Busboy

So, a bunch of us who are in fact old enough to know better are heading to Tennessee for Bonnaroo, a three-day party featuring with what we hope will be a compelling mix of geezer acts in fine form (Dylan, the Dead, etc.) and a bunch of younger bands that will allow us to pretend we're hip for listening too. As eGulleters, we're committed to hearing "The String Cheese Incident's" set. Anyway, it's camping. And no glass is allowed on the site. Given our advanced age and refined palates, canned beer just isn't going to cut it for those 2AM post-set wind-downs. And I have yet to find a box wine that won't be even more of a bummer to drink than that brown acid was to eat. So, any suggestions on how we can keep a few (ok, lots and lots) bottles of mid-range red and white wine drinkable for three days? Our first thoughts: High alcohol reds. Port keeps, right? So the closer we get to 18%, the better off we are. Cali Zin anyone? Freeze it in plastic bottles. We have done this with leftover wine in their original bottles, and it compares very favorably to recorking and refridgerating -- even with that vacuum pump, especially after 24 hours, and with reds. We can just stick them in a cooler and drink them as they melt. Filling air-tight plastic bottles to the top and sealing them. I mean, when Chateau Mouton sends a guy around to recork you 66's, that couple of seconds of air doesn't turn the bottle bad, right? And then he tops the bottle off to prevent further oxidation, recorks it and you're good for another decade. And, as Randall Graham keeps telling us, an airtight screwtop is as good as a cork. So why not give it a go? Anyway, if anyone has any comments or suggestions (or the name of drinkable box wine), we'd appreciate it.

One could have made a bundle betting me that I'd ever post a link to McDo on this board. Here's the link to the McDonald's France site. They use pop up windows and/or frames. You'll have to click through to find the Wi-Fi locations. Click "entrez" on the homepage and click "Le Wi-Fi Chex McDo" under the "Guide des Restos" pull down menu. On the next page, click "suivez le guide!" Enter the départment number in the box on the next page (75 for Paris) and click "valider." Another screen will pop up with a scrolling list of about 27 McDo Wi-Fi locations in Paris. They say it's free. I have not yet had the chance to try it out. I'm also told that in addition to the (expected) frîtes and the (unexpected) wine, MoDo in France also serves espresso. Europe is such a civilizing influence. And, as we all know, they have quarter pounders with cheese. Of course, they don't call them quarter pounders...

From the hotel web site, although it's not that prominently displayed: The rooms, at least the larger more expensive rooms, look large, especially for Paris and we can assume that's the case if they have room for a child's bed to be brought in. It looks like a nice place. I have seen their "suite," which is not quite a suite by US standards, but very large and with windows overlooking the park. Unfortunately, the only room they had left when I stayed was pretty much a closet -- but the owners had warned me, and I preferred to stay with people I know (I have stayed at their other hotel, the Valadon, which has computer access but not wi-fi) than hunt down another place. I could get wi-fi in my room, but preferred to hang out in the parlour and watch the people come and go, and listen to the jazz the owner always plays. They also have a computer available for a modest fee, for those who want to check mail but prefer to travel sans laptop. EDITED TO ADD: Lest I sound unduly negative about my small room, I am looking forward to staying there on my next trip to Paris (whenever than may be) and staying in one of the larger rooms.

What Echezeaux said. If you were eating your salad nicoise in Nice, you'd likely be drinking it with a good rose.

Quality of truffle oils can vary. We once bought a (relatively) cheap bottle from Trader Joes and the stuff was pretty awful, now we stick to the $10 "arline bottle" sizes at Dean &DeLuca or Whole Foods. Given the season, the thing you want most in the world to do with your truffle oil is haul over to the nearest farmer's market, buy a grocery bag full of exquisitely fresh English peas, and make the pea soup with truffle oil from the French Laundry Cookbook. Trust me on this. My wife also like to put it on pizza.

