Malawry

Not quite. I had dinner there tonight and at Nectar on Saturday, both for the first time. I think it's trying to be a more casual, neighborhood version of Nectar on some levels. The plating/presentation is not at the Nectar level, nor are the prices, and nor is the cooking. But it's still really good food. I had the Sunnyside Farms hanger steak ($19) and a glass of Greek grenache-blend wine for my dinner. I enjoyed the cauliflower-apple soup as an amuse. The bread basket came with a sundried tomato-olive butter in a cute little iron crock, and I appreciated that the focaccia was warm. My entree was an appealing assortment of fall flavor: braised endive, a mix of haricots verts and soft pan-roasted sweet potato cubes, little dots of Chinese mustard sauce and sweet-tart pomegranate reduction across the plate. Some random hunks of crisply fried bacon rested on top of the plate; I eventually broke them down into manageable bits with my knife and fork and ate them with the beans and sweet potatoes. (They mystified me, honestly. I love bacon as much as the next girl, but I really don't like having two big hunks of it randomly perched on my plate.) The steak itself wasn't nearly as flavorful as the hanger steak I ate at Nectar on Saturday (I must be in a steak mood lately) but it was a respectable piece of beef nonetheless, and generously sized at the price to boot. When I arrived at 6:15p there were only two other tables occupied, but four more tables filled while I was eating. Two parties were seated near me and both of them consulted with the front-end manager about wines by the glass. I overheard both parties inquiring about chardonnays and cabernets, and the manager responding with an explanatory "We don't have any chardonnays, cabernets or merlots on our wine list." An interesting decision; I was sorry I didn't have a chance to inquire as to why the wine list is set up in its current form. A pomegranate lollipop was presented with my check, which I enjoyed as I drove home from dinner. Don't chew on it unless you want to loosen your dental work ( ), but it does have a great tartlike flavor. I wish this place had been around when I lived in the neighborhood. I hope to God it succeeds, and even raises the bar for what else restaurants nearby serve. I'll be back, probably for lunch sometime soon.

Ahhhh...l'amour. *cough hack*

I bet a pizza from Ella's or the miniburgers from Matchbox would fit the bill, and be suitably fast takeout if you called in advance. Plus you get in a nice walk, yet it's not so far that your food will be cold when you get back to work. I ate Ollie's Trolley fries for lunch once or twice in fits of desperation when I worked at FBI HQ. I can't really recommend them, nor do I suggest purchasing anything in the food bucket at the Old Post Office Pavilion. You didn't mention Potbelly. I think their sandwiches are pretty good and a good value, though their milkshakes leave something to be desired. Potbelly sammiches were an in-house favorite among Ortanique's front-end staff, and somebody would often pick up a big order from them on Saturdays when we reported to work around 1pm. Right on 11th St, close to Popeye's.

My parents know the chef and her husband personally through the Jewish community and were enthusiastic about taking me and my partner there partly because of this. I almost hit 223 for lunch on Friday but ended up at Stamey's...I didn't have enough time for a schmancier lunch, unfortunately. (Yes, I was considering Stamey's, Ghassan's, and 223 as my lunch choices. What does this say about me?)

The ambiance really is nice at Bistro Sofia, especially when measured against most Greensboro restaurants. I liked the French-restaurants-around-the-world menus on the walls (Russian French bistro near the door was especially cool). The bar looked pretty cozy and like a nice place to enjoy steak frites and a glass of wine if you happen to be alone and want a nice dinner in Greensboro. My parents loved the restaurant that preceded Bistro Sofia, I think it was called Madison Park or something like that, and they used to celebrate anniversaries there...so I somewhat expected a classy interior in the newer restaurant. The gardens look cool from the outside...Dad's cheese plate had mint from the outside garden on it. I liked the Jewish star stained glass window looming out through the backyard; the Greensboro Jewish Federation office happens to be on the next street over. Service was polite and inobtrusive. I almost ordered the Ibarra chocolate cake with dulce de leche ice cream for dessert, but the entree was so large that I was stuffed by dessert time. I tried to lobby my mom into splitting it with me but she was too full too. The portions are pretty large, not obscenely large like Cheesecake Factory but certainly bordering in that direction. The dessert menu is pretty short but I don't know how it compares to other dessert menus in Greensboro. For DC the menu would be too short...even though the four selections looked okay, a place around DC with that few choices (one of them a cheese plate) would be a place that doesn't invest much in its pastry program. So perhaps I was unfair in not getting something to share from this menu...if there's anybody in Greensboro putting some effort into their desserts, I'd be the first to get behind it. I'm sorry I didn't know the desserts were good before showing up last week.

