Busboy

I don't know this for sure (I don't buy them), but I think I remember seeing quail eggs pretty much year-round in the MT supermarket in the "Chinatown" center. Andrew ← I have no idea what's going on in Austin but, to second Andrew's suggestion, I've seen quail eggs in serious Asian markets in several cities and would recommend nosing whatever Austin offers along those lines.

We do this with a butt, but you did mention braising so I assume you've got a big enough pot for a leg... Buy a couple of bottles of inexpensive Alsatian Gewurtztraminer or other fruit y white wine, a half-gallon of cider and, if you're feeling flush, a bottle of Calvados. A quart of stock, preferably pork, would be useful, as well. Marinate the pork for a day or maybe two in the wine, with substantial onion, thyme, parsley, leek, and carrot, maybe some clove and garlic if you're in the mood. If you have a copy of the French Laundry Cookbook, you can use the proportions mentioned in the short-ribs marinade and even burn off the alcohol, as he suggests. Brown the pork. This is a pain and possibly unnecessary, but I like doing it. Throw the pork, marinade, a couple of cups of calvados, your stock maybe some apples, and apple cider to cover in a big pot and braise for 6 hours or so, until the pork is pretty shredable. Let the pork sit overnight, chilled. Skim the fat, return pork to braising liquid and warm slowly (at least an hour). If you're feeling adventurous, set the now-warm pork in a warm oven, strain the braising liquid and boil it down until it is the consistency and concentration you want in a sauce. You might spike it with a bit of cider vinegar and adjust the Calvados just for zing. It's kind of like Normandy goes to Arkansas, a French pulled pork, and it's delish.

