The grand plans and busy life of Luz Jimenez, owner of Los Gallos Restauran

By Olivia Haber-Greenwood

Ask Luz Jimenez a direct question, he will answer you directly.
“Do you believe in the American Dream?”
“Yes.”
Looking around his bustling grocery store and growing restaurant, where a young Mexican couple feed their toddler bites of quesadilla next to chatty FBI agents with full sleeves of tattoos, it does feel awfully believable, tangible, tastable.
Los Gallos, a taquería and Mexican grocery located at the corner of 10th and Wolf Streets in South Philadelphia, is the successful result of the hard work of its hustling owner and his family..
“I’m here 14 to 16 hours a day,” says Jimenez, 31, who has owned Los Gallos since he opened it a year ago. The front half of Los Gallos is a grocery store; the back half is a taquería with just six tables and a handful of newspaper reviews mounted on the walls. Jimenez is seated at the table that abuts a fruit hutch hung with paper mache pears and oranges, and displays pineapples, avocados, limes, tomatoes, and jalapeño peppers arranged in wicker baskets.
Wearing a blue sweater and baseball cap over his dark hair, he greets each person that walks past the fruit to sit down at a table. He is affable, gregarious, always moving. A charmer who can slip between Spanish and English in mid-sentence.
He says to a young man with piercings and skinny jeans selecting a glass bottle of Jarritos soda: “Hola, amigo, que dice?” meaning approximately: “Hey, man, whad’ya say?”
Three Anglo men in sweatshirts walk in and sit at a table next to the counter.

Hola amigo!
“Hey guys, how’s it going?” Jimenez welcomes them, speaking English with hardly a trace of an accent. “Thanks for coming in.” They nod and smile back, turning to the menus that Lupe, his cousin, puts in front of them.
“Everything here is made from scratch,” says Jimenez, moving his hands across the green table top like an umpire calling a runner safe as they slide onto home plate. This call is black and white, his standards for Los Gallos are not negotiable.
If a tomato is served in this establishment, Jimenez can vouch it was chopped that very day. He starts each day early in the morning, working in the kitchen with this brothers and cousins doing prep work for the food that will be served later.
“What I have tried to do here” he says, “is something a little different. I want people to have a reason to come here.”
Is the aroma of Mexican sausage and spices that you can smell wafting up the street a block away not reason enough?
“This is mostly an Italian neighborhood,” he says, “and, I’m not going to say,” he pauses and glances at two Latino guys drinking coffee at the adjacent table, “I’m not going to say they’re racist. But sometimes, it feels like that. I used to hear people walking by, saying ‘This is an Italian neighborhood’, you know?”
Jimenez wasn’t much fazed by the frosty reception. He set about getting his neighbors inside Los Gallos. “I tempted the Italians to try my food. They said they wanted some hard shell tacos like at Taco Bell.” He laughs, shaking his head.
“I said, ‘no, this is better than Taco Bell,’ they said ‘No, I don’t think so, Taco Bell is real Mexican food, this is crap!” But, he is happy to report, he won a lot of them over. Continue reading →

