Frjtz At Frjtz

Frjtz is a belgian fries, crepes, and mussels joint in the Mission. They also have another location in Hayes Valley. It's a casual place on Valencia. You order your food, get a number, and they bring it out to you. They have beers and booze and other food too.

A grimbergen. We all agreed that this beer was super tasty. It's belgian, and I believe this was a blonde, but as we can all see, it's quite brown. And yummy.

They provide carafes of water so you can hydrate yourself. A enjoyed a hoegaarden while I took advantage of a passion fruit soju mixed drink. Fruity and strong. Yeeha!

The frites! Extremely thick cut, which surprised me. Hot and crispy. With the large, you get your choice of two dips. Amongst us, we picked thai chili ketchup, white truffle artichoke ketchup, parmesan peppercorn ranch, and spicy yogurt peanut. Here's the low down... thai chili - ok and spicy, artichoke - amazing, ranch - eh, it's ranch, and the peanut - thick and peanutty. I think we all agreed that theh artichoke was the best of the bunch. These freis were great. And not greasy either. I was picking the crumbs...

A got the mussels, the thai kind. She loved it. And the leftover broth was enjoyed by all. She even got extra bread to sop it all up.

The rest of us got sandwiches. The sisley - roasted pear, cheddar, gorgonzola, chipotle remoulade, and avocado on focaccia.

The rest of us got sandwiches. The basquiat - grilled chicken, pesto mayo, caramelized onions, swiss, avocado on focaccia.

The velasquez - prosciutto, mozzarella, roasted pineapple, roasted pepper mayo on focaccia. All sandwiches were served with a spring mix salad. Good food with good friends. Not exactly cheap, but worth it! I probably drank too much... ha! Ok, not here, but definitely at Gestalt where we spent the rest of the night...

Revisiting Monk's

It seems like I've been visiting a lot of places lately that I haven't been to in a gazillion years. It happened again when I went to Monk's. I think I've been to Monk's a couple of times. Once was awhile ago and I remember eating something perhaps rabbit-y, trying fois gras for the first time, and also trying the frites. I also remember coming here and trying hoegaarden for the first time. Come to think of it, I've had a bit of firsts here!

We looked at the menu beforehand and both agreed that we wanted stew. They have a belgian beef and beer stew made with local grass fed beef, slow cooked in Chimay Grand Reserve with local root vegetables. How can you not love the sound of that? We told them we were going to share it, so they brought it out in separate bowls and gave us strange but tasty rolls each. I can't really describe the roll, it seemed to have raisins in it, but it wasn't sweet enough to be raisin. Does anyone know? In any case, the stew was delicious! I wish we'd had a giant vat of it, it was so good.
We also got an order of the pommes frites. You have to! The waiter forgot about them, so we didn't end up getting them until after the stew, but that was ok. We didn't mind, we just ate them along with the additional beers. I love these fries, but I just wish they were longer pieces of fry, instead of little tiny stubs. Otherwise, I still love these. It comes with their famous bourbon mayo. Monk's is definitely a beer place, so get ready to drink. Since I was still sick, I didn't really drink much, but the little sips I had were certainly tasty.

We had a great server. He was almost overly friendly and helpful? We started talking about JJ Abrams for some reason and he started going off about Lost and the Star Trek movie and whether we'd seen the trailer. Then later on, he brought over his iPhone and made us watch the trailer on his iPhone. It was bizarre, yet it amused us. We appreciated his enthusiasm!

The Chocolate Weekend

What did I get for valentine's day this year? I got sick is what I got. HA! Not sure where it came from, but it struck with a vengeance on Friday, dang it! So I didn't really feel good enough to go eat somewhere. And I'm not really into dining with crowds on a day where there's inflated fixed priced meals, so it was probably a good thing anyway.

I did end up with some gifts of chocolate on this weekend though, both completely unexpected. The first was a box of adorable truffles from choxie. Choxie is the target house brand chocolate. It came in this adorable box that actually had slide out tiers in it. Yes, it was fancy. And the chocolates are delish.

I also got a gift from M when she got back from Belgium. Have you ever had Neuhaus chocolates? Yes, they're belgian, and yes, they rock.
If you can find it, you'll love it.

Homemade Belgian

Last Saturday, E turned 40. Whoa. The big 4-0. To celebrate, M threw him a Belgian themed par-tay. After all, he's Belgian. Makes sense, eh? For starters, a smoked salmon appetizer on pumpernickel mini toasts. I'm not that into smoked salmon normally, but I dug this stuff. I think it helped that I'd fasted all day in preparation for this gorgefest.

The main course on the menu was forced meat chicken. E had been craving this dish. What does forced meat chicken mean? It's chicken, stuffed with a ground meat type stuffing. I'm not sure what was in it, but it included meat as well as pistachios. And it was tasty whatever else was in it. The chicken was cooked very well, not dry at all, and not pink!

