clifford

When I lived in Baltimore, the theater at the Rotunda Mall actually didn't care if you brought food in. There were many a night that my ex and I ate pad thai or nibbled on some somosas while catching the latest flick.

When I first started learning about wine, a friend of mine told me to go a "nice" wine store and follow these rules: 1) Never spend more than $10 2) Never buy anything from the US, stick with French, Italian, or Spain, except... 3) Never buy anything from France, Italy, or Spain that looks like an American wine (ie: flatly states CHARDONNAY in bold print on the label) I found his recommendations (guidelines actually) to be really helpful in developing my palate and appreciation for wine at an early stage, without costing a bloody fortune. There are certainly great wines made throughout the world, at multiple price points, but if you are just beginning, this approach worked great for me, and didn't cost a whole lot. And since I live in Alexandria, I wholeheartedly second the nomination of Rick's. Great selection, educated staff, nightly complimentary tastings, and about twelve selections of wine that meet the above criteria displayed five feet inside the front door.

The one I ate at is in Washington DC, with multiple locations in the greater DC area. Not only is this disease insideous, but it is widespread.

The Melting Pot was my worst "dining" experience, ever. Party of four, industrial surroundings, idiotic server, cooked our own shitty food, $230, including tip. Didn't get drunk. Didn't order the whole menu. I saw the bill and half wanted to singe my face on the burner just so I would never forget the pain of the experience. Four years later, and I am still angry. I have always wondered how they get a food service license, considering their biggest sellers are chicken and shrimp, both of which can be very hazardous if not handled properly. DEATH TO THE MELTING POT!!!

My girlfriend once had a pearl in her vichysoisse, and it was still attached to the earring. When we brought it to our disinterested waitresses' attention, she condescendingly replied "no one in the kitchen would wear an earring LIKE THAT". She then gave us a great little patronizing smile that said, "Eat your fucking soup". My all-time favorite foreign objects story was when I worked in a little restaurant in Baltimore. I walked into the service area where I found one of my servers staring at the finished plate of Oysters Rockefeller. We served these four to an order in a cassoulet (sp) filled with rock salt. There stood Steve, staring at the empty cassoulet and the four empty shells. He had a very puzzled look. We started talking about the absence of the rock salt, and how it made it out of the kitchen and to the customer with no one noticing. I asked Steve how it even made it to the table, since it had to pass the cook, expo, runner, server, etc. Then the customer came staggering out of the dining room, literally careening from wall to wall as he headed for the bathroom. I followed him in and watched as he began to projectile vomit. I went back to the table and informed the gentleman's wife that he was violently ill, and might require medical assistance. The wife responded, "I think it was those white things he ate". "What white things?" I replied. "You know, the white things with the oysters" she continued. "You mean.....the rock salt?????" I said, incredulous. "UNDER the oysters??" "Yeah, what are those?" asked the idiot's wife. "Ma'am," I flatly stated, "those are rocks, rocks made of salt". The man left in an ambulance and we never heard from him again (to the best of my knowledge). Now, when the asshole Chef heard about the incident, things again got interesting, as he felt that it was a service issue and the waiter should have informed the guest not to eat the salt. I simply replied, "While were at it, we should tell them not to eat the plates, too." At the end of the night, we wighed the rock salt that fills the cassoulet. Slightly more than two pounds. And he ate them all. With a spoon. I can't for the life of me figure out how he did it.

When you order, say, guacomole, and it comes out composed on the plate, rather than mixed, generally with some subtle variation. You see it a lot with Caesar salads/dressings, usually with a unique, whimsical, and often non-sensical twist.

