Busboy

Call all the presidential campaigns Des Moins offices and see where all the visiting journo's hang out. They travel endlessly and seek good food relentlessly because most of their lives are boring as hell and food and drink is their only respite (you try listening to Hillary or Rudy say the same damn thing six times a day, seven days a week, for 12 straight months). They also bring eating experience from a cariety of backgrounds, so they have a different spin than the locals. OK, not quite a practical suggestion, but it beats the heck out of the old saw "eat where the truckers eat."

Reduce red wine, add beef stock and vinegar, reduce a bit more, and drizzle over foie gras.

I loved ClakLewis (website to annoying to link to). Get a reservation if you can, but they do accept limited walk-ins. Excellent food that has all the same annoying buzzwords as every other menu ("seasonal" "artisanal" "vision") but pulls it off better than most. Jeans, suits, whatever. I hesitate to recommend pizza to an East Coaster but Appizza Scholls (called The Pizza Nazi by some) is truly excellent and if you have a slow evening it's on a great funky strip of bars,comic book shops, knick-knack joints etc., and they have one of those restored Grand Old Movie Palaces where you can get liquor and watch second-run movies, only in this one you can get a good Oregon Pinot Noir. In fact, across the street from the Pizza Nazi and down the street from the theater, there's a liquor shop that will sell you some excellent Pinot Noirs that the guy swears never make it to the East Coast (if you don't mind risking having an all-burgundy-colored wardrobe by the time you get off the plane back east). I don'tl know what it's like in March, but there have been few breakfasts in my life that I wouldn't trade for a stroll through the Portland Farmers Market, even if there was little I could buy. It's just that wonderful.

Paula Wolfortposted This recipe on another thread. It comes out great. Watch the salt.

I inadvertantly deleted dinwiddie's reply, which I reproduce here: To his excellent selections, I would add -- if you are in a top-dollar mode -- CityZen and -- if in a mid-dollar mode -- Cashion's Eat place, a less formal establishment where I just had a wonderful meal, with a write-up to come tomorrow.

I like a good fight and this is an interesting thread, but the trained monkey comments were a little close to the edge. Obviously, I don't think any ethnic slur was intended (or the post would be gone) but given the racial divide that often exists between the front and the back of the house, I'd urge everyone to be careful in selecting the metaphores used to describe what is -- in many restaurants -- an admittedly assembly-line like task. Not (and I say this as a former waiter) that most serving positions are rocket science, either. And, as a general matter of courtesy, let's all think twice about reducing professions that people spend years pursuing to a cheap stereotypes. It's not only unfair and needlessly provocative (I like provacative, but the 4th-grade kind of provactive is needless) but -- speaking strategically -- makes your own argument less persuasive. Cheers.

I was waiting for someone who'd actually been to Ay to weigh in, but since no one has let me second ptipois and say that I can't imagine being in a French town on market day and not going. There's always something, even in the off season. Good bread and local cheese, maybe, or oysters you can bring back to your hotel room and feast on, alnog with all that champagne you bought. Or maybe just a market basket souvenir for a friend -- and one for yourself.

In fact, there are a lot of places worth hitting in Culpeper, apparently. Here is a Washington Post piece about the town, and the accompanying sidebar, with hours, addresses and numbers. A nice Calhoun ham would be a good souvenir. If you're like me, and prefer the 4-lanes to the interstate, Culpeper is right there for you on Route 29 (which should be a pretty quick drive this time of year). Might also try Apartment 2G if you're sticking to the Interstate Rout (it's just off I-66, about 10 miles from I-81, at the entrance to Shenandoah National Park).

Pretty much all the good fish restaurants will have it -- Kincaid's, Oceanaire, etc. I saw it for sale in the deli counter at Black Salt the other day, so I assume it's on the menu as well. It seemed oddly out of place, as I identify shad's appearance with Spring and it sure as hell wasn't spring in DC last Saturday. Theirs had been trucked up from Georgia, so I assume that the local stuff is not yet available.

