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DonRocks

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Everything posted by DonRocks

  1. Bistrot du Coin is what it is, and it isn't for everyone. If you're looking for a quiet place to sit down and get fawned over, then stay away. If you're looking for a convivial atmosphere where you can sit around and laugh and drink with your friends without feeling hurried or rushed, then go and enjoy yourselves. The food is inconsistent: sometimes it's quite good (Argentine ribeye, moules sauce Poulette), often it's pretty bad, and it's almost always heavy and unhealthy. The first time I went was a couple of years ago: there was no special treatment, no "friends with restaurant VIPs," no nothing. I went to the bar and had a couple glasses of wine and a snack, and eventually began chatting with the person next to me. Ten minutes or so into the conversation, it dawned on me that he was the owner: it was Michel Verdon. He was completely cordial and utterly without pretense (as anyone who has seen him on his microphone at 2 AM will attest to), and he even comped me my second glass of wine, simply because he was being hospitable. I've been back many times since, both with and without people in the industry. Yes, there is lavish attention bestowed upon the late-night restaurant crowd, but this is their playground, they're regulars, and they come in here and spend real money and leave good tips - why shouldn't they be treated well? I'm sorry, but not all diners are equal in all restaurants. As an anonymous diner, I've been for lunch and dinner numerous times, and have received service ranging from annoyingly indifferent (in which case I simply pipe up and ask for my order - please refer to the possible etymology of the word "bistro"), to friendly and cordial, but never hostile or insulting. Bistrot du Coin, for me, is a late-night watering hole. There is nothing wrong with this, and Washington DC is a better place for it existing despite it not being all things to all people. Cheers, Rocks.
  2. He's a long-since sold-out commodity. Question: instead of looking back at Chef Boyardee in making comparisons, perhaps it's time to look forward and think of Wolfgang Puck as the precursor, the prototype, of various other sell-out "chefs" that people in this forum blindly and uncritically accept as Talents Worth Masturbating Over? I'd probably do Britney Spears (if she had her makeup on), but that doesn't make her a good musician. Cheers, Rocks.
  3. Everyone make sure and ask iamthestretch how his evening was last night at Firefly and David Greggory and Asia Nora and Citronelle and Sette Osteria and Timberlakes BTW Stretch, your wife called last night at 1:45 AM looking for you - I believe you were downstairs hurling in the bathroom at Timberlakes.
  4. [This thread is about Bistrot du Coin, which has been both applauded and criticized in the past for having "French service." Any discussion of the merits, typicity or pitfalls of French service on this thread should be tied in somehow with the specifics of Bistrot du Coin.]
  5. Per Colorado Kitchen's newsletter, daSto is opening this weekend - you can call (202) 722-1955 for details.
  6. I had forgotten all about Colvin Run Tavern.
  7. Yes, two suggestions. First and foremost, I would bear in mind that it's Romeo, especially as Cesar Romero played the Joker in the original Batman series. As for the low-fat options: for sushi, Makoto (intimate tete-a-tete) Sushi-Ko (fun sushi bar or full restaurant upstairs) Spices (for inexpensive variety in a casual setting); for healthy-ish pizza, Two Amys (if she has kids she wants to bring); for a hip menu and restrained portions, Komi (the vegetables aren't necessary low in fat); for raw bar, Old Ebbitt Grill (historical, cavernous) Oceanaire (for a dressy business lunch) Kinkead's (for name recognition and simple grilled fish); for an impressive atmosphere, 2941 ($60 vegetarian tasting menu) Asia Nora (some good options here) Yanyu (likewise); for spicy Korean, Yee-Hwa (I haven't been, but it's the only place downtown and supposedly decent); for lots of different dishes to handle a variety of needs, Zaytinya (large, hip and bustling, middle-eastern styled tapas) Jaleo (medium-sized, loud and bustling, Spanish tapas); for genuinely healthy vegetarian, Sunflower (out in Vienna) Vegetable Garden (Chinese in Rockville). Knock 'em dead, tiger. Rocks. Edit: Damn it I just now noticed that you're looking near Arlington. Add Tachibana in McLean for Japanese, Thai Square in Arlington for casual Thai, Pho 75 in Rosslyn for casual Pho, Llajtaymanta in Falls Church for casual healthy family-run Bolivian, Secret Garden in Falls Church for Korean, Fortune in Falls Church for Cantonese, Jaleo or Oyamel in Crystal City (see above), 2941 in Falls Church (see above), Guajillo for ceviche in Rosslyn.
  8. It's neither vegetable nor miniature, but my contrarian prediction for a future fad item is bluefish, not necessarily in pure form (and certainly not blackened), but in a myriad of presentations as-yet not conceived. Why do I say this when there's barely any hint of it on DC DelMarVa menus? It's cheap, it's healthy, it's oily, and it's flavorful. We're in the midst of a garbage-meat fad courtesy of the influential restaurant Saint John (in London), and bluefish can easily be considered a "garbage fish," basically a logical extension of garbage meat. It's currently on the menu at Legal Seafood who has the financial and marketing clout to be a trickle-down market leader. In essence, all the components are in place for bluefish to be wildly popular several months, or perhaps a couple of years, down the road. You heard it here first! Rocks.
  9. In a situation such as this (sour mustard, etc.), I adhere to the principles of Taoism, i.e., Tsing Tao.
  10. Steve Klc and Nebuchadnezzar. Separated at birth.
  11. Going from left-to-right on the plate: a BLT, a BBQ pork sandwich, and a ham sandwich, each on a homemade biscuit. What a fiendishly good plate of food this is!
  12. Rumor has it Michael Landrum is on the verge of introducing the Nebuchadnezzar - equivalent in size to 20 standard hamburgers and weighing in at over 10 pounds. Offered only rare, medium-rare or medium, it requires an entire bottle of ketchup, a half-jar of dill pickles, a custom-baked bun, and is served with a whole bag of potato chips. Recommended wine pairing: the 2002 Marquis Phillips Shiraz "Integrity," rated at 99 points by Robert Parker.
  13. Here is a little-known photo of the eGullet mini-Burgher outing when their sandwiches showed up well-done.
  14. Not a bad write-up, though I don't know about the bit about talking his way into Roberto Donna's back door. ← Hey I was there it happened.... ← By the way, Brendan, welcome to eGullet - it's nice to have you here. And just in case Brendan is too modest to post his bio: voila, here it is.
  15. So Brendan what's the deal with Todd Gray's chefs popping up all over town like Whack-a-Moles?
  16. A more severe version of this problem exists when you show up at the Osteria in jeans on a Saturday night and need to tinkle.
  17. DonRocks

