reesek

you've inspired my new signature line. love it.

parkway. hell yes. potato pancakes getting cooler and heavier over the years? hmm? can't hear you. sweet waitresses who have known me since birth never around anymore and replaced by super surly man-woman? they're busy! hash browns? yes. nova? yes. pickles? yes. delight sandwich? yes please. with a side of levitra. vace. i don't want to know from any two amy's. living in seattle, a pizza wasteland, only whips up my lather for vace. dancing crab - whole lobster please. boiled? cold fries? wet tray? depressing room? see you at 6. silver spring tastee. scratch that - it's perfectly rational. i remember the adds for chesapeake bay seafood house..."get all the seeeeeeeeafood you can eat!"

i'm pretty sure they didn't have twinkies last year...i can't imagine i would have chosen a candy bar over a twinkie. i have heard that the frying must be precise. can you imagine if the creamy filling melted? have fun! (don't miss the goats!)

adanzig - what did you have at each - any recommendations? I've been to both Lailabela and Meskel too and I'm not sure I agree - though we've stuck to vegetarian platters. I've only been to Meskel once, and Lailabela several - but found the quality and service at Lailabela to swing wildly, making me wary of going back. The collard greens at Meskel are exceptional, and the draker reddish lentils were at least as good as Lailabla's very good ones. The salad on the Meskel platter was injera and tomato...an interesting take on bread salad, while the Lailabela salad is iceberg and tomato - refreshing but forgettable. The yellow lentils at Meskel were not hot enough (temperature-wise) - a problem we've had with our whole meal at Lailabela on 2 occasions. On the service front...while I don't expect exceptional service, Meskel was a pleasant surprise - the outdoor seating was also a bonus. have you (do you plan to) make multiple trips to each place? I definitely feel like I need to go back to Meskel and see if the second meal is as good as the first.

dougery - i dragged my boyfriend last year with promises of scones, and pygmy goat and donkey sightings. it was my first state fair. we ate scorchingly hot, yet raw french fries, bland panini, and the grossest "scone" ever, before i demanded we try a deep fried snickers on our way out. i have since agreed never to make him eat at a state fair again. the snickers melts - but only a little - in it's corn-dog jacket, in a really upsetting, oily, wet, slimy way, not a warm car melty way which, i must confess, i like. what did you eat at the fair? or did you take suggestions from egulleteers and skip the food? (the goaties are cute!)

speaking of figs - i made a very tasty fig and apple butter this weekend to go on fresh baked bread (my new obsession) if anyone is interested in my method, PM me and i'll gladly send a recipe.

jack, i can't believe my luck that you're blogging! i've been poring over your wonderful bread lesson in EGCI. i'm thinking about getting some starter...though even with commerical yeast we've been having fun baking. i'm very eager to watch you bake lots of bread and pizza in those brick ovens. your view and apples look wonderful...our 2 trees (with indeterminable apple varieties) are jealous. i've heard cambridge is lovely. my boyfriend's family is from hertfordshire & essex and we hoped to make it to cambridge in april, but ran out of time. i'd love to see some photos of the area if you have time. blog on!

richard - this looks good. i'd serve with halibut, but braised lamb would be mighty tasty too. roasted tomato & flageolet