(Just in case some have not noted, I am being half facetious in my hand-wringing. After a cross-country trip with two fellow post-adolescents this summer and a stint on a campaign, I know that the boy is no stranger either to brutally hard work or temptations -- some might call them vices -- that I would rather not think about. What I learned as a waiter certainly has made me a better cook and diner, and I trust it will him, too. But knowing how I, my friends and my collegues in the business lived our lives, I can't help but wish sometimes that he's found a nice internship helping save endangered tidal pools in the PAcific Northwest or something. If nothing else, though, at least we know he'll he'll never date that most horrid species of human -- a person who's mean to servers.)

See? There's that ugly prejudice against FOH workers that drives them to destructive behaviors. Can't we all just get along? Actually, given his zig-zagging between being a bit of a spaz and extremely anal-retentive when he locks onto something, I fear that if he ended up behind the line he'd either cut most of his fingers off within the first month -- or go into pastry, two equally frightening outcomes. (Ducks and covers while pastry chefs come at him).

To my mind there's a big difference between most restaurants and a chef-owned place. To have the owner of a restaurant (or any small establishment) personally thank you for dropping and maybe make a little chit-chat strikes me both as good manners and good business. It puts a personal stamp on the evening, differentiating it from the chain places and making you feel personally valued by the owner. I don't think I'd ever get to detailed in any detailed critical analysis, though. Of course, one of the chefs we saw regularly was the chef at the Washington Palm, hardly an artisanal joint. But he was a friendly guy, a Cambodian who would occasionally alert us to some distinctly non-Palm-ish Asian special he'd added for the day, and he'd make my kid BLT sandwiches that weren't on the menu. Again, it made us feel special and valued, and encouraged us to return. (Years ago, I saw Muddy Waters play a small club in DC, After his set, he stood by the exit and shook every patron's hands as they left. Very classy. Works the same for chefs.)

Actually, despite the fears that he will follow in my footsteps in not so much succumbing to the vices traditionally identified with restaurant work as flinging himself into their arms, I am pleased that he is becoming a waiter. I'm hoping that he will take the job seriously enough that even if he never goes deeper into the business, he'll want to do it well. I'd hate to think that the Sweeney family inflicted two generations of bad waiters on the DC dining scene . And it's a good trade to have. He's working for the Clyde's restaurant group and they have become successful by doing a lot of little things right. Wherever he goes after this, he will bring a degree of professionalism with him that a lotof younger servers don't have. We actually -- and in large part through my involvement with eGullet -- have found ourselves socializing with some pretty hot shit food and wine guys -- chefs, somelliers, wine importers -- and we eat well at home most nights, so I think he'll be bringing some excellent background to the new job. I'm a little worried about his aversion to fish -- though that is changing -- given the restaurant's pride in their fish and oyster selection. And, given that he's not old enough to drink wine legally, he's going to need a little coaching in that regard. But that will be a fun project at home. And, if he decides that this is more than a way to make a few bucks while getting ready for college in the fall, well, the CIA is no more expensive than Worcester Polytechnic. But if he starts coming in at 5AM sniffling, with some credulous college girl who's all about wild living and free drinks, there's going to be trouble.

So, how was everybody's visit? Sorry about the weather.

Certainly true. Sometimes in these cases I'll run for the hills, but other times I'll take a couple of steps back and see that in spite of all the theory, these people have doing this for years (and maybe it's a tradition that goes back farther than that) and no one seems to be dying, so maybe they actually know what they're doing with that mop bucket and used meat! ← The fact that I was completely addicted to the dish and had eaten it many times before certainly made me a little more relaxed about the prep than I might have been.

It was bad enough when he moved to Baltimore, and then to the Philly 'burbs to do politics, a profession populated by hard-drinking, heavy-smoking young people with visions of of Utopia in their eyes and some half drunk local organizer in their beds. But now, he's going into the restaurant business, the last refuge of the talented but deranged ( ) and not surprisingly the off-year employment of choice for the kind of political hacks my friends and I used to be. Only now he'll be running with a bad crowd and have money in his pocket (campaign pay being notoriously low and irregular)! Why couldn't he get a nice job at Starbucks or some bookshop? He's only 18 -- he shouldn't be allowed to play with these people. What did I do wrong? How can I get him into a nice trade, like bike courioring or fencing stiolen goods? And, as long as we're inflicting a rookie waiter on the dining public, what advice should we pass along in hopes of making the Washington Dining Scene better and not worse. Or, y'all could just throw out "first job" stories and detail how you grew up into proper chefs, maitre d's and managers despite the temptations of restaurant life -- or moved on to be accountants or whatever. Minor irony: the boy will be working for the Clyde's Restaurant Group, a well- respected local chain here in DC. Their second ever restaurant was Clyde's of Columbia (Maryland), which occupied the space vacated by a "continental" place called Per Bacco!, which was where I got my job, as a dishwasher. The apple, apparently, does not fall far from the tree.

