Busboy

An excellent movie on DVD, preferably with subtitles, wit and attractive people in provacative (ie, very little) clothing. A bottle of manly red wine. Or two. A crusty sourdough baguette and a salad of freshest arugula and tomatoes. And a bucket of 30 spicy wings with all the homemade blue cheese dressing (that being Wishbone BC Dressing spiked with Pirate's Treasure pre-crumbled blue) you can eat. Edited to add: and a bottle of Texas Pete's chili sauce in case the wings aren't spicy enough already.

And they were actually Baltimore-based at first -- Gino played for the Colts back in the Glory Days. If you joined the Junior Orioles (Dad-son baseball for $1.85 a game; those were the days) you always got a Ginos certificate in the "welcome" kit. More here. Now I'm hungry and filled with an inconsolable tristesse for my lost youth. Thanks.

Now, now. No wonder they call us "food snobs." There are a number of perfectly nice people out there who spend their lives commuting to work, raising children, volunteering for the homeless or just hanging out with a beer on a glorious day rather than "exploring the restaurant scene," but who nonetheless appreciate a nice meal every now and again. Getting them out of Olive Garden and into Firefly is good for them, it's good for restauranteurs whom we like and respect, and it's good for the DC dining scene because it creates a morket for even more good restaurants. You can sneer at me, but don't sneer at my parents.

Good questions. And it's easy for a reviewer -- or anyone -- to get so hung up on their own gimmick -- um, theme -- that the whole list like this gets silly. It would, theoretically, be possible for a critic to rank every restaurant he or she has visited and put the 52 best on a list, and that would be a useful thing to have. On the other hand, other publications already do that, and a number of the restaurants on the list are already well known (I'll bet you pulled your list off the top of your head) and well-booked. Or they've become arrogant. Or the quality, though high, does not justify even higher prices. It appears that Tom has done a little matrix that crosses variety with enjoyability --both, admittedly, subjective terms -- and decided to send people to what he considered deserving spots that delivered value, delight and a change of pace. I was pleased to see Pesce, Colorado Kitchen, Ray's and other less known (outside eGullet-land) 2-stars on the list. I haven't been to a lot of the places you mention, Rocks, but between my experience, reviews and other feedback, and eG, I'll wager I can guess why a lot of them weren't included. Ardeo: Boring Galileo: service problems Gerard's Place: poor price/quality Le Paradou: "no heart" Sette: more flash than substance Vidalia: HillValley's savage review (actually, I've been to all of these at least once) In other words, although the food may be good -- even excellent -- there are other restaurants where, for the money you spend, you will have a better time. Others, I'm thinking Marcel's and Indique, were perhaps victims of culinary affirmative action: not good enough within their category to force the exclusion of, say, the list's lone Korean place, or Tutto Bene, a way to eat great Italian in the suburbs without the expense of Laboratorio or Maestro. One can quibble with the list, but it's perhaps more valuable than a traditional guide, given that we have the Washingtonian and other sources for "best of," and certainly more interesting.

Go to Il Laboratorio at Galileo. Order the wine pairing (which appears to be "all you can drink," btw) they offer, in which case the wine will cost less than the food. Go early in the month, so if he's offering his truffle menu, you can spend the rest of your month's budget by ordering it and spending the night in inexplicable bliss.

Closed by the health department for Weirwolf infestation.

When I worked in a formal French restaurant we served from the left and cleared from the right, a habit I retain to the is day. I seem to remember that we called it "American service" rather than "French service (which, then, would have meant serving from the opposite side)," though I may be mistaken. Banquet service -- in which the waiter wedges a tray full of food between two diners with one arm and either plates the food with his free hand or steadies the tray while the diner serves himself -- is always done from the left, so perhaps that's the clue that proves jackal10's assertion. Though we always called this "Russian Service." I seriously doubt that service or clearing from either side has a significant impact on one's dining pleasure, the important thing being that the waiter drops or clears the plate with his or her "outside" arm -- serving with the left hand if serving from the left - so that his elbow doesn't end up in your face. ***** On the larger issue, I wonder if one of the more experienced French diners could confirm a thought that I had: that France is much more of a hierarchichal society and that, say, asking a runner to pour your wine for you is akin to aking him to break the social contract: he has not "earned" the right to pour your wine, as your waiter has. If he were to pour it, it would be a suggestion to the waiter that the busboy does not know his role, and that the waiter has made an error.

Oh, c'mon -- this is too easy. Bat Bourguignon, Buffalo bat wings, Bat au Vin....

So, you got paid by Bourdain and The Plain Dealer? Interesting... EDITED TO ADD: Or should I, too, stop drinking in the afternoon and and believing everything I read.

