Busboy

You might splurge on the bar menu at No. 9. Had gnocci and truffles there about this timelast year -- excellent stuff and affordable (if you don't eat or drink anything else ) Granted that these lists are more fordiscussion purposes than guidance, The DC boy in me was pleased to see Citronell ranked so high and surprised not to see the Mini-bar, Galileo's Il Labortorio or Maestro on the list. Certainly Il Labortorio is as good as Babbo, not to be taking shots at America's favorite Italian Chef.

That looks like good advice to me, Robin. When I was thinking "most" wines don't imporve much after 7 or 8 years. I had definitely excluding Bordeaux, though I've had good luck with drinking Burgundies relatively young. Probably should note here that better wines of any variety generally take longer to mature, and last longer.

Something to ponder this weekend: the Oval Room has announced a no corkage policy for Saturday nights "ad infinitum" (I'm not sure that's the phrase they were looking for but it's the one in the press release), which dramaticaly lowers the cost of checking out new chef Anthony Conte’s cooking, which was recently awarded 2.5 stars by the WP. Given his previous position as Exec Sous Chef at Jean-Georges, it's reasonable to hope Conte's 2.5 stars is just the beginning. I saw him foraging for produce at that Dupont Market the other Sunday, this is always a good sign. Note also that, with two days notice, the chef will design a menu around your wines, for $65. This has some potential. And for those tracking the progress of former Chef Matt Seccich, word is that he is on his way to Chicago to do some time with Charlie Trotter. Presumably Chef Seccich will not be doing his foie gras and coke thing, but I think they will get along. (BTW, if anyone clicks onto the Post links, do the reader reviews strike you as maybe, oh, planted?)

I find Mendocino hit or miss. When I'm in Georgetown, I'm perfectly happy to get a burger and a glass of cabernet at Clyde's. I haven't been, but word is that the service problems have been somewhat ameliorated at Leopold's Kafe, so it might be worth a look-see.

Not long ago. Mrs. B and I, after a camping overnight at a bluegrass festival amongst the swamps and tobacco farms of Southern Maryland, stumbled into some backwater bar to drink breakfast and kill a little time. As the cleaning crew mopped the floor and took the chairs off the tables, we fell into conversation with the friendly woman behing the bar and -- as happens when you tell a proud cook, "holy mackeral, that sounds great," -- ended up sharing some of the lunch she'd brought in for herself: crabs n' gravy. Apparently you steam up crabs in Old Bay (de rigeur in Marykland), rip the appendages and top shell off and split them in half, and sautee the resulting demi-crustations up in a basic roux-type gravy. You finish cracking the shell and dip them in a gravy, eat, and then lick your fingers. Dee-lish. And perfect for breakfast with a long-neck Bud. The bartender, a transplant to the area, said that she learned it from an older African-American woman she'd worked with there in Southern Maryland, so I have no idea if it's a regional/ethnic dish, a family specialty, or just a bit of inspired home cooking. But, boy was it good. (Bet it would work even better with "mustard" added)

There are, as always, many variables (as well as people more knowledgeable than me), so I'll speak only of my experience. I don't want to be responsible for the premature death of someone's $500 '05 Margeaux. My wife and I have been hauling a revolving collection of wines to various locations for a couple of decades now. We usually put them in empty wine cases, in the cellar or a closet, where they stay in the dark and don't get too much heat except the occasional summer heat wave (and then nothing extreme). Quality has ranged from a couple of first-growth Bordeaux to a lot of mid-level reds -- $30-$60 wines that can benefit from a few years on their side. If a wine lasts more than four or five years -- maybe 6 or eight for a cabernet -- we usually drink it up. I can't say for certain that they wouldn't have been better had they been in a climate-controlled facility, but they seem to have showed no ill-effects; some have been extraordinary. I say go ahead and buy some decent stuff for laying down. The 'fridge thing strikes me as a bit much, especially given the cost, but to each his own. I'd like to hear what others think, but suspicion is that most red wines, even the good ones, don't develop much after seven or eight years, anyway (though an advantage of the real cellar is that they stay at their peak much longer). So if they're a couple of years old when you buy them from your (reputable) wine shop, and you keep them in the closet for three or four years years after, you're probably drinking a pretty good wine.

If you only intend to keep the wines around for a year or two, room temperature with normal fluctuation is fine (as long as the place doesn't get to 95 in the summer when you're on vacation). I've kept some pretty good stuff around for a lot longer than that with no ill effects. Take the money you'd spend on a wine fridge and buy more wine!

