vengroff

We visited Union again last night for the $25 tasting menu. The main dining room was full when we arrived shortly before 8, so it seems that the $25 tasting menu strategy is working. I hope these people keep coming back when it reverts to $48, because even at that price it is more than worth every penny. I haven't written as much about the food itself here as I should. But rather than focus specifically on what we had last night, since it will be different tomorrow or the next day, I'd like to offer some observations from multiple visits. First, Chef Ethan Stowell is a master of avian cookery. From tiny quail with crisp cracking skin over smooth savory bits of meat, to duck breast served perfectly medium rare over wilted greens, to the house confit of guinea hen, it's all first rate. Every bird that comes out of the kitchen has the kind of bold distinctive flavor that makes you realize just how much is missing from the chicken dishes you might pay similar prices for at other restaurants. Foie is, as one would expect, perfectly executed, in a thick slice with crisp seared sides, accompanied by a rotating selection of fruits. Second, the fish courses. Union sources from the east coast and Europe in addition to the Northwest. They get fish like rouget, sturgeon and dorade that you don't see as often as often as the ubiquitious salmon and halibut. But far from just being a novelty, these fish are put into well-executed combinations that really bring out their particular characteristincs. Finally, the cheeses, which are uniformly exceptional, and presented at the peak. You can tell Union is serious simply by looking at the goat cheeses they stock. Not once have I ever seen a milky white round of young chevre. Instead, it is made clear that goat cheeses exist in a broad spectrum, just as their cow and sheep counterparts do. If a blue goat cheese appears on the menu when you visit, jump on it. Last night we continued our odyssey through wine director Reinier Voorwinde's half-bottle collection. It ended up being a California does Rhone kind of evening. We started with a Treana Mer Soleil Marsanne/Viognier. It's a nice alternative to your run of the mill Chard. Next up was the Fife L'attitude 39, which kept us happy though the meat and cheese courses. Others may disagree, but I really like eating at the bar in general, and Union is no exception. One of the advantages of sitting at the bar is that Avel and/or Jason can guide you through their extensive selection of European aperitifs and digestifs--not just your standard Campari and Lillet, but more exotic stuff like the strangely satisfying herbacious Liquer Fabrique par Les Freres Chartreaux. By all means, whether you've been already or not, get yourself to Union and support what they are doing during their $25 promotion. More importantly, keep supporting them once the promotion is over.

I was at Union both Tuesday and Friday evenings this week. The $25 March Madness tasting Sun-Thu is quite possibly the most insane restaurant value I have ever heard of. Their tasting menu should be priced at $65-70, but they routinely run it for $40-48. With this deal it's $25. Food cost alone has got to put them in the red. One hint on the wine list: Flip to the half-bottle section in the back and you can pair great selections course by course even if your party is small. Don't miss the St. Innocent Pinot Noir.

Note that Cafe Atlantico puts on a stunning prix fixe vegetarian Latino Dim Sum brunch. I have no idea what their policy is at the minibar, but the brunch is one of the best vegetarian meals I have had anywhere.

Like Ms. Cassidy, I was disappointed with the cheese. But for me it was the quality, not the quality. I had a very dissappointing underripe epoisse, as compared to the outstanding one I had at Union just a few days later. The rest of the meal at Lark I quite enjoyed. But I've never been one to complain about serving sizes. I always prefer quality to quantity.

I never had one of those soft-serve pomegranite margaritas--I stick to the traditional lime-based liquid variety, and I always liked the food at the original location in NYC. If the quality has fallen off a cliff, it's a real shame.

I skipped on in recently and had a nice meal. There were only two of us, which unfortunately limited the total number of dishes we were able to sample. I really liked the place, especially because it reminded me of one of Blue Ribbon Bakery, which was always one of my favorite haunts in New York. They aren't exactly the same--I think Lark aims a little higher with their menu, whereas Blue Ribbon has a more extensive wine program. That being said, both are places where I feel like I can walk in and pick and choose small plates to compose any of several completely different meals. Should I end up living in the vicinity, which I hope to do, Lark will be a regular spot for me.

Another successful visit to Union, this time with a group. We had tasting menus all around. Once again the soup was outstanding. Velvety chestnut poured over a quenelle of foie gras mousse. The monkfish in lobster broth with young onions was also fantastic. Fluke with mint was an adventurous combination; the mint tried to be subtle, but was still just a tad overstated for the fish, in my opinion. The cheese course was an in-your-face epoisse, all gooey and runny on the plate--a bold and inspired choice--I loved it.

