Add Food To The Mix

I'm changing the color for part of this post to try something out. I'm experimenting with the idea of using text color to denote topic. In this case, the green text means I am talking about restaurants or eating. I'll use red for movies, and traditional white for music and sports. I'm going to start to use this page for restaurant evaluations. Everyone's a critic, and it's feedback that makes any good operation better.

Back in February I was in Atlantic City for a bachelor's party, and had the opportunity to eat at P.F. Chang's China Bistro. I love chain restaurants, if for no other reason than the fact that you can always see how they are doing financially. I had eaten in a P.F. Chang's back in 2000 in Chicago, but the details remain fuzzy. Not this time. We were a party of 6 or 7, we were seated within 15 minutes on a Friday night around 9:00. Our service pair (maybe one was a trainee, I wasn't sure) remained on top of drinks and pre-bussing all night. The atmosphere was electric for a chain establishment, it felt like I was in a Cheesecake Factory almost. The food was outstanding, I had a Peanut Chicken Salad. When judging the cuisine at a chain, I believe you can only give a little weight to the actual food makeup (ingredients, sauces), and need to put more weight on the execution (was it hot enough?, portion size, value for the dollar). The fun in eating at chains is that there is such competition, and it is not necessarily direct, head-to-head competition. My salad was delicious, huge, with great flavor. I enjoyed a glass of Riesling with the salad, and a vegetable potsticker before the main course. **** out of 5.

I had a lot of fun watching the end of the Flyers game on Wednesday night. Scoring the tying goal with less than a second to play and then winning in a shootout makes for great television. The Flyers' GM, Bob Clarke, took a small beating in the local press over the moves (or lack thereof) that he made at the deadline. I like what Clarke did. The strong rumor was that the Flyers could have gotten Mark Recchi for a package involving Pittsburgh native R.J. Umberger, and I think the Flyers were wise to hang on to the young Umberger, who has great value down the road as a confident piece of a winning team. Denis Gauthier is a Clarkie-kind of guy, hard hitter, a little slow, but I'm open minded to see what can happen. When Clarke brought in Markov and Malakov back in 03-04, the moves were scrutinized but those two guys really helped the team down the stretch and in the playoffs.