VivreManger

Over the past month or so Steve Klc has eaten at and reviewed Bistro d'Oc, across the street from Ford's Theatre, 518 Tenth Street, NW, 202-393-5444. He suggested a review was likely in the Washington Post around 1 June. halland ate there and reviewed it as well, but other than these two reports, I haven't heard much. Steve was down on the desserts. halland sampled only one to mixed judgment. Anything else to report? What is the name of the grizzeled chef, nee of La Miche in Bethesda? I was thinking of reserving for dinner later this week and I wanted to know if anything had changed either to make it less desirable or too desirable?

menton1 Posted on Jun 5 2003, 03:16 PM Do you know what the Delta Skymile Gold charges for foreign purchases? I assume that it is the same 2% that my UAL Platinum does. I believe that the Amex card should charge only 1%. That Amex card has no rebate, I believe. The Delta card should have the rebate of mileage, whose exact value may have recently changed. How you calculate the rebate value for air mileage is fairly complicated, but possible.

My instinct is to go Euro, but the question is what kind of exchange rate is AAA offering and how does that compare to other current rates -- if you can obtain them? Presumably with Euros in hand she would not have to hassle exchange charges and banks outside of Switzerland, where the ATM system functions pretty smoothly. I presume there is no charge for the travelers' checks themselves. Do you have a regular AAA Visa/MC card? What has your experience been with it? Did you ever have any problems getting it -- or whatever other card you used -- getting it accepted overseas?

HSBC unfortunately does not market its products, credit card included, outside NY State.

Regarding modern French orthography, I use a PC and I still have not figured out how to enter French accents when I compose directly into an eGullet window. On the other hand, if I cut and paste into the window from an off-line word document I have no trouble. But the difficulty, as Bux reminded us, is that since the search engine on this site is Anglophone, it can't handle the accents. The other alternative is to return to 15th-16th century orthography, pre-accent marks, mais c'est pas la mesme [sic] chose. Recently in the Quebec forum I posted some questions on Île d'Orleans, Ile d'Orleans, Isle d'Orleans, which I purposely spelt three different ways, for precision, search engine convenience, and historical accuracy. Since the settlement is a 16th century foundation, the Isle is the original spelling, though it used to be Isle de Bacchus. Then there is the island in the St. Lawrence called Île Verte, to be distinguished from the adjacent coastal community on the mainland, l'Isle Verte. The convention in English is to call the first Ile Verte, but that looks quite barren, hardly the proper setting for North America's only salt-marsh (présalé) lamb. Ideally we should have multi-lingual sites with engines that can accomodate different orthographies. Wouldn't it strengthen the Quebec and French sites, if we encouraged postings in both languages?

I think that IF indeed -- a big if -- the MBNA World Points credit card works as I understand the fine print and as has been explained to me by their sales representative, it seems to be the best deal. First, no annual fee. Second, unlike Costco AMEX Card, no minimum charges before rebate kicks in. Third, much greater world-wide acceptability of Visa/MC versus AmExpress. Fourth , no foreign currency exchange fee, beyond the 1% base that Visa/Mastercard charges on all transactions. Fifth, rebate points ($1=1 point) that can be converted into cash, airline tickets, hotel rooms, car rentals, etc. The rate of the effective rebate ranges from .008, i.e. .8%, on cash to .016, i.e. 1.6% on airtickets. I haven't done the math for the other options. Thus, 1% charge by Visa/MC for foreign currency transactions minus .8% minimum rebate 1.6% possible maximum net cost .2% at the worst and a net gain .6% is possible at best. Check this out.

I had the same experience with LoCredit. The follow-up question that zeroed on the foreign currenct tax has still gotten no response.

I put myself on their emailing list, but have gotten nothing so far. The outdoor schedule is for free concerts? Any during the day? Is it posted on their website? Where did you see it?

My local bank ATM, which I have kept separate from my credit card, avoids ATM charges and I suspect conversion fees as well. At least so they claim. And when I have checked the actual rates, the results in the past seem to confirm them. However I suspect that not all debit cards are the same. In my case I don't see transferring everything to Chase as a quick and appealing solution. Do debit cards also give travel points? Anyone have any experience with non-Chase debit cards that would confirm moqsob's suggestion?