Can't argue with that. I should have said something to that effect in my post. If you go you should try to bring along someone you are interested in having long leisurely conversation with. Although that might interfere with the dog and pony show. I guess you could text message back and forth on your mobile phones or something.

I put one in my DC kitchen and I loved it. I got the kitchenaid 27" model, which comes with a good selection of trays and racks. It was second only to the convection oven in radically increasing the quality and efficiency of my cooking. I don't know what I did without them. It's a great place to put a just-roasted rack of lamb for 10 minutes while you finish the sides on the range. The meat relaxes, but doesn't cool too much. Beats the hell out of the old aluminum foil tent. I've also kept a roast chicken in it for almost an hour with only minimal loss of texture. With a little experimentation with the temperature and wet/dry adjustments I was able to keep a dozen pancakes in perfect shape as I continued to make more. Same for waffles, which are even more problematic, since I can only make four at once. I never tried it with fried foods, but I bet it would be just the ticket for holding a batch of fries from my small DeLonghi deep frier while I made a second batch. It's also fantastic for warming plates sligthly so that plated food stays warmer. Finally, it can used for proofing bread if you are into that.

I think I'd be sick if I had to eat that quickly! I much prefer a leisurely pace to my dining. Meals at Lumiere and Tojo's in Vancouver and Mistral in Seattle easily topped the 3 hour mark and I loved it. I'm with you LEdlund. A few days before I left DC I had a four course meal at the bar at Nectar that lasted from 7 o'clock to 11:30. It was great talking to the staff and fellow patrons before during and after each course. It was really much more like a good dinner party with interesting guests than a standard restaurant experience. I love that kind of dining.

I had the tasting menu at the bar at Union last night. The service was attentive and friendly and there were some very nice dishes. Spinach soup with creamed dungeness crab was a great combination. The savory spinach soup was poured over cool sweet chunks of crab. The effect was brilliant. I also had grilled loup de mer topped with a slaw of fennel in light vinegar. This dish got a lot of points with me for using fennel to its fullest potential without letting it overpower everything else on the plate, as so often happens. The only dish that disappointed me was the oysters topped with paddlefish caviar. To me it was just too briny. Note, however, that I routinely like less salt in my food that many others--so you can take my thoughts on the oysters with a grain of salt, as it were. They have a good selection of wines by the glass. I particularly liked the Shea Pinot Noir that I had with an impressively gamey little roasted squab. They've also got a nice selection of half bottles. On my next trip, I'm very much looking forward to sampling their selection of cheeses. The tasting menu had a cheese course, but not the full experience you get by ordering it seperately. Dessert was a panna cotta with a grapefruit sauce (more soup really). I liked the combination in the bowl, but had trouble finding a wine pairing for it. In retrospect, maybe a sparkler would have been the right call. Overall, I was quite pleased with my experience. $45 for the tasting menu seemed well within reason for the food, service, and presentation. One final note if you happen to eat at the bar. There is a glass door that looks like an emergency exit to 1st Ave but isn't. Try to avoid sitting near it--people come and go all evening, and you get a blast of cold air on your back every time they do.

Just got off the plane and found my way to my temporary apartment. It's a couple of blocks from Union. Gee, I wonder where I'll be eating tonight.

I would suggest gutting it, living out of a dorm fridge for months while it is remodeled, and then, when it is finally done, moving across the country. It worked for me.

Point taken. Some people may actually like the stuff. It certainly seems to keep flying off the shelves. It's probably even comparable to a lot of what's out there in the $7-12 range on supermarket shelves. But if you look around a bit there also happen to be some far more balanced wines available in the sub-$10 price range. To me, a more balanced wine is a more enjoyable wine. Walk into any decent wine shop in the country with a ten dollar bill, and they can set you up with something that will blow the Chuck merlot I tried right off the map. If there is a $3 bottle that can compete, I'd be happy to hear about it. But Chuck just isn't it.

I think the point here is that just because something is cheap, doesn't mean it's a bargain. If it's really bad, it's really bad, even if it's free. And this stuff is bad--jet fuel on the nose and smuckers grape jelly on the palate. I'd rather drink a decent $9 bottle of Taurino Salice Salentino one time out of three and water the other two times than a bottle of $3 Chuck every time.