As a newbie to the board, I can see that I have a lot to learn about e-gulleters. It never ocurred to me to actual post WHILE I ate! That being said, I am chilling down a bottle of '03 Brancott RIGHT NOW, and I also happen to have some PEI mussels in the fridge. I will attempt to recreate Susan in FL mussel/wine experiment and post in short order. edited because I am a tarrible speler

This post is fascinating, and I might say, a bit daunting. It seems to me that starting a restaurant is the modern day version of alchemy. No matter how much you think you have the proper mix of overhead, labor, and F&B costs, a substantial portion of the success is predicated on..........luck? Even talent AND sound business plan AND a passion for the business AND the willingness to work 80+ hour weeks more likely than not are going to amount to heartache. As Mr. T so eloquently stated..."I pity the fool"

I think most of the time, a great wine list buy is a mistake on the part of the restaurant part. A few years back I went to a restaurant in Little Italy, Baltimore that had '97 Caymus Napa Cab for $28 a bottle. Last year, I saw a bottle of 1997 Diamond Creek Gravelly Meadow at a restaurant called Bilbo Baggins in Alexandria, VA for $100. No other wines on either list were similarly priced.

Perhaps it came across harshly and I was not trying to assign blame to the customer, just a bit of advice. There are a lot of very good restaurants that can't seem to get their food to "travel" well, but when presented with the opportunity, are willing to try. Better to trust the ones that do it frequently, especially for such an important day.

Off premise catering is a nightmare. The old adage of Murphy's Law never rings more true. No matter how exhaustive your walk throughs and planning meeting are, you will always be searching for something and attempting to pull a rabbit out of your hat at the last minute. One of the hardest things to execute? Coffee. Especially for huge quantities of people, and generally in these old catering mansions with terrible electrical systems. You need a dedicated 20 AMP breaker for each coffee maker, so you will find yourself brewing coffee in virtually every nook and cranny of the place. And you really need an electrician, because the outlets NEVER work like a client tells you. I used to test sockets with one of those $20 little testers at walk throughs, but even that wasn't a sure thing. I never left the restaurant without a full case of sterno, an empty Cres-Cor, Extra sheet pans, and three cinder blocks? Light 10 Sternos and throw them in the Cres Cor and presto, you have an oven. I have actually melted the doors off of these things! Why the cinder blocks? Arrange them side by side, with a sterno in each, and you have the hillbilly version of a Viking range! The minutae involved in planning a sit-down dinner for 400 is mind numbing. And no matter how much you plan, and label each equipment box, one server will take the box with the doilies and salt and pepper shakers and inexplicably place them ON THE ROOF, then forget he has done this. One of my favorite moments was when I was planning a wealthy clients holiday party, and he wanted to have his favorite Vietnamese noodle place do some of the food. So we go and meet the owner to discuss the set-up and his equipment needs, and he starts in on the refrigerators he will need, and the pasta cooker, and the gas fired woks, etc, etc. I leaned over the table and said to him, "Have you ever been camping?" He looked at me quizzically, as the term "camping" did not quite resonate I proceeded to explain to him that he was going to have to figure out how to feed his delightful noodle dishes to 500 people out of coolers and from ONE electric oven with an 8'table for prep. Oh yeah, and you'll be cooking on the loading dock. "That," I explained to him, "is why you can charge someone $10K for noodles." On busy weekends, when we had multiple events going on the same day, I would generally throw up from the stress somewhere around 11AM. And I was GREAT at the job, but I just could not take it anymore. Maybe the old deli tray kind of drop off catering is easy, but full service, fine dining catering has got to be a reasonable facsimile of the seventh circle of hell.

As someone who once ran several successful off-premise catering ventures, I know that they are often fraught with potential disaster. My only question is this: did the Indian Restaurant REGULARLY execute off-premise catering? If not, you should have never contracted them to do so in the first place. Many restauranteurs fail miserably in what seems like a simple logistical challenge. It doesn't seem like this particular restaurant was well versed in something seemingly easy as food delivery. It is obvious that they were trying to get you the food, unfortunately they were failing. Their failure to live up to their end of the bargain was magnified because it was your wedding, a once in a lifetime event. Weddings, to me, were always the most pressure filled simply because I knew the clients expectations were so high, and a letdown was simply not an option. Change the event from your wedding, to say, a family picnic. Your anger/disappointment with these exact same events would be considerably different, and you most certainly would have settled the issue of payment by now. The restaurant apparently was trying their damndest to get the food to you, but were inept. Shame on them for not being able to accomplish their contracted obligation. And even worse, shame on them for making excuses. However, you did accept the food when it arrived. And although you may not have wished to make a scene, you had joined in the fray several times before the food got there. When it arrived, everyone, by your own admission, had already eaten. So you cannot argue that you HAD to accept the food at that point. You chose to. The caterer/restaurant deserves to be paid more than 1/6th of the total. I would imagine something along the lines of 1/3 would be appropriate.