I did follow up Bigbear's link to the LoCredit website. Thanks for the suggestion. Unfortunately the information provided there is minimal. The links to the recommended cards are not helpful since the linked sites are uninformative and even fail to provide a phone number for further clarification. I did email the LoCredit info site itself -- again no phone number -- and promptly, to their credit, they sent a reply. I asked about low or no charge foreign purchases. I asked how the MBNA World Points Card compared with what they featured. The second question was ignored. The first was -- to put it charitably -- misunderstood. Instead of highlighting the lowest charges, they offered the highest: The Chase Card, once again. Their motto seems to be cut to the chase. I suspected they are the sponsor of the site. Thanks for the other suggestions. I will call AAA and google Amtrak.

As some of you may remember, I have been looking into the unannounced charges that credit card companies attach to your charges. The United Airlines frequent flyer credit card adds a 1% to every purchase in a foreign currency, over and above the 1% that Visa/Mastercard charge. I assume that other frequent flyer credit cards do the same. The only credit card -- discovered so far -- that offers a no-charge card with some form of mileage benefit is the MBNA World Points card. Its airline ticket benefit is even more restrictive than the airline cards, but its points can be redeemed for hotel charges, rental car fees, merchandise, and even cash, a return of $4 for every 500 points. In my head that return is the princely sum of .8%, that is .008. It is not apparent from the details I have reviewed so far that actual mileage flown gets any points. Does any one know any better deals?

Is Bia the brinty spears of samba reggae or is it Daniela Mercury you mean? Ben Harper is already sold out. Thanks for the good advice. Our teen age daughters have decided that Britney Spears is now passe, but a glitzy Brazilian singer they might enjoy so I am interested in whom you mean.

Sounds great, but we won't be able to attend that night because of other commitments.

The Montreal Jazz Festival, June 26 to July 6, www.montrealjazzfest.com, (514) 871-1881, is one of the activities we are planning to attend. We particularly like Afro-Brazilian jazz styles. Does anyone know the group Bïa? What kind of Jazz does Michael Bublé play? I think that Abdullah Ibrahim «African Magic» is definitely worth attedning, but I wonder about some of the other performers, like Cesaria Evora. Any jazz cognoscenti out there?

Sumac has a lemony sour taste that would go well in deserts that usually include citrus. It would also go well with mango. I just pulled some off my shelf -- great taste. I am making a fruit salad for 25 on Friday. Perhaps I will try some on the strawberries.

As the fifty or so of you who looked at my earlier post -- http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?act=ST...ST&f=3&t=21468& -- on Carciofi alla Giudia must have quickly realized, there is a lot of arcane mystification in preparing them. Now that I have made them, I see that much of it is needless. They are much easier to make than the cookbooks claim. Herewith, the results of my first attempt. Sharing the process should encourage others to try so that collectively we can improve the results. Make haste while the baby artichokes flower. Springtime is when they should be made. This is a dish where ingredients are more important than technique. Of the four recipes I linked on the original post, Claudia Roden alone addressed this, although her claim that only tiny Roman or Spanish can work is too restrictive. In the States right now, good produce stores do sell baby artichokes, from California not Europe -- I presume. So one need not fly to Rome to eat this delicacy. Baby artichokes obviate the elaborate sculpting repeated in many of these recipes. Furthermore these artichokes are tender enough so you need not bother to remove the fuzzy choke and the inner spiky leaves -- particularly since they are too small and tight to get at the chock without breaking the entire vegetable apart. Instead simply cut off the stem and the outer leaves. Cut off about the uppermost 1/5 of all the other leaves. That should remove the spikes and the toughest parts. The standard advice is to keep them in acidulated water, i.e. mixed with the juice of 2 lemons and the juiced halves so they won't discolor. I did follow that advice, but I wonder if it is necessary since frying changes the color in the end. By the way it may be that similar results can be produced with full-size artichokes, but they probably would require the kind of painstaking work detailed in the Roden recipe, most notably choke removal, and in Machlin, careful sculpting of the leaves. After they have been cut up. Do try to open, expand, and slightly flatten the artichokes so the leaves spread out like flower petals. Some of the recipe techniques seem absurd, such as hitting the artichokes against each other like cymbals to open them further. Squishing them slightly with the bottom of your palm -- the chokes, bottom up, leaves down -- on a cutting board, worked quite well. Generous salt and pepper are important. I sprinkled sel de mer and freshly ground black pepper. Some of the recipes call for 25 minutes and two stages of frying. I did it in about 15 for one stage and I fear that might have been too much for the babies. Ten minutes in rolling, boiling EVOO (actually I cheated since I also had some left over peanut and corn oil as well) should be enough. I did not cover the artichokes in oil. I turned them over once. The result was a vegetable that looked more like a marigold than chrysanthemum. The leaves tasted like green potato chips. The tiny heart had the consistency of fried clam bellies, but much more delicious. The seven of us scarfed them down. A few of the leaves were tough, but discarding them was no more annoying than getting rid of a kalamata olive pit.