"In France, pot-au-feu is the symbol of family life." -- Escoffier OK, I don't feel like doing my real work, and it's a perfect day for pot-au-feu here in DC, so I looked through a couple of cookbooks. The results: Interestingly, the LaRousse Gatronomique calls for flank, sirloin and chuck steak (it's oddly written), as well as marrow bone -- a flourish adopted by Keller in his adaptation, which is made with short ribs. Julia's much more elaborate recipe calls for Rump Pot Roast, but allows for several similar cuts, including sirloin tip, bottom round and chuck. She also adds pork, chicken and sausage. Escoffier reccommends a combination of chuck and top ribs, but will settle for bottom round, chuck or flank. He also mentions a provencal version made with mutton. Patricia Wells has a recipe with veal breast My guess is that if you were French housewife back in the day, looking to make a warm family dinner on a drizzly afternoon, you'd go with whatever the butcher had that looked tasty and inexpensive. None of them separate the broth into a separate course, btw, thought they do separate meat and vegetables and skim the broth before service.

You had to bring the poor quality of bread into it, didn't you? You should check out the new lay-out in Tenleytown and the huge amount of space given over to mediocre chocolates!!! Cautionary remark is in order. Good point. But, they DO sell ham for sandwiches and a couple of types of salami. (Their pate just never looked worth buying.) And until now, they could always be counted on for Italian prosciutto. But how come fancy cheeses, walnuts suspended in honey, olive oil, sherry vinegar, olives and what not can come from France, Spain, Italy, New Zealand et al yet meats....? ← Correct me if I'm wrong, but I can't recall seeing any prosciutto sold there that wasn't pre-packaged, which avoids all the tricky problems involved with storage and making sure there's someone at the slicer that knows not to cut it like corned beef. The other stuff -- from olives to sherry vinegar -- is relatively easy to store, display and sell and has nice long shelf life. I'm just speculating, but the WF's cured meat offerings have always seemed to be of lower quality than the rest of their stuff.

I agree that ADM and Monsanto are not farmers, and that small farmers continue to struggle. Actually, this is one of the insidious things about the program. Congress could, if they had the guts, cap payments to individual farmers, thus ensuring that that small farmers got a larger share of the benefits than they do now. With a program designed in part to artificially raise prices, however the bigger you are, the more benefit you get. (Don't forget that the big producers are getting hefty refining subsidies as well). But the ethanol program is being pitched to the American people as a way to support small farmers; it is supported by politicians already flocking to Iowa in court of the small farmer vote; and, to the extent that growing demand for ethanol plays a role in the 25% rise in corn prices the article references (with higher prices expected as ethanol refining capacity grows significantly), it is putting money in small farmers pockets. Now, I would rather chew my own arm off than argue with a farmer or their family about what the price of corn "should" be, but if farmers are going to reap the expected rewards of this programs, and allow themselves to become the poster children of the program, and vote for people becasue they suppport the program, they deserve a little of the credit/blame for the program as well.

Not to get all Occam's razor-y, but I always thought the reason that they didn't have real proscuitto was because they just didn't do the charcuterie thing. Pate's, non pre-packaged saucisses and salamis, quality cold cuts -- they just don't do it. I think they'd rather devote the training, counter-space and man-hours to selling something that yields a little more revenue per square foot, like prepared foods or fake artisinal breads.

I don't see much benefit in forcing those among us who can't affort organic meat to pay as much for their dinner as those of us who can. There is a problem here, but "taxing" poor people is not the way to solve it. And before we get all anti-government here (not that there's anything wrong with that) let's look at the real villain: an unholy alliance between the nominally right-wing large corporations and agribusinesses whose millions underwrite massive lobbying efforts in favor of ethanol and reap billions in revenue as a result; nominally left-wing environmentalists whose care for the environment and loathing of big oil have rendered them irrational; and midwestern farmers whose disproportionate political power allows them to extort funding from every politician of either party who wants to be president. I am all for significant invetment in biofuels, but the current, massive influx in corn ethanol expenditures is not well advised.

Lobster Burgers are back!

My attitude is that a thread like Django, or any of the other "major" restaurants with their own threads, is more or less a mosaic. Any single post is just a small, discrete part of a larger picture and, despite the tendancy to cheerlead that I (a cynic) often detect, a skim through the totality of the posts acts as a way to eliminate the outlier experiences and provide an accurate representation of a place. Also, it's important to credit readers with enough intelligence and critical savvy to understand the nature of a forum like this. To assume that a restaurant will be harmed because of a single critical post amongst a cascade of glowing reviews assumes, I think, that the reader is not as bright as we are and can't understand the context of a post. It feels condescendingto me.

I live in the neighborhood directly adjoining Adams Morgan, which (as mentioned earlier) has gradually gone from "lively" to "obnoxious" in the last few years. Unfortunately, a small band of neo-prohibitionist-types has used the Adams-Morgan example to completely stomp out live music in my 'hood, including the roving mariachi bands that used to move from bar to bar in our heavily Hispanic 3-block "strip." These guys once brought a decible meter to a free kids event in the park! While I can see why there needs to be some control, the stomping out of live music seems particularly egregious.

