Devone's while taking shortcuts from the Shore, avoiding the Atlantic City Expressway jams and the other arteries clogged with automobiles, not fat. On your first visit they treat you like a regular customer, and you find yourself stopping back.

Georgetown University student David J. Wong, who is editor in chief of a campus newspaper called the Hoya, has a very bright future in newspaper journalism. Wong has exhibited all the finest and most familiar traits of the liberal media we've come to know and loathe: allegiance to ideological groupthink, aversion to controversy, deference to establishment bullies and willingness to censor well-informed opinions that challenge politically correct sacred cows. On March 27, Wong fired a conservative student columnist, Georgetown junior Robert Swope, because he didn't like the writer's strong views on feminist hypocrisy and politicized scholarship in the Women's Studies Department.

The meat cleaver falls with a sharp, swift, bone-cracking sound, separating the chicken into two sections and punctuating the conversation. Chuck Cambria trims some fat from the bird, gives it a neat, clean-cut look, and - in what seems like one unbroken motion - wraps it politely in butcher paper. He's been at his South Philadelphia butcher shop for so many years he can trim steaks, grind beef and pound veal paper-thin while talking with customers or answering the phone. This day he's talking about tripe.

Some friends were talking the other day about restaurants. A couple of them asked if there was a dining spot truly representative of a typical, old-time South Philadelphia Italian eatery. Well, I told them, there was a classic: Graziano's Ristorante. One problem. Graziano's is in South Jersey, not South Philly. But once inside, you'd never know. Eyeballing the surroundings and enjoying the menu, it could be 10th and Reed, or 12th and Dickinson. Graziano's, on the White Horse Pike en route to the Shore, has been serving a fine and honest version of American-Southern Italian fare for nearly 20 years.