More and more vegan food establishments are popping up in Philadelphia

By Stephanie Trott
Amidst the sea of cheddar cheese sauce and soft pretzel salt lies a select group of culinary gems in Philadelphia. Long known for its cheesesteaks, hoagies and pizza pies, the city is now home to a steadily increasing population of vegan restaurants, bakeries, and coffee shops.
“Philly has a really big and growing vegan population,” said Sweet Freedom Bakery owner Heather Esposito, citing four other establishments in Center City alone. “It’s going to be one of those things that start coming up more and more. Everyone makes so much of it.”
In this piece, we will profile three of the vegan businesses in the city. Sweet Dreams bakery, Horizons Restaurant and the Grindcore House coffee house.
Sweet Dreams, 1424 South Street
Owned and operated by Esposito and business partner Allison Lubert, Sweet Freedom is a vegan (dairy-free, egg-free, casein-free) and kosher bakery, serving goods void of gluten, soy, corn, peanuts, and refined sugars. The organic bakery opened in January 2010 is located on South Street just west of Broad.
Esposito, who received her Master’s degree in Counseling in 2004 from Philadelphia Biblical University, worked in mental health counseling before realizing her passion for food. After two years in private practice, she decided to delve into the culinary world after discovering the impact diet had on clients.
“When I was counseling I started to realize both with my clients and also with myself how much of a difference diet and lifestyle make,” Esposito explained. “You can make changes in people relatively quickly when you change diet and lifestyle in comparison to just doing therapy.”
Esposito decided to go to culinary school while still counseling, and attended the Institute for Integrative Nutrition in 2007 and the Natural Gourmet Institute for Health and Culinary Arts in 2008, both located in New York City.
Esposito, 36, cites her own health concerns as another reason for opening Sweet Dreams. “I’m hypoglycemic and very sensitive to gluten, and so I really wanted to start creating items that I could eat, she said.
Sweet Freedom serves a variety of baked items including cupcakes, cookies, and donuts, as well as cakes and pies. Also featured are weekly, seasonal, and holiday specials.
One of the biggest problems Sweet Freedom has encountered, said Esposito, has been finding sources for the ingredients for their baked goods. “You have to make sure all of the things you’re getting are ‘-free.’ It was definitely a lot of research and took a lot of time.”
Most of the ingredients are purchased from the West Coast, said Esposito. “We would love to be more local, but there’s nothing on the East coast.”

In addition to those with food sensitivities, the bakery also has a steady following of Philadelphians who are simply in the market for a sweet treat
“We want to have products that anyone would eat and not be able to tell the difference,” she said. “You can’t really tell the difference.”
Although the bakery has only been operating for about a year, Esposito said that they have expansion plans, including a possible cookbook and opening a second location.
“We definitely want to be able to serve as many people with food allergies as possible, who can’t have typical baked goods,” she said.

Horizons, 611 South Seventh St.
Eight blocks East of Sweet Freedom lies Horizons, a restaurant opened in 2006 that uses local and seasonal ingredients to create one-of-a-kind vegan fare.
Working alongside co-owner, executive chef, and husband Rich Landau, Philadelphia native Kate Jacoby serves as Horizon’s pastry chef and manager. Whether working directly with ingredients for menu items like Pumpkin Cheesecake or managing the front of the house, Jacoby’s food ideology is an ever-present motif of this modern vegan venture.
Continue reading →

The Eiselen Bakery in Roxborough has been a family business for 100 years.

But can it remain in the family? A daughter explores the options

By Dana Eiselen
The door bell chimes as I walk into the bakery. Heat from the oven defrosts my cheeks of the bitter November air. It is 7:30 a.m., and the store is bustling.
A boy of three or four presses his nose and hands on a glass case, staring down a cupcake. The cases are filled with piping hot pies, cinnamon buns, Danish and donuts. Freshly baked rolls are piled up on tables for sale. Cellophaned cookie trays dot the store with sprays of color.
A customer walks in behind me. “It smells wonderful in here,” she says. I take a deep breath, though the wonderful smells are not new to me. For 21 years I’ve been walking into Eiselen’s Pastry Shoppe in Roxborough; long ago I became immune to its sweet smell.
It is the price I pay as the baker’s daughter.
I squeeze my way past the customers, give a nod to my sister, Allie, who is taking an order, and make my way to the back of the bakery.
Mom is decorating a cake. Dad is adding ingredients into the Hobart mixer. They both look up.
“Happy Thanksgiving,” says Mom. Dad just smiles as I put on my red apron.
There is an unspoken understanding that this Thanksgiving at our family bakery could be the last.
My father’s salt-and-pepper hair is lightly dusted with flour. Reading glasses, smudged with butter cream, hang around his neck. His “white” apron is a Rick Eiselen original – it’s spotted with evidence that he’s already been working for several hours: a brownie’s dark fudge, blue icing from a Happy Birthday cake, and the molasses of pecan pie.
I turn toward the store, ready to man my usual post as manager.
“We could use you back here, Dana,” says Dad.
He limps towards me, his body gently tilts to the right as he rests his hand on bench to bench for support.
In the unforgiving fluorescent lighting, he looks all of his 67 years.
Eiselen’s Pastry Shoppe is a full-line retail and wholesale bakery, making over 300 different products from scratch. My father takes pride in being able to make “whatever the customer wants.”
“In Northwest Philly, we’re the only bakery left like this,” he says. “There are niche bakeries that sell just cupcakes or just specialty cakes, but we put it altogether.”
We are known for custom cakes. My father was one of the original celebrity super bakers, he says. Cakes from Eiselen’s have been made for Philadelphia icons from The Phillies to the Mike Douglas Show and for landmarks such as the Philadelphia Museum of Art. They’ve been featured in movies, TV commercials, and at Tom Cruise’s birthday.
For 50 years, Eiselen’s has sat tucked away in the Ivy Ridge Shopping Center on the corner of Ridge Avenue and Domino Lane in Philadelphia’s Roxborough section, though this location is relatively new compared to the business’ colorful 114-year history in America.