La Molienda Restaurant 3568 14th St NW, Washington 20010 Phone: 202-291-0855 If you make your way to the corner of 14th Street. and Park Road NW you’ll find yourself at ground zero of the latest yuppie bomb to explode over DC, surrounded by girls with tattoos peeking out of their high-top Chucks or cascading down their upper arms, boys with goatees and baby strollers, and the kind of affluent young urbanite that doesn’t feel weird walking down the street in a T-shirt declaring his or her participation in a kickball league. Whether this is a) bringing new life to a run-down residential and commercial corridor; b) sucking the soul out of a soulful place; c) a condo bubble waiting to burst; or d) all of the above, remains to be seen. One thing is clear, though: there’s an invisible blast wall that seems to run down Newton Street that for better or for worse effectively contains the yuppie hordes just a couple of blocks north of ground zero. Walk up past the restored Golden Age Movie House -- with a hip bar where the projection room used to be, a Spanish-language performance space and an odd warren of offices favored by left-ish non-profits – past the almost always almost empty Ruby Tuesdays, past the ugly office building rising where the last great slummy Giant Foods used to stand (the new version is next to the movie theater) and the neighborhood changes in an instant. Instead of coffee shops and organic dry cleaners, you have pupuserias and used furniture stores. The people on the front steps aren’t waiting to go the wood-oven pizza place, they’re just hanging out, ‘cause that’s what they do. The kids hollering and racing along the sidewalk wear polo shirts from the local public school, not their soccer league or the kind of private schools people like me send their children to. Of course you’re not surprised to find yourself the only person not-of-color (if you are indeed not-of-color) on the block, or to see that annual household income statistics have collapsed since you left the condo canyons. But even in a city where affluence and poverty bump against one another in a number of neighborhoods, it’s a bit breathtaking how suddenly dramatically the social, economic and commercial character of the neighborhood changes (and a bit fun – you came to the city for its diversity, right?). And it’s surprising that so many are willing to wait so long to pay so much for Park Road Yuppie Chow, when there’s so much cool stuff so few blocks away. Take La Molienda (“The Milling” -- your guess is as good as mine; that’s what it said on Babelfish). In a strip marked by storefront carryouts and the kind of Chinese places where you order through bullet-proof glass, La Molienda catches your eye with its cool neon and handsome front. And, once inside you realize that you’ve stumbled into not just a joint, but a pleasant little restaurant, with low lights, a nod in the direction of décor and large windows that allow you to keep tabs on the show walking by outside and give the place a friendly feel. OK, the music’s a touch loud, and there’s two TVs –one for football and one for the telenovellas. But the TVs are blessedly small-screened, low volume affairs and music louder than I like it seems to be yet another highly-contagious cold sore of the current age. And the food is pretty dang good. I mean, a pair of flat-grilled quail (Codorniz la Parilla) with crispy, salty skin served with sides of rice and beans for $11.95? You really can’t beat that with a stick. And while I thought the whole grilled rockfish was a smidge overdone, my dining companions – whose credibility in these matters far exceeds mine – tore into it without hesitation. Backtracking a bit, the appetizers were far more hit than miss. My wife’s hearts of palm salad was a deeply misguided attempt to get some green into the meal; the less said, the better. And I was not keen on the batter-dipped plantains with drawn butter on the side; YMMV. But the cheese pupusas were pretty good, kind of a macho variation with a heavier tortilla and a cheese that doesn’t telephone wire out on you when you bite into it. The CD-sized white corn tortillas deep fried and topped with shredded chicken billed as Salvadoran Chicken Chiledes delivered the requisite zing and crunch. I was particularly gratified to see my friend woof down the Chicharrones con Yucca (or was it Yucca con Chicharonnes?) because that’s the dish that had lured me back, after I stumbled across La Molienda while looking for another restaurant earlier this year. Mexican chicharrones are deep-fried pork rinds – fresh cracklins, if you will – but Salvadorans apparently deep-fry the meat itself, coarsely chopped, and give it the same name. Served with thick batons of yucca and topped with some of the powerful green chile sauce set on every table, it’s quite tasty. I finally found out what that cole slaw stuff that comes with pupusas (often topped with tomato sauce) and any number of other dishes is: cortido. And La Molienda’s is excellent. On the other hand the lettuce and tomatoes were unsurprisingly horrid. And, for what it’s worth, there’s a “Mexican Corner” on the menu if you’re in the mood for the same old stuff. Service in the too-empty restaurant (get up here you yuppies! spend some money!) was wonderful, provided by a sweet young woman who seemed positively nervous to be waiting on us and who worked with around our odd Spanglish to deliver food and drink with aplomb. And such a deal! Aside from a curiously pricy round of tequila (maybe my wife ordered the good stuff, my Spanish is virtually nonexistent), the whole bill for four apps, five entrees and a smattering of beer and wine came to less than a hundred bucks, after tax. La Lomienda is a too-rare reminder that you don’t always have to choose between an authentic hole-in-the wall and a nicer spot that’s diluted its cooking to appeal to American tastes and our craving for mediocre Tex-Mex. We shall return.

There's a lot of restaurant talk here, including discussions of all the restaurants mentioned so far. Since price is no object, I'm assuming you're looking upscale (as you should be for such an event!). I had a dinner last year at CityZen that I thought was better than my meal at The French Laundry, where CityZen chef Eric Ziebold was Thomas Keller's sous. Michel Richard Citronelle is considered one of the best French Restaurants in the country and if you are into wine your are in for a treat: Mark Slater -- Citronelle sommelier and eGullent member marksommelier -- won this year's James Beard Award for his wine program (oh yeah, Michel Richard also won outstanding chef ) and he's a big classical music fan. You might PM him if you decide to dine there, I'm sure he'd be delighted to make your night. And, while some have found the service less-than-gracious, I don't think anyone doubts that Palena's food is as good as any in town. Sadly, my tickets are for the following weekend, but I wish your brother best of luck.

I believe you get two courses, a ride to the show, and then a ride back for dessert. Given that they were looking at Komi, which can be an endless -- although, arguably, endlessly enjoyable -- dinner hour, I assume that they don't need tomake that type of arrangement.

Ah, unfortunately, we won't have a car (from their website, it didn't seem like they were near any public transport). We're all going to be in town for a piece of my brother's that's being played by the NSO, and coincidentally just after his birthday. So suggestions would be greatly appreciated for places that are Metro accessible or a reasonable cab ride. ← What's the date? We're subscribers. I'm assuming that you're not eating the same evening as the piece is being played. If you are, options are more limited. If not, my first thought is Marcel's, which is only about a 15 minute walk from the Kennedy Center. Unfussy but very high-level French-Belgian food.

