vengroff

I'm curious about the percentages here. In particular: What percentage of bottles opened in restaurants are bad? What percentage of these are rejected by sommeliers? What about by customers? What percentage of bottles whose contents are as intended by their makers are sent back by customers anyway?

That's another good suggestion. The beer, mini-burgers, and atmosphere are top-notch. But for pizza I like Ella's around the corner a little better. And welcome to eGullet, Vandyhoo.

It is indeed granite. The pattern is called butterfly, and comes from Brazil. Even within butterfly there is a great deal of variation. I would recommend to anyone considering granite that you be sure to go look at actual slabs and pick a specific one, rather than just choosing from samples in a showroom. We spent a good four hours at the stone yard looking at hundreds of slabs before narrowing it down to this one. Behind the stove there will be stainless steel up to the hood.

Thanks! Once it's done I think I'm not going to eat a restaurant meal for a month. Except, perhaps, on a whim.

Countertops are in! The plumbing should be hooked up later this week. The hood and upper cabinets will be next week.

Mini tacos al carbon. Char the outside of the steak, slice it and roll in small warm flour tortillas with pico made from the tomatos and some cilantro, onions, and jalapenos.

If you are looking for something interesting and ethnic, with really top notch cooking, you might want to try Zaytinya. You may or may not exceed your budget depending on how hungry and thirsty you are. If you want Ethiopian, which DC used to be famous for, Dukem is pretty good.

You also have three tables with great views of the kitchen. One of my joys of solo dining in DC is to book one of those three tables at Citronelle and watch the kitchen work. It's not the same as the kitchen table, but it is great fun. I totally agree. If you don't have a large enough group to book the kitchen table, those three tables are fantastic. All the tables in that section of the dining room are great, but those three at the front are even better. Next time I think I'll bring a pair of opera glasses so I can focus in on the minute details of how the eggs are assembled.

Don't forget that the on the 20th there will be what promises to be a very special eGullet dinner at Indique organized by our very own Monica Bhide.

There is a company called Doug Care Equipment that sells bags for quite a bit less than the Foodsaver brand bags or rolls. They also sell industrial-scale vacuum sealing equipment. According to the site, their "micro-layered® pouches may also work with other brands of external clamp vacuum machines such as Foodsaver®." And they are about half the price. For example, you could get 50 8x10 pouches and 50 10x14 pouches for a total of $25.80. That's 1100 linear inches of 10"-wide material, or $0.023 per inch. As a contrast, a package of 15 11x14 Foodsaver bags is $9.99 at Amazon. They are 11" wide instead of 10", but it's only 210 linear inches, making it $0.048 per linear inch, which is more than twice the price. You can get a sligthly better deal with two 18' rolls of 11" wide Foodsaver material for $18.69 at Amazon. That's 432 linear inches of 11"-wide material, or $0.043 per linear inch. Does anyone have any experience with these? If they work with the Foodsaver appliance it looks like a good way to save some money on vacuum sealing supplies.

Repeat after me: my name is Don, and I am a risottoholic.

At Maestro is Tysons Corner, Virginia there is simply no wall between the kitchen and the dining room. If you have a table on that side of the room, you are just a few feet from the kitchen. There is an island on the threshold where Chef Fabio Trabocchi oversees final plating before dishes are sent out to the tables. One of the most amazing things to me is how quiet the kitchen is. Even if you are sitting at a table right in front of it, you don't hear any noise from the kitchen. There are no pots clanging and it appears as if the members of the brigade communicate telepathically. Upon closer examination, you notice that everyone in the kitchen has a small radio on their belt linked to an ear-bud in one ear and a tiny microphone clipped to their collar. It is fascinating to see the precision work that goes on in Fabio's kitchen. It's even more enjoyable when his fantastic creations reach your table.

Chef Fowke, That chicken looks great! Have you ever tried this technique on a larger bird? I wonder if it would be a practical way to solve the dry-breasted Thanksgiving turkey problem.

I was thinking of getting one of these. Before I do, I wonder if anyone could help me with a couple of questions about marinades. The first question is, how much difference does marinading in a vaccum canister make in practice. I've always thought of marinading as a chemical process where an acid in the marinade breaks down fibers the meat being marinated. Does this reaction somehow occur more quickly because of the low pressure? The second question is whether you can toss some meat and a marinade in a bag, vacuum seal it, and then freeze it for a quick meal at some later date. Does this work, or does the liquid end up in the guts of the machine when it tries to suck the air out of the bag?

