Jamonera

Craig LaBan heaps the praise on the latest from Marcie Turney and Valerie Safran’s tapas bar, Jamonera.

Turney’s most stunning dishes, though, are dressed in squid-ink black. The calamari marinate in ink before getting crisped and are so ebony they look to have been fried in a volcano. But they’re delicate and tender, with a smoky wisp of pimenton Spanish paprika, a squirt of lemon, and garlic chips. With the mussels escabeche, whose vermouth-marinated mollusks are cleverly in a sardine can, squid ink completes the ingenious trompe l’oeil garnish of faux mussel shells molded and baked around actual shells with a potato-garlic tuile dough.

Three Bells – Excellent

Craig LaBan review: Marcie Turney and Valerie Safran’s latest, Jamonera [Philadelphia Inquirer]
Jamonera [Official Site]

Photo by Jason Varney | Fussing with Forks

Trey Popp reviews Jamonera, Marcie Turney and Valerie Safran’s new Spanish wine bar and finds excellent precision, pacing and fun.

Turney’s trend-spotting is offset by a depth of engagement with classic Spanish foodstuffs that rivals Jose Garces’s culinary curatorship. Do you like chorizo? Jamonera was using five varieties the last time I went, from smoky chistorra links from Basque country­ (on an egg-and-short-rib-smothered­ plate of papas fritas that played like a Spanish one-up on poutine) to foot-and-a-half-long canteplano­ sausages crafted by a Spanish expat in California, and a house-made duck chorizo enriched with fat trimmed from slices of Fermin Iberico ham.

Three Stars – Excellent

Restaurant Review: Jamonera Is Barbuzzo’s Sexy Older Sister [Philadelphia magazine]
Jamonera [Official Site]

Starting Monday, March 19th 13th Street’s Spanish tapas bar Jamonera will debut it’s late night happy hour. From 10 p.m. to 11:30 p.m  every Sunday through Thursday, the wine bar will offer inexpensive drinks and plates. The specials will include $3 beer, $4 sangria, $5 wine and a $15 Sherry tasting. A changing cast of $2 tapas bites will also be offered. Look for plates like fried chorizo-stuffed olives and sheep’s milk cheese with Membrillo. Chef Marcie Turney has also created “Kitchen Staff Snacks,” playful dishes created after Turney and her team have finished a long night of work.   Kitchen Staff Snacks »

We’ve updated our Restaurant Week Guide for Winter 2012. Center City District’s Restaurant Week features more than 100 restaurants offering $35 prix fixe dinners and $20 lunches. The hoopla begins this Sunday night and as Marc Vetri will certainly tell you, not all $35 dinners are created equally.

Our guide helps you pick the stars and skip the duds with our filters. Want to get extra courses at a BYOB that has vegetarian options? Only Foobooz can make it as easy as clicking three buttons.

This Restaurant Week will mark the debut of Marcie Turney and Valerie Safran’s wine bar Jamonera. It is also the first time The Corner, Revolution House, Rocchino’s and Zento participate.

Guide to Center City Philadelphia’s Restaurant Week [f8b8z]

Didn’t you hear? The damn hurrica-pocalypse is coming! You’re supposed to be out there boarding your windows and panic-buying cans of tuna fish, so what are you doing sitting on your ass reading food news?

Ah, well. For those of you who’ve decided to bunker-down in front of your computers this weekend, here’s what you might’ve missed while stocking up on whiskey and Oreos in anticipation of the coming storm.

Moon Out At Talula’s Garden The story that started as a rumor and exploded into a mini-industry for food writers this week
Collingswood Gets a Krispy Kreme Donuts, donuts, donuts, donuts, donuts…
Geno’s Joey Vento Dead at 71 Hope English is the official language of heaven. Otherwise, Joey is in trouble
Bindi to Become Jamonera And yeah, it’s your fault
New Digs For Fish Mike Stollenwerk swims upstream
Oktoberfest Guide Beer and pretzels (and squash) for everyone
Think You Can Guess The Next Talula’s Garden Chef? Then step up to the mic and prove it
Diving Horse Pop-Up on Saturday One of the benefits of a catastrophic storm, I guess

Stay dry, everyone. See you all on Monday.

What do you do when you’ve got three restaurants and a food market, a spare liquor license and an underperforming Indian BYOB? If you’re Valerie Safran and Marcie Turney, you drop the Indian concept and turn the space into a Spanish wine bar. On September 24, the pair will close Bindi, their 4-year-old Indian restaurant across the street from Barbuzzo, and reopen it as Jamonera sometime between early December and early January.

The explanation for the drastic replacement?

“After a while you get tired of hearing people say, ‘We don’t eat Indian food,’” sighs Safran.

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