I don't have a great deal of experience in Paris -- I'm working on it -- but a trip this spring seemed to confirm one thing I had heard: the weather in Paris in early spring is undelightful. You might want to consider October rather thanm, say, April (despite the song). I recommend this so often that she ought to put me on the payroll, but Patricia Wells' "Food-lovers Guide to Paris is well worth the investment. Finally, if the weather is warm enough, Paris offers some mighty fine picnicking, and the traiteurs offer excellent prepared food for al-fresco dining, in addition to the plentiful bread, cheese and fruit. It's a good way to save up a little extra cash for one top restautant. You can indulge your anti-tourist snobbery by eating along the banks of the Seine (while all the tourists past by in those topless tour boats) and stroll around to Maragret's ice cream place for dessert.

The Hotel Latour Mauberg offers free wi-fi, and, to my mind, reasonable rates in a great location in the 7th.

Any stew or braise that could be made the day before would give you the chance to chill the dish overnight, and skim the excess fat.

In the fantasy world I sometimes inhabit, the grocery stores sell large boxes of hearty vin du pays for about three bucks a liter, and every glass tastes like something you'd find at a small cafe in Provence, perfect for quaffing on the front porch or with a little grilled chicken and frites for dinner. In real life, however, every time I've tried box wine, it's been pretty much undrinkable. Still looking, and I suspect a Louis Vuitton box would catch my eye. I seem to recall, though, that their parent company LVMH (?) aims for a little more upscale market than box wines. Their last, failed, vineyard acquisition attempt was d'Yquem.

It should be noted that a plurality of U.S. immigrants came from nations and regions without the cooking tradition of France and Northern Italy: The British Isles, Scandinavia (think the Great Plains) and Germany. Further, I would argue that immigrants of other backgrounds, whose contributions to the American dining scene are more celebrated than those of my Irish forbears -- including Chinese, Southern Italians, Poles, Jews -- tended to settle in urban areas, perhaps because they arrived too late to take advantage of the Homestead Act and the cheap land earlier immigrants found, perhaps because they had been uirban laborers in the Old Country. The upshot of all this being that the early links of the food chain were disproportionately in the hands of people likely to think practically about their food. They were thinking about how to maximize grain and hog production, not whether they could raise pheasant (which they had likely never eaten), or plant basil, which they might never have even heard of.

Addis Abbaba in Adams Morgan is serving substantially better food than most of its Ethiopian competitors, but success has not gone to its head, or interior design. I feel a bit mean calling it "crummy," but it is a little down about the heels. No matter, it's a swell place to eat.

Marcel's.

Mrs. Busboy did the carnitas thing this weekend and we, too found that the time allocated for boiling the water down was significantly underestimated in the original recipe. Fortunately, everything else seemed to work and we had a great dinner with carnitas, red beans and rice (Salvadoran style, not Cajun-style), garniching the whole mess with lime wedges and crema centroamerican. If only we hadn't put all the tequila into the stew, it would have been perfect.

I agree with Andrew's point that the "less is more" approach has become something of a formula repeated endlessly in upscale dining rooms around the country. One unfortunate upshot is that you can easily find yourself dropping $100 on dinner for two, for food you can pretty much cook at home. Heirloom tomato salads, braised short ribs and strawberries? I don't need talented cooks doing things that I do in my own kitchen, I need them to do things I can't. Sometimes I wonder if the trend is so wide-spread because, as with a lot of pasta/Italian places, you can get by with a pretty thin bench in the kitchen. You don't have to have staged with Ducasse to slice tomatoes or boil pasta, so the chef doesn't have to spend time hunting down highly skilled, expensive help and risk losing them to a competitor or their own venture after only a short time.

