Honey Just Allow Me, To Give You One More Chance

This column originally appeared on Sunday, Sept. 21, 2008

I know what you're thinking. I know that you're thinking that this is the last Sunday of the summer, that autumn officially starts tomorrow, and that the calendar thus indicates that this must be the date of the ever popular-slash-dreaded West Chester Restaurant Festival.

And you are also thinking that I am going to lecture you about how much we "real" West Chester folks — as opposed to those pikers who walk around town wearing "Dub-C" T-shirts — really don't like the restaurant festival and consider it an event more endured than enjoyed. Sort of an open-air colonoscopy, with crab cakes and crowds.

You are thinking that I am going to tell you how I would rather sit and listen to state Sen. Andy Dinniman describe the machinations of the state budget process, without bathroom breaks, than try to walk down Gay Street today after noon, when the festival is in full swing. That you would no more find me at the festival than you would find a wild elk in Elk Township. That I'm going to hunker down someplace as far away from West Chester as possible without spending more than $50 on gas until the crowds of soon-to-be unemployed Lehman Brothers executives have gone back to MortgageForeclosureLand.

But dear readers, that was then and this is now.

It is the season for change. I know that this is the season for change because every time I turn on the television and listen to the radio, a junior U.S. senator from Illinois or a senior U.S. senator from Arizona is telling me that. Change is no longer something you dump in a bowl with your car keys, but something you have to embrace, something you have to hope for, something you have to accept like it was a birthday card from your Aunt Louise.

So change we must.

This year, I'm going to give the restaurant festival another chance, even though I'm not certain it really deserves it. I am going to open my heart and take the festival back in, like a ex-girlfriend who dumped me on my birthday and now finds that she needs a ride to the airport. I'm going to allow it to make up for past transgressions, and to look for the shining pearl in the center of the grimy oyster.

Who knows? Maybe I will find that the restaurant festival isn't really all that bad. Maybe it will be the same as when I got tired of eating Indian food and vowed that I would never eat it again, that Indian food was the worst food on the planet, that I would no more eat Indian food than I would ask a Lehman Brothers executive for a sub-prime mortgage -- only to find years later that I really like Indian food, and could you pass the chicken tikka, please?

I am, after all, capable of changing. I am not so stuck in my ways that I would avoid going to the restaurant festival just because I ridiculed it in the past. After all, if John McCain is capable of embracing tax cuts that he once denounced, and if Barack Obama is capable of backing off a pledge to take public financing, than I am certainly capable of standing in line for 35 minutes to order a crab cake the size of an iPod Mini and paying $7.50 for the privilege, and enjoying myself in the process.

No matter what you think.

The Best Meal in West Chester

This column originally appeared on Sunday, Sept. 16, 2007

Here’s a little bit of historic detritus, courtesy of the Daily Local News afternoon edition, Sept. 19, 1983. Under the headline, “Festival crowd … called ‘enjoyable mob,’ appears the following paragraph:

“Organizers of the festival, which brought more than 50 restaurants to the five-block-long Gay Street Mall, were quick to proclaim the event a success. Along with unofficial estimates by the West Chester police department, the organizers set the crowd at 26,000.”

It should come as no surprise that the event in question was the fourth annual Chester County Restaurant Festival, which has morphed into the West Chester Restaurant Festival, which is set to kick off sometime around noon today on that self same Gay Street — although no one refers to Gay Street as a mall anymore, not unless they want a sour look from the Chamber of Commerce for simply bringing up the dreaded “m” word.

I bring this account to your attention because the person who wrote it seems so overtaken by the “well controlled … friendly … sunny skies … party spirit” that it’s a wonder his cynical, hard-bitten, crusty old editors didn’t fire him on the spot for becoming so besotted with the success-proclaiming organizers that it appears he swallowed their proverbial Kool-Aid as easily as he must have swallowed the wine they sold to benefit the Chester County Hospital.

Luckily for me, however, they didn’t, since I’m the author.

Now that I’ve turned into one of those cynical, hard-bitten, crusty old editors, I see the festival for what it truly is — a great time for people to come to the borough and get either acquainted or reacquainted with the grandeur that is West Chester, and an even better time for those of us who live here year-round to either stay inside all day or get acquainted/reacquainted with anyplace outside a five-mile radius from the center of West Chester.

