Poor Richard's Scorecard

Imagine What the Lower Merion School District Would Have Done if Blake Robbins Had Been Eating M&Ms

The most startling information to emerge from the well-publicized lawsuit filed by a Lower Merion family this week against the township school district is not that:

• School officials are alleged to have remotely activated a laptop webcam to spy on a student. (School officials are charter members of the Don't You Guys Have Anything Better to Do? Club.)
• Parents reacted to a perceived slight by filing a suit in federal court. (It's Lower Merion, the Official Home of Helicopter Parents.)
  
• County and federal law enforcement are investigating. (Grandstanding DAs and feds sniffing around a sensational story? Who'd have thought?)
• The story has gone global. (The only thing missing is sex, which would have sent the news interplanetary.)

No, the most surprising facet of the story is this:

New Pennsylvania Beer Legislation Makes Sense and Helps Consumers; Of Course It Has No Chance

That Pennsylvania continues to be one of the few states whose government controls the sale of alcoholic beverages is astounding, given its political makeup. The urban, cosmopolitan populations comprising the Commonwealth's eastern and western reaches should be sufficiently affluent and politically savvy to influence the political process to offer greater choice and better prices. The God-and-guns crowd in the center of the state should be aghast at the undeniably socialist infrastructure that currently exists. Yet we're still stuck with state stores and beer distributors.

Wing Bowl: Doing More Harm to Philadelphia's Image Than a Thousand Snowballs Aimed at Santa

To criticize Wing Bowl as a civic embarrassment is to risk being seen as a sour killjoy, someone too highfalutin to appreciate such commoners' fare as Buffalo wings and young hotties who like to take their top off. Well, guess what? I like those things--like 'em a lot, actually--but I can't stand Wing Bowl, the annual wing-eating contest held earlier today in South Philly.

Critics Call 'The Late Show with Cliff Lee' a Smash Success

Um ... Wow.

While Philadelphia slept, Cliff Lee made his first start as a Phillie, and all he did was throw five and a third innings of no-hit ball, notch a pair of hits himself, and shackle the Giants with a dazzling, four-hit, complete-game performance. Phillies 5, Giants 1, and the only downside is that after a terrific dinner at Jose Garces's Old City tapas place, Amada, I was way too tired to attempt a viewing of the late action from the West Coast. Can you imagine the reception Lee is going to get when he takes the hill at Citizens Bank Park next week? | PRS

A Return to South Street, Still Funky but With More Upscale Options for the Discerning (Read: Older) Diner

The Headhouse Square/South Street scene was a significant place in my coming-of-age period, but since getting married and becoming a dad, I've ventured into town for social outings far less often. When I do, it's usually to Rittenhouse Square or Old City, with the occasional Northern Liberties trip thrown in. That made last Saturday's return to 2nd and Lombard that much more fun: I was able to see how an area I recall with great fondness has changed--and remained the same.

Somebody Get This Man a Bellyfiller, and Fast

He is said to make in the neighborhood of 5 million bucks a year to do nothing more than elevate atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, so you'd think Chris Matthews could afford to buy himself a decent lunch. Granted, the City Avenue dining scene, while much improved in recent years, is hardly what one would call a regional culinary jewel. But still--the best the MSNBC yakker could do after delivering Saint Joseph's commencement address Saturday was Popeye's?

Philly Foodies Finding Options Aplenty, Including a Mexican Gem in West Philly

Craig Laban's front-pager in Sunday's Inquirer was well timed. Writing about the impending closure of Susanna Foo, the Inky's restaurant critic noted that while Walnut Street's venerable Restaurant Row may be losing its status as Philadelphia's gastronomic center, foodies are increasingly able to find a rich array of options all over the city. Having dined in University City's stellar Distrito on Saturday night, I can't argue. From Northern Liberties to Fairmount, South Philly to West Philly, ambitious new places are joining with long-running establishments in the creation of a kind of foodie diaspora spreading culinary joy throughout the land.

Next Time We'll Stick to Flinger's or Chotchkie's

All we wanted was a dinner out with the kids at a nonchain restaurant, a place that didn't have old license plates and pennants of fake teams hanging on the wall, that didn't have 19-year-old college sophomores taking our order, that had something more than burgers and wings on the menu.

Serves us right. From now on, when the girls are in tow, we're a Chili's family. Message received.

Back Open for Business

Catching up on Philadelphia's busy week after returning from vacation

What the hell?

I go on vacation for just one week -- one goddamn week -- and the Phillies go in the tank, 3 cans Mendte, the Sixers draft a coaster, the Flyers resign a key young player, and Daulerio takes over Deadspin.

It's enough to make a guy want to stay home.

Until he remembers the taste of the lobster roll at the Sesuit Harbor Cafe, the view teeing off under the windmill at the Highlands in Truro, the sight of his daughters dipping their feet in Cape Cod Bay, the experience of actually reading, cover to cover, a work of fiction containing not one illustration, and the smell of the water while strolling through the lapping tide at 10 at night. And then he realizes that the world can go to hell in a handbasket so long as he can swig Smuttynose Shoals Pale Ale while cleaning up in the beach house's outdoor shower. | PRS

Citizens Bank Pork

Tony Luke's, McNally's get deserved shout-outs in today's Times

The New York Times sent its cheap-eats restaurant reviewer to various baseball stadiums to assess ballpark food, and he filed this mostly accurate report from Philadelphia:

... [T]he prize for vernacular food probably goes to Citizens Bank Park, the four-year-old home of the Philadelphia Phillies. Most of the action takes place in Ashburn Alley (named for the Hall of Famer Richie Ashburn), a brick promenade behind center field where fans can practically hang over the visitors’ bullpen or dine under the giant Liberty Bell sign that lights up and rocks back and forth when the Phillies hit a home run.

Ashburn Alley is home to hoagies, Chickie & Pete’s crab fries (French fries dusted with Old Bay seasoning) and two of the city’s respected cheese steak purveyors, Rick’s Steaks and Tony Luke’s. Tony Luke’s had the better cheese steak of the two (though their other locations are notably superior). Even better is Tony Luke’s juicy roasted pork and provolone sandwich [see photo above; dare you not to start salivating], dressed with tender broccoli rabe, as good a meat sandwich as there is in the majors.

Also not to be missed is the Schmitter sandwich from McNally’s, an outpost of an 87-year-old Germantown tavern at the end of Ashburn Alley. It’s not named for the Phillies legend Mike Schmidt, but rather, I was told, after a long-gone McNally’s customer who always ordered it with Schmidt’s Beer, the now-defunct Pennsylvania brand.

The Schmitter packs, from top to bottom: melted cheese, a generous squirt of a “special sauce,” griddled salami, more cheese, sliced tomato, fried onions, griddled steak and another slice of cheese, just to help keep the beef in place. It was the unhealthiest thing I encountered on my cholesterol-gathering trip, an unholy alliance of meats, cheese and mayonnaise tucked into a Kaiser roll. It was also impossible to stop eating after the first bite.

Hard to argue with any of that, really, though of course McNally's is not in Germantown but Chestnut Hill, on Germantown Avenue. That aside, I do have one other quibble: For a city that prides itself on certain specific culinary offerings, it's a travesty that the only soft pretzels served at Citizens Bank Park are the abominations known as SuperPretzels. The country's very best soft pretzels, crisp on the outside, chewy on the inside, with just the right amount of salt to pack a little zing, are baked here in Philadelphia, but we have to settle for teeth-rattling, flavorless twists of barely warmed, iron-like dough? Please.

And, hello, when is anyone going to wake up and realize that there's a mint of money to be made by selling TastyKakes at Citizens Bank Park? | PRS