go west, young girl!

I live on the eastern side of Broad Street, which is considered the "middle" of the city, even though there are only 13 blocks to the river on the East side and 30 to the river on the West side.  Nevertheless, I was discussing this with a future colleague in a short pre-work meeting last week: it is this huge, big deal to cross Broad Street.

There is no good reason for that, especially when you could easily walk from Washington Square to Rittenhouse Square (the two big parks on either side) in about 20 minutes, maybe 30 if you really take your time and all the lights are against you and there's too much traffic to jay-walk.  A phenomenon that I've noticed, though, is that your idea of distance adjusts to where you live.  So, when I lived in the furthest reaches of what could be called, with any kind of integrity, the Main Line Philadelphia suburbs, I had no issue driving 30 miles into the city for entertainment or to visit friends 17 miles away.  When I moved into a part of Philadelphia that could not possibly be considered center city, I had no issue driving into center city but I was less inclined to drive outside the city to visit friends as I had been when I was in the suburbs and everything was far away.  When I moved into a busy part of center city, I found it a struggle to ever go anywhere that required the use of my car (other than work, of course).

So there you go; I stick to "my" side of Broad Street most of the time.  However, now that I'm dependent on public transit and since I will be working on the "other side," I'm branching out a bit and seeing what the West side of Broad has to offer.  The answer?  A great deal, actually - Rittenhouse Square area really    has the best shopping, boutique-wise in all of Philadelphia.  You can imagine it, if you wish, as a marginally more affordable East Coast Rodeo Drive.  I'm not a huge shopper, but when I do, I prefer smaller boutiques to department stores for many reasons I'll probably go into at another time, possibly on another blog.  Anyway, although most of my favorite restaurants are within blocks of my home (which was one reason I chose to live here, honestly), I love crossing Broad to visit Williams-Sonoma, MAC, Barnes & Noble, Anthropologie, and.... Pure Fare.

Yup, that's pretty much where all of this has been leading to.  We had Pasta Della California from Veganomicon for dinner tonight, and I've made it plenty enough that it really wasn't all that interesting to share about, so I'm going to focus on lunch today.

It's a relatively small joint but it has clean lines and an airy feel, since the wall to the street is completely made of windows, floor to ceiling, just about.  On each end there is a service area - one for drinks and one for food, and then there is a wall with two or three refrigerated shelves stocked with ready-to-eat food.  One thing I love about Pure Fare is that everything is labeled - ingredients, calories, price, and in terms of their baked goods, whether it is vegan or gluten-free.  I think that is wonderful!

In the center of the room, there is a long communal table with swinging stools.  I have nearly fallen over every time I've sat down, but I think it's great that you can adjust where you sit without having to scrape the legs of a heavy chair across the hard floor.  There are also two bars against the windows, looking out onto 21st Street, but I wanted to sit at the table.

I mean, why wouldn't I want to sit in front of a centerpiece of flowers and asparagus?  I have to admit, although it did make a charming display, I was sad that the asparagus was a centerpiece and not a side dish.  Anyway, how did I come to have my lunch there?

Glad you asked.  Today was the last day I was covered by the insurance my former employer covered and there will be a bit of a gap before I am covered at my new job - 90 days, to be exact.  I am generally of good health and Mister is generally stubborn about seeing a doctor, so we've forgone COBRA's generous offer to take an entire paycheck away from me to cover our health insurance until I am covered again.  Regardless, I wanted to have my long overdue eye exam before losing my insurance, so I went to a nice little place on Rittenhouse Square and was planning to go to Trader Joe's to pick up a few things as long as I was allll the way over there.  I remembered that Pure Fare is the only place in Philadelphia who serves Blue Bottle Coffee and I was in the mood for some of that espresso-like brew.  As I walked, I realized I was a bit hungry as well, so I thought I'd get a little something from their pastry case.