Am I the only one who thinks once burgers get over six ounces, they're just unwieldy? Anyway, the Washington Post Food Section analyzed a baker's dozen of DC burgers for our edification here. Ranked in order: Central Palena EatBar (Arlington) BLT Steak Charlie Palmer Steak Morton's Black's Bar and Kitchen (Bethesda) Sonoma Ardeo DC Coast Capitol Grill Vermilion Les Halles

See, I tip roughly the way you do, but I think the "cost of living" argument is BS. Because one thing that has been going up as fast -- or faster -- as the "legitimate cost of living" is the cost of a good dinner out. Diner waitresses have it tough, vis a vis check size versus cost of living. Servers in upscale joints? I think tabs have more than kept pace.

If price is no object, there are a number of spots to consider. What do you like?

You might want to glance at this topic, and see if anything strikes your fancy; it also has more detailed discussions of the restaurants below (to which I hope you'll contribute). If you're a Hopper fan, btw, you're in luck: mega-retrospective at the National Gallery. Very hot right now. Saturday lunch is tough, because most places are closed. Nonetheless there are some good spots open, all on the north side of the Mall (do not waste your time looking for food on the Mall's south side) all about equidistant from Constitution Avenue. Starting towards the Capitol and working west towards the Monument and the White House, you can get all Latin-y at either of two stars in the Jose Andres constellation, Cafe Atlantico's very hip Latino dim sum brunch (which certain reprobates suggest is best enjoyed at the bar with a selection excellent and unique cocktails) or Jaleo, a tapas joint just a couple of blocks away. My experience is that the dim sum brunch can be hit or miss, but the misses are pretty good and the hits are muy bueno. Jaleo is consistently very good on a less exotic but very tasty level. Nice wine list emphasizing Spain and South America. These are not far from the National Gallery or the Archives. I'm assuming you aren't interested in the Hard Rock Cafe so, as you proceed towards the White House leave Latin America for France, at the Willard Hotel's Cafe du Parc. Fine Bistro food and, should be a clement afternoon, lovely outdoor seating in the shadow of the White House. It is said, by people whom I trust, that the cafeteria at the American Indian Museum is quite good, with offerings based on native American cooking, but I have no first-hand experience.

Keep in mind that, in the end, nothing is cooler than the waiter's corkscrew. Everything else is for parvenues, wimps and show-offs. OK, some of them may actually work better than a waiter's corkscrew (better yet, call it a "wine key"), but they're not as cool. And the coolest of the wine keys are these. Of course, they're far too expensive to give as gifts, so just buy one for yourself.

Maybe hearing about wine is like hearing about someone else's kids. Sure, there's hard work and heartaches and heartbreaks and heartwarming moments and all but if this is just someone you're sitting next to on a plane you might not really give a rat's ass (as old Dad would likely say, particularly about expensive wine or strangers' children) as long as the little tyke is polite and well behaved. Same if it's just another tasting room on the day's itinerary or the fifth flight you've been through or you'd rather stare smolderingly into your date's eyes than hear about secondary fermentation and oak barrels -- just pour, lady. The cynic in me suggests that 90% of all wine people -- no matter how much they love actually drinking the stuff -- are faking it when it comes to actual production, so people might actually have no clue what you're on about. And the customer in me suggests that you have to be a pretty talented spieler to keep the patter fresh all day. Personally, I like to hear it (usually) as long as I have the time to ask a million dumb questions and an interlocutor who has the time and the experience to answer them, because secretly I want to know as much about wine as Daniel Rogov and it seems like learning the details is part of that. But the standard rap ("after a dry September this was harvested on the 15th at a brix of...") gets stale quick. Plus, an unfortunate percentage of the time you've got this earnest person in your face about pruning strategies and you're thinking to yourself, "I'd rather light twenty dollar bills on fire than buy this stuff," which always makes me feel guilty. It's like thinking someone's kids are ugly as they tell you how well Johnny's been walking lately.