It’s not that we don’t appreciate the attention the festival brings our fair borough. We know what a great place this town is, and we don’t mind showing it off every now and then. What makes us uneasy about the whole experience is that we know that the greatest meals in West Chester don’t get served at the Restaurant Festival.

No, the best meals come from a combination of dishes at a variety of venues scattered throughout the borough.

You start, obviously, with an appetizer of hummus, grilled pita and Baba ghanoush from The Mediterranian on West Gay, then dart across the street to Tony’s Meat Market and pray that Kenny has some chicken pasta left over at the end of the day. You’ve already made sure that Anthony at Penn’s Table has a quick Greek salad to go on hand so you won’t have to stop too long before picking up the seared tilapia filet from High Street Caffe on your way home. A bottle of Pinot Grigio from Stargazers that you picked up earlier from Brian and Jen at the Growers Market is already waiting for you, so you’re pretty much set, except for the dish of mint chocolate chip from West Chester Scoop for dessert.

And hopefully the only mob you have to deal with is the Corleone crew on DVD.

The Sweet Smell of Excess

This appeared on Sept. 17, 2006


Ah, the coming of fall in West Chester! A hint of crispness in the air, wind-blown leaves appearing on the cool brick sidewalks, college students rushing to and from their drunken par ..., er, classes -- all are sure signs that the autumnal equinox can't be too far away.

Not to mention, of course, the biggest local signal that fall is just around the corner - the annual Chester County Restaurant Festival in West Chester. With its 60 different restaurants - serving everything from hot dogs to crab cakes, as the brochure says - its more than 100 craft and organization booths, live bands and a popular beer and wine court, it always brings thousands of enthusiastic Chester Countians to the shining jewel called Gay Street on a (hopefully) warm and sunny Sunday afternoon.

And to each and every one of you 10- to 15-thousand visitors, we longtime borough residents have but one thing to say:

Call us when you've gone home!

Not to put too fine a point on it, but today's restaurant festival is about as popular to us in the borough as Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are at the Aniston family Thanksgiving dinner table.

Take, for instance, my friend Ruth Wright Hurford, birthright West Chestrian and ex-catcher with the Daily Local News Headliners Co-ed Softball Team, circa 1985. Since she's spent nearly every minute of her waking life in the borough, you figure Ruth is the sort of person who would know how the natives act. Think of her as sort of the Baedecker Guide to West Chester.

I checked with Ruth last week and found out that, true to form, she won't be dining today on the Gay Street pavement. She'll be around the corner at a friend's house engaging in the last great barbecue of the season. She gets the ambiance of the day, the flavorful aromas of the festival grills, yet none of the waiting and slow shuffling from block to block.

Make no mistake about it, it's the very fact that the festival is so popular that makes it so disliked by borough residents. The lines! The crowds! All we want is a crab cake and a hot dog and to go home and watch the second half of the Eagles loss/game. Instead, we're pushed up against some dog-leash-holding stockbroker from Developmentland who can't decide on whether to get the crab cake sandwich or the crab cake ice cream cone, while his blond second trophy wife pesters him about the fresh fruit crab cake cup. Or whatever.

I don't know about you, but if there is a line of more than five people at the gates of heaven, I'm going to straight to hell.

I've written and edited stories about the festival since I arrived here in the early 1980s and used to look forward to the event. In one of its first incarnations, the restaurant festival was when about 15 restaurateurs would push a few tables onto closed-off Gay Street, fire up the Webers, Donohue's would empty the tavern of tables and chairs, and the ale would flow evenly with the tartar sauce on the crab cakes.

It was a simpler, more sanguine time, when you could stand on the corner of High and Gay Streets with a cup of cold beer in your hand, chatting amiably with the mayor and the police chief. If you stand on that corner with a cup of cold beer in your hand, chatting amiably with the mayor and the police chief these days, you might get 11 1/2 to 23 months of probation and a lecture from Judge Gavin.

But don't let our ambivalence to the festival deter you from having fun. We'll survive.

By 10 o'clock tonight, Gay Street will be free of litter and empty of restaurant booths and by early Monday we will be able to take our morning constitutional from Matlack to New Street without being squeezed like a Philadelphia building contractor.

You'll be gone, and we'll be here. Enjoying our crab cakes.