reesek

if it can be eaten - it can be piled on bread, covered with cheese and melted or topped with another slice of bread and grilled. my childhood favorite was peanut butter (and butter) on toasted english muffin - topped with celophane-wrapped american cheese. it's better melty, but fake cheese seems to have 2 temperatures - molten and hard. i think i still have scars from over-eager eating. i eat salad sandwiches at work. gross cafeteria caesar salad is vastly improved when part of this complete sandwich.

my friend did call the health department - it was his girlfriend that got so sick and he was worried and angry. they called all of us for their report. it was amazing how incredibly nice and sympathetic the health department was - if the restaurant had even approached that sympathy - i think i would have left this entirely behind me with no ill will. thanks very much for the feedback and comments - i think this really boils down to a "do unto others" philosophy of mine that i really have no right expecting from other people - i end up feeling disappointed that i have to ask for/demand what in my opinion should be a given.

so why do restaurants list an email address?

broccoli/broccolini/broccoli rabe - don't try to fool me people liver and other awful offal marzipan and all it's almond pasty brethren. yuck.

tommy - i can't really answer your question about what their policies should be - i don't own a restaurant. however i do think they should have a policy - maybe they do - maybe it's $25 per person no matter what the complaint - i have no idea - but the $100 felt very arbitrary. and though i mentioned my friends by name (including the one who was very nearly hospitalized) the restaurant didn't ask for their info at all. you keep mentioning email in your posts - would it have been different if i'd called or written a letter?

i think they should take care of people they make sick. i don't think they would have wanted my proof.

i think the least they could have done was comped (or sent a gc) for the amount of food we paid for. i'm not really sure if i'm reading your post right - but i feel some aggression there and i don't know why. i got sick from the food they served...are they not at all responsible for that?

you know, i thought about that...i'm kind of non-confrontational so i love the ability to email people but i did wonder the same thing. i also emailed them on tuesday, while at work - and i was still in absolute agony. i had to be at work - miserable, but there was no choice - but i really didn't have the energy for what i imagined might be a long time on hold...the staff at this particular spot tend to be very young. and i did want to contact them as soon as i could.

i have a specific situation which i'd love feedback on and then a general question for the thread - about a week ago, my boyfriend and i took another couple to brunch at a seattle spot very famous for their sunday brunches. we each had 2 mimosas which upped the bill considerably (from it's already high for seattle price of just under $30 per person) the next night - all four of us were afflicted with food poisoning. it took a while to unravel the mystery - but since all 4 of us were violently ill and only shared the one meal together - it was pretty clear that the brunch was the culprit. i emailed the restaurant to let them know. i did not ask to be reimbursed. i received a reply in which the manager noted that mine was the only complaint they'd received. i have no idea if her comment was intended to comfort me (ie - no one else had suffered as we had) or to call into question our honesty. she asked for my address which i gave to her. later that week we received a gift certificate for $100 (food only no liquor). am i right to feel a little put out? the gift certificate didn't even cover the cost of the food we vomitted. the "gift" means we'd need to eat there again...frankly the way they handled the situation more than the lousy piece of shellfish or tainted cream is what makes me feel unlikely to ever go back. bad crab (i refuse to blame the oysters) can happen to good restaurants - but shouldn't good restaurants do a better job of taking care of their patrons? generally speaking - how far should restaurants go to make patrons happy? if they screw up a reservation...if a waiter is inattentive...where does the responsibility lie for the experience of the diner? when i used to wait tables, i believed it was my responsibility to help guide my guests through their meals - is that an unfair expectation?

oh and the hamachi kama at mashiko...sticky yummy goodness

honey walnut prawns at lee's asian on california...i'm a whore for those. i can't stop thinking about the halibut cheeks (and the accompanying grits of joy) i had at lark last week...does that count? crab cake benedict from kingfish. and half a biscuit.

that sounds amazing!! i would love the recipe if you don't mind last night i had jim's cauliflower (1st time and i freaking loved it), also roasted some sunchokes and brussels sprouts. yum. went to a brand new fish market in my neighborhood because i want to support them - even though the fish does look a little less than pristine. i bought what they labelled hamachi - i don't know what it was - but it wasn't hamachi - my best guess would be something in the albacore family. would have been fine, but my prep (black & white sesame seeds and crushed macadamia nuts) wasn't suited to tuna. it needed more flavor...veggies were super though!

amen!

i saw that today in the weekly too - thanks for the menu tighe - i really like the looks of it - did anyone else notice the 1/2 price wine on tuesdays?

hey trillium, what do kaffir limes look like? i've seen some sort of very hard green thing at viet wah in seattle, but couldn't figure out what it was. what are they like inside? do you use the zest in thai cooking?

as someone from barely south of the mason dixon i have to try to put a stop to whatever of this is my fault. i think all this is stemming from my hasty "stereotypically black food" comment. i'll just say it now - it was a dumb thing to say - i didn't mean for it to read the way it did. though certainly the menu served is as (stereo)typically southern white as it is black - my experience does not reflect that - i apologize for making my experience into the only experience. and maybe there was nothing wrong/racist/potentially offensive/politically incorrect/whatever about what northwestern did, but it made me wince when i read it.

my point wasn't at all that cafe employees are black - almost no one there is. most employees are students - most students are not black. the analogy was - if i was one of the few black students being served stereotypically black food - by a white university on the only black holiday of the year - i'd wonder if there wasn't an implict slur. i think the real point is that it didn't even occur to the university that some students might find that offensive. the food was always offensive.

if it was being served to me by german-americans i'd wonder if there was a slur involved. (just my jewish NU grad opinion)

gildenhorn - that's it. he owned that whole block - amoco, circle liquor, rossini's (which may well be something else by now) american city diner (thanks hillvalley - i knew it was something like that!) and the fish market. joe when you say "old" sibley - do you mean pre-renovation or was it actually located elsewhere?

Joe - you're a treasure trove! do you still live in DC? born and raised? what are your favorite spots now? what do miss? another place i've been thinking about lately, though - i'm almost ashamed to admit that i loved this place because the owners were so hated, but growing up close to connecticut avenue and mckinley in NW - we used to go to the fish market (??) and later to rossini's. i loved their white pizza and canneloni. later - in middle school, i went to the rip-off diner across the street for bland, expensive milkshakes and searingly hot french fries. jeffrey something was the patriarch - long last name...good cannoli.

i made black bean chili from the greens cookbook yesterday. i had dried black beans i'd gotten this summer through a farmers market. the recipe is involved, but well worth the extra effort of making powder. next time i think i'll source some mexican oregano instead of the "plain" stuff i have. it was excellent, but i did find - though i covered amply with water - soaked the dried beans for about 16 hours (changing water and stirring) some of the beans were lovely and creamy - some were harder - not too hard to eat, but hard enough to be noticable. i cooked the beans in a 5 Qt dutch oven (2 c. dry) - once i added everything, there remained about 3 inches of room in the pot. total cooking time was just under 2 hours. did i not cook it long enough? why do the beans cook so unevenly?

i love to make white pizza (out it's always a disappointment - too greasy, not crisp enough - but i live in seattle - my pizza expectations are low) when i do it myself - sometimes with pre-bought self-tossed dough, sometimes with lavash - i used olive oil, garlic, salt, chili flakes and fontina. so good. sometimes i'll add kalamata olives and thinly sliced onion.

yum that sounds good...i had grits on friday at a wonderful new seattle hot spot - i'd never had them like that (by like that i mean "good") sunday dinner was black bean chili from the greens cookbook. definitely the best chili i've ever had...lots of toasting and grinding - i used some smoked spanish paprika and finished it with rice vinegar. made cornbread/pudding to go with - corn meal, roasted poblano, carmelized shallots and frozen cuisinart-ed corn. i think i should have compensated for the extra liquid in the corn - it was a little wetter than i would have liked, and not quite as sweet. still very tasty with the smoky chili.

we went friday night - what a wonderful addition to seattle dining scene! we arrived at around 7:30, and our 45 minute wait at the cute bar passed very quickly. 2 of us had beet salad with tangerine oil razor clam chowder with truffle, thyme & turnip sunchokes & apple halibut cheeks with grits and virginia ham albacore with lentils & preserved lemon buttermilk panna cotta with quince preserves aside from not liking the sauce with the tuna - it tasted very lime popsickle to me, the meal was outstanding. i agree whole-heartedly that the accompaniments made the dishes even more special. the halibut was far and away our favorite...not to be missed!

hillvalley, i think we might have been separated at birth. my first food memory also involves corned beef (spell it however you want - it all tastes good!) the one caveat to this story is that i was 2 years old. no one remembers it exactly like i do - so whatever the truth was, has been converted into my elastic recollection... picture it - dc, august 1977. 5 of us are packed into dad's white LTD - it's orange vinyl interior removing strips of skin whenever possible. we're headed up to boston for his parents 50th wedding anniversary. mom and dad chain smoke in the front, grandma chains in the back between my sister and me. oh - no a/c - have you ever overheated on the jersey turnpike in august? neither has my father, and he intends to keep it that way. around noon we stop for lunch at a picnic table. we eat a lunch of corned beef - i'm atkins before my time - no bread - just a fistful of snider's finest. for whatever reason, i'm slow to finish (90 degrees, hot car, wee lungs full of benson and hedges perhaps? that thermos of milk mom's packed not really as inviting as she intended?) she tells me to hurry - i tell her i'm done - she tells me to finish... famous last words...sorry grandma! i for one felt a lot better. i slept all the way to boston. i even got ice cream that night.