F had sent us a link to a byob sushi place weeks ago, and we finally were able to make plans to check it out. A fairly newish spot, open since February, Fat Salmon is a sleek and modern place in Washington Square. The decor actually reminds me of Morimoto’s a bit, probably due to the waviness in some of the design elements. All of the furnishings are clean and white. On a weekday evening, the place was pretty packed. Since it was a byob, M brought along a japanese cocktail concoction. It was delicious and strong and had me at first sip.

I love the standard green salad with the ginger dressing that is offered by pretty much any and every sushi restaurant. But not all of the ginger dressings are up to par. I’m happy to say that the green salad here was one of the best. There’s even cucumber and green bell pepper slices and the dressing is zesty and amazing. And it’s a good sized salad. The miso soup is perfectly nice as well.

On the right, that slop of mess, is the Rolling Fire. It is a roll with shrimp tempura and cucumber, topped with broiled spicy scallop sauce and some imitation crab meat. And oh, it’s like totally spicy. Man, it surprised me. You can see that it’s sort of sitting in a red pool of firey oil. It’s still good, but it is quite the shocker. So be careful! On the left is Mr. Shiro, one of my favorites of the evening. It is eel tempura, avocado, crunch w/spicy sauce on the inside, topped with broiled spicy white tuna and tomato.

Here is the Dragonfly Roll, which actually does look like a dragon. It has shrimp tempura, cucumber, and spicy sauce on the inside, and is topped with eel, avocado, and eel sauce. There’s nothing about this roll that anyone could dislike. It’s great.

On top is the White Forest, my absolute favorite roll of the evening. It was shrimp tempura on the inside with spicy sauce (you could also get salmon tempura), topped with a heap of pico de gallo and our cream. It was like a sushi salsa roll, and I absolutely went crazy for it. On the bottom is the Lost Rainbow, with spicy crab stick, scallion, and masago on the inside, topped with tuna, salmon, white fish, ikura in sesame soy sauce, and cucumber. This would have been really good, but the ikura on top was super salty and it kind of ruined it for me. It overpowered everything when it could have been a nice compliment. So it turned out to be my least favorite roll of the evening. All in all, this was great food with great friends. Fat Salmon is a nice find. Their main thing seems to be crazy rolls. Their menu had dozens. So if you like a great variety of special rolls, then this is the place for you!

It had been awhile since E and I had gotten together for our sunday night dinner adventures. When she suggested banh mi at pho & cafe viet huong, you know I couldn’t say no! I’ve been to viet huong countless times, but have never had their banh mi. And E had never had banh mi before, ever, so this was going to be a fun treat. Since this was her first banh mi she went safe with the grilled chicken banh mi. It comes nicely wrapped in paper so that everything stays inside and does not fall apart. E was a big fan of her first vietnamese hoagie. How can you not like this? It’s really the best of east meets west.

It was hot, so I didn’t necessarily want hot food, and I found the thought of the stewed beef with bread intriguing. I thought it would be a banh mi with the stewed meat inside. Oops! It turned out to be a bowl of stewed beef (a la the same beef from pho bo kho) with a toasted baguette. Well, I didn’t mind this at all! It’s like taking all the delicious hunks of meat from your pho bo kho and eating that with an amazingly warm and crusty piece of bread. There’s tons of broth to dip the bread into or you can even make little sandwiches yourself. We also got a couple of smoothies, because it was so muggy out. E tried the avocado smoothie, per my recommendation, and she really liked it. I had strawberry and it was perfect in every way. Service was speedy and efficient, as usual!

Pho & Cafe Viet Huong
1110 Washington Ave # 2A
Philadelphia, PA

There’s a pretty fancy schmancy food court at the lower floor of the shiny Comcast Center. Yelp had a Spring Feastival there the other week and I got to take a gander, before it was open to the public. All the vendors were out showcasing their delicious wares. Termini Bros had major cannoli action going on. And even though it was somewhat still morning-ish, I had to try it. Nice.
Speaking of Termini Brow, they also had one of their cake dudes decorating a cake. He had just begun, but it was already looking quite lovely.

Speaking of desserts, gelato. The lemoncello one was amazing!

Of course there was sushi, courtesy of Tokyo Sushi.

And while we’re on an asiany bent, some fresh spring rolls from Sook Hee Produce. They had various ones – chicken, shrimp, tofu, whatever would float your spring roll boat. These were pretty good, except for the fact that they put celery in it. Stop this immediately! Celery should not be in here at all. It ruins it! Thank you, now off my soapbox.

Under the “C” Seafood had some shrimpies going on.

Here are some deep fried somethings from Mexican Post. These were particularly terrible.

Di Bruno Bros had some cheese out and about!

But they truly won over my heart because they were slicing up some prosciutto. It was amazing. I saw what they were selling it for, and damn, I probably ate like $20 worth of cured pork. And well, I could have eaten more, if they would have let me. As my brother says, if you have the option, always eat the value!