I think restaurants should extend the BYO policy to other parts of the meal. For example, I know a butcher who sells dry aged USDA Prime steaks that are better and less expensive than what most restaurants offer. I would like to bring some of these steaks to a restaurant and have them expertly prepared and served on fine china with a nice bernaise--or maybe a green peppercorn sauce if I'm in the mood. For that I am willing to give the chef a bite of the steak and pay a $15 grillage charge for the table. Actually, the above is purely hypothetical; but is it really that different than BYOW?

Here are a few to get you started: foams, let the arguments begin Ferran Adria's coconut foam recipe, in english How do you make an Emulsion!?!?! Foams and Gelees, Valid? Good? Interesting?

Sounds like a very nice dish. Anything that brings a customer back for a second night in a row has got to be something special. I look forward to giving it a try. Lobster, peas, and pasta is one of Tom Colicchio's trilogies of ingredients in Think Like a Chef. I see no reason not to replace the pasta with rice.

Excellent tip. I'll make sure to ask for ours to be mounted up front when they go in.

We went with an intermediate solution. Our microwave actually is a countertop model, but we got a matching trim kit to go with it. The kit consists of a special metal metal shelf that is attached to the inside of the cabinet and some trim that screws onto the front of the cabinet. The microwave sits on the metal shelf. The stainless steel trim around it matches the front, and has vents to allow air to circulate. Undo four screws and it pops off and you can pull the microwave right out if need be.

It seems to me that how food products are handled during their journey is at least as important as the length of the journey. Which would you rather eat, a fish that was properly packed in ice and flown three thousand miles to your table, or a local fish caught this morning that sat in the back of a warm truck for an hour waiting to be unloaded?

The range is actually dual-fuel, so it's two electric ovens, one 30" monster and one 27" in the wall for less ambitious projects. The fridge is indeed a subzero. It's the only 30" wide tall built-in model we could find from any manufacturer. You can't really tell from the photos (except maybe the cat one) but there is not a lot of side-to-side clearance between cabinets when entering the kitchen from either the dining room or the back door. If we went wider than a 27" oven and a 30" fridge it would have gotten really tight. The overall kitchen is about 13' by 10'. We went with Viking because nobody closer than Baltimore can service a DCS if anything goes wrong. There was one distributer in Virginia who would sell us a DCS, but they didn't have any floor models we could look at. We also thought that it would be less hassle to get all the appliances from one vendor. As it turned out, it probably could not have been any worse if we had used two.

It's finally starting to look like a kitchen, and I'm far to happy about that fact to complain any more or worry about the work yet to be done or how long it will take. Here are some progress photos: This is the view entering from the dining room and looking diagonally across the kitchen from southwest to northeast. This dishwasher will be covered with a wood front panel to match the cabinets. The main sink will be in the corner, to the right of the window. The hole in the wall above the range is where a hood will be. It will vent out through a hole that will be cut in the exterior brick wall you can see behind the drywall. There will be upper cabinets all around. This is a view entering from the back door and looking diagonally across the kitchen from northwest to southeast. The big hole in the wall is a pass-thru to a bar on the other side, in the dining room. This used to be a solid wall, but it should open things up a lot more. The boxes in the dining room are upper cabinets and a few misordered cabinets that have to be sent back. There will also be a sink on this side, in the second cabinet from the right. With the two sinks, we have two self-contained work areas, each will full access to the range and the refridgerator directly behind it on the west wall. This is a view from the northeast corner, where the sink will be, towards the west wall. The oven, microwave, and warming drawer are now all operational. The fridge is plugged in, but not finished or hooked up to the water supply. Like the dishwasher, it will have wood fron panels and handles matching those on the cabinets. There will also be a small cabinet above it that will come up to the height of the oven cabinet. The idea is to reduce the number of bulky-looking appliances in the small kitchen by having them blend in with the cabinets as much as possible. This is a view from the southeast corner looking back to the northwest corner, where the back door is, and the west wall. Again we have the fridge and the major cooking appliances except for the range, which is on the opposite wall. This side of the fridge will also be wood-clad. That wood leaning up against it is a mis-sized door for one of the base cabinets. As soon as the workmen left for the day, the cats came out from hiding to check on the progress. I promised not to complain in this post, so I won't even mention the scratches on the floor or how they got there.

For the record, my comments should be read as if they were followed by a smily-face. I assumed that it was obviously enough a joke to not be necessary.

I knew Adria, Andres, et. al. were pushing the limits of cuisine, but barf? That's wandering into Fear Factor territory.

Great pics. Thanks, Malawry! One thing I forgot to mention about the lamb steak is the small marrow bone embedded in it. If you order this steak, be sure to poke the marrow out and spread it on a crust of bread.