Kent Wang

It is called a mignonette, which is frozen balsamic vinegar, shallots and some other stuff. I, too, had never encountered it until I arrived in the Pacific Northwest. Is this a regional preference? It tastes great and pairs even better with the oysters, much better than the typical horseradish and cocktail sauce. Haha! More for me.

I'm extremely impressed. That's a lot of driving and eating.

I was surprised to not be able to find a thread dedicated to this restaurant. On Sunday, July 16 my friend and I went to Elliott's Oyster House. Very nice view of the waterfront. We took advantage of their progressive happy hour: $0.50 oysters starting at 3:00pm with the price going up $0.20 every half hour. You're looking at three dozen oysters. I don't think I've ever seen a more beautiful sight. Oyster sampler. Clockwise from top: Eld Inlet, South Sound, WA, Intertidal beach; Geist Cove, South Puget Sound, WA, Intertidal beach; Westcott Bay European flat, San Juan Island, WA, Japanese lantern net. Pan fried oysters with tartar sauce and Jack Daniel's dipping sauce ($11). Even when fried, one can clearly notice the freshness of the oysters. Oyster shooter. All told, we had seven dozen raw oysters (including a dozen of the pan fried) between two people. Service was great, oysters were superb and the oysters during the progressive happy hour are a total steal.

Thanks for the explanation. I always wondered about that but never bothered to investigate. Anyway, The Reverend is the sweetest Belgian-style ale that I like.

I love Ommegang. For sweeter beers, I recommend Avery's The Reverend. It has Belgian candy sugars added to it. Delightful, without being cloying.

I'd just bring some charcuterie and a knife.

Barbecue, chicken fried steak, Southern and cajun cuisine.

Unrelated to science but also using the "before and after" word scheme, back on his home planet, Alf was the captain of his high school's bouillabaisseball team (which is played on ice using shellfish as a ball).

All of the above menus are fairly modern and casual as evidenced in the use of sans serif fonts. Let's take a look at some more elegant, traditional designs that reflect the vision and atmosphere of the respective restaurants. Both employ serif fonts. Driskill Grill (Austin). PDF. I like the star used as a section separator, very evocative of Victorian-era, old Texas sensibilities. Chambar (Vancouver). PDF. The ornate, floral border design matches the Belgian image of the restaurant.

Very handsome. I think there's not much room for improvement. The only thing I can think of is that the script-like typeface that is used for the wine names may be difficult to read for some of your customers. I very much agree with MGC, many people forget to consider that a sizable portion of your demographic may be dependent on reading glasses and steps should be taken to improve readability. You can also accomplish this by bumping up the font size; you've got plenty of room, might as well fill it.

Sunday, July 16. My friend and I went for the happy hour bar menu. Seared hamachi with sea beans, lemon ($8). Like Jeffo said, I was expecting delicious sashimi-like hamachi and this was cooked more than I expected. Beef carpaccio with parsley, capers, parmigiano reggiano ($8). Great, capers were a nice touch. Grilled lamb tongue with baby beets, arugula, red wine dressing ($12). Very similar to beef tongue with more lamb flavor. Excellent, very tender. Cured ocean trout with caraway crackers, creme fraiche, watercress ($10). Both the trout and the crackers were rather lackluster, especially considering the price. Tairagai with cucumber, basque red pepper ($14). Crisp texture of tairagai (abductor muscle of razor shell clam) pairs perfectly with cucumber. Bone marrow on bruschetta. Not on menu. I have never seen a bone marrow dish in any restaurant. Superbly rich, comparable to foie gras. Photos of menu on my Flickr. They have one of the best, most sophisticated cocktail menus I have ever seen. Minimalist, nothing too time-consuming but all very smart and original. We enjoyed the Spumoni, Sideswipe, Montmartre and The Sophisticate. We also had a superb bottle of Unibroue 2004. I'm impressed that they still carried this limited release brew at less than double retail. The beer was wonderful, one of my favorite Unibroue releases. This bottle-fermented ale aged nicely and had a robust and developed flavor with terrific, long-lasting, small bubble carbonation. The label listed the ABV as 10.5% but I'm sure it was a bit higher after more than a year of cellaring. The beer combined with the four cocktails got the two of us quite toasted. I loved Union and found it to be my favorite of all the restaurants I visited in Seattle. Great, cutting-edge food with a bar of even greater quality. My favorite dishes were the lamb tongue and bone marrow. That Dungeness crab avocado salad looks great. I'd like to try to duplicate it. What do you think went in there? Was the crab meat finely processed or left in bug chunks?

