http://www.philly.com/inquirer/columnists/rick_nichols RSS Feed for Inq Col Rick Nichols en-us Thu, 03 Jul 2008 07:03:24 GMT http://www.philly.com/inquirer/columnists/rick_nichols/20080703_On_the_Side_.html Rick Nichols' "On the Side" column does not appear today. http://www.philly.com/inquirer/columnists/rick_nichols/20080619_On_the_Side__The_saga_behind_the_sign_at_venerable_oyster_house.html Last week, the grates were pulled down over the windows of the Sansom Street Oyster House, a small closed-for-business sign with an ambiguous reopening date the only evidence of the familial, almost biblical drama that had transpired behind the scenes. http://www.philly.com/inquirer/columnists/rick_nichols/20080622_Lush_lavender_fields.html On a morning last month at Carousel Farm, Niko Christou was finishing the planting of his elegant kitchen garden - cucumbers at the moment, many of the other raised beds already sown and well under way. http://www.philly.com/inquirer/columnists/rick_nichols/20080615__Organic__and__smart__aren_t_the_same.html The rogue's gallery has been gathering dust on the corner of my desk, "stupid foods" I call them - boxes of "Italian-style" panko bread crumbs (which is sort of like saying "Japanese-style" fettucine noodles), a jar of powdered peanut butter to which one is asked to simply add water (Why?), a "twice-washed," shrink-wrapped "microwave-ready" Idaho potato that promises (Miracle of miracles!) genuine "oven-baked potato taste." http://www.philly.com/inquirer/columnists/rick_nichols/20080612_On_the_Side__A_huge_appetite.html In Villanova one day last week - one month, to be exact, after its long-delayed opening - Maia, the behemoth on the Main Line, was doing a credible, if slightly disorienting, lunch business. http://www.philly.com/inquirer/columnists/rick_nichols/20080608_Their_smoked_fare_has_a_distinctive_flair.html It is Tuesday in the smokehouse of Sugartown Smoked Specialties, which is to say, "Spread Day," which is to say, the day they make the Hungarian smoked salmon spread that the regulars will descend upon - with customary vengeance - at the Lancaster County Farmers Market in Wayne the very next day. http://www.philly.com/inquirer/columnists/rick_nichols/20080605_On_the_Side__There_s_a_secret_to_the_sweetness_of_Joe_Jacobs__berries__and_fewer_and_fewer_growers_share_it_.html MILMAY, N.J. - At Bertuzzi's Farm here, a regular stop on the way to the Shore, Joe Jacobs attributes the particularly juicy sweetness of his strawberries to what at first seems a rather unlikely secret - his salt-hay mulch. http://www.philly.com/inquirer/columnists/rick_nichols/20080529_On_the_Side__Funny__it_still_looks_like_Murray_s.html Murray's Deli, the Bala Cynwyd fixture, has long derived its identity not so much from its decor or menu of Jewish deli standards, but from its proximity - less than a block away - to competing Hymie's Deli, the older of the two (at this location), but the more recently updated. http://www.philly.com/inquirer/columnists/rick_nichols/20080522_On_the_Side__A_virtuous_burger__very_good__not_best.html Across from DiBruno Bros. cheeserie near 18th and Chestnut last week, the line was moving smartly at the newest burger joint in town, a fresh-faced interloper called Goodburger. http://www.philly.com/inquirer/columnists/rick_nichols/20080525_Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.html The streets of the city are scented in various precincts - near 30th Street Station, for instance, or stretches of Woodland Avenue - with the smoky spice of jerk chicken, oxtail and curried goat of Jamaica, much of it dispensed from trucks, some of them manned, to the disappointment of native Jamaicans, by Haitians or Africans whom they say don't always get the taste of things quite exactly right.