Also served was a pureed carrot souffle. This was light and delicate, and didn't really taste like carrots much. That's good, because I'm not a fan of cooked carrots. This was cooked in ramekins in a water bath. Way too complicated for me. This was served with a butter sauce to put on top.

M also cooked up cranberries and oranges and then served it in orange halves. Sweet, tangy, and delightful.



There were a few vegetarians in our midst, so M also prepared a tempeh salad. This wasn't quite belgian. It had tempeh, mangos, and pickled red onions, with a vinaigrette. I loved it! I'm gonna definitely get the recipe for this one.



And the piece de resistance? Belgian waffles! One of the guests brought a waffle maker over, and made fresh hot piping waffles. He had the special sugar for these, which had been shipped to him from Belgium. It was an unexpected highlight to end this fabulous meal.

Zot - Mostly Looks...

Zot is a fairly new Belgian restaurant to grace the Philadelphian scene. We weren't sure, but we think it opened earlier this year. Located on an unfortunate block of Lombard near South Street, it serves "belgian food by a belgian chef". The place is very attractive. You can definitely tell they spent a lot of money on the construction and decoration. Located in an old rowhouse, there's a wine bar and piano in the first room, the regular bar in the second room, and then just dining at the back.



We got there fairly early on a Sunday, so for awhile, we were the only patrons in the place. Everybody had a beer before we were seated, but I was not partaking that evening. They do have a tremendous beer selection. They'd better, after all, it is belgian. The tableware was also attractive. The water glasses slant sideways. The silverware is freakishly long and different.

I and L ordered the pate as an appetizer. It was served on a piece of 12x12 ceramic tile. This is the first time I'd ever witnessed anything like this. Although cute, honestly, it was much too big for the small tables. The tables were already overrun with crooked glasses and long skinny silverware. The tile was just too much real estate for not that much food. The pate also did not come with enough bread/crackers. And while they did give us complimentary bread, it was gone very quickly and they weren't very good about giving us more. We had to keep asking. You'll see that as a running theme here.

I went with the orval onion soup as an appetizer. I enjoyed this very much. It's pretty much their take on french onion soup, but made with orval beer and with different cheeses on top. It was strongly flavored, yet as you can see, a bit too charred on top.

For main courses, the options are few: a selection of mussels, a selection of various meats, or a selection of fish. And with each of these, you can pick the sauce or the ingredients for how it is prepared. D ordered the monkfish. The green sauce is the spinach garlic sauce. With meat/fish entrees, you also get to pick a starch. D picked the stoemp bacon. Stoemp is basically like mashed potatoes, but also includes other root vegetables, and in this case, also bacon. The fish and the sauce were quite good.

L was a brave one. She went with the sweetbreads. I forget what kind of sauce she picked. She picked the stoemp with leeks. I'd never had sweetbreads before, so this was a real treat. To my surprise, I liked it!

I's selection was the duck breast. I believe he got this with the choron sauce. Choron is like hollandaise or bernaise, but with some tomato puree. The duck was extremely well cooked. I'm not a duck fan myself, but my little bite was scrumptious. I's stoemp of choice was with carrots.

So that left me, and I went with mussels. I picked the "snob" mussels, which are made with lobster bisque, cream, and cognac. I only got the 1/2 kilo but there were plenty of mussels for me. And they weren't puny either. There was a good mix of sizes and some were quite large. I enjoyed them a lot. In fact, I really enjoyed all the food that night.

Now here's where the problems began. I also ordered a side of the pommes frites. But did I get them? No, at least not right away. All of our food came out, everybody else dining in the restaurant got their pommes frites, but I did not. So I asked for them. And then I waited some more. The mussels were soon all eaten. I asked a second time. Then they finally came out. Did they apologize? Half-assed, yes. Our server joked "well, they're good for dipping!" since all I had left was the broth from the mussels. As if making light of the situation that I did not get the food I ordered until after everyone was done with all their food and until I'd asked about it twice, would make me feel better about the situation. She was so wrong.

So the service is lacking. Seriously. They don't fill your water much. They do the first time and then leave wine bottles filled with water on the table so you can refill. But they don't check to see if you need any more. Like I said before, they also don't give you more bread. They also don't really bother to check if your food is ok. And they certainly don't seem to care if you get the food that you order. And don't get me started on the check. I don't know how long we had to wait until they picked up our check, and getting change, even that was a hassle.

It's a pretty restaurant. It has pretty servers. The food is pretty. But really, it's missing something. I'm not sure what it is, but it's just too much show and not enough substance. It's all very pretty, but underneath it all, you see some homeliness. They definitely need to step up their game because Zot could be so much better. It has so much potential, but it has to follow through. Otherwise, you're going to keep reading reviews like mine.