He did it three times on three different table checks. He must have to take his medication fairly often if it was for that reason... It was my understanding, that at least in the US, you tip regardless of the service. And if there there is a problem, then you bring it up with the management. I would have talked to the management at that time, but I didn't want to do it in front of our guest. Then I had planned to write a letter, but I just haven't gotten around to it (I haven't even unpacked since coming back to Japan, and that was 3 weeks ago). ← Ahhhh -- that explains it. Tipping is a hotly debated issue -- here's one topic -- but whatever your baseline percentage, it's certainly acceptable to adjust downwards for sub-par service (and only fair to adjust upward for exceptional service). Personally, I wouldn't stiff a waiter just for ostentatiously checking his watch, but I'd knock a few bucks off his tip. Actually, to be honest, after the third check and the fourth glass of wine, I'd probably say something snotty like "are we keeping you out late?" and play it by ear from there.

Japanese restaurants (in Japan) often serve that way. I don't think it's considered rude in Japan. They want you to eat each dish as it's prepared (at its freshest), regardless of whether everyone has their food or not. My pet peeve is when the waitstaff keeps checking their watches, as though we are taking up too much of their prime-time space (i.e. lowering their tips/hour). That happened to me recently at Frontera Grill in Chicago, and I was unimpressed. I left a better tip than the guy deserved (to help make up for the slower turnover of our table), but I was still pissed off. ← See, I don't get this. Why would you tip more to a waiter who was rude to you (and I'm assuming you're reportage is correct and the guy wasn't just innocently checking to see if it was time to take his asthma medication or something)? Tips should encourage better service, not reward worse service.

Tree and Leaf had some high quality haricot verts today at Mt. Pleasant, possibly worth hunting them down tomorrow in Dupont.

I think the whole DOC thing is ridiculous, anyway.

I would not get your hopes too high, the one's outside manhattan are quite dissapointing frankly. ← Actually, DC's store isn't bad at all. And it's tiny.

You know, it was Cabernets and Chardonnays that slew the great French beast, giving them an leg up on "Flagship" status. As been said, Zin is California's truly unique wine (all these Primitivo-come-latelies be damned). Pinot Noir really is indisputably Oregon's flagship wine already. And -- though I am probably in the minority in thinking this -- I'm pretty sure California Pinot Noir sucked at least until the mid-90s, especially in comparison to what were then much-more-reasonably priced Burgundies. So I vote "no." (While we're on the subject, if anybody wants to PM their unvarnished opinion regarding Skewis Pinot -- California Pinot has finally won my heart -- I'd be grateful; I'm considering spending some of my very limited wine budget on a case).

I was chatting with a local restaurant owner one night and he asked me if I thought he should go cash only. Seems credit card fees were running three grand a month. Now, his pace is very popular and it's not a cheap place - though not particularly expensive, either, but it isn't large and he doesn't do lunch. $3000 a month is enough to hire another employee, buy a BMW or keep wine prices low -- seems like a reasonable alternative for any informal place. I mean, I prefer to pay with Amex, which a lot of restaurants don't take because their fees are higher, and often don't have the cash in my debit account to cover a nice meal at the end of the month (my one concession to fiscal responsibility was ditching my other credit cards). If one person is within their rights to demand that credit cards be accepted, should I be allowed to dictate which ones? Personally, I can't imagine being "so put off by" a no credit cards policy that I wouldn't eat at a good restaurant (unless I had that end-of-the-month thing going). If someone wants to serve me a decent meal at a decent price, I can make accommodations. And it's a hell of a lot less of a hassle than spending $50 cooling your heels in the bar for an hour, or dialing weeks in advance, for hours at a time, to get a rezzie.

I'm afraid I don't know Great Wall that well -- I spent an hour there last time I visited looking for instant congee and failing miserably. Likewise, I've been to the Super H in Wheaton/Silver Spring and the one in Rockville, but I don't know anything out your way. Seems that the Asian communities went north and west of the city, rather than east, for whatever reason. But give a ring next time you have a day to kill and we'll bomb around the 'burbs and see what we can turn up, all in the name of investigative journalism and fish flakes!