I've only tried one bottle of this stuff, but that was more than enough for me. It was really quite awful. Here's a thread on Chuck from last year.

I just checked the drink list. Avacado Daquiri, anyone? It's avocado, Skyy vodka, lime juice, and simple syrup. I might go with tequila over vodka in that one, and skip the simple syrup, but you could certainly do worse. How about a White Peach--peach nectar, Stoli vanil, and Godiva white chocolate liqueur? Sounds like a drink aimed at twelve year olds. Or, a Nectar--Pitu, apricot nectar, and fresh mint. Shouldn't that be the name of somebody else's signature drink? Seriously, though, if the food lives up to the billing on the web site, this place is going to be stunning.

I've never seriously considered opening a restaurant. But I did once do a back-of-the-envelope calculation that convinced me I absolutely never should. Suppose I hosted a dinner for 8 at my home twice a week, and spent $100 per person on food and wine. That would get me some very high quality ingredients at a cost of about $80K per year. Now suppose I opened a serious restaurant in a serious restaurant city. I would consider myself extremly fortunate if I only lost $80K the first year. In the dinner party case, I would be working five or six hours a day two days a week. In the restaurant case, I would be working twelve hours a day seven days a week. The way I figure it, if I'm going to lose my shirt anyway I'd rather have the extra free time.

Nectar has a velvety pumkin soup with crisp sweetbreads. The perfect middle stop on your soup tour. The mussels aren't technically a soup, but the rich sauce poured over them has the feel of a really good cream soup. Firefly's Turnip soup with bacon and egg sounds like a real winner too. Good luck as you hop from one to the next in the bitter cold weather.

COuld you please describe the milkshake? It sounds delicious. It tastes exactly like a warm white russian (kahlua+vodka+milk), frothed up and served in a champagne flute. Apparently, some diners pour it over the cobbler as a sauce, while others sip it as we did. My wife liked it so much she ordered a second one.

We had a lovely time in the back bar at Nectar last night, and even ran into a couple of fellow eGulleteers. As of last night, they have added a stunning little bowl of mussels to their menu. A pitcher of light curried cream is poured over them at the table. Be sure to get plenty of extra bread to soak it all up. Next up was a study of duck and turnips. In the center of the plate, between perfect pink slices of breast and a crispy leg confit was a fat slab of foie sandwiched between two sticky carmelized slices of turnip. The creamy savory richness of foie gras has, by now, been paired with the sweetness of every fruit under the sun, from figs to blackberries to bananas. But in this case, Jamison has carmelized the starches of a root vegetable to produce a similiarly balanced, but altogether exciting combination. Cheese was brilliant as usual as was the winter berry cobbler with a warm white russian milkshake.

That's it, or course. Now I feel like an idiot. Good thing I don't post on eMusician.

Nevermind.

Perhaps so, but how would individuals find out what happens at meat packing plants if those private enterprises barred them from the premises? Maybe they could start giving free public tours, the way many breweries and chocolate factories do. You watch a short video on the history of meat, then a tour guide takes you through the plant, where you watch operations from behind panels of glass. At the end, you get a free hamburger and the option of buying a T-shirt from the gift shop. How likely is that to happen?

In an idealized market model, it is fairly easy to make the argument that the invisible hand will force producers to provide safe food products to consumers. Consumers will decide what they will or will not pay for products made from ingredients and processes that they perceive as more or less risky to their health. The critical piece of this model that tends to be missing in the real world is the full disclosure of information from the producers to the consumers. A month ago, how many consumers had any idea that the hamburger they were eating could be made from cattle too sick to stand up? If they knew, many might have been willing to pay an extra few cents a pound for beef certified by the producer not to have come from downers. Soon the market would reach a new equillibrium at a slightly higher price, supported by full access to information about production methods. If the equilibrium price of a commodity is predicated on either buyers or sellers having incomplete information, then the market has failed. Given that producers tend to actively resist any requirements to provide additional information on the ingredients and processes that go into their products, it seems that government intervention to force them to do so could conceivably help move the market closer to its ideal configuration. It's a radical concept for rabid free-marketeers who resist any suggestion of government intervention in markets. Curiously enough, however, their ranks tend to be populated by those who benefit most from witholding complete information from the market.