Feeding kids is a daily exercise in "the art of the possible." Laying down hard and fast rules, or attempting to hold kids and yourself to a higher plane of dining is frustrating and impractical. In my experience children's tastes are arbitrary and, in the short-term, utterly inflexible. Balanced against the ideal of diverse, nutritious, home-cooked food is the reality of busy lives and a desire to get through dinner without a battle over the creamed spinach. At our house, we have a repetoire of "generally recognized as safe" dishes, and when we go beyond that, we generally make sure that there is enough other food around to fill the kids up. For example, if we're eating fish, which my children loathe (why? I have no idea), we'll make extra rice and vegatables. If there's a sausage or two in the fridge we might fry them up, but the general rule regarding custom children's dinners is that the kids have to eat a variation of the adult's meal, and no extra hassle should be involved. We made eggs benedict the other night, the kids were allowed to have scrambled eggs, since they are not persuaded of the genius of Hollandaise, and scrambling a couple of eggs while you wait for the another batch to pach is no problem. Kid's tastes are funny things. Ours were exposed to pretty much every kind of cooking there is. They were much more adventurous at two than at four, and there was a long period of very picky eating. Now, at 11 and 15, their palates are again broadening, and I don't worry too much. As a child I didn't even like pepperoni on my pizza, as an adult I had to be convinced to try Thai food. Now, I get jellyfish cravings.

What time are you meeting? Saturday nights start late so a place that has a huge line at 8:30 may be empty at 6:30. There's also a new Greek place just down the block from BDC called Mourayo. I've just had apps there, but I enjoyed it, it's a change of pace and they haven't been too crowded the last couple of times I walked by.

I have had the tremendous good fortune to travel to France several times over the last two years and have found that no one ever thinks I'm American. It's either my tenuous grasp of the French language or my fabulous Euro-style that throws them off, and I am informed by close friends that it is probably not the latter. As I am now, also, travelling to Greece occasionally, and have very little command of that language, I can conficently state that the relatively modest time and money investment involved in a six-week "intro to French" night course will be richly repaid. Even a modest vocabulary and the most rudimentary grammar skills will dramatically increases your freedom of movement and ability to explore, and will likely draw much more friendly and supportive reactions from the people you meet.

Books about wine are kind of like books about sex. They can be pretty informative but they're no substitute for actual experience. I'd suggest that, given the people who post to this board, you ask as well for reccommendations for reasonably priced, representative wins that will reward a newcomers affection without breaking his bank. (I'll be taking notes, as well). A good half-bottle of Muscate de Beaumes de Venice can likely be found for less than $20; this would give you something to sip on while you read.

Ethiopian restauranteurs love kids. Even at 15 and 11 they still draw excellent service to the table, when they were 6 and 10 they got us treated like royalty.

What's the difference between Orange Chicken and General Tso's? Anyway, put me down as a "hell yes" on both fronts.

The Minister harms his case by linking to one of those whiny, self-absorbed "child-free" sites run by people who just hate kids. I think he also harms his case by failing to name the restaurant or place the age of the child. There is a huge continuum of possibilities here, and the situation of, say, a 6-year-old at Sam and Harry's is very different from a 2-year-old at Nectar. We need details.

Alas, Mrs. Busboy and I wil be in Tennessee that weekend. Looks like a great time.

Whoa, I think you lost track of my intention here. I am looking for Italian. Ofcourse I am aware of the many chefs doing just that kind of ideal with other cuisines and interpretations. The first thing I ate when I got back last night was sushi....couldn't have been happier. Again, I was looking for Italian suggestions. Oh, and thanks to DCMark for being blunt and humerous, your reply was probably the most on point response I got. Well, the thing about eating Italian food in Italy is that you're playing to the strength of the local chefs. When you roll into an area, any area, and demand that they live up to the specialty of another place 4000 miles away, you've set yourself up for dissapointment. To paraphrase Chairman Mao, you have to be the fish that swims in the sea of life. Rather than demanding that DC (or anywhere) live up to expectations formed in Italy, you need to come into town without preconceptions and find our what works where you are now. Anything else is folly.

"The Office," a dive bar in Council Bluffs, Iowa ("If you need me, I'll be at the office). "The Horse You Rode in On" in Baltimore. "Bertha's," also in Charm City" but only for their vaguely unsettling and wildly popular bumper sticker reading "eat Bertha's mussles." "Big Wong," in DC

If the timing works.... Also, don't forget babka's cheese bash.