Tendentious

Dinner tonight with my old neighborhood friend Bill and two other guys at Morimoto, which is co-owned by one of the Iron Chefs, at 7th and Chestnut in downtown Philly. It's as amazingly yuppified as you might think, with decor from a Kubrick movie, with dim-to-dark overhead lighting, most of the light coming from the inner-lit tables, which changed colors constantly but gradually. The help all dressed in black Viet Cong pajamas. It was a fun, extravagant evening and I spent too much money and tried things I'd never had before, like sea urchin and Kobe beef. I got an appetizer where they made tofu right at the table except that they couldn't get it right and had to do it again and ended up taking it off the bill (it wasn't bad though with the carrot-soy sauce they served with it).

Morimoto wasn't there, but another famous TV chef who I had also never heard of, Mario Batali was at a table across the room.