{"id":1120,"date":"2019-09-15T12:36:07","date_gmt":"2019-09-15T16:36:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gastropoda.com\/trails\/?p=1120"},"modified":"2019-09-15T12:44:49","modified_gmt":"2019-09-15T16:44:49","slug":"ride-south","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gastropoda.com\/trails\/2019\/09\/ride-south\/","title":{"rendered":"Ride south"},"content":{"rendered":"

I had high hopes of listing five reasons to Amtrak to Philadelphia right now, but the weeks Twittered by and now the phenomenal Bill Viola at the Barnes Foundation has closed and the great \u201cSouls Grown Deep\u201d at the art museum is gone, too. So here are three: The Constitution\u2019s Center\u2019s new permanent exhibition on Reconstruction<\/a> is vaut le voyage, not least for the potholder reading \u201cany holder but slave holder.\u201d As James Baldwin said, not every problem that\u2019s confronted can be solved, but no problem can be solved unless it\u2019s confronted, and this is a huge step forward toward understanding how American slid back into its bad old ways after the Civil War. It actually equates \u201cGone With the Wind\u201d with \u201cBirth of a Nation\u201d in messing up people\u2019s heads.) Then there\u2019s High Street on Market, right nearby, where we had another excellent lunch (gazpacho and a good and gooey grilled cheese). And I\u2019m looking forward to our inevitable next trip so we can eat again at Alimentari, the sleek, airy cafe Di Bruno Bros. just opened upstairs from the outstanding food shop that\u2019s one of our regular stops on every trip, just to gawk and maybe buy a bottle of Italian wine you won\u2019t find even in the best state store. We ducked in for a quick lunch on the way to 30th Street Station for avocado and smoked salmon tartines with Calabrian chilies on Lost Bread Co.\u2019s finest; asparagus and zucchini pizza, and the one underwhelming dish, \u201cThe House of (Grilled) Cheese),\u201d a skillet of raclette and taleggio teamed with San Marzano tomato dip. Call it Italian queso fundido and wish it hadn\u2019t been roasted to rubber. Cucumber-watermelon hard seltzer from Two Robbers was the talk of the table, though. <\/span><\/p>\n

This trip we also indulged in dinner at Big Fish, at our hosts\u2019 recommendation, and it put the din in dinner. (The server was not amused when one friend asked if she went home with a headache.) The place is cute and tiny, and the food was good if overwrought to the point where the main ingredient on every plate felt peripheral to all the frou-frous. Because it\u2019s BYOB, entree prices were in the high $30s. And I was glad the H&J innkeepers admitted they were also underwhelmed by SpiceFinch, where they had had a spectacular meal. The server was overwhelmed, for starters (this being a hotel resto). And the food was just adequate. Suraya was a dinner disappointment on our previous trip, so maybe the message is we should get ourselves to Zahav? <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I had high hopes of listing five reasons to Amtrak to Philadelphia right now, but the weeks Twittered by and now the phenomenal Bill Viola at the Barnes Foundation has closed and the great \u201cSouls Grown Deep\u201d at the art museum is gone, too. So here are three: The Constitution\u2019s Center\u2019s new permanent exhibition on… Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[139],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-philadelphia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gastropoda.com\/trails\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gastropoda.com\/trails\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gastropoda.com\/trails\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gastropoda.com\/trails\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gastropoda.com\/trails\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1120"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/gastropoda.com\/trails\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1120\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1122,"href":"https:\/\/gastropoda.com\/trails\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1120\/revisions\/1122"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gastropoda.com\/trails\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gastropoda.com\/trails\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gastropoda.com\/trails\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}