Even the most successful restauranteurs wonder aloud why anyone would wish to get into this business. It's not enough to simply be passionate about food. It has to truly consume you. And being talented, culinarily,won't necessarily get the job done, either. The world is littered with closed restaurants operated by culinary wunderkinds. And if, in fact, you are a financial wizard, that often times is not enough in the fickle and mercurial world of restaurants. You really have to be equal parts of all three, and a little bit lucky as well. Every single year hundreds, if not thousands, of people just like you decide to chase their dreams and open up a restaurant. And yes, the attrition rate for these ventures probably runs about 95% over five years. But unless you give it a go, you'll never know. Be prepared for 80 + hour weeks, dishwashers not showing up, seafood deliveries minus the crabmeat, broken stemware, health department inspection during the height of lunch rush, waking up in the middle of the night wondering if table 52 got their grilled calamari salad, etc. etc. etc. And when its all said and done, if you still have your sanity AND your business, you have truly accomplished something extraordinary!

I was actually EXCITED to brew my coffee this morning, armed will all of this newfangled coffee information. I carefully, and coarsely, ground my beans, measured them out, and placed them in the Bodum (sp?) coffe press. Added the boiling water, let the grounds steep for 5 minutes, then presto, down went the press. The resulting cup o' joe was deep and rich in color, and had a pleasant and refreshing bouquet. But the taste was, well, disappointing. I was using some Kona Peaberry I recently was given, and the taste was flat and astringent. All bitterness and surpirisingly thin body, given the color. Please help me! Am I doing something wrong, or, even worse, to I actually prefer BAD coffee?

I received a bottle of Ruby Red a few years back. A little of that with some tonic on a hot summer day was divine!

I was never an adventurous eater as a child, and the line(s) of demarcation for me were based on two principles: motion, and fourth grade science class. Anything that moved as I was trying to get it onto my fork, spoon, spork, whatever was out of the question. This eliminated jello (watch it jiggle, see it shimmer...HATED IT), peas, linguine and spaghetti, etc. Basically, if it was hard to get on my utensil, and hard to keep on my utensil, it wasn'y crossing my lips. In fourth grade science class I learned about trichinosis, and the thought of a worm growing inside of my belly ruined pig for me. In all forms. Same with mushrooms. Once I found out their function in nature is to decompose DEAD THINGS, I couldn't understand why anyone would want to eat that. And you could not convince me that the egg yolk was anything other than a liquefied baby chicken. Off my list. Then one day in 1989, I awoke from a three day heroin coma craving bacon and a mushroom/pea omelette. The rest is history.

