Archive for November, 2007

explanation of the blog header picture

Tuesday, November 27th, 2007

drewjpowell wrote an interesting post today on
Here’s a quick excerpt
What we can see on the header bar of Tilman’s kitchen corner is a very small section of a September 2006 oyster orgy, which was not, in fact, prepared in my kitchen at all.
Place of action: a sunny deck in the remote rural west of Virginia (not to be confused with West Virginia).
Participants: a bushel (!) of fresh oysters, a huge bowl of freshly cooked large shrimp with southern-style herbs, another big bowl of fresh crab cakes, champagne, other wine and assorted spirits and asides, and fewer guests than originally announced.
As a consequence of this combination of circumstances, the party got on for four days, with all sorts of oyster variations imaginable chasing each other, under the general motto “another day, another pile o’food,” as our dear hostess, party-participant and crab-cake-cooker said on another occasion.

Read the rest of this great post here

Why we don’t use the “B” word

Sunday, November 25th, 2007

skowroneck wrote an interesting post today on
Here’s a quick excerpt
Since the earliest days of concept development, we found ourselves wrestling with the “B” word — Barbecue.
As obvious as it may seem, we learned that many people use the words “cookout” and “barbecue” interchangeably to describe an outdoor gathering centered around a grill, and many exchanges went like this:
Sheila to Mom: “Punk’s is a fast casual, American backyard cookout experience.”
Mom to Aunt Marilyn: “Sheila’s opening a backyard barbecue restaurant.”
Aunt Marilyn: “Oooh! I love barbecue!”
And so the word would spread that Punk’s is a barbeque restaurant…which it’s really not. Now don’t get us wrong — we love the slow-smoked, finger-lickin’ world of barbecue fare and especially die-hard barbecue people. But Punk’s is a different experience. Punk’s is a cookout — it’s is a fresh from the garden, hot off the grill, friends and neighbors, bocce and badminton (and maybe a little bug spray) experience.
We think that when the menu is finalized […]

Read the rest of this great post here