I love that spelling. Gives the word a bit of class(e). I may decide to borrow it and always use it, if you'll allow. ← Well, I was of course reciting sonnets to my beloved in honor of Valentine's Day, so I guess a little but of that olde tyme spelling crept in. (If this be false and upon me proved...) I'll have to try the cod cakes. Sounds simple, and one advantage of living in half-Hispanic neighborhood is that salt cod is cheap and plentiful.

Double dipping! For shame. I'm agnostic on this one. As long as there's still some in the clamshell, I'm happy as a clam.

As I recall, the brandade recipe in Zuni is pretty good. When I make it, I tend to pull out all the cookbooks and pick and choose from the various recipes (I think Bouchon may haveone, as well) even though brandade is pretty simple -- I just don't make it often enough to remember the ratio of garlic to cod. Anyway, two trickes I've picked up. Boil down the cream until it's reduced by maybe a third, which allows you to get the creamy goodness into the cod while preserving the fish's texture. Also, some recipes call for potato and some don't. I was at a restaurant in France (L'Oliviade in Remoulins, I believe) and they struck a good compromise by making the brandade without potatoes, but serving the cod in a flat disk shape on the plate, and covering the brandade with a layer of thinly sliced boiled potatoes (and a scattering of sun-dried tomatoes). That way, you avoid the feeling that you've used "Cod Helper" in the brandade, but you still get something strchy to play the fish/gralic flavor off of.

In some books they recomend doing chicken stock only with back bones, which are often readily availabe in 10 kg boxes directly from the processing plant. When I make stock with back bones, even if I use A LOT, I dont get a gelatinious stock as the gelatin is concentrated in cartilage from leg bones, and also from the skin (I think). I get a gelatinious stock when I make stock from whole chickens. ← If you're looking for a more gelatenous chicken stock, see if you can find some chicken feet at the grocery store (try Latin or Asian markets). Similarly you can add pork feet to a beef stock to get the same effect.

Agreed. A little fermentation, aging, controlled rot, makes the world go 'round. ← I didn't say I had a problem with it (despite years of being told by health-type agencies that meat left at room temperature for more than an hour goes bad), just that other customers might have been put off. I'll try anything. But ley me be clear -- there's a significant difference between a side of beef hanging in a temperature-controlled meat locker with circulating air and humidity control, or even a pan of pre-made meatballs in the walk-in, and a pile of meatballs (dry it was not) shoved underneath the dishwasher.

I had a favorite Thai snack at a favorite Thai restaurant (alas, after many chef iterations, they finally got one who can't cook this dish at all) whose key ingredient was deep friend, spiced pork meatballs, which were then subsequently crumbled and tossed with peanuts, lime, chilis etc. I was such a junkie for these little treats, that the manager took me into the kitchen to show how they were made. Turns out that a key step was what might best be described as a two-day fermentation: after the meatballs were formed, they were left covered in plastic bucket (you know kind, comes filled with sour cream or something) for a day or two at room temperature in the kitchen, to get the flavor just right. And I was such a junkie for these little treats, that it didn't bother me a bit.

Seeing Tony piling on Rachael Ray in particular or the Food Network in general is is hardly illuminating, but it was interesting to see who he actually likes. Interesting to see Emeril and DiLaurentis get his tat of approval.

Indeed. I should have been clear that I was not claiming Citronelle was better than the French Laundry. Rather, I wanted to make the point that Richard is an extaordinary talent -- just giving a shout-out for my homie, as I'm not sure DC chefs get the national attention they have earned. Citronelle is sufficiently different in style from TFL that which one a person prefers is a question of personal preference, not one being "better" than the other.

Without outing anyone, I know at least two people on eG who would, if given a choice between Citronelle and the French Laundry, would pick the former.