It was great to see the link to NatDecants web page, and all of the positive talk about wineries on the Niagara escarpment. About three years ago, a friend of mine who is a fairly serious collector suggested we head up to Niagara for a hedonistic wine weekend. Although I was puzzled why he wanted to go to Niagara, I am always up for a good wine bender and readily agreed. My wife and I met the couple at the airport and were astounded at the volume of luggage they had brought. Several skycaps were furiously tagging what appeared to be 10 steamer trunks. I asked Dave if his wife was anticipating difficult couture decisions, and he replied that all of these were empty. "They won't be when we come back!," he laughed. So off to Buffalo we went, where we rented two Suburban's (Me: "I think we just need a sedan", Dave: "What the hell are you gonna haul your wine in?", Me: "I guess we need a Suburban? ) Off we went. To make a long, hedonistic story short, I still rave to all of my wine friends how they simply must go to Niagara! Sure Inniskillen has international noteriety, but it's the wines you drink in peoples kitchens and garages that are truly spectacular. Everyone is so hospitable and accomodating, and the wines are generally good to extraordinary. And the QPR, even at Inniskillen, was excellent. I was pleasantly surprised by all of the restaurants we dined in. Actually, amazed might be a better word. Refined food, elegant, often simple settings. When it was time to cross the border, Dave and his wife had 15 cases of wine, and we had 7. Now, I was pretty nervous, as I new that you could only bring back two BOTTLES, and we had, between us, over 500. Dave was, again, nonplussed. He said the worst case scenario was that we would have to pay a slight tariff (I believe $.35), but that "the paperwork is such a colossal pain in the ass the border patrol will just wave you through." Apparently, you would have to itemize EACH BOTTLE, so it's better to take more across the border than a little less. Dave went through customs first, and the border guard spent about one minute talking to him. The guard went to the back of the Suburban, opened the back door, and inspected one of the now full steamer trunks. One minute later Dave was back in the states, and we pulled up. I gave the guard my driver's license, and he asked "I guess the purpose of your visit was to buy ton's of wine?" "Yes sir," I replied. "How much you got?" he inquired. "A little more than seven cases...." I fearfully stammered. He just shook his head, handed me back my wallet, and waved me through. That summer, Henry of Pelham Baco Noir was my everyday drinking wine, and my only regret is I haven't made the time to go back again.

You know, I always found the notion of truly expensive vodka rather perplexing. Let's look at the raw materials they are working with: water, potatoes, grain. No real shortages of any of that stuff. And it's supposed to taste like,...well...nothing. And there's no need to age it, because after, say, two years, it's not going to taste any more like nothing, is it? So why, exactly, does this stuff cost $20, $30, $40+ dollars a bottle? The answer must lie beneath the smiles of those liquor company executives. As an aside, a friend of mine once paid $125 USD for a 750ml bottle of some Super Premium Lithuanian vodka. PT Barnum must have rolled over a couple of times in his grave!

Wow! With each passing day I am more amazed at the education level and passion displayed here on egullet. I guess it's up to me to dumb down the discussion a bit with my two-cents: I have never purchased a bottle of sparkling wine from CA that was labeled Champagne. I have never even seen it advertised, as such. I thought (maybe I am wrong) that it was against the law to put the words Champagne on the label. That being said, when my Mom comes over for Christmas Brunch, she always brings the "Champagne". I take her bottle of Korbel with it's nifty white plastic screw cork and place it in the 'fridge, right next to my '95 Veuve Clicquot Brut Rose. No matter how much money the French (RIGHTLY) spend on defending the viticultural region of Champagne, they would do themselves a far greater service by attempting to educate the general public that Champagne is great to drink on days other than Christmas, December 31st, and your wedding.

I had a 20 tawny from a producer named Burmester (sp?) at a tasting five years ago that was to die for. Never seen it,or anything else from the producer, since. Has anyone ever heard of this producer?

Two things I think really need to be addressed: What was the Escenzia like? What was the BILL like?

New Guy weighing in here. Dress codes, to me, are a slippery slope. I am fully supportive of restaurants that have dress codes, as I believe it not only sets the tone and ambience of the dining environs, but for some people, it heightens the anticipation of the dining experience. I cannot imagine that sneakers violate a dress code,unless they are specifically mentioned. I believe Hannah's problem was that her sneakers were just not all black or all white, and therefore stood out against the rest of her ensemble. A fashion faux pas? Certainly. A violation of the dress code? Hardly. Unless it was specifically mentioned. I have seen plenty of people meet the "Coat and Tie" requirement in gharish, outlandish, and downright hideous ways. But they met the requirement. To refuse service based upon dubious aesthetic judgement seems suspect.