Best Americanized pad thai yet, this time using chicken stock (). I tossed in plenty of veg to make it a one-dish meal.

Another Dave Scantland suggestion: Mussels in a garlic- and pepper-spiked tomato sauce with lots of thyme, over linguine. Lots of toasted baguette and butter, which we used to sop up the sauce. A small salad. Dessert: leftover baklava

I would support a ban in restaurants, but then I'm asthmatic and can have a hard time around cigarette smoke. While smoking bans can hurt business (and they have in MoCo), if DC pushed through a ban I bet a lot of the other local jurisdictions would have an easier time banning smoking. I think the dining scene in DC is important enough vis-a-vis dining in suburbia that it wouldn't cause smokers to go dine in the suburbs en masse. While bartenders in particular enjoy better tips when people smoke, it's a health hazard to have to breathe secondhand smoke all day every day in your workplace. This is why most other types of workplaces ban smoking at work. I know that my breathing difficulties due to smoke is one of the primary reasons I've never waited tables. I imagine this is also why there are some industry workers who are behind the ban.

Zaytinya is a great place to share vegetarian mezze that will blow you away. I especially love the spanakopita with handmade filo, the fava bean dip, and the fried eggplant with yogurt sauce. Yanyu in Cleveland Park has a vegetarian tasting menu, which includes all kinds of wonderful goodies...when I went I remember enjoying tofu skewers and mu shu veggies as two of the courses. I think it's a 7-course meal, all small tastes, all excellent. One of the best vegetable plates I had when I was a vegetarian came from Vidalia. I especially liked the brown glazed pearl onions and the mashed potatoes. I got really sick of vegetarian plates composed of side dishes after a while, but this one rose above the pack. It wasn't on the menu but they gladly made it for me several times when I used to work around the corner. Call in advance as they've since revamped their menu to make sure it's still available; I bet they have something similarly good if not. Sorry, Don, I am not fond of Woodlands. The one time I ate there I found the food greasy and I thought the spicing was unbalanced, plus I thought the Langley outlet had no ambiance. If you're coming up to Langley Park I think you'd be better off with one of the many dosais at Udupi Palace just down the road on University Blvd. They have a menu of 10 or so, along with many other South Indian favorites...like Woodlands, Udupi is all-Vegetarian. Plus they have interesting versions of barfi (Indian fudge) available from a counter up-front if you want to try an Indian dessert other than gulab jamun. I'm pretty sure Udupi has a limited wine list and sells beer (I know their sister North Indian restaurant Tiffin a half-block away does), and while it's in a crappy-looking shopping center and it's too brightly-lit I kind of like the environment in there. Vegetable Garden in Rockville has excellent Buddhist vegetarian Chinese-style food. The whole menu is vegan actually, with many organic dishes. The sesame "chicken" and the brown rice california rolls are perennial favorites in my household. Some of the local destination restaurants, including the Inn at Little Washington, cheerfully accommodate vegetarians. 2941 can do a great job too, most of their cooking uses vegetable stock instead of chicken stock meaning they already have a lot of vegetarian-friendly components on-hand to assemble you and your friend a great meal. Laboratorio del Galileo made me a great veg meal for my birthday a few years ago, too. It's very unusual for me to not see at least one vegetarian entree on a menu around Washington. Overall I believe DC is a very vegetarian-friendly city, and you'll dine well on your visit here. Please let us know what you ate after your trip is over!

If the dough rips when going through the rollers on the first or second setting, it's probably not kneaded enough. Finish pulling it through the rollers. Set it on a floured surface and rub the top with flour. Fold in thirds and use the palm of your hand to compress the layers together firmly. Put through the rollers again on the first setting. Repeat if it's still ripping and anything other than smooth and supple. This is basically using the machine to knead your dough. Resting the dough after making and before rolling is also important, as somebody else suggested.

Care to fill us in on some of these injustices? Does the whole book use the star system, btw?

Hey, I've been out of town! I'll probably pick it up sometime this week.

