reesesWeb

I'll definitely be hitting Morimoto in Philadelphia next week with an old buddy. I haven't been there yet (not as if I spend much time in that town) so I'm wondering if anyone has any recommendations. I'm planning on following up my WD-50 undecidedness and just going omakase, but I'm open to suggestions.

WD-50 is not a great restaurant. Out of nine courses on the tasting menu in place when I ate there, I enjoyed probably three. The first shouted "Hey, I read about that Adria guy!" and consisted of carrot juice or soup stabilized by calcium chloride and sodium alginate over a similarly thickened disk of coconut milk. I don't remember the name, other than that it included "over easy" so you can easily visualize the presentation. It was quite good.

I also enjoyed the miso soup with soba noodles. It was a normal white miso, all of $.30 of paste and hot water at home, but the soba noodles were delivered in a squeeze bottle, still in semi-liquid form. I squeezed the pre-noodle goo into the hot miso soup and made my own noodles. I should like to declare that I was well along in the wine-pairing part of my meal, and the clumps were a result of my reduced coordination and the small size of the vessel.

I finally found a decent grocery store reasonably close to where I live. On the previously-mentioned scale, I'd say it's about 400 millilarrys, for the following reasons:

• They sell beer AND wine. In Montgomery county! (See the third FAQ.) It's not a great beer or wine selection, but at least you can buy a bottle of Sam Smith Oatmeal Stout or Guinness without having to track down a liquor store.
• They have a decent cheese selection. At least half a dozen bries, several chevres, shopshire, and they actually care enough about the different fetas to group them by national style, so you won't try cooking with greek feta, or try putting a french feta on your salad.
• Big, fat, juicy kumquats!
• Decent staff. The checkout person actually held an intelligent conversation without seeming annoyed that I added to his workload by picking his line. He and the bagger actually took care with our purchase, gently handling the produce and baked goods. Our food probably wouldn't have been damaged had they not done this, but it was enough of a northwest coast move that I couldn't help but appreciate it.
• They carry crap as well as "eclectic" food. At Whole Foods, for example, you need to make a second stop afterward to pick up things like Coke. This was the huge advantage Larry's had -- you could buy your mass-produced Frito/Pepsi food at the same time you bought artisan taro root chips. Balducci's doesn't have the breadth of junk, but they do have Coke!

On the downside, just like Whole Foods, forget about being here if it's busy. For some reason, they follow the WF store layout model which encourages slow, indirect flow through the store. The aisles are roughly one cart wide, and they're not arranged on an orthogonal plan. We went on a Monday and didn't have much trouble outside the baked-goods area, but it's very easy to see that a weekend trip would be murder. I'll have to remember to go there on Fridays since I'll be home.

• Deep-Fried Twinkie Onna Stick
• Teriyaki Ostrich Onna Stick
• Deep-Fried Reuben Onna Stick
• Alligator Sausage Onna Stick
• Macaroni And Cheese Onna Stick

Can you guess where I was? I couldn't brave the Deep Fried Snickers Bar Onna Stick, or else you'd know for sure.