Here are a few additions that I have enjoyed: Cheese: La Ferme Saint-Aubin, 76 rue Saint-Louis en l'île, 4th 01 43 54 74 54 (08:00~20:00. Closed on Mondays They will cryovac cheese for travel, as well Ferme St. Hubert Worth a visit, particularly if you are going to nearby Berthillon Barthelemy: 51 rue de Grenelle, Paris 7; tel: 42-22-82-24, Chocolate: Michel Chaudun, 149 rue de l’Université, 7th 01 47 53 74 40, near Invalides & Champs de Mars, between blvd. Tour-Maubourg and rue Jean Nicot

I picked up a pound of Chinese watercress that I hope to wok stir-fry Thai style, a favorite. Peanut oil and garlic are the two other ingredients I plan to use. Does anyone know what other ingredients should be included? In the version I have tasted, there is not much fish sauce taste, but can anything be cooked in Thailand without fish sauce? Edited: Did I forget to mention soy sauce? Probably not too much.

Quite apart from "the chips with everything" problem that is on the horizon, there seems to be another possible glitch in using US credit cards or perhaps credit cards in general. I am reasonably confident it is not a chip problem, but has something to so with the nature of the credit card approval systems in Europe -- are they crankier than the States? In last November in Switzerland and France, I used my visa card freely with two or three exceptions -- not weekend filling stations. In one artisanal food store in Lausanne -- worth a separate posting if I can ever find my notes -- the Visa card did not work after several tries. I then produced a US Mastercard which went through immediately. Both, I believe are magnetic stripe not chip-cards. A similar problem occurred at Au Petit Marguery in Paris. The same Visa card was refused. In this case American Express worked. That is not a restaurant unaccustomed to Americans. I also confirmed that at no point had my bank put any kind of hold on the card. Is there anybody out there familiar with the detailed workings of credit card purchase approval systems in the US and Europe, who can address this question? Is there anyway to prevent the problem, other than by overcoming it with back-up cards.

There are many people whose tastes are so benighted that they prefer a piece of hot (or warm) crap to a cold delicacy. However there is a problem of food storage on aircraft. Airline food comes in two temperatures, frig(ging) cold or micro(nuked) hot. All of the wonderful foods you describe and which I would long for should be served room temperature. There is no room temperature in an airplane. It would be possible to set aside the space to generate it, but that would require them to re-design the whole bloody mess. Even then many people still think they need a hot meal so they still would have to provide for them. The solution is to pack your own lunch, to be sure that has its own problems, but...

Pages Jaunes is very powerful and effective. Anybody planning a trip to France should bookmark it. You need a little French to navigate it, but common sense is almost as useful.

Thanks. Just checked it out. Seems to be a funkier version of Pariscope. Perhaps not as useful for restaurant coordonnees since it seems less inclusive.

In the French forum there has been some discussion of French credit card systems, wireless, pin-requiring chip-bearing etc.. Australia and NZ have adopted the latter requirements as well. Now it seems the UK is moving in the same direction, as the following BBC-link suggests. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3039619.stm What problems might this pose for credit card holders in the US since their banks have been much slower in adopting the new technology? As some of you may realize, some US banks -- particularly the ones offering airline mileage -- tack on a 1 to 2% charge on all foreign currency purchases over and above the 1% exchange transaction charge levied by Visa/MC. In that regard what are UK bank credit card practices for foreign purchases?

To return to the main thread on credit cards. The following article from the BBC websites alerts us to the increasing ubiquity of pin-requiring chip-embedded credit cards. The process is taking off in the UK, as described in the link. One wonders how long it will take US credit card companies to introduce the new cards and at what expense to the consumer? In the meanwhile we may have to anticipate US cards being increasingly useless abroad even as the banks figure out ways to charge us more for the occasional privilege. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3039619.stm

This is all well and good, but a diesel engine can be hell on the Italian autostradi and the grandes autoroutes that have a lot of German and Italian drivers. I once rented a diesel Alfa for a trip from Graz to Florence, with side trips to the Italian lakes. Driving on the Venice-Milan road -- the busiest in Europe, makes the New Jersey Turnpike seem like a Sunday stoll through the park -- was hell. There was construction so lanes were constantly dropping off. The remaining two lanes -- at best -- offered a choice between Polish extended lorries chugging along at 25 mph or BMWs at 125, that is M ph, not K ph. The diesel did not have quick enough acceleration to move smoothly between the lanes.