SaxChik

Check out the ISO thread. Working on getting a dinner put together tentatively planned for Tuesday, September 6th. No time set yet, that will depend on who decides to go. Please take a look and PM me. Hot rabbits ding! Lauren ← Ok, we're on for Tuesday the 6th at 7pm. PM me and let me know if you're interested! Thanks! Lauren

Check out the ISO thread. Working on getting a dinner put together tentatively planned for Tuesday, September 6th. No time set yet, that will depend on who decides to go. Please take a look and PM me. Hot rabbits ding! Lauren

Did you check passports or something? ← ha, touche ... we were the only caucasians in the joint (and the only people speaking english). so hard to figure out what's politically correct these days.

well, my weekend in DC was a lot of fun (jungle heat aside) ... here's where and what we ate ... for dinner saturday night, we decided to go out for german food (a favorite of both of us). we went to the Cafe Berlin on capitol hill. i ordered the jagerschnitzel with spaetzle. my boyfriend had the sauerbraten with a potato dumpling and braised red cabbage. we started with potato pancakes and ended with linzer torte. we both ordered beers (a heffeweisen and a dark lager .. BIG BEERS!). the food was good and the restaurant was really pretty and quite romantic. the sauerbraten was a little tough (we like it when it's fork-tender). the linzer torte was pretty dry. the jagerschnitzel and spatezle were delicious. i'm not sure if they were short waitstaff, but it seemed to take FOREVER to get through dinner. luckily, we had a lot to talk about and were enjoying our huge beers. for lunch on sunday, we hit the eastern market and ate sandwiches and munched on all the cut up fresh fruit each stand had out. dinner on sunday was spent at full kee. YUM-M-M-M-Y!!! when we got there, we were the only americans in the joint (a good sign!). we had the beef and golden mushroom hotpot and the short rib and eggplant casserole. we started out with an order of steamed dumplings. perhaps the best chinese food i've had in a long while. i will definitely be hitting that place again my next stop in DC. many thanks to everyone who put in their 2 cents. i have passed your other suggestions on to my boyfriend who will be in DC for the rest of the week. you dc folks can pour on the hospitality. feel free to hit me up for any philly and suburb info you might need. cheers! lauren

if i keep going further afield i'm gonna end up back in PA! thanks for the suggestions!

I'm coming in from Philly, my boyfriend's flying in from Washington State. We'll have to see how our clocks work out. Are most of these places open on Sunday, as well?

any good sushi bars?

I'll be staying near the DC Convention center at the Marriott Courtyard on F St NW. Any restaurant recommendations? We like all sorts of food. My dining partner will be on a stipend, so we can't make it TOO expensive. We prefer non-chain places. Thanks in advance! Lauren

You're not too far from Hamburg, PA. Hamburg is home of a lovely Cabela's outdoor store. If you've never been, it's worth the trip. It's like a redneck Disney World. They have aquarium exhibits of game fish, taxidermied animal dioramas, rivers running through the place and enough flannel, camouflage and weapons to keep the country's militias well dressed and equipped for the rest of the century. If you're going the weekend August 27th, you're in luck. They're having Cabela's BBQ Challenge! I'm guessing there'll be some good eats going on! Good luck! Lauren

If this is the place in the same shopping center as the Calista Grand spa, they do seem to have weird hours and can get full very quickly. ← No, I think the Spa is in West Chester. Flavour of Britain is in Wilmington, De. BUt, you are coorect in that it has weird hours and fills up fast. ← We decided to try Samovar in Downingtown. It was a lovely little shop (where the Elizabethan Tea Shop used to be) on Lancaster Ave. It was decorated in a bohemian shabby chic and there were lots of neat tea cups and other items for sale. My sister ordered the high tea, which consisted of a scone with devonshire cream. lemon curd and jam, a bunch of tea sandwiches (tuna salad, egg salad, cheddar cheese & tangy honey mustard and swiss and some sort of chutney). The desserts were small pieces of carrot cake, coconut cake, lemon cream roll and meringue. I got the quiche (a nice veggie quiche with zucchini, corn and some other veggies) and a side salad with mandrin oranges and candied walnuts. We both got iced honey ginger tea, which was really good, and shared each other's meals. It's a nice spot, very relaxing. The food and tea were good, although they were out of the samsas (meat pastries) which would have been a treat. I must say I miss the old tea shop there. The woman who used to own it was from the UK and made mean meat pies and mushy peas. Mmmm. I think next time I'll give the place with the weird hours a try in West Chester. Thanks for all your suggestions! Lauren

But you might just want to use this Tea Map tearoom locator (who knew?) ←

My sister's coming to visit this weekend. I thought it might be fun to do a high tea or something of the like. Was wondering if anyone had any experiences with the tea shops in the Chester County and surrounding areas. I used to go the Elizabethan Tea Shoppe in Downingtown, but the owner had to close it due to medical issues. There's a new shop in it's place called Samovar, but I haven't been yet. Any advice is greatly appreciated! Thanks! Lauren

whilst wandering around the wiles of west chester last night, the conversation focused on a number of restaurants that we all need to eat at ... 1. as mentioned in my last post, High Street Caffe in west chester. great cajun BYOB. 2. although not in chester county, the persian grill in lafayette hill was on the list to follow along with the kebab-a-rama thread. seems their website is no longer functioning. 3. finally, a group outing to Tifco's China Bistro in exton for some sizzlin szecuan. some other places that might be interesting ... Shiraz in devon (more persian food) Su-Tao Cafe in malvern ... vegetarian chinese good enough to please the most avid meat lover. Olive Tree Mediterranean Grill in downingtown - really good greek! Teca in west chester - the really cute tiny italian & panini bar we passed last night. last, but not least ... Chester Spings Creamery in chester springs (near exton). eat ice cream and pet cows ...doesn't get much better! it's moooooooolicious! i figure if i write it down, we might actually end up going sometime! lauren