The "off night" thing comes up again and again, here and on other boards, with chefs, lovers, groupies, fans or whomever gets on and criticizes a critical review on the grounds that "it was only one visit," or "it was just an off night."Until I see a chef, lover, groupie fan or whomever post a similar comment about a positive review "we just got lucky that night," I'm not going to give the "just one night" objection too much thought.

And it is, too. So bad that the thought of carrying it to any place other than the closest potted plant has never occurred to me yet. But little coffee places labeled Segafredo, with two or three aluminum tables on the sidewalk, serve decent coffee. Though I'm afraid they've recently been sort of wiped out by the Starbucks invasion. ← As much as I enjoy a picnic, sitting at a cafe with the IHT and watching Paris go to work seems equally delightful, particualry as I'd rather go through caffeine withdrawl than go to Starbucks in France (though I patronize them here). Also, fewer grasstains on my derrier. I also have a growing affection for old bar-tabacs, which seem to evoque the more naturalistic genre of black and white French films. Old timers having coffee (or beer) and cigarettes for breakfast and reading l'Equipe, and a look of vague surprise when the guy behind the bar realizes that a tourist has stopped in.

I take it all back. Today at Chez Cedric, 13, rue Denis Poisson in the 17th, the review of which I'll be posting soon, I had the first petoncles of the season, fresh fish just in at Rungis and peche de vigne - seasonal stuff is the way to go. ← Stay contrarian. At the Market in Uzes in July -- probably the month with the least amount of "r" in it of the 12 -- I picked up a couple of dozen oysters that were extraordinary, particularly eaten cold with a chilled Chablis after a long canicular day.

We have similar problems -- and similar attempts at resolving them -- here in DC. The crowds are ridiculous and -- late at night -- aggressively obnoxious. Drunks piss in your yard or alleyway. Petty theft becomes a nightly occurrance. People get shot. Perhaps worse, useful enterprises like hardware stores, framing shops, and clothing stored get forced out because they can't afford the higher rates that booze peddlers can pay. And forget finding a parking space. Compounding the situation is the fact that it's heavily out-of-neighborhood crowd. I'm not enough of a free-market capitalist to give a shit on a theoretical basis about a few trendy bars more or less locating in a hip neighborhood. Quality of life is important, too. A moratoreum on liquor licenses is an unweildy tool, but it often seems to be the only one available. And, let's cut off the "why did you move here in the first place" argument with the response that often people like my friend Beth in Adams-Morgan (and Pan in the Village?) made these neighborhoods home many years ago.

An unofficial conversation with one of the bartenders yielded up a planned opening date of September 12th or 14th, but this is uncomfirmed.

I think Richman's problem is that he sees the Vegas dining scene as defined by money, glitz and absentee chefs, and does not lie with any individual restaurant or with chains per se. In addition, he is skeptical of a scene dominated by few high-end transplants as opposed to the more organic environment one finds in New York and other major cities.

My apologies for implying that you hadn't read the article. And I appreciate your input. For better or for worse, Vegas is a major food destination now, but much of the discussion I see is breathlessly uncritical or of the "I'll be there in a week, what's good?" variety. Given that we all seem destined (condemned?) to spend time in Vegas every now and again for a meeting or a convention it's interesting to see a little critical discussion both on the National Critic/Glossy/Deeper Meaning level and on the informed eGullet thread level.

The article is indeed an in-depth look at the Las Vegas scene and -- whether one agrees or not -- is an interesting read that I thought would spawn an interesting thread (though it is handicapped by the fact that the piece is not available on-line). Particularly if you haven't read it -- which you seem not to have -- I think comparing it negatively to Steingarten in that regard is unfair. The reviews were capsule reviews and are the sauce, not the meat of the article. Not wanting to infringe on copyrighted material or do a boatload of typing, but in hopes of giving up a little of the article's flavor, I did a little sampling of what I thought would be some of his more trenchant observations, and did the rankings myself. He does indeed say more than "I hate" about Ducasse's place (none of it good) and talk more about than the sommelier at Alex (some of it good). But again, to focus on the reviews is to miss the larger point of the article.

Johnny's throws open its doors tonight, welcoming the first "r" month since April with a mess o' oysters ("yankee oysters" as someone called them, but oysters nonetheless) and raising money for the ongoing restoration of Willie Mae's Scotch House. This is great news for the Hill, which was a wasteland not long ago, and great news for Ann Cashion who has contributed much to the DC scene over many years and has always been a big part of the community, as well. I will report on the surroundings tonight, I hope one of the Hill types who frequent the board will report back soon on the food. Event info: 400 North Capitol Street NW 6-9 PM More information: 703-683-7500

This is Chef English.