Back to Germany

The Eiselen line of bakers extends back to the early 1800s in Germany. My great- grandparents emigrated from Germany in 1886 and opened two bakeries in South Philadelphia. My grandfather and then father continued the baking tradition. Our roots run deep.
Eiselen’s Pastry Shoppe went on to be Philadelphia’s first supermarket bakery for The Baltimore Market on Broad and Cheltenham, and later opened locations in Oak Lane, Erdenheim, Devon and lastly, Roxborough.
“In fourth grade, the teacher asked me what I wanted to do. I said I wanted to be a baker like my dad. Little did I know I’d still be in it,” he laughs. Continue reading →

Haverford College had apathetic fans until the Squirrel Squad came along

By Raffi Williams

When most people think of college sports, they picture large stadiums with raucous ans who refuse to sit for the entire game. They see students with their faces and chests painted screaming as if every extra decibel they reach is another point for their team. It’s loud, it’s emotional, and it’s the college experience.
Mike Troup, a senior at Haverford College, pictured this voracious scene, too. Sadly, fans like the ones of Troup’s dreams did not exist at his college, where the crowds at varsity games were sparse and the sounds muted. .
Troup, a former college lacrosse defensemen, decded to do something about it. In the fall of 2009, after two years of lamenting about the lack of fans at games, Troup started the Squirrel Squad; a Haverford College sports fan organization. The Squirrel Squad’s goal was to be a Division III version of Duke University’s Cameron Crazies, by “raising school spirit and fan participation in sports at Haverford,” says Mike Troup.
School spirit and fan participation were at dismal levels before the Squirrel Squad. Kiley Norton a Haverford College senior and lacrosse midfielder, fondly remembers his days in high school when what “seemed like the whole school was out to support the team.” He continues, “My sophomore year [at Haverford College] we hosted a game for the second round of the NCAA tournament and the opposing team had 3 times more fans in our stands than we did.”
It was not just the lacrosse team that noticed the lack of support. Lauren Kemph, a senior and former field hockey player, says, “Our bleachers used to be empty… only filled by parents.”
Senior athlete Max Hjelm says, “I used to get more excited to play away games since I knew more fans would be there.”
Even without fans, Haverford College sports teams were good. The 2008-2009 school year saw Haverford College win the Centennial Conference in volleyball, go to the NCAA tournament in men’s lacrosse and volleyball as well as qualify for the Centennial Conference playoffs in softball, baseball, men’s tennis and men’s lacrosse. “At Haverford College we had a lot of good sports, but not that many people went to the events,” says Troup.

The Squirrel Squad was created to change the attitude towards going to games. To do that, Troup worked on creating a fan culture.
The first step was tio come up with a name. The Haverford College team name is the Fords. Most teams’ mascot is the Black Squirrel. “The alliteration, just popped in my head and it was too good not to use,” says Troup.
With a catchy name decided upon, Troup had to figure out how he was going to change the fan culture of Haverford College. He knew he had to make the games more appealing.
“The only game [before the Squirrel Squad] that people went to was the Swarthmore basketball game. It was also the best fan experience of the year,” Troup says. “I want to get every game to be like that.”
In order to increase the fervor around sports, Troup made Squirrel Squad t-shirts. “Part of the problem was that there were almost no fun Haverford athletic gear that was not team specific.”