    Decanting Port

    Hi Gidon, Are you sure it's a 1932 and not a 1931? I don't think I've ever seen or even heard of a Port from the 1932 vintage, whereas there are still examples of 1931 around. Assuming it really is a 1932, it might not be very good, unfortunately. But regardless, I would stand up the bottle a good month in advance (I strongly believe that it takes this long for some of the suspended colloids to unsuspend themselves and fall to the bottom), and simply accept the fact that the cork will crumble and disintegrate if you use a standard corkscrew - you could always heat up the old Port tongs, or try and finesse the cork out with an ah-so, but I'd prepare for the worst. Pour it carefully, slowly, and with one steady, consistent motion rather than tilting the bottle back-and-forth. Absolutely decant. If it's a 1932, you'll need to begin drinking shortly after decanting (and will only need to decant to leave the sediment behind). If it's a 1931, take a glass after decanting, and if it's in good shape, it should open up nicely for 20-30 minutes (longer if you're fortunate enough to be pouring a Quinta do Noval Nacional). A mistake people make is to swirl their glasses even when the wine is ancient. If your wine is fragile, one swirl will be enough to coat the sides of the glass, but if you continue to swirl-and-swirl (I even do this with my water), then oxygen might end up being your enemy rather than your friend. Good luck with it, and please let us know how it was. Rocks.
  18. DonRocks