Finally made it there tonight, for a fantastic birthday dinner. I ordered tuna tartare, steak and baked alaska. This sounds like a supertraditional dinner, doesn't it? But it wasn't. The tuna is a rectangle of sashimi-grade tuna topped with a spicy dried tomato-pine nut relish and itty bitty baby basil greens. The steak? Four rectangles of thick, juicy hanger steak topped with cepes, with a red-wine reduction sauce and bright bright green spinach puree. Big glass of spicy, brassy shiraz with the steak which made me actively happy, I was almost squirming I enjoyed it so much. Oh, there were some crispyish round potatoes on my plate too which kicked ass...little half-spheres of potato heaven. The baked alaska had a maple-nut ice cream and this extremely alcoholic, terrific "hi-ball sauce". My only complaint was that the sauce was hard to pick up with the alaska since it was so thin, so I ended up drinking most of it with a spoon after the alaska was gone. The plating at this place alone is gorgeous and inventive. I want to return for lunch sometime. My partner had the scallops with haricots and chorizo, which looked terrific. The scallops were seared until caramelized, rich and sweet. He chose the fall fruit crisp with warm white russian milkshake for his dessert. I thought it a bit odd that a fall crisp included raspberries and blackberries, but it must have been fantastic because I didn't score a bite of it. It came in one of those attractive French oval bakers (they make chicken pot pies in these same dishes on the lunch menu at 2941). The milkshake was mildly alcoholic, and had a texture between whipped cream and the frothed milk on a cappuccino. Mmmmm.

Yes, Mighty Quinn, I graduated from Grimsley in the early 1990s. The Stameys moved out of the neighborhood before we did in 1986, but now my folks live over in the Friendly Acres development near Brassfield...and the (retired) Stameys have settled into a house only a few blocks away. They're a genuinely nice family and I'm really sorry I didn't like their BBQ more. I hadn't seen Chip since the mid-80s but he looked exactly as I'd imagined he would. I will go back and try the chicken, which Dad described as transcendent. I LOVE the steak subs from Ghassan's, almost got one instead of going to Stamey's actually. Their chicken skewers I remember as being good but not sure I'd still like them as much...haven't had them in many many years. My dad used to go to Ham's as a teen. He says there was another place called Campbell's where girls went to eat back then, and Ham's was where boys went. If a girl went to Ham's and she wasn't on a date with a boy she was considered to be a little...risque, maybe sluttish even. As a girl I eat at Ham's alone sometimes when I'm in town and nobody looks at me funny in this day and age. I go mostly for the chips (housemade chips are unusual around DC, but thanks to the Ham's legacy they're common in Greensboro). I only go to the original Ham's on Market Street near Westover Terrace. Ham's is all over NC now but they started off in lil ole Greensboro. Now, if somebody knows stories of the old Boar and Castle, we can really talk Old Greensborough. By the time I was born I think only the sauce remained. Libby Hill is another place I never went...though I actually enjoy fried seafood occasionally. Justin Conrad was one of the many Conrad kids who I went to school with; there's a picture of me dancing with him at my bat mitzvah party. I caught up with him at my 10-year reunion and he was about to open a new breakfast and lunch-only fast food place as a sort of experiment to see how it went over. This reminds me I meant to follow up and at least drive by (I think he said it was on Market near Spring Garden??) but I forgot all about it...and now I'm back in DC. All this goes to show you that if you know where to look, there are some excellent cheap eats in Greensboro. Which is pretty cool.

We ended up at Bistro Sofia tonight, for a nice bistro-y dinner. I had the leek and gruyere tart with gooseberry sauce and a small salad, followed by grilled lamb loin with mushroom bread pudding and a sort of ratatouille. Knocked back a big glass of jammy grenache with the food. Everything I ordered was pretty well-executed...the tart was a big hit around the table, and the lamb was flavorful and came with a nice pommery mustard-finished sauce. I thought the bread pudding was a little lacking in mushroom flavor but otherwise tasty. My husband ended up with some of the stranger dishes...a bowl of soup with rosemary, white beans, duck and bacon sounded promising but was garnished with...fried wonton strips? And then he had the "Asian" BBQ chicken, which came with a strange salad of watercress, black beans, mandarin oranges, fried chow mein noodles (I think that's what they were) and some kind of spicy vinaigrette. My dad enjoyed the cheese platter and a duck dish I didn't get to taste, while Mom had truffled frites and wild salmon on a bed of lentils with caramelized onions. We didn't get dessert. By the way, I stopped by Stamey's BBQ for lunch for the first time in my life (!!!) today. Caught up with Chip Stamey, who grew up kitty-corner from my family in the Green Valley neighborhood of Greensboro. The bbq is all right, not as richly flavored or smoky as I'd hoped for nor as tender but good in a pinch. I really liked the chopped cole slaw with bbq sauce, which was sweet-tart and quite crisp. The hush puppies aren't too bad, they're extruded through a device that looks somewhat like a donut maker to form little 2" snakes. I told Chip I fried hush puppies for my culinary school final, which he got a kick out of. He told me to send my dad by more often. Speaking of which, over dinner at Bistro Sofia, I told Dad that Chip said to come by more often, and Dad told me a story about how he tried to work with Chip's parents to get a BBQ chicken dinner going at Beth David Synagogue. This was probably sometime back in the late 1970s. They couldn't figure out how to do it without buying a brand new smoker to keep everything Kosher. I suggested that they could have dug a pit behind the synagogue but I guess nobody really considered that idea seriously enough. It's stories like this that make me glad to be a Jewish kid from Greensboro.