I got this one while baking a pumpkin pie and bumping my arm on the side of the oven.

I think it's a pretty slick idea. Glamorama by Bret Easton Ellis has a fictional depiction of the kind of work it takes to open up a trendy club/restaurant/bar and the various lengths they go to lure celebrities to the opening and generate good buzz.

What species do you find harder or easier to shuck? Is there a general correlation between size and ease of opening?

Siena has consistently the best bread in Austin. They have high enough turnover that they always have something fresh out of the oven. Vespaio also has a nice variety of breads -- and second best in the city in my opinion -- but they are not always as fresh as Siena.

Oyster Guy, your dedication to your craft is impressive. And such a delicious craft, too. Best of luck. Video is what we need!

I'd like to learn more about the various cultivation methods. Elliott's Oyster House in Seattle lists the cultivation method in addition to the source of each of their oyster varieties, some of which sound really cool: Japanese lantern net, deep culture, rack and bag, intertidal beach, dike grown.

Saturday, July 15, 2006. Restaurant was packed but service was gracious, accomodating and well informed. Plato de chacinería. A selection of cured meats ($12.50). Higado de pollo. Chicken liver sauteed with caramelized red onions, sherry and cream ($8.50). Wonderfully rich, like foie gras lite. Revuelto de conejo y hojas de nabo. Rabbit confit and turnip greens, lightly scrambled with local organic duck egg ($11). Superb. The duck egg was much richer than chicken egg and complemented the rabbit confit well. Goat cheese cheesecake. Photos of menu on my Flickr. The portions for many of the dishes were bigger than what I'm used to from tapas restaurants. That's my only complaint: I wish the portions were smaller so we could have tried more dishes. A lot of unique items, especially the chicken liver and rabbit with duck egg. Compared to the tapas restaurants I've tried in Texas, this is about on par with Rouge in Dallas.

I prefer leaving the currency symbol on to clearly denote that the number is the price and not the item number or anything like that. I started a thread on this subject a few months back: Menus dropping the currency symbol.

I went to Monsoon on Saturday, July 15 for their weekend brunch. Steamed BBQ pork buns, pork siu mai, shrimp har gaw. Zong zi, pan-fried daikon cakes, shrimp bun. The thing I never liked about zong zi is that there is not enough meat; Monsoon's version is about one-third pork, exactly what I've been looking for. For a place that doesn't specialize in dim sum I was very impressed with the quality of all of their dim sum items, on par with even the best dim sum restaurants. Duck leg curry with morning glory greens. Banh xeo. The rice crepe is nice and crispy at first but after absorbing some moisture develops an unpleasant, mealy texture. I like bean sprouts but it's hard to eat a half plate full. Mem nuong. Casing-less sausage. Flavorful seasoning, skillful grilling job. Isn't a casing-less sausage just a meat ball formed into the shape of a log -- a meat log I suppose? Brunch menu. I'm not a fan of Vietnamese cuisine but I liked Monsoon's take on it a lot. The incorporation of Chinese and colonial elements really appealed to my taste. Good value for the dollar.

This is one of the best laid out menus I have seen in a while. From Union in Seattle. Dish names aligned to the left with prices aligned to the right for easy scanning. Attractive use of logo on both the header and footer. Good practice of seperating full description of dish into short name (e.g. "Garden greens") followed by extended description (e.g. "With hazelnuts, fine herbs, champagne vinegar"). My only quibble is that I wish the font for the short name was differentiated more from the extended description, or maybe if a different color was used.

Party-going bears snort the stuff.

I went there on canucklehead's advice. I also enjoyed it. Pics and comments coming soon. It's interesting that the entrance is from an alley. Trounce Alley on my map but Blood Alley according to Salt's business cards. It was a little scary walking down it as we were expecting to get a thorough trouncing. Maybe they renamed it Blood Alley because there had been so many trouncings in the past.

Does it look like this when cooked?

I just bought a bottle of the Pama as well. How should one convert recipes that use pomegranate juice into amount of Pama?