Busboy

Thanks for all of the suggestions. Unfortunately, it is an unadventurous Christmas this year and despite the many e-mails with website links and praise of the restaurants you mentioned I dispatched to the Home Office. We are going to the New Behemouth Clyde's at Gallery place, Old Ebbitt, the first choice, being booked. Oh well. At least we can go bowling afterwards.

I just chopped the pancetta coarsly, threw it in with the other meat and ground them both together, for a consistent texture. Eden: don't know what you have in mind for the lamb, but I like to throw it with sundried tomatoes and feta cheese, using a bit of cumin and cinnamon for spicing.

I suspected as much. All New Yorkers consider it their birthright to trash DC's bagels, pizza and Chinese.

Nirvana is at 1810 K St; I don't know if they have a buffet or not. The only Indian buffet I can think of is Polo Indian Club (or whatever) on Connecticut and S, and I don't much love it.

From the Washington Post Harmless fun? The triumph of form at the expense of substance? Or what the nobles were quaffing at Versailles when the peasants stormed the Bastille?

NPR story about a German immigrant stollen-baker.

Ask Amy Major trend or more whining from geezer diners? I confess, perhaps because I try to eat late, that I run into the phenomenon more often than the obnoxious kiddies of lore.

Interesting theory... I'm no way scientifically up on such things, but I've always been under them impression that ethanol was not an addictive substance in the same way as, say, nicotene and opiates are. I've also always heard that most natural juices, e.g. OJ and apple cider, have trace amounts of alcohol in them due to natural fermentation that the preservatives just can't stop. The idea that microdoses of alcohol make kids alcoholics seems quite a stretch to me, and that makes me wonder if this story is an urban legend. Even so, it is still a useful tool in this discussion about how far companies may go to lock in their future customers, and what control parents have over such things. However, there are already labeling regulations that were clearly being breached if doses of addictive substances are being laced into snacks and they don't appear on the ingredients list. ← This has all the earmarks of an urban legend. I googled and the best I could come up with this (scroll way down), a story about New York banning the sale of frozen malt liquor pops -- apparently a hot item on the Dutch club scene -- because they looked too much kids' ice pops. Given that malt liquor is considered an "African-American" product and that the pops were banned because of their resemblance to kids' treats, it's easy to see this story morphing, as it gets passed along by word of mouth, into a conspiracy to turn black children into alcoholics. But until I see an actual article from a reliable source supporting that theory, I remain very skeptical.

I do think that browniebaker should take the money she would have spent on her childrens' meals, spend half of it at Clos des Gourmands (a semi-formal little place in the seventh where you can have a darn civilized meal) with her kids -- where I know from experience that they enjoy serving children -- and the other half on a bottle of Burgundy that she'll taste, in her mind, forever, at Taillevent. And I think that on a trip to Paris there will be endless hours that her children will enjoy and remember forever -- cafes and museums and being carried on Dad's shoulders down the long corridor in the Louvre that leads to La Joconde, or the first sight of Winged Samothrace, or walking across the footbridge to Notre Dame -- and that there will be better times and places than a formal restaurant to talk about them. And I think that a kid, jet-lagged and dragged through museums and tied and drilled into an event that they latched onto because they were kids, has a significant potential to melt down no matter how hard he tries and how much she wanted to go there in advance. Browniebaker's kids want the Taillevent treatment? Cool. on the other hand, my kid wants to drive, he's excited about it, but he's not quite there. You have to make judgment calls every now and again. And I think that mom and dad should have a night out, sans enfants, in Paris. But, I also think that people who recoil at the sight of children in fine restaurants should move to another planet where children don't exist. And my experince has been -- limited though it is -- that French restaurants love taking care of American kids, and probably kids in general.

Are there any dives left on 14th? ahhh Stoney's. My wife and I hung out there so long ago that we also went to Matt Kane's around the corner, as well. And, anybody remember The Silver Dollar Lounge? I'll have to find a way to get there one more time.

I don't like kids 'til they're old enough to smoke.

Note also that Paris is full of restaurants that will be new and wonderful for the kids (so I'm told), where they can dress up and have a special, unique meal with their parents that they will long remember, but where the experience will last two hours rather four. On general preicniples, I'm skeptical of even the best-behaved 5-