I'm not "really" part of this course but thought I'd post the menu and results anyway. Mom buys a turkey already cooked because I am not usually home in time to make it myself. I did however carve it myself this year, my first time cutting up a turkey and the first bird I've cut up since finishing my classwork at L'academie. My dad was especially impressed, not to mention pleased since he usually gets stuck with the job. I made Mom a nice turkey stock with the bones which tastes wonderful and will make a great turkey and wild rice soup...it's already in the freezer. I'm a little jealous of it actually. I made braised red cabbage, Loufood's asparagus with lemon confit, a big batch of mashed potatoes with lots of roasted garlic, cornbread, stuffing. I popped some popcorn and set out a relish tray beforehand. Relatives contributed a green bean casserole (I was a little irritated that this was preferred to my haricots verts with sauteed wild mushrooms and fried shallots from last year), a cranberry crumble, fried apples (MMMMM), and sweet potato casserole with some pineapple in it and marshmallows on top. After all that sweet nobody really wanted dessert, but it was all pretty tasty nonetheless. Next year my goal is to convince the folks to let me handle the bird beginning-to-end. At least there was lots of wine to wash it down with, and Mom and I knocked back a few campari-and-grapefruits while prepping in the kitchen. Mom's my favorite sous-chef.

Oh jeez. Now I'm really sorry I had to run out at the end of the night. How did it all work out? You guys must have been thinking E. and I stiffed you or something.