we had very late dinner (11:30) there last week. it was packed - we waited at the bar for a few minutes before heading into the dining room. the bartender was nice, but not wildly knowledgable about wine. it was late, and we weren't starving so we thought we'd stick to mezze - what we ordered was far too much food - some good, some kind of "eh." our waitress was fine...but didn't initially inspire confidence. she couldn't really tell us about portion sizes and when we asked for everything to be brought at once (not wanting to fill up on any one thing) she seemed a little flummoxed - though it worked out relatively well. we ordered the eggplant spread - it was good, and i liked the pita, but wished it had been smokier. it was also very cold - like they'd moved to a new batch from the walk-in - i wished it had been at room temp. next were the fried chick-peas with rosemary and sea-salt. addictive, delicious, and i bet damn easy to recreate at home. we're flirting with meat so we ordered the lamb skewers and the braised octopus with pork belly. the lamb was ok...i agree with the comments about the overly sweet tomato and ...i don't know - maybe it's that i haven't had lamb in ages (it used to be a favorite) but i just wasn't very impressed. very gamey and not juicy at all. the bed of onions it came on was great though. it's a lot of food...3 big skewers - i wish i'd known that. the hit of the meal was the octopus - absolutely delicious - but what the heck was that pork belly doing in there? it didn't add anything flavor-wise...i could have understood a smoky sausage - but the belly was fresh. the crisp bits were nice, but i just felt they clashed with the octopus. it can stand on it's own just fine... also a huge portion. way too full for dessert. we had 2 glasses of something red - it was not memorable, but not bad. i do love small plate dining, but it's a challenge to get each restaurant's portion sizes down...a little reminiscent of clothes-shopping (where depending on the brand/store you could be one of 3 sizes). lola didn't really do it for me. i have to confess though, that while i love palace kitchen, i'm not a major TD fan...i never think the food is as interesting as it could be - so take my words with a slab of pork belly.

plot thickening...i've talked to my sister (not so good with surprises). they've only been to palena once and didn't love it (willing to try again, but on a less 'special' night) and the small size of nectar's menu has kept them away. (can't pick your relations, right? ) she's suggested a couple of other places...any feedback on these - city zen? i can't find anything on it...and charleston in baltimore. still open to more options...thanks again! edited to comment on bilrus' post - ironic that they've rejected nectar for the same reason they loved rupert's...but there it is. maybe i shouldn't have called her - they might have loved it. i'll drag her there when i next come home.

i like your logic morela. nectar tops the list. i'll look over that thread carefully. any dissenting votes?

hi all, i need a little advice. i've poked around on various anniversary threads, but everything is 9 or more months old - i'm hoping you all can help with some suggestions on where i can send my sister and brother-in-law for their 9th wedding anniversary. they live in rockville and have 2 little kids - so i want to send them somewhere more relaxing than electric. i've got $200 to spend - though it's fine if dinner goes slightly/somewhat over. places that i think sound good (foodwise) i don't live in DC anymore so know almost nothing about the atmosphere of the places i drool over from your reports are like. firefly nectar palena eve (but OT is quite a hike from (deep) rockville if they decided to go mid-week) mendocino (someone was treated exceptionally well there from a thread i read - but i think that was pre-nectar?) i really don't know what they like but their favorite restaurant in the world was rupert's...not sure if you all were familiar - it was in chinatown, on 7th i think. good food but a tiny menu and a little precious imo - but they were fervent believers. oh - my sister used to work on Penn. Ave so has lunched extensively in downtown business spots so i'd like to avoid kincaids, etc if possible. any ideas for this PITA? thanks a million! rk

it's like being in (the self-empowering community part of) a spike lee movie. great atmosphere. egg sandwich...with sausage. yum. definitely sit at the counter and watch the magic happen.

snowangel - so glad to see you blogging! i'm sorry you've been getting bad washington peaches - they're so incredible here this summer. (i guess we're keeping the good ones?) i wonder how the fruit-powers-that-be make those decisions... glad you're getting good ones from somewhere at least. have you posted photos of your new kitchen anywhere? i love your cabin photos.

Halland, I tried Sambar's frites a couple of weeks ago - i must agree - definitely the best frites i've ever eaten. we didn't have a great experience at Sambar, but those frites were heaven. When we had frites from Frites, we liked them and the guy working there, but thought the sauces could have been zippier and the frites could have been crisper. In a celebrity death match of frites - i've got Sambar in one round.

of course, it's worth noting that the american dialectic society came up with this label...not some roving band of flesh dabblers. but i don't understand the venom. am i picky, and therefore not worthy of sharing your table because the dialectic people named me, or because i eat more vegetables than meat?

i'm only weighing in because i happened to have dinner at wild ginger on saturday. i used to go a lot with an old boss who was a regular there, but it's been about 2 years since i've been...mostly i think of it as a place to go with out-of-towners (which is what we were doing). while i was pleasantly surprised by the food and especially the wine list, i found the service exceptionally bad. because it's such a huge place - it's really hard to tell if your server is off getting food or drinks, waiting on other customers in a part of the restaurant you can't see or hanging out at the bar. the pacing/timing were terrible...the sommelier (while i'm sure he was very knowledgable) was grating, and the staff just plain didn't seem to "have it down." no sense of what to say, how to advise (and we were asking for advice) or when to be there and when to get lost. in short - i get the sense that while the staff knows that professionalism is very important, and that guiding the diners through the restaurant is helpful - they don't seem to really grasp what that means.

