mb7o

we ended up at bambuza. before 6, all appetizers are happy hour half price. i'm just never impressed with the place. the food is decent. the service was good, the decor nice... but the food never leaves much of an impression. (except for the smoothies).

skip the marriott at the airport unless necessary. the food is edible and in large portions.

Yikes. R.I.P. Fandango unfortunately, not too much of a surprise. last time i was there (~1.5 months ago), they'd closed the main dining room, made the lounge (along with the hall & wrong-side-of-the-entrance area) a dining room, and reduced the menu considerably.

tomorrow evening i'm going to an event at Town Hall. I've never been there before. Any reccomendations for a quick dinner before hand? It's in a weird location in a sea of parking lots, but not far from parts of downtown and first hill. Right now I'm tending towards Dragonfish, they supposedly have a good happy hour selection (though we might miss that) and must be used to handling pre-event crowds. (and how late are the convention center escalators open?) If it weren't monday I'd probaly go up to la Spiga. What's on 1st hill? Another thread mentioned a decent Pho restaurant and George's (polish) deli.

it's been a while and there's nothing formal on this list, but they should all be good: Bento Box (on ne 24th @ 152nd or so behind the Arby's) for korean/japanese. Mayuri(156th @ northup (aka NE 20th))- indian. haven't tried the newer place mentioned above. also the south indian chain (?) place (Udipi Palace) in crossroads (outside, next to firenze, which is a good italian restaurant). the taco truck in the 76 @ the corner of 148th and ne 24th

i don't see why this discussion should be in any way inflamatory--clearly there is a tradition in britan of not rinsing the dishes after washing them. it may not be the dominant tradition, and it may have historical reason, but it's not an insult to point out an actual tradition. as for washing in dirty water, i think that's a common method--scrape the plates, wash all in one soapy tub, then rinse with clean water. where i went to summer camp in maine they washed all (or maybe half) of the plates (~60 people?) in one sink-load of water with a manual dishwasher--put the dishes in a rack, put in an agitator (back & forth with a lever) in the sink, pull out, put in another sink to rinse (i forget how often that was changed or if it was running water), and set out to dry. two people had the job for the entire summer. then again, we spent half of each week on camping trips drinking straight out of the lakes and rivers.

i went to the arboretum sale today. they have a huge representation of ornamentals, from the somewhat unusual (carniverous plants, succulents) to conifers and other native plants. only two of the vendors (it's set up to have a lot of vendors, though with very little overlap) sold edible plants. the veggie vendors were Langley Fine Gardens (Vashon) and Homegrown Edibles (Seattle). my memory of the tilth sale is that they had a much larger edible selection.

one question: how was the noise level? until they quiet the place down a bit (add some padding or something), I won't be back. which is too bad.

the biggest difference in terms of costco vs. walmart from a political standpoint is how they treat their employees: well. as opposed to using many different tricks to cheat them (you hear about people being fired for complaining or attempting to organize a union, people promised benefits but keept just under the number of hours needed or fired after so many weeks, hours shaved from timecards, etc.). so in a sense, the low prices are at the expense of the workers, your neighbors. (not to mention how the products are sometimes made.) don't think costco has had as many environmental fights, though they don't always get along with their immediate neighbors due to traffic issues.

to whoever commented on the frozen ankimo-- isn't that actually in effect a cooked pate? always pre-prepared, though freezing it is probably not a good thing. seach for frozen ankimo on google, this thread comes up #1 and a purveyor comes up #2. on morimoto-- recently ate there. the most disapointing part of the meal was the sushi. one of my friends commented that the ikura felt like it was defrosted wrong. on frozen/fresh/days of the week-- we ate at morimoto on a sunday. does that make any difference? sure, the markets are closed, but most things must be frozen. on farmed fish-- no way i'd consider farmed fish parasite-free. fish farms are a big pollution/waste issue, must be a breeding ground for who knows what. though one could imagine clean pond farms.

we ended up eating in the airport marriot. ordering out would not work because there's nowhere to eat, except in the parking garage or similar. plus waay to complicated for the group at hand. food was mediocre, portions large, prices OK. hey, it was better than i expected for a hotel attached to an airport. the strangest thing was that this must not happen very often--we told them that some of us were trying to catch a flight, but they didn't really change the service accordingly (e.g. they waited for those who ordered appetizers (and didn't have a flight to catch) to finish them before bringing the main course)

Well, the thing is that they no longer allow people without tickets into the airport, so that's not going to work if we actually meet with the others. Which is too bad, since apparantly lots of people in the new office parks near the airport used the B/C connector as a lunch break area. My usual airport food (since I'm usually on my way in or out) is Auntie Annes. The sushi place scares me, it was the last place I'd expect to find Sushi. Anyone know how bad the lines are for the security checkpoints on Friday night? I don't want to do my usual trick of entering Terminal D when the flight is out of the new A West terminal. Maybe A West has short lines too...

Friday my friends will by flying through Philadelphia to Europe. (I will be to but may or may not be on the same flight). The flight arrives in PHL just before 5, and the outbound flight leaves after 8. The question is, is there any sensible place to go with a group, departing PHL around 5 and returning around 7:30? It might be anywhere from 6-10 people depending on the number of locals. One option is Tony Luke's. But I'm not sure that will work with this crowd. Do any of the airport hotel restaurants serve edible food? I suppose hauling into downtown or Chinatown might work, but that's far and risky traffic-wise.

no idea on cooking schools there... though you're in backpacker land, someone might know, or ask in a restaurant you like. if you want interesting stories wander over to Cafe Freedom if it's still there (i'm going to make a wild guess that you're in #9 or #10, keep walking south on the road to the very end) and talk to Brian (?) the owner. His wife is a good (Thai) cook too. remember, motodop rides are fixed price. (2000 riels if I remember right, though add a bit @ night.)

we just moved offices to the union bank of california building downtown. any reccomendations for regular lunches? so far we've been super busy and mostly exploring the 'food courts' in the neighborhod. nothing particularly interesting to report. of course the market is 15 minutes away, as is salumi and the ID. what else? cafe zum zum is on my list, perhaps bakemans, mae phim (though i was not impressed on my one visit).

so if it takes 30 months to show up. but it's not infective before then where does the prion come from? is it spontaneous at 29 months?

thanks, i asked about typhoon not because i think they're in any way authentic, but rather because they claim to aim for 'higher' quality food with trained thai chefs, as opposed to random thai people saying 'lets open a restaurant because we're from an exotic place'. (P.S. discuss their employment practices here. and the Redmond WA location is much better than the Seattle location for some reason.)

