April 7-13, 2005

food

Meat Markets

FLESH OBSESSED: The Italian roast beef sandwich served at Tony Luke's Beef & Beer Sports Bar. Photo By: Michael T. Regan

At four new purveyors of pork, beef or barbecue, dinner comes in any color as long as it's red.

by A.D. Amorosi

In Philadelphia, where Brasserie Perrier opens finger-food cafes in clothing stores and where Continental makes cotton candy a pricey delicacy, it seems we've grown up and out of our love of the trashy and the splashy. We've learned to embrace the finery of four-star dining. Dag. Maybe even five.

So, now that we've done that much can we eat? A lot? Live up to our agenda as the fattest city in America — but without looking like total slobs, without acting Wing Bowl disgusting?

Four new local establishments think so. The delicate dining experience has finally met its match in a comfort-food renaissance where quality and quantity is matched by affordability.

In the world of "more-is-more," no one enjoys serving much more like sandwich king Tony Luke. Luke Sr.'s newest emporium — the industrially designed Tony Luke's Beef & Beer Sports Bar — has come up with the utmost in meat: a 3-pound burger called the Big Daddy Luke. Selling for $20 a pop, the 48-ounce Daddy isn't necessarily meant to be supped and slurped on by one person. Rather, tables of four to six have been known to take on the mammoo of meat. Yet, Luke offers single-serving competitive eaters (a veritable Philly sect since the Wing Bowl) a challenge: If a solo eater can down the Big Daddy within an hour, they get a picture on the Wall of Fame and an "I Ate The Whole Thing" T-shirt.

For those who don't want the shirt, just the extra-large bib, there's the Smoked Joint. It has become a haven of the heaving helping where downtownies chow gluttonously on barbecue deli goods like pastrami and slow-smoked brisket, succulent taffy-pulled pork, oversized chicken wings, and thick, tender ribs with pink insides that fume in hickory smokers from Texas (Mesquite, Tejas, son) for over a dozen hours, all smothered in Smoked J's special sauce. Do you think that meal fits conveniently on a tiny plate without a mess?

And Smoked Joint's newest challenger, Famous Dave's of America, the Louisiana-based chain with its just-opened Columbus Commons eatery, plans 10 more locations just like it for the Philadelphia area. Dave's might not be as tastefully put together as the Smoked Joint, but if you're splashing sauce against your molars, you might not be worrying about the elegantly appointed furniture.

Then there's Porky & Porkie. Situated off the corner of 11th and Washington streets within eyesight of that block's pricey Lofts at Bella Vista, this newest of smokeless barbecue all-you-can-sup buffets is leagues above its neighbors.

One: It offers a bar with specialty cocktails like the lychee watermelon martini with vodka and fresh lychees. Zoinks.

Two: Its in-table Sinai silver grills and exhausts offer individual barbecue choices. The Korean menu of items like kimchi, chun yup (ox tripe), samkyupsal (bacon), maewun ojingeo bulgogi (spicy thin-sliced squid) is balanced out by hot pots and the marinated raw foods that line the P&P buffet. They also serve bulgogi, a highly stylized Korean signature dish whose quality rib-eye meat, according to the owners, is in league with the best of this city's restaurants. All this is done by the mysteriously titled head chef, "Mrs. Joing," who cooks specialties like junbok jook (abalone and rice porridge), boyang jungol (black lamb and vegetable casserole), denjang jigae (soybean, shrimp and tofu stew) and nakgop jungol (octopus and beef tripe). "It's straight-up Korean," says the general manager, Thomas Tran, of the menu.

And three: It's named after an e.e. cummings poem. "The owner, Kheim Tran, thought — for a poem — that it had a funny, ironic twist in its relation to our food," says GM Tran (no relation). "Plus, it's catchy. [If] we ever franchise, which is part of the plan, that'll come in handy."

A year and a half in the making, the 3,800 square feet housing Porky & Porkie is clean, wide, pinkish and bright, with a scrubbed look that both Trans deem absolutely necessary for their constantly replenishing buffets. "While the dining experience, the menu itself, has a trendy, family feel to it — something one would do in their own back yard — the food itself must be the freshest."

Thomas Tran knows well the ins-and-outs of trendy, having worked for Susanna Foo, the Ritz-Carlton and Striped Bass across the last decade. He knows that the trend toward family-style eating and value-for-the-dollar is as current a foodie ideal as eating more whole grains. This may go against the young professional ideal of tapas menus on the run, but screw that. Young professionals, like those who've purchased homes in the area for upwards of $300,000 (or more for those lofts), want to eat a lot and cheaply but with tasteful decor and specialty items.

"Our plan was to combine the notion of fine dining and family eating with affordability," says Tran. "Make the food stylish and cost efficient." For $15 (dinner) and $10 (lunch), you can fill up and not worry about breaking the bank.

So eat already.

Porky & Porkie Restaurant and Bar 1111 S. 11th St., 215-468-8389 The Smoked Joint: A Barbecue Experience 1420 Locust St., 215-732-7500 Tony Luke's Beef & Beer Sports Bar 26 E. Oregon Ave., 215-465-1901 Famous Dave's of America 1936 S. Columbus Blvd., 215-339-0339

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