LEdlund - what about a mustard sauce diluted with FF half and half? i have a gorgeous smoky onion mustard that i bought at the Metropolitan market in WS (note - LEdlund and I are seattleites)...it's so good on egg sandwiches - maybe warmed and then diluted with FF half and half? is that legal? if not - maybe a little skim and FF sour cream?

verjuice - if it's not too late...there's a guy at the market (and the weekend farmer's markets too) who sells hazelnuts. listen to pitch and the build-up - then get the "good ones" (most expensive, unflavored) they are unbelivably hazelnutty. and seriously good.

no problem - thanks for taking the time to post back - your pictures are wonderful! i can't wait to see ecuador for myself!

Michael, Most of what makes lobster so expensive is the meat to shell ratio. with that in mind, i highly recommend biting the length of the legs to extract what can be a surprisingly rewarding amount of meat. 1 1/4 lobsters are among the smallest sold. I made lobster rolls (rather the pale-bunned facsimile) for 4th of July. I'm an Easterner myself, daughter of a Massachusetts man and I too mourn the absence of frisky lobsters in seattle. my rolls, for the record had homemade mayo with some herbs. not authentic in the least - but pretty darn good. I have eaten excellent Maine Lobster at Etta's (a place I'm not generally wild about) though it seems all too wrong to eat lobster in a white tablecloth restaurant. I know someone who holds a "lobster feadst" once a year. Flies lobsters in from Maine, throws newspapers on a picnic table with a couple of rocks and picks and dumps freshly steamed lobster on the newspapers. everyone brings a donation and a beverage (which must be consumed in it's container) and makes friends real fast. nothing like a little lobster fat in your eye to break the ice with strangers. i haven't ever met any of you...wonder if it's too late to get good lobster from maine...anyone interested in a feadst-type gathering?

Jeff - thanks for straightening me out...it seems though that i've spoken too soon - we won't be in Quito - we'll be in Guayaquil...any (fresh) words of advice? many thanks!

it's not downtown, but cafe lago (in montlake) is excellent. ethereal lasagne and a decent selection of wines. italian is not at it's best here - i would skip il terazzo carmine - huge wine list (pioneer square) but the place always depresses me - very old boy network (i'm neither) and i think they're less professional if you don't drop major cash on wine. if you're a big spender - it might be just what you're after. i've only been to assaggio once and had a decent meal there, but like tulio, it's in a hotel so to me feels less local, more touristy. i've heard great things about la vita e bella (sp?) on second...but i'm not sure how their wine list is. edited - tsquare - it's like we were just on the phone!!

bigbear/stella and other ecuadorphiles - please - bring it on. i unexpectedly lucked into a free (ridiculously short) trip to ecuador. i'll be leaving seattle thursday the 16th and returning that sunday. saturday is booked (rob is performing so we'll need to stay local to quito). the cloud mountain sounded amazing...how long would it take to get there? if we must (for time reasons) stay in or right near quito - what shouldn't we miss? i speak some spanish - if i get the opportunity to take a day trip (returning before evening) by myself - will i be ok? i haven't travelled in south or central america at all, and i dearly wish we had more time - but i'm wildly excited...do your 2002 recommendations still hold? i can't wait to try the jugos and humitas!

i agree lemony, i think el gaucho (and the pampas room downstairs) are very sexy. capitol club can be sexy...what's that saying? a couch, a lemon drop and thou? especially when it's not too packed or hipstered. i could see the argument for marrakesh, but i wasn't into the food so it left me cold. i've had much better...um... reactions to dumpy eithiopian places. eating with my fingers - that amps the sex appeal of any venue.