USA Sep 2011 – Day 7

Today was about exploring Philadelphia and trying out the different eateries at the Reading Terminal Market. Despite the humidity the forecast was generally overcast and occasional breaks of sunshine.

The first stop was definitely the Reading Terminal Market with so many places and cuisines to eat from. The difficulty was choosing which one places to eat from and how much food I can take. I had to do about 3 laps of the place first then decide on what to eat.

I tried a pretzel dog, a beef roll and a peanut butter cookie. That’s all I could handle but was tempted to sample the chicken wings and a few other goodies. I did sample gator gumbo which is like a stew with alligator meat. Gator itself has texture like fish but taste like chicken, it wasn’t as bad as I thought it’d be.

To burn what I just had eaten I decided to walk endlessly to the Delaware River and check out what was there. Its a very quiet city (people-wise) as I had expected more people in Philadelphia. Perhaps most people are indoors studying or working. Nothing exciting goes on here as far as I can tell, maybe its the wrong day of the week.

In the afternoon I caught up with my friend and I got shown around the University of Pennsylvania. We tried some tacos and pork buns from this food truck which weren’t bad. There wasn’t any seating around where the truck was so we basically sat on the side of the road tucking into our food.

Dinner tonight was at Morimoto’s which I was very excited about. I wanted to eat from an Iron Chef’s restaurant and sample the strange and not so strange delights. The decor is very modern inside and they could have been more creative with the table lamps as they look like phallus’. The price isn’t too bad but it just depends on what you eat. We got some yummy oysters followed by a bunch of sushi rolls and for the main I got a giant seafood platter.

Afterwards we all went to sample some beers at a quiet pub called Eulogy and then we went to a famous ice cream parlour called Franklin Fountain afterwards with its “Mt. Vesuvius” item as seen on man v food. There’s no way I’d attempt that, its simply too much dairy! Apparently the root beer and ice cream is nice but just the sound of it makes it unappetising for me. Only one of us ordered that. I just went for a waffle and 2 flavors of ice cream.

Smiles