Ode to Ray's
By Sherry Brukbacher
6 May 2008
What Ray's Coffee House (http://phillychinatown.com/raycafe.htm) in Philly lacks in atmosphere it makes up for in charming details and fine coffee. That said, if you're not a connoisseur you might not notice the difference between the $4 cup and the $7.25 cup (which I tried). I wanted to be blown away by the super fine taste of the Japanese Sumiaki coffee made with a syphon coffee maker (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum_coffee) but I was more impressed by the presentation and the teensy cream pitchers. As for those Philly cheesesteak sandwiches . . . Let's just say I probably wouldn't go out of my way to try another. Perhaps it was our choice of restaurants (the name of which escapes me for some reason). The recommended place (Jim's Steaks, http://www.jimssteaks.com/indexb.htm) had a line that wound around the building so we walked down the street. How different could one place be from the next? What we ended up with was something that looked like a cross between ground beef, card board and dog food. I affectionately nicknamed it "mush meat". We agreed that waiting in line for Jim's next time might be wise.
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