Fan uniform

The Squirrel Squad t-shirts filled the clothing void. The bright red t-shirts have a drawing of a muscular squirrel with a large “H” on its chest. The simple color scheme allows for the shirts to blend together when placed side by side. The fun graphic made the shirt appealing to students. The shirt became a ‘cool,’ item to own on campus.
Over 300 shirts were purchased during the last order, an impressive stat for a school of 1,200. The latest incarnation of the shirt is a muscular squirrel dressed up as Uncle Sam. “The shirts are supposed to be like a fan uniform, allowing [the fans] presence to be better felt.” Continue reading →

A Profile of Laura Kemper, Bryn Mawr’s assistant athletic director

By Sarah Fischer

The phone rings and Laura Kemper answers. Her tan face, speckled with freckles, becomes serious as she begins a series of interrogations.
“Is Heidi okay? Are her pupils dilated?” There is a pause.
“Well, can you check?” Another pause.
“Anyway, your ski gloves are on top of the dresser…or maybe in the attic on one of the bins”
Before she hangs up, she gives a final reminder:
“Look if one pupil is bigger than the other, or if she has crusted up blood in her nose”
After hanging up with this caller from home, Kemper apologizes and explains.
“It’s my dog Heidi. I’m checking her for a concussion.”
Kemper, assistant athletics director at Bryn Mawr College, routinely checks for concussions — but not usually in dogs. She works with the Bryn Mawr athletes to “manage prevention and care of injuries”
Kemper, 32, describes her job with a care and eloquence that shows how seriously she takes her job.
“I provide emergency first response care to the athletes…I evaluate and treat as needed. That includes sprains, joint and muscle, contusions, wounds, and concussions.”
In addition to this job description, Kemper also is the faculty liaison for the Bryn Mawr College Body Image Council and coordinator of Bryn Mawr’s Fit Club, an initiative to encourage Bryn Mawr students to work out amidst their busy academic schedule.
Kemper calls these jobs her “three primary responsibilities,” but her dedication  make it so much more. Kemper holds a deep passion beyond any job description.

Laura the Giver
Before coming to Bryn Mawr College in the fall of 2007, Kemper held a variety of jobs, most of which involved her background in athletic training..
After graduating from Hofstra University with a degree in Athletic Training and going on to graduate school at University of Delaware for a masters in Exercise Physiology, Kemper returned home to Connecticut. There she worked per diem at Wesleyan University as a trainer and a personal trainer at Health Trax.
Health Trax, Kemper explains, was not the “typical meat head type gym.” The gym attracted an “older, conservative type crowd.” Health Trax enforced a dress code, too, which banned spandex and midriffs.
Kemper explains that the dress code promoted a healthier body image, an idea that Kemper had long studied in undergraduate and graduate school. (Kemper knew that she wanted to incorporate body image into her career, but wasn’t sure where that fit in)
At Health Trax, Kemper worked with special populations, including athletes, children, and people with medical restrictions such as cancer. Continue reading →

Injuries happen often at a school where one of of three students are on varsity sports teams

By Jonathan Yu

Drive around the campus Haverford College in suburban Philadelphia long enough and you will notice there are no big football fields, no marching bands, and no cheerleaders.
But that doesn’t mean the small Division III school is not sporty in it’s own right.
Roughly one-third of the 1,200 at Haverford play a varsity sport. And that means that in any given season, varsity athletes – particularly those in high-risk contact sports, such as men’s lacrosse and men’s soccer – suffer an array of injuries, ranging from minor to major. In fact, injuries related to sports are an everyday prospect at the college.
“Most of what we see are minor injuries, aches and pains, due to repetitive use or just the incidental contact involved in sports,” said Curt Mauger, Head Athletic Trainer at Haverford College.
According to Mauger, minor injuries include bumps and bruises, cuts, overuse injuries like tendonitis, and ankle sprains. Treating these conditions can be as simple as using ice and ibuprofen to using corrective stretching techniques.
But from time to time, serious injuries, like ACL tears, concussions, and some shoulder injuries, will sideline players for extended periods of time.
“We do see our share of more significant injuries that require testing, physician’s visits… but because we don’t have some of the very high-risk sports, for example, football, wrestling, ice hockey, we don’t see as many surgeries as some larger athletic departments,” Mauger said.
“We’ve been lucky to not have too many severe, season-ending injuries,” said Cory Walts, Fitness Center Director and Strength and Conditioning Coach at Haverford College.