The quick answer is to just think of polenta as Italian mashed potatoes. You can do anything with it. I generally prefer mine mushy; I'm thinking of spooning a healthy lake of it beneath braised lamb shanks this weekend, and I find it makes a particularly inviting pan-Euro dinner when served with Chicken With 40 Cloves of Garlic. It's also great left to cool, sliced and fried up. I have served it as a first course, fried, with white beans and tomatoes but generally serve it as a side. As for the consistency, it's just a question of how much liquid you choose to add, and knowing that even soupy polent will congeal as it cools. It's simple stuff, too, the hardest part is figuring out how you like it. It's almost a...cakwalk?

I know it's heresy but I find that instant polenta (the kind you stir, not the kind you slice) gives excellent results and, when I put up an angst-ridden post about it was assured by a variety of more-seasoned eG Italiophiles that the vast majority of Italians use the instant stuff today without guilt or significant flavor loss. That said, I crave a creamy garlic polenta presented in a now-lost Patrick Connell (of the Inn at Little Washington). Sweat some chopped garlic in butter or olive oil, substirute whole milk for 1/4 of your water and cream for another quarter, throw in a bay leaf and a shot of tabasco as you cook, and add equal amounts of grated parmesan and dried polenta. It should come out about the consistency of grits and it won't hurt at all if you add a little water or cream at the end to get it just where you like it. Fries up nice for breakfast the next morning, too.

Not to skip over the rest of your thoughtful post, but there are two particularly interesting points here. The trade/profession dichotomy thing is interesting. Clearly, in the U.S., opportunities for professional advancement have expanded exponentially for women since, oh, 1960. One can almost picture a generation of women realizing that, unlike their foremothers, they had vast (how that plays out relative to men is another discussion, so let's not walk down that blind alley now) opportunities to enter the workforce and either get rich or change the world or just earn considerably more than pin money for a nice vacation. How nmy of these women were thinking, "dammit, I'm going to be a doctor, or an attorney, or (my field) a communitcations professional." And how many were thinking, "dammit, I'm going to spend 70 hours a week in a hot, kitchen scarring myself, listening to rude comments all day and making crap money?" Maybe it just didn't occur to the women most able and likely to take advantage of the changing social and economic landscape to put themselves back in the kitchen when the corner office was finally in reach. And, lest we think that chefly brilliance is always the result of a "calling," remember that the only calling Thomes Keller got was when his mother called him to get his ass over to the restaurant she was manageing, because her cook had quit. The second point is: how does one resolve the opposition between the quest for balance you and sinclair mention with the fire in the belly which, pretty much by definition, means a life out of balance? If women, generally, place higher priority on balance, does this mean that, generally, their rise -- as a group -- to the top of any profession, but particularly coooking, will be hindered?

If this is true -- and I am perfectly willing to accept it -- it actually brings us back to the original question. It is a fact that there are relatively few top chefs who are women? Do they not have "the fire in the belly?" or is there some exogenous factor that is preventing them from rising to the top? If it's the former, it would be interesting to explore the idea that there's something innate in gender or society that makes one more eager to cook professionally than the other (that thread will be a fun one) And, if it's the latter, why aren't Rogov's suggestions a pretty good jumping off point for discussion without his getting mau-mau'd for his alleged paternalism? Kind of gets us away from the original, pretty good, question. Just for the hell of it I ran through Washingtonian's "100 Best list" to see what the gender breakdown of the "top toques: was. Of 12 3-star restaurants, eight were men, two were women and two I couldn't figure out (note to Washingtonian: why are the two "ethnic" -- Thai and Indian -- restaurants on your 3-star list the only two whose chefs don't get a mention in the review?). All eight 4-star restaurants were run by men.

Not sure how you'd maneuver her into the place (maybe under the guise of catching a free show at the Millenium Stage but the terrace on the top floor of the Kennedy Center has long been known among GW students as great spot for a cheap date, as the view is so spectacular. Make sure it's open, first. There may be too much construction, at this moment, but the coolest place to be at sunset in Washington is directly behind the Lincoln Memorial, looking over the river, the Rosalyn skyline and the Eternal Flame. Both of these spots put you within walking distance of Nectar.

Patricia Wells, numerous eGullet-types and I all think highly of Marie-Anne Cantin in the 7th, just around the corner from the Rue Cler Market and the hotel we always stay at in Paris (OK, stayed at twice. But I like to think of myself as needing a pied-a-terre in Paris). Even if you never find the thread, you can feel pretty confident about Cantin, who does vacuum pack upon request. PS -- the last time I tried to smuggle foodstuffs past Customs, they told me that cheese was fine -- even letting me bring something stinky that was wrapped only in battered aluminum foil into the country. Just watching a uniformed non-cheese person react when the scent escaped the foil and assaulted her nostrils was almost worth the potential fine. She did, however, make a bit of a non-cheese stink about the cured meat I'd forgotton to ditch on the plane.

Umm. That statistic absolutely does fit the hypothesis that cooking at home is about to lose its popularity.

