• Joe’s Peking Duck Original 1984 is the review this week, and Adam Erace finds the menu to be puzzlingly all over the place. Joseph Poon is given “props for creativity, but so much of the fused fare seems grounded in arbitrary experimentation rather than the tenets of good taste.” Oh my. A lot of the menu is not resoundingly successful, but the one thing that MUST be (that would be the Peking duck) is, which is a relief. There is something “mysterious” about the whole operation, including the level of succulence achieved by the duck, but Erace doesn’t ask questions about the latter.
• Beer Lass is all about the “mix-a-six” in this week’s column — specifically, a six composed primarily of Christmas ales, or at least ones that seem Christmas-y. The one outlier is Buffalo Bill’s Blueberry Oatmeal Stout, which she describes as a “a summer fruit to splash right in old man winter’s face.” Sounds nice!
• And in closing, oysters on the half shell are delicious. Okay, there’s a little more to it than that! People love local oysters, and for Philadelphians, that tends to mean Cape May Salts, which can be found at Pub & Kitchen and Bar Ferdinand, to name a couple options.
Also, this week is Philadelphia Weekly’s food issue, and it’s all about how to navigate the gnarled highway that is eating well in the face of budget constraints. It is well worth reading in its entirety.