* * *
Lacrosse player Leks Gerlak never expected to put down his stick so soon.
Gerlak, recruited from a top high school lacrosse program, was only a few weeks into his freshman year in 2007 when he cut hard on his right knee and “felt everything pop out of place.”
“I kind of hobbled over to the sidelines,” Gerlak said. “It wasn’t like it was excruciating pain or anything, so I was like, alright, maybe I just twisted my knee.”

Up until that point, Gerlak never had an injury – not even a sprained ankle. But the next day, the doctor told Gerlak that he had torn his ACL, a major ligament of the knee. The tear ended Gerlak’s lacrosse career.
ACL tears do not happen frequently at Haverford, but they are considered serious injuries, according to Mauger. Surgery is often needed to fix the tear and it usually takes about six to nine months to recover fully.
Most of the post-surgical rehabilitation is done on-site at Haverford. Mauger and two other athletic trainers provide treatment and rehabilitative services to varsity athletes from Haverford’s 23 teams with everything from sprained ankles to ACL tears.
For the past three years, Haverford has contracted with NovaCare, a corporate physical therapy provider, to give students, faculty, and staff access to a NovaCare physical therapist three times per week.
But it is not easy to predict how long a player will sit out due to an injury. Continue reading →

The Headlong Performance Institute teaches not just art, but how to live as an artist

By Pragya Krishna

In the 17 years since they founded the Headlong Dance Theater, Amy Smith, David Brick and Andrew Simonet have had 35 productions, a New York Dance and Production Award, a Pew Fellowship in the Arts, and rave reviews from many newspapers and magazines, including the New York Times and the New Yorker.

Now they have turned their attention to teaching young artists at Headlong Performance Institute (HPI) in Philadelphia. This institute is one of few places in the nation that teaches students trained in one art form – ballet, theater, choir, even writing – about how to mix it naturally with other forms to create ‘experimental performance’. Most of their students are in college.

But while they love to teach, what the three are most proud of is bringing three things to this area: their rich knowledge about how artists can live a good life, their support for the city’s artist community, and their very different brand of ‘hybrid performance’.

Brick, Smith and Simonet form a striking trio – Simonet and Brick are both tall, dark and lean, and could be confused for twins if they dress similarly. Their website jokes about telling them apart: “Andrew is the taller one.” Smith, meanwhile, is small and petite, very much a dancer. They met at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, and graduated together in 1990.
“All three of us loved ‘ensemble performance’ – performing with everything we had, our voices, our bodies, our expressions – that’s why we started the dance theater,” said Amy Smith, after a Friday showing of the Institute’s students. “But we also always loved to teach. And then six years ago, we underwent a strategic planning process and decided we wanted to have a larger impact on a smaller number of people.”

The Headlong Founders

HPI, founded in 2008, is located on 1170 S. Broad Street, a block south of Washington Avenue. It admits college students who are taking a semester away from school, and recent college graduates.

Students are attracted not just because of the kind of art form it teaches, but because of the education it offers about living as an artist in today’s world. This isn’t something taught in many art schools. Continue reading →

Not every new college student is packing on the pounds

By Hannah Turner

The ubiquitous Freshman 15 is dead.
While the lifestyle of college students still lends itself to high stress, overeating, and excessive partying, and while some students still do gain weight in college, many are fighting the trend of gaining 15 pounds or more in freshman year. Some are even replacing it with a Freshman Minus 15.
One of them is Haverford College sophomore Maria Johnson, whose name has been changed at her request. She said “wanted to avoid the Freshman 15 at all costs and possibly lose 10 of my own.” Surrounded by her family’s obesity and her friends’ eating disorders, the athletically-built Johnson had been trying to lose weight for years.
“I thought, when I get to college, my mom won’t be there to tell me to eat so I will finally be able to lose weight. Plus, I will have close access to a gym. It’s the perfect opportunity,” she said.
When she arrived as a freshman, Johnson planned to exercise regularly and minimize snacking and ice cream consumption in order to lose weight. “Some mornings I didn’t eat breakfast but then I would be shaky and weak so I stopped doing that,” she said, but she met her goal and did lose weight._
Haverford freshman Allie Kandel had a similar strategy upon beginning college. Kandel, who called snacking a “dangerous habit”, said she lost six pounds in her first six weeks of college simply by making healthier choices.
Fellow freshman Anna Russell echoed the anti-snacking sentiments, but didn’t know if it had led to any weight loss. “I know that I eat less than I did in high school, simply because I don’t have snack foods available to me,” Russell said. “It’s a set-up that I deliberately created for myself…but…I haven’t been exercising like I did in high school.”