The time thing perception deserves a whole 'nother thread, probably not on eGullet, just for the examining the difference between working shorter workweek but having to work on line in a blizzard -- ie increased leasure v. the abandonment of natural rhythms. I meant the "significant" probably more in the economic/statistical sense. If you think of the caveats that a 3% difference in a political poll means a statistical dead heat --ie there is no statistically "significant" difference between Bush at 47% and Kerry at 45% (I apologize to anyone whose taken statistics courses, I'm not trying to be condescending) . But, I would argue that the loss of 45 minutes a day is significant in the other sense as well. The difference between getting home at 5:30 and 6:15 is very noticeable, if add in longer commutes and some stupid kid thing (my parents weren't required to review my homework) you've losylost much more than 10% of that small slice of life that, after work, kids, housework and the dishes is yours.

Interesting article here. Among the links are a graph showing the results of a study that found that the average hours per household worked rose from 57.5 in 1969 to 71.8 per week, largely the result of women entering the workforce. That's almost three more hours a day for a five-day workweek. A pretty significant climb even if, as in the Busboy household, some of that time is made up by letting household chores slide. Another thing they touch on is lengthening commutes and the stress that brings. Toliver, this is from one of the articles you quote: "From 1989 to 1999, the questionnaire recall data indicate that paid work in the labor market increased by 10 percent for men and 17 percent for women, reflecting the decade’s strong job market and the increasing labor market participation of women. As a result, total work time for men increased by 8 percent over that decade. But given the drop in housework time for women, their total work time increased by only 2 percent. " Paid work is increasing significantly, according to your own source, for men and especially women. People have less free time. So people are doing less housework, one assumes including cooking, in order to slow the growth of their "total" workload. They cook (and clean) less, because they are working more. Your own sources contradict you. So there. Moopheus, it's tough to argue that it takes as long to eat out as it does to cook. Admittedly, I'm in the city, but there's a good two dozen restaurants around that I could walk the family to, eat in, and walk home faster than I could cook a roughly equivalent dinner and wash the dishes. Hell, the whole restaurant industry -- except for a relative handful of places -- is geared to getting tables turned as fast as possible. Most of the times I go out to eat I end up thinking, "geez, that was quick."

It may technically be in Columbia Heights, but since I like it, I claim it for my side of the 'hood. There are two, about three doors apart, on Park Road between 14th and 16th -- if you remember the Waffle House and the Kantouri Fried Chicken places, they are right near there. Pretty good selections for corner stores, and just fun to walk through (though the block is grim and menacig even by my low standards) -- odd vegetables and Asian cuts of meat, duck and quail eggs by the score, packaged pho spice if you don't have seven hours....

Al -- All the stuff you can't get at Eastern Market (where I assume you'll hunt down stock bones and the like), including pre-sliced pho meat and all the asian spices -- is available about four blocks from my house. Feel free to drop by for a beer and we'll show you Mt. Pleasant's Vietnamese quarter....

Daddy-A You missed my point. My Mom certainly considered it work, so do I. The point is that she only had one "job." Today most women (and the burden still falls disproportionally on them) have two -- the "work work" and "housework." If you add time spent by parents at the office or factory or wherever to the time spent working around the house to the time spent transporting kids, to increased extracurriculars and homowrk for the kids, etc, today's families have fewer hours to cook and enjoy a meal than most middle-class families of the past. Throw in the growing number of single parents and you have a huge change in dinner's role. People who spend $35,000 on kitchen equipment -- or are able to persue it as a mid-week hobby (that have three hours to spend shopping and cooking because they like to do it) -- do not represent the realities most Americans face. Nor, btw, does eGullet. Asking this group about the future of dinner is a little like asking the Young Dempcrats abnout the future of the war in Iraq. The answers are valid, but not necessarily representative of the nation as a whole.

Well, I figured "what the fuck" and PM'd Tony this morning. We'll see.

California between San Francisco and Big Sur. Ask Tanabutler, but I can't picture anyplace in America that, in May, would have a better combination of places to kick back and relax, and great seasonal and restaurant food. And if you want a night on the town, you can drop into Fog City and do it up right.

You're living in a dream world if you think families have as much free time as they used to. I grew up middle class in the 60's and 70's and virtually every mother stayed home. Mom did a little sewing - and a little painting and whatever else needed to be done in addition to the housework. She probaly spent as much time working as my wife does, but making dinner was part of her "job" not in addition to it. My brothers and I ran around the neighborhood for fun; the endless shuttling of kids from soccer to ballet to tutors hadn't been invented yet -- though there was some of that -- because unstructured time was tolerated and people weren't paranoid. The lack of time is real and, and anybody who has time to cook as a "hobby" on a Tuesday night is probably either not working full time, or childless.

Another thought, to draw back to the original question, is that having kids gives you certain economies of scale -- it takes roughly the same time to cook for four, roughly, as is does for two (or one). Meanwhile, the costs of eating out rise significantly, both in hassle factor and food costs. Hence, "family dinner" becomes relatively more economically desireable.