While we're on the subject of Boston, any suggestions for something a cut below No. 9, Clio, etc cost-wise, but still offering a reasonably gracious meal? I've been to Pigalle and B&G and found them fine, but nothing special.

Any tips on dining in Worcester? Interested in anything from decent upscale to ethnic and diners. In fact, I find myself respectfully skeptical of anything upscale and would probably be happy with a cut-above-the-chains burger place for a big meal. All replies mentioning Legal Seafood will be ignored.

This is the sort of food writing I can support, macho or not. I've had my fill of the Michael Bauer 'fantastic beet and goat cheese salad' bullshit already. Food writing needs to move beyond the sycophantic nonsense that serves no purpose... ← See -- here's the funny thing about that column: Morford writes stuff like this (emphasis added) and then he writes like he's one of them, taking aim at targets even the most stereotypically beer-addled frat boy could pick out (fast food! bacon! fake cheese! Boy, no one's ever taken a swing at them before) and then smothering it with bombast and hyperbole that's more or less the journalistic equivalent of the food he's writing about. Nothing to be learned here, just move along people. On the larger issue, my personal bete noir is "feminine" food writing, all full of ethnic grandma's and sepia-toned family dinners and bonding and feelings and stuff. That's why Bourdain was so cool when he came along and -- back when his writing was more or less effortless -- it was great. Now, Bourdain's painted himself into a corner and an unfortunate portion of his stuff is painful to read (including the quote in the Slate piece)y but when he arrived it was blast of rock and roll after years of folk guitar. If it was "masculine" the more important thing was that it was fun and intelligent: quick, pointed, informed, new (at least to me) and containing more than a few instances of the depth that Levy claims for himself. So, what does that mean? It means overly-stylized posturing is annoying and uninformative regardless of the genre. When food writers remember they're writing about food, they tend to be interesting. When they're female bonding or spitting out adjectives over the latest $400 Cabernet to come out of Napa in order to demonstrate their erudition, just showing off their dicks (how's that for macho posturing?) they get old fast.

Popped into Veritas, the new wine bar on Connecticut and Florida last night, to have a little swirl, sniff and spit (swallow, actually). It's only been open for a couple of days so things can change, but... Veritas is a nice little candlelit room, sparse, clean-lined, lots of black and white, just about the right size to wrap around yourself, occupied by slightly more than a handful of people mostly more beautiful than me when I walked in. Nice wine list (see link above) but it felt a little pricey to my accomplice and me. If you drink as fast as I do, you can drop a bundle fast, especially as the pours seemed a light -- my friend and I were guessing 4 ounces or so -- and as the wines by the glass seem expensive compared to the bottled stuff. I'd be curious to hear what more experienced winos think. Veritas has no regular menu. Instead, it has an extensive cheese list and offers a variety of charcuterie. Like the wines, the cheeses are available in themed flights: you might try pairing "apples and oranges" (Hook's Cheddar from Wisconsin; Tilston Point Blue, also from Wisconsin; and a Dutch Farmer's Gouda,) with "m&m&m's" (Trapich Malbec; Selby Merlot, and Swanson Merlot. I didn't feel like flying, but a McKinley Springs Chenin Blanc and a Chehalem Pino Noir -- among the wines I tried -- provided a bit of lift. I'm not sure I'm cut out to be a regular there, but it seems a good place to stop when I'm ready to get a little elegance on -- and in need of a little Roussanne, (Note: There's no way around the fact that the bread came with the cheese just sucked with a suckiness that overshadowed the fermented curd. It may be a telling detail, but 'm hoping it's just a temporary arrangement until a contract with a real baker can be inked.) Veritas 2031 Florida Avenue NW Washington, DC 202.265.6270

Interesting piece on Rock Harper's transformation from tradesman to celebrity. It will be curious to see if he can a) establish himself as a competent head chef in what I assume is a much larger spot than his last job at B Smith's, b) remain enough of a celebrity to sell chef's jackets and vinaigrettes and c) get the non-profit thing going. Interesting subtext: racism, classism and Rock's current statues as America's most famous (not best, Marcus) black chef.