Continue reading →

Food trucks are using social media to make new customers

By Stephanie Trott

With effortless ease, Tom McCusker, owner of Honest Tom’s Taco Truck, ladles some hand-chopped salsa on top of his two beautifully made tacos, hands them to an eager customer, and whips out his phone to post a message on Twitter: he had just run out of sweet potatoes. He had just served the last sweet potato tacos.
McCusker is part of a new wave of food vendors, ones who are using the Internet as a means of free advertising and to gain a steady following among Philadelphians. Popular social networking websites such as Facebook and Twitter allow entrepreneurs to set up a free website containing information, pictures, events, and specials.
According to Facebook’s online statistics, the website has over 500-million active users, spending approximately 700-billion minutes on the website per month. As of April 2010, Twitter reported to the Huffington Post that it had 180 million visitors in the website every month and 37% of those users update their pages through use of their cell phone.
Though word-of-mouth initially helped McCusker get the wheels of Honest Tom’s Taco Truck rolling back in the summer of 2009, it was his decision to bring his business to the Internet that brought in a more steady stream of customers.

1,000 followers

“I wasn’t familiar with Twitter when I started,” said McCusker in a recent interview in his lunch truck, located in University City at 33rd and Arch Streets.

He cited his brother’s roommate as getting him interested in Facebook and Twitter, both of which he now regularly updates. His Facebook page, which boasts over 1,000 followers, also contains the same                                         Honest Tom’s Taco Truck

updates as his Twitter page. Using both of these websites has allowed McCusker to gain stand out among the sea of vendors in University City, and has also improved his business.
“There was definitely an increase once we got onto the Internet,” he said, referring to the amount of patrons visiting his truck.
The beauty of Twitter, noted McCusker, is that the updates are short and simple. “I don’t write too much,” he said, “just my location and any specials.”
Continue reading →

New people are arriving, new problems are arising

By Meld0n Jones

The largest township in the country has seen its fair share of change.
“I remember when Upper Darby was mostly Irish Catholic, White Protestant, Jewish and Italian, there weren’t many minorities at all” said Helene Curley. Curley has lived in Upper Darby Township, PA for over 60 years and has been a witness to the rapidly changing demographics.
Now Upper Darby is a smorgasbord of ethnicities, home to over 100 ethnic cultures earning it the nickname “The United Neighborhood”. A trip down 69th street is a linguist’s dream, where a slow stroll will treat the astute listener to over 50 languages. The crowded streets are framed with colorful restaurants and grocery shops from almost every imaginable place. Local residents are just as likely to have spicy homemade ceviche for lunch as Guyanese dhalpuri roti (a hot, buttery flatbread stuffed with ground yellow split peas, garlic and pepper, usually served with savory curry).
“I moved here because of the diversity” said Monica Routh, a new resident who moved to Upper Darby a year ago. “The high school is very good, and it’s very close to downtown Philadelphia too.” And Routh’s favorite thing about her newfound home? “The shopping!” she gushes. Indeed, the local businesses are ripe with interesting finds; from catchall shops run by local Sikhs to large chain stores, filled with glossy posters of the latest Nikes.
But Curley remembers the real glory days of shopping in Upper Darby. Her blue eyes take on a dreamy quality as she reminiscences about bygone years: “People used to come from the outer suburbs to shop here. The big department stores around then-in the 50’s and 60s- were you know, Gimble’s, Lit Brothers, Woolworth’s. Everyone came here to shop, especially around the holidays!”

Continue reading →