Hmm... methinks the study didn't have enough subjects, or the problem is different. A few people on this thread and people I know claim to have an adverse reaction, and I have had one myself in the past. Let me tell my story. I am not discussing burning mouths, sweating, crying, or building tolerance to that, but rather the later digestive effects. Several years ago, I was on a moderalty high dose of naproxen for a joint injury. Foolishly I ignored the 'always take with food' warning, since i'd never had a problem doing that. Well, at some point, mid-meal in fact, I found I could not eat spicy food. Not like burning in the mouth 'must stop', but rather my stomach informing my subconcious or something similar that, I must stop eating anything, other than water or tea. (The realization was sudden, though it had probably built up to that point over time.) I went on a very mild diet for many months, and also drank a small glass of aloe juice once or twice a day. At some later point in time, I could eat spicy food again. Clearly my case is different from my friends. I don't know if anything other than time had any effect on my healing, but it leads me to think that at least some of these issues are curable. And the testaments of the aloe people pique my interest, as they claim that it will help people who doctors otherwise write off.

I believe it's a northern thai street food dish, though the only place I managed to notice it was Bangkok. Basically it's a bunch of ingredients wrapped in a bai chapoo (or here, spinach) leaf, either by you or the vendor. The ingredients are dried shrimp, peanuts, chopped lime, chopped coconut, chopped ginger, some more things, and a marmalade like sauce. http://www.thaifoodandtravel.com/recipes/mkum.html Maybe it's not in NYC yet... http://www.jamesbeard.org/events/2002/11/020.shtml On authentic--bai chapoo leaves can be quite tough, and I find it very hard to choke down when they're that way. Perhaps that's the street-food ingredient-quality problem again. Irwin--what do you think of Typhoon? They apparently recruit chefs from Thailand, as opposed to being a place started by immigrants. At one point someone told me that many Thai restaurants around here were run by Vietnamese people. Perhaps many are, but the ones I've been to recently definately have mostly thai-speaking staff.

Umm, that's dissapointing, it's the problem with reviews in the paper. But I must warn you, service like that can be very authentic.

Recently I went to a Thai restaurant with some friends, and we ordered the food 0 star. Mind you, I'm not a chilihead. But I'd like to have a moderate level of spice, it's one of the key elements of Thai cuisine. However, my friends claim it will irritate their digestive system and don't want to pay that price. Has anyone gone though this and 'strengtehend' their systems to be able to eat spicy food again? Any ideas or suggestions? Antacids? Aloe drinks? Purgatives? I think at least one doctor's suggestion was 'well don't do that', which makes sense for allergies, and certainly is a better answer than 'you've got a life-threatening disease'. But there must be more than that.

That's a good discussion on chowhound. One of my thoughts on visting Thailand was that the food at Seattle restaurants was better than what I was eating in Thailand. Don't know if it was familiarity, quality (the best restaurant in Seattle is certain to be better than a large swath of poor restaurants in Thailand), bad restaurant sense, or what. By the end of the trip I had the opposite mindset. But new things do get introduced. Miang Kum is now in many restaurants here, almost certainly influenced by Typhoon. I found some on the street in Bangkok, and the people at the bar I ate it in were surprised I knew what it was.

Noodle Boat got two writeups in the last week, a review today from Penelope Corcoran, and a mention last week, I believe in her column. Oddly enough, I made it out there for the first time last week. Now I'm afraid it'll get mobbed... good for them, bad for me. We ordered everything 0 star. Which it was--quite impressive, the food was still well balanced. I'll have to go back with people who can handle more than that.

Fat Guy, if you don't think it's caused by prions, what do you think it is? I'm willing to grant that Pruisner may spend more time on promotion than research, but as pointed out in some of the links I posted earlier, research on this has actually been going on for the past 70 or more years. On testing: Here's an interesting comment on some of what's happening in Japan: http://joi.ito.com/archives/2003/12/28/jap...iseasecase.html (Basically, like bureaucrats worldwide, proclimations and head-in-the-sand are often acceptable solutions.)

1. He has done testing from my understanding. At this point (5 years beyond the article you cite), very few people disagree with what was heretical 20 years ago, though the exact mechanism remains unproven. Actually research on scrapie predates the discovery of DNA. 1a. and testing the entire population of cattle would seem to provide a wealth of data to do further study, though europe or japan should be good data sets now that they do it. probably too much data to handle, really, since you'd need more than just the results from a single test. 2. it's clear from your original quote that you think he'll profit from this testing. my assumption (perhaps false) is that there are other tests too, and profit is not his primary goal. it's like someone saying "foie gras is tasty, and i happen to sell it." getting paid for your work is not neccesarily evil. Some links for those interested: http://www.cjdinsight.org/Deana/history.html - on the history of research into this subject. http://www.mad-cow.org/griff.html - also on the history of research into this subject. http://groups.google.com/groups?th=5105406...23636%40wingate - on this particular article.