Ten lucky eGulleteers gathered at 2941 for dinner last night. Things got off to a little bit of an awkward start, but once the food started coming we all had a wonderful time. (I think there was some sort of miscommunication with the restaurant as to number of guests and time of service, so we were seated 30 minutes after everybody had arrived.) Chef Jonathan Krinn came to talk to us many times about the restaurant, his father the bread baker, and aspects of the courses we were enjoying. He also sneaked in a few surprises, much to our delight. We were seated in the sedate, lovely Waterfall Room, with a waterfall cascading outside our window. We enjoyed plenty of space at a large table surrounded by cushy seats, and the dedicated service of the talented, cheerful Anya (who made sure ladies were served before gentlemen). The center of the table was set with an attractive arrangement of colorful gourds and winter squashes. I apologize for the slight blurriness in many of these images. I'm not sure why it happened but will try to do better on future outings. I didn't drink any wine, so any camera hijinks really were all my fault. We started off with a couple of amuse-bouche dishes: Marinated calamari on croustade and crab-cucumber salad on a cucumber round. I think the calamari was cured via the marinade but not cooked, giving it a pleasant salty-fishy aspect. The salad was quite summery, full of crab flavor without being too rich. Tuna ceviche on potato chips. I viewed this as a sort of upside-down riff on tuna casserole. Top-notch tuna in the ceviche, rich and fatty and meaty. Then we began on the set menu: Fresh porcini on a puff pastry round, sweet with reduced madeira sauce. This was accompanied by a luscious, truffled custard round. The aroma between the porcini and the truffles was amazing. I need to find a perfume that smells this way or something because it made everybody pretty happy. Bacon-wrapped diver scallops on parsnip puree, with spiced apple cider glaze. I was impressed that the bacon seemed almost fused to the side of the scallops when presented, which made it easy to get bacon into every bite. (There should, after all, be bacon in every bite of a dish containing bacon, right?) The parsnip puree was a nice, seasonal touch, an earthy-sweet starchy comfort underneath the scallops. Marinated Chilean sea bass with honey and soy sauce, with a small pile of spinach which tasted strongly of iron and some mashed potatoes. The fish was ethereal, sweet-rich in flavor and an opal-like color on the inside. We were served a special fish knife with this course, which I semi-teased Anya about. (She responded with the appropriate professionalism and is probably snickering about it with her coworkers right now.) Chef Jonathan came and told us he happened to be digging around and found some lobsters languishing in the walk-in, so he thought what the hell, he'd throw some into the oven for roasting and see what happened. (I guess he happened to have extra lobster sauce, a surplus of caviar, and several quenelles of cauliflower puree that needed rotation as well, because they showed up on our plates as well. Darn.) We all managed to clean our plates, just to be nice...I chased the last few bits of caviar onto my fork with my knife and probably would have licked my plate had I been at home and alone. (I've got a reputation to maintain here...) Grilled foie gras with pistachio crust, ginger confit and pomegranate seeds. Does. Not. Suck. Braised pork belly with a pommes souffle. Chef Jonathan is amazing. I mean, this random pig wanders up to the back door and offers to become another special course for our dinner. That's hard enough to believe. Then Chef Jonathan finds somebody on a Saturday night with enough time to accompany it with all the bother of pommes souffle. (I've never made these. I don't dare.) Who is this guy, and why does he have extra pigs and lobsters just hanging around waiting for eGullet people to eat them? And why hasn't he posted more about it if he experiences this often? It's a mystery to me. Meanwhile he made good on the pig tummy, braising it slowly until it became a rich, tender delight. Mmmmm. Braised beef cheek "bon bon" and beef tenderloin with celery root puree and caramelized vegetables. This was some of the more flavorful beef tenderloin I've tasted, but nothing beats the flavor impact of a slow-braised beef cheek. Marinated venison medallions, venison meat loaf over mustard-braised kale, and sweet potato puree. This was one of my favorite courses...I especially loved the meat loaf, which was a new sensation for me with the full-flavored venison meat. The kale won huge points around the table too; its mild bitterness was a welcome foil to the meat loaf and the sweet potato puree. Caramelized pear tart flavored with thyme, with a crisp caramel-filo base on a round of chestnut cream and a quenelle of ice cream. The chestnut puree was my favorite part of this dish; its subtle earthy-spicy flavor was a perfect counterpoint to the other tastes in the dessert. Soft, innocent strawberry marshmallows and candied chocolated almonds (just like the ones I made at home yesterday, as Chefette taught me how to make.) Bilrus manhandles the pina colada-flavored cotton candy. It was mild and sweet and not at all gummy like carnival cotton candy can be sometimes. I ate almost a whole bowl of it myself, even after all the other food! Stacie35 wanted me to get a picture of the coffee, which she was holding when I took this picture. Unfortunately only Stacie35 showed up in the frame, not the coffee, so you can't see what it looked like. Too bad. At the end of the night we each took home a baguette from Chef Jonathan's dad. The bread was incredible by the way...I tried to sample all of the types in the basket (pumpernickel, some kind of cherry, baguette, walnut-wheat, and more). I ate a slab of baguette with butter after I'd been up for a few hours as my "breakfast"...I was still stuffed when I woke up this morning but after a while I couldn't resist the bread. Mmmm. Thanks, Chef Jonathan and Monica, for putting together a great night.

I didn't call before trying, so I didn't know until I showed up tonight that they're closed on Sundays. The menu looks great though, and I am delighted to see they support Polyface Farms by buying their bacon and Sunnyside Farms (I think that's where their beef is from) as well...both excellent vendors selling at the Dupont market on Sunday mornings. My friend and I vowed to hit them for lunch the week after Thanksgiving.

Nope, sorry. I love truffles and I don't care what they cost. The black ones and the white ones both, although they are quite different. There is an earthy component to them but they don't taste like dirt to me, in the same sense that a beet does. My enjoyment of both types of truffle is more related to the aroma they impart to a dish than their flavor though. Nothing beats that scent.

What happened with the wines? I was about to upload my pictures but seem to have trouble getting to ImageGullet. If I can't resolve this problem by tomorrow morning it may end up waiting until next Sunday.

More details! More!

Yes, the food was fantastic and the waterfall room and our service from the talented Anya both really added to the experience. I took pics and notes, and will try to get a summary up tonight.

My mother, who I love very much, gave me a fish cooking guide...you hold it up against your fish to see how thick it is and there's a list of cooking times for each degree of thickness. I usually just stick my hand in the oven and touch the fish to see if it's squishy. I almost never overcook my fish.

Parchment paper placed directly on the surface of food will prevent it from developing a skin. I usually braise with a piece of parchment and no lid on my pot or pan, or with both parchment and a "lid" of aluminum foil. But I don't braise meats for hours, I braise mostly vegetables.