No room for the inn?

Part of the list is runovers, unfinished business, cryptic notes to self: A fireside dinner at the Carversville Inn once again seems like the venue for good winter material; and has for about three years running. Its problem is that something always jumps the line in that neck of Bucks County (up toward New Hope) - a gorgeous lavender farm where they're making their own honey, or Solebury Orchard in cider season, or the homespun pork and oyster dinner they've been holding at the Carversville Christian Church since 1871. (Which to my taste was better than ever this October, though I was so famished that I was getting ready to chew on a hymnal by the time we were ushered to a table in the basement.)

So it remains to be seen whether the Carversville Inn will get its ration of ink in 2009. The competition is stacking up. There's an overdue supper debriefing with an irrepressible diner named Ed Weinrott, a gourmet-about-Philadelphia in the years when fresh herbs were still an oddity. His anecdotal account of the city's culinary coming of age is said to be without local peer.

Another contender? Taqueria Puerto Veracruzano, the homey cafe and catering kitchen tucked in a red-painted corner spot near Eighth and Dickinson. I'd sampled its Colombian empanadas at a recent Northern Liberties birthday party for a new architectural-salvage builder, and followed up with a sublime, on-site taco al pastor (flecked with diced pineapple) and pollo guisado, a chicken-potato stew.

I'm making it a priority - the taqueria. Not that I'm eager to postpone what could be a magnificent tour that, as much as I hate to admit it, isn't of my own invention: a Philadelphia tour de scrapple that a young woman with, well, let us say good taste buds recently recounted to me. It involved, as I recall, a scrapple risotto side dish served with the pork chop entree at a steak house, a scrapple and beer pairing at Nodding Head Brewery, and a fried scrapple sandwich with various toppings that is a specialty of a line of Center City diners, only one of which apparently makes the sandwich with credible distinction, and with a proviso. It must be enjoyed (in the manner of Scottish haggis) with a shot or two of bourbon.

Lord have mercy. So much to taste, so little time. At Chinatown's steamy Ting Wong, a colleague and I are in the midst of decoding the difference between the reddish-lacquered roast pork that they hack to order and a very different beast they call "roast pig," its crackling skin bronzed, its meat of a blonder, saltier, porkier nature. Our findings are forthcoming.

There are the no-brainers. "Latin Superstar chef" (as his publicist has taken to calling him) Jose Garces is weeks away from opening Chifa, the Peruvian-Cantonese fusion and ceviche place taking shape at Seventh and Chestnut. What's up with that - Peruvian-Cantonese?

So Chifa is on the list. And so is the Italian Market, where they're promising to keep the lights on later than the 6 o'clock news. And so are the budget fish-cake and pepper-hash stands at the edge of Fishtown that, if history is any guide, could be ripe for a renaissance.

And there's supposed to be a big, new German beer hall opening in the spring on South Street, if the economy doesn't do it in. I sure hope not. This city gave first breath to Germantown, one of the country's earliest German settlements. One measly German-style beer hall and eatery doesn't seem too much to ask.

That's just for starters. Who knew when 2008 dawned that Marigold Kitchen would debut a whimsical country "ham plate"? That the Reading Terminal Market's local-seasonal Fair Food Farmstand would be ready to double its size? That Talula's Table would soon be having a baby sister cafe in Kennett Square?

So the list is wide open: Somewhere out there is a snowy new goat cheese. A trove of Pennsylvania Dutch pie plates. A pizza place hot to take on Trenton's esteemed tomato pies.

It's only January, and already the Carversville Inn is looking doubtful. Next year, maybe.