    Bourgogne de Histoire

    I wrote Allen Meadows, aka BurgHound, and he gave me permission to quote him in his answer to this question. Please take time to visit Allen's website at www.burghound.com - he publishes a bimonthly newsletter, and is generally recognized as the leading Burgundy expert in the United States, if not the entire world. Cheers, Rocks. Allen's response: -------------------------------------------------- Hi Don, Sure, you're welcome to quote me, no prob. As to the question, it's frankly complicated, having as much to do with the size of the exploitations as it does with money and psychology. To make this brief though, most of the major châteaux in Bordeaux were sizeable operations and owned by wealthy, mostly absentee owners. Thus, when it came time to divide an estate among the heirs, most of these families (who were wealthy and well advised) elected to create the rough equivalent of a corporation (société anonyme). This resulted in the heirs becoming in essence shareholders in Château X with a profession resident manager retained to oversee their interests, make the wine, etc. This became accepted practice and thus, it was no mark of shame for the heirs to retain ownership of one, or several châteaux in this fashion. And of course some heirs elected to subsequently re-acquire the shares belonging to their relatives and in doing so, some châteaux were "put back together" under a single owner as it were. Because most of the shareholders were truly absentee, it also explains why the big brokers rose to power in Bordeaux but not in say Burgundy; Burgundy though had a separate form of these brokers but there they were and are called négociants. Corporate ownership is certain benefits, like allowing a famous château to remain essentially unchanged for centuries though it can have its problems as well; witness the recent control difficulties of Château d'Yquem as there was essentially a shareholder revolt (there was of course more to it but at it's essence, the heirs got tired of not realizing a market rate of return). As your question points out, Burgundy is different for a variety of reasons and even to this day, relatively few sociétés anonyme exist; a few examples include the Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, Domaine Leflaive and Domaine Comtes Lafon though there are of course others. Anyway, the above is pretty simplistic but it is the main thrust of why things are the way they are today. Best regards, Allen Meadows, Pubisher, www.BurgHound.com
  19. For several years now, I have read Tom Sietsema’s restaurant reviews in earnest, taking exception with certain things, but generally in accord. However, his review of Aria has weakened the tongue of the glacier to the point of calving, and so I go, leaving in my wake offal of bergy bits and growlers in my beer hall putsch. He writes: These “rings of light” so quickly dismissed as Vegas kitsch harbor a complexity lying outside the field of the Paris scope, reaching downward from the ceiling and serving to contract the angle of the diner’s perceived azimuth down, down, down and away from the hard-featured grizzly white ceiling tiles, at once forming an amalgam of the central balustrade of the dining room’s circular columns with the equally circular concavity buried in the courtyard outside, echoing the annular selvage of the Rios building, and expanding, expanding their wake into the four surrounding monuments, the circle of Fort Defenses, the Washington beltway, the Chesapeake watershed, the eastern seaboard, the western hemisphere, the earth itself, the exosphere, the elliptical orbit around the sun, the Milky Way, the periphery of the heliopause, our globular cluster, the spiral arms rimming our galaxy, the Local Group, the Virgo Supercluster, and perhaps even to the edge of the visible universe itself. I call on Tom Sietsema to resign as Washington Post Food Critic. It is time someone who cares about our galaxy to step in and lend a more appropriate fashion aesthetic to our expanding nebula of restaurants. Did I mention that I hate stars? Rocks.
  20. I'm not sure this qualifies as a meal, but once in college I was staying at a friend's house for the weekend, and helped myself to a bowl of granola in the morning. I sat there innocently, reading the paper and scarfing away, then screamed bloody murder when I looked down into the bowl: the cereal was infested with hundreds of tiny bugs, and I had eaten dozens of them by the time I noticed. In a related incident, I was visiting the south of France several years ago, and was walking around the hillside with my extended family, two of whom were picking figs and plums off the trees by the side of the road and handing them to me to gorge myself on. Halfway through a plum, I looked and saw a colony of worms. In the middle of the street, I screamed and started doing something that probably looked like a cross between jumping-jacks and Riverdance, hopping up and down and spitting everything I could possibly spit out of my mouth, all the while hurling invectives like a Marseille dockworker who dropped a crate on his foot. I then heard one of the ladies say to the other, "We probably should have told him to look out for worms." One other time in college, I was staying at another friend's house, and came home after having had a bit too much to drink. I'm not sure what got into me, but do you know those little spray-nozzle things on the side of certain dishwashers? I got a rubber band and wrapped it around so that the trigger was activated, and then I pointed it outward toward the person turning on the water. The next morning I was awakened by a scream coming from the kitchen: it was my friend's mother, who was being sprayed. She was taken off-guard, and didn't get back to the sink very quickly, and so the kitchen was hosed down for about ten seconds before she was able to turn off the water, and she was drenched. She took it in good humor, and was even joking about it as my friend and I were eating our breakfast. However, I found out later that she had taken several laxatives, and crushed them up in my cereal.
  21. I just read through this whole topic for the first time and shook my head in disbelief and disappointment. Basically, it's a bunch of really smart people trying their damndest to look dumb. It reminds me of people critically analyzing the muscianship of Britney Spears or Madonna. And of course, inevitably there will be those that chime in and scream "foul" (like I'm doing now), stimulating even more conversation, adding to the free PR these vacuous charlatans receive, and getting dismissed as snobbish farts who need to get off their high horses. Shame on everyone here. Rocks.
  22. Based on my abysmal dinner at Les Halles last night (Sunday-night crew?), I pray for your sake (and his) that he's going to be cooking.
  23. On Thursday evening December 1, 1955, after a long day of work as a seamstress for a Montgomery, Alabama, department store, Rosa Parks boards a city bus to go home.... Cheers, Rocks.
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