bummer on the milltown market. such a neat idea that never got enough publicity and never really took off. the thai place was good. you know, my favorite chesco restaurant has yet to be mentioned ... the high street caffe, 322 s. high street in west chester (a few stores down from avalon). they make, imho, the best cajun food in the area. the restaurant is purple and black right out of an anne rice novel. the have a nice coffee bar, live music on the weekends and they're BYOB. i'll have to go there soon and take pics. some of my favorite dishes are the crab bisque, the blackened crabcakes over portabellas, alligator sausage with goat cheese, the jambalaya fettucine, the crawfish etouffe and their interesting meat specials. leave room for dessert, their bread pudding and bananas foster are HUGE and very tasty. the only thing i wish they did was flambe the foster at the table. everything tastes better after it's been on fire. :) the place is pretty small and gets packed, so make reservations. i usually bring wine and beer, then leave the leftover beer for the staff. they're highly appreciative. lauren

Mrbigjas, interesting that you looked for some of the ingredients following our dinner. I find myself often inspired by Shola's dinner and ingredients and a hunt for them usually ensues dinner. At one of my first dinners at SK, I was introduced to Argan Oil....2 yrs later, I finally found a bottle. After our last dinner, I located the unfiltered Manzanilla olive oil, ordered some smoked salt via mail order, made "essence of corn" soup from "corn juice", ground my own burgers and have a batch of tomatoes in the fridge giving up valuable "tomato water". I hope Shola views this more as inspiration than plagiarism ← i was shopping at wegman's in downingtown tonight and found the manzanilla olive oil for $7.99 a bottle (not sure that's where you got it from). hope you're planning on sharing some of that smoked salt. :) lauren

so it is! i missed that on my first pass through the website. i'll definitely ask! thanks! ← being the computer geek that i am, i went to http://babelfish.altavista.com and did a loose translation of the chinese menu. it doesn't get all the words right and some don't make sense, but it did translate a good deal of it. if you'd like a copy (it's a word doc), please email or PM me. thanks! lauren ← You could always host it at http://www.uploadtemple.com/ and post the link here, so long as it's smaller than 30MB. It's a free service. This looks like a great restaurant, and I'm glad that someone touched upon one of my major complaints about eating Asian food out. If I can pronounce it well enough to be understood, and I ask for it, do you think that maybe, just maybe, I actually want it? I was told once, after having ordered bun bo hue at International Smokeless (it was late, everyone else was closed or closing) and then complaining when it was served and half of it wasn't there, that "you people don't eat that stuff." "You people"? I've never been back. ← hey, that's a neat site! thanks! here's the link to the menu ... http://www.uploadtemple.com/view.php/1122239219.doc. please understand that some of these are direct translations and give little clue to what the dish actually is. :) to that, i say "hot rabbits, DING"! lauren

so it is! i missed that on my first pass through the website. i'll definitely ask! thanks! ← being the computer geek that i am, i went to http://babelfish.altavista.com and did a loose translation of the chinese menu. it doesn't get all the words right and some don't make sense, but it did translate a good deal of it. if you'd like a copy (it's a word doc), please email or PM me. thanks! lauren

so it is! i missed that on my first pass through the website. i'll definitely ask! thanks!

I know you and the shrimps don't get along well, but their szechuan shrimp is AMAZING! it's just shrimp (big 'uns) and peas with ginger and a great, spicy, very tasty red chili szechuan sauce. it's so good i suggest you ask the server if they can make it with scallops or another substitute just for the sauce. this is on their american menu. the last time i ate from their chinese menu i got this pork dish that was a lot of pork fat with sweet potatoes. mildly spicy and, aside from the plaque i could feel building up around my heart, very good. i have a lot of chinese friends at work. perhaps i could convince them to join us for dinner one night and explain the menu.

We got a copy of the menu pretty late the night before. I think there was one other party doing the tasting menu that night, as well. We had a boatload of wine and kind of winged it before each course. The restaurant had incorporated wine bottle corks as part of their decor. We made sure our corks got placed in the window display (although i'm not sure the screwtop from the Muscat got in there). :) The meal was wonderful. The chef made a few last minute changes, but they were changes for good, not evil. The staff did an amazing job keeping up with our use of stemware. Lauren

updated: the time is 6:30pm. we have a reservation for 6, but can expand if there is more interest. please let me know by thursday, feb 24th. thanks!

ok, my spelling sucks. it's MANDARIN in frazer. looks like the date is Feb 26th (sat), time TBD. please email me at saxchik @ aol . com. thanks! lauren

Due to grad school classes, I won't be able to make the DCC's Feb Chinese New Year celebration on the 22nd. There's a good one at Margaret Kuo's Mandrin in Frazer/Malvern. It's throughout the month of February. I'd like to do it on a weekend (Fri/Sat/Sun night) and gather a group of 4 or more people. The cost is $45 p/person (sans tax & tip). It's BYOB. The food is consistantly good or above average. Here's the menu ... Starters: Peppercorn Shrimp & Drunken Chicken Essence of Chicken Soup w/ Black Mushrooms and Herbal Dates Main Course: Royal Peking Duck Mandrin Lobster Tail w/ Ginger & Scallions Szechuan Beef Tenrloin Au Poivre Seafood Jasmine Fried Rice Propitious Whole Fish w/ Pinenuts Dessert: Traditional Osmanthus Dumpling in Soup or Ice Cream If you're interested, please email me at my user name @aol.com. Thanks! Lauren (37, Exton)