eunny jang

So, then, it's the difference between technical proficiency and real intimacy? Certainly, we all appreciate our grandmother's food - soup she's spent an hour stiring and seventy-six years making. Soul food, blah blah blah. Absent history and personal relationships, what makes the food itself soulful? Enthusiasm or superior creativity on the part of the chef? Pride in what he's doing? Does clever or witty food have the opposite effect of distancing the diner?

Hmmm. I think eating raw crabs from any water isn't recommended for those with weakened immune systems, etc. The crabs are relieved of their top shell, guts, and gills, and rinsed. Even so, the flesh of scavengers can be crawling with bacteria and pathogens - not sure what the cure does to those. I think it has less to do with the water they live in, though we're often warned here from eating the mustard/pancreas in the body cavity of a blue crab from the Chesapeake - high PCB concentrations in crabs caught in certain areas. In any event, the crab population here is so depleted that more often than not, the crabs you eat on a Baltimore dock are trucked in from the Gulf. I seriously doubt that the gaejang one buys in London is made from Maryland blue crabs.

Everyone else - great looking and sounding food! I ate beer and crow for dinner last night.

Oooh. Cream them like spinach (use every bit you can). Or cook them slowly in the oven, covered, with stock and a little cream. Or build a potato/leek/mushroom gratin with only a little cheese - layer thin slices of potato, and some sauteed leeks and mushrooms simmered briefly in just enough cream to moisten. Wet the construction down with a little more cream. Cheese if you must. Bake; run briefly under the broiler to brown the cheese if using. Parboil - trim them, halve them lengthwise if you want, clean the grit out as best you can, and stick them in some rapidly boiling, heavily salted water for just a few minutes, until they're a little tender and vibrantly green (think of how you'd prepare haricots verts). If you're not going to use them right away, take them directly from the pan and dunk in a bowl of ice water to stop cooking and set the color.

Certainly not. But me, I always feel like a bit of a sucker when I buy one.

This is so unimaginably disgusting it made the little hairs on the nape of my neck stand up when I read it. But there was something else really interesting in the review: Admittedly, I'm young and broke and starving (but not an artist; maybe that's why this went over my head), and I don't find myself too often at Le Paradou and its aimed competitors. Maybe you wise-and-worldly fine diners out there can answer for me: are heart and soul to be found in abundance in this city's best dining rooms? What's the distinction Tom is drawing here? The food tastes and looks good, but seems joyless, like June Cleaver during sex? Is it something (or lack of something) in the way it's presented, in the service, in the actual taste of the dish? How does one quantify this elusive quality?

Re: Roys - I miss it. A lot. Frisco sandwiches and those little oil-balloon hash brown nuggets in the morning - I ate a lot of those in high school. Re: Five Guys - what's the big deal about this place? It's a big sloppy burger that tastes fine, and it's not McDevil's or Burger King of Darkness. But really, it's a fast food burger, greasy fries and dried-out peanuts for $8.00. Not exactly a good or unusual deal.

I've only eaten at Spezie twice, just after they opened. It was a pretty room with servicable pastas and a bunch of skeezy top-three-buttons-undone hairy-chested oily-looking guys sitting at the bar, leering at passerby on L street. I really really wanted to love it, since I've been going to Il Pizzico forever, but there was nothing whatsoever about it that left any kind of impression on me, other than the sketchy gold-fill-necklace-wearing dudes.

Hrrrrrrrrm.

It seems like BeDuCi has been closed for ages, and it took forever for someone new to get in there...odd for such a cool location. BeDuCi sucked hard. It could have sucked the chrome off a trailer hitch, and not in a good way. Overpriced, boring and there always seemed to be a whiff of decay about it. Does this space have some kind of stupid-mapquest-names curse? Do they think that people won't be able to find it?

I think being stuck naked inside a giant peppermill might be worse.

Oh, I'd forgotten that I ordered a burger once at The Diner in Adams Morgan at, like, 4 in the morning, and discovered that the square wax paper separating frozen patties had been left stuck to the meat. On both sides. How, I ask you, could that have possibly happened?

Goodness, that's beautiful! Good looking fingerlings, too.

Good god. This is a joke, right?

Ooh. White bread, white cheddar, slice of tomato, bacon, another slice of cheddar and...wait for it...a scrape of grainy mustard. Boatloads of butter. Smushed to ensure that the tomato and bacon are good and stuck to everything and don't jump ship while you're eating. Griddled to almost-burned carcinogen-y goodness. Campbell's plain jane tomato soup, made with milk and doctored with Tabasco. Manna from heaven.

kinky.

No good very bad day. Dinner: Then decided to go to sleep and try again tomorrow.

BASEBALL IS COMING TO DC!!!!!!!! uh, topic: I bet they'll serve a shitty burger at the stadium.

I just think it's a little more thoughtful to wait a moment before offering pepper. Doesn't hurt anyone and only slows things down for a moment.

I had an absolutely awful burger at Clyde's once - I asked for it medium rare, and it was literally raw completely throughout. Couldn't have been in the pan longer than 10 seconds on each side. When I showed it to the bartender she shrugged and said "that's our medium rare". Last time I checked steak tartare was not described as "medium rare".

Yes, but how are you supposed to know how much will make that Caesar taste delicious? Sure, he tells you to say "when" - but how are you supposed to know when "when" is? Say you ask for a judicious amount and discover that the dressing is seasoned well already, or that the dressing is insipid and you're going to need a lot more. I'd rather have one on my table as well.

No. But conversely, I hate it when the waiter comes up brandishing some giant phallic thing in my face before I've even had the chance to taste it. Same with Parmigiano. Edit: that sounds dirty. But you all know what I meant.

Everyone has been making delicious stuff. I ate out all last week I read Basilgirl's dinner and immediately started dreaming about chili. So: Chili and jalepeno bacon cornbread Seared-off cubes of chuck, secret spices, some tomatoes, water. A little grated carrot for sweetness and thickened with cornmeal. Proper not-sweet cornbread with a crunchy crust laced with bacon and cheddar and scallions.

Hrmm....you'll be on the very very edge of crab season...

I haven't been to the Brickskellar in years. And I just turned 21.