Urban Naturalist: The Runabout Rodent

It took my wife Jen about five minutes to spot two rats (I missed the first) running toward an overflowing trash can near the center of Rittenhouse Square. No one else saw them. True, it was dark, but the park was filled with couples chatting on benches, bar-hoppers strolling through, a circle of twentysomethings sitting on the grass a few yards away and a handful of homeless folks bedding down for the night.

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Urban Naturalist: One Tough Nut

You know Chestnut, the street that runs west to east between Market and Walnut? Have you ever seen a chestnut tree? Locusts, pines, spruces and walnuts are all around, even if you’ve never noticed them. But you’d be hard pressed to find a chestnut tree. They’re almost all dead.

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The White Stuff

Not everyone can get the tempeh so white and…” At Café Pendawa, a corner market on Mole and Morris in South Philly Iwan Santoso searches for the right word. He settles on “fluffy.”  Handmade by the Santoso family at their full-service restaurant Indonesia at Snyder and Bouvier streets, Café Pendawa’s grab-and-go tempeh represents the highest expression of fermented faux meats. The Santosos guard their production method so zealously, they refused to allow GRID a peek at the process, lest we reveal the white and fluffy secret to competitors.

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Urban Naturalist: Mussel Bound

Who’s got the best mussels in philadelphia? Sure, the Saison Dupont-bathed Ghent bivalves at Monk’s Café are divine. But by far, Philadelphia’s most interesting mussels are out in our rivers, buried in the mud.

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Urban Naturalist: Honk if you like geese

My wife, Jen, adores Canada geese. She especially loves the fluffy goslings that graze alongside their parents throughout grassy Philadelphia, but she waves to the adults, too. Jen might be the only Philadelphian I’ve met who likes the geese, and, like anyone whose spouse holds a dangerously contrarian position, I am bound to publicly agree with her.

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