As I waited for my pour-over to drip through the filter and into my cup, I inspected my options....which were, in fact, very little somethings.  I opted for the vegan brownie because they're awesome but mine always end up too dry for my tastes and this one looked nice and fudgy.  It was.  Regardless, it was just a little bugger, so I scoped out the salads, too.

This is the Falafel Salad, although I'm not completely certain why it was called that.  It had whole chickpeas, but the crumbly stuff that looked like it should be mashed up falafel patties is actually bulgur wheat.  Very good bulgur wheat, but not falafel.  Regardless, I'm not complaining - this was the best salad I have eaten in a long time.  I'm really not much of a salad person, honestly, but this salad was absolutely exceptional.  There were two especially memorable things about my salad:

First, do you see those perfect, red cherry tomatoes?  Never have I ever had such aptly named vegeta-fruits.  They were incredibly sweet, so much that I didn't believe they were actually tomatoes.  There were also slices of cucumber and green bell pepper, along with the bulgur, chickpeas, and perfectly cut up lettuce.

Second, do you see that awesome green dressing?  When I was surveying my food options, I saw a quinoa salad that I will probably try someday (since I will be working walking distance from this delightful foodery - man, that will never get old!), and a lentil hummus sandwich that was also quite tempting, and finally, my falafel salad.  Since it's normally a given that salad should be vegan unless the title expressly states otherwise (you know, like Grilled Chicken Caesar, or something similar with an animal in the name), the salads and sandwiches were not labeled vegan or not.  I asked the nice young lady at the food counter if the falafel salad was vegan and she said it was, other than the yogurt-based dressing.  I made a comment on how I could just leave that off and she asked if I would like a different dressing, which is how I came to possess the blissfully verdant and eye-poppingly tangy dressing in the picture.

Score one for customer service, Pure Fare - that's a great way to make me come back and habitually spend $10-14 on lunch!  It might seem to others like "duh, of course you could get other dressing," but I'm a person who doesn't like to inconvenience people, so I normally don't think to ask if another dressing might be available.  It was very thoughtful of her to offer it to me, because otherwise I would have eaten the salad dry.  It was a delightful salad, but there was definitely an element of pure sparkle added by the neon green dressing, and you can bet I'll be back for more!

Even if it is alllllll the way over on 21st Street.

sometimes the sequel is better

While it is rarely true in motion pictures, I find that a dish is usually better the second or third time I make it.  I can only imagine that this is because the first time, I stay strictly close to the written recipe, and on future adventures, I break free of the tyranny of the recipe, allowing myself to tweak a little here and there.

Tonight, I reprised Pasta Shells with Black-Eyed Peas from The Vegetarian Times Complete Cookbook.  We liked it just fine the first time around, which is why I made it again, but since I looked back over my original post, I remembered to give it a little more flavor this time around.  Mission accomplished: a generous sprinkling of my beloved sea salt blend took this from a decent dinner to a fantastic meal.

The shells were a little bigger than I thought they'd be, once they were all cooked up.  I knew they weren't as small as the ones I usually get, but these are really big - as in, almost clever-hors-d'ouevres-stuff-them big.  It was actually kind of fun trying to see how much "filling" I could force into each shell before stuffing it in my mouth.

I'm an adult.  I can play with my food if I want to.

extreeeeeeme close-up!

Anyway, in about 24 hours, I'll be trying to force myself to go to sleep so I can get up at some horrid time like 4am (which is when I should be going to sleep, not waking up).  Fortunately, the happy ending is that after I sleep through a four hour plane ride and groggily locate the bathroom and Starbucks at the Salt Lake City airport, I will find myself in San Francisco, ready for a much-needed, incredibly deserved [albeit short] vacation.

I've been researching cocktails on Esquire.com so I know some fun things to order (I am Over-Prepared Woman - that's my superhero name), and I've scoped out a natural, non-toxic nail salon where I hope to get a manicure to pass the time between my flight's arrival and my sister's.  This time tomorrow I'll be packing and panicking and hopefully, remembering to check-in online.  I'll be packing my fun little owl book as well as my camera (and the battery charger!), but I have absolutely no idea if I'll get a chance to post while I'm out there.

That being said, it's time to reveal what's behind Secret Door #1.

I've decided to create a new blog.  Don't worry - I'm not abandoning this one!  Angst Loves Spinach will continue to be my primary blogging home, but Pretty Woman in an Ugly World is going to be a kind of supplement, so to speak.

I realized that although this was meant to be a "look ma, I'm learning to cook vegan!" blog, there are a lot of times I've written up reviews of restaurants or other food-oriented establishments.  Customer service is very important to me and I feel like it is a dying art.  In an effort to put the spotlight on those businesses that continue to offer World Class Customer Service, as well as expose those who don't quite know how to spell it, I've created this new blog.

The spark behind it was two-fold.  If you want to wander over there, you'll find the "story" laid out amidst the tabs (which I know are still woefully lacking from this blog, and I hope to correct that soon!), but let me give you a brief synopsis:

As I mentioned in the last post, 13 of Mister's and my friends joined us for an evening of fun at North Bowl, based on our recommendation because we so enjoyed the first time we visited.  Our experience this time around was so far from the first experience as to be unrecognizable.  Our waitress was quite possibly the worst waitress I've ever had.  It was embarrassing, since it was my suggestion and most of our friends were from out of town.  I sent off a long, detailed, and "passionate" email to the management that very night, letting them know how unacceptable our experience was.

Management's response was swift and favorable - they reviewed their video tapes, identified the "culprit" and will address this occurrence with her.  Additionally, at the time of my choosing, Mister and I and two friends have been invited back to the bowling alley for a round of bowling and drinks on the house.

At my work, we try to keep an evaluation of World Class Customer Service by asking ourselves at the end of a customer interaction, "How does the client feel about me?  How the customer feel about our company?"  So, how do I feel about North Bowl?

I'm thrilled with them.

Seriously!  Within 12 hours of me writing that email, the management took the appropriate steps to ensure my future satisfaction with their establishment.  That kind of customer service is so out of fashion these days that it reminded me of something I had pondered long ago.

In the beginning of the movie, "Pretty Woman," Julia Roberts's character, Vivian (perfect '80s name) finds herself rudely turned away from a boutique on Rodeo Drive.  She is devastated because all she wanted to do was buy a dress so she would look appropriate for her dinner date.  I'm sure at least most of my readers are well enough acquainted with the scene that I don't have to rehash it, but here is what has stuck with me for years now: when she returns to the hotel and gets "in trouble" with Barnard, the hotel manager, she tells him her sob story (while losing her composure) and he, despite his notions about her and her occupation, has an irrepressible desire to make it right.  He picks up the phone, calls a fancy department store and calls in a favor, resulting in Vivian getting the perfect dress and everyone is happy.

The reason this stuck with me is because it is my opinion that a person should not have to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars per night at a high-end hotel to be treated with respect and dignity.  The a$$-kissing is nice and I suppose that's something for money to buy, but it just feels like more and more often, we accept substandard service simply because there is no outstanding service available (or affordable).  I had an entrepreneurial moment while watching the moving about 5 years ago that I would like to get into hospitality just so that I could start my own hospitality business modeled after the service demonstrated at the Beverly Wilshire, but somewhere "normal" people could go.  Everyone deserves a little sucking up once in a while, don't you think?  (that is, by the way, absolutely a goal I have for this vacation - we're staying in two boutique hotels and I expect to be treated like a female version of Edward Lewis.)

So, in an effort to shift our service paradigm, especially in a time when money is far more scarce, so far more valuable, I want to highlight businesses that either offer incredible service consistently or companies, like North Bowl, who are willing to do whatever it takes to regain your business after someone messes up.  Occasionally, I may also write a scathing review of a business that exhibits unapologetically horrendous service, obviously hoping to influence my readers to take their hard-earned dollars elsewhere.

So, if you get bored in my absence, please, feel free to poke around on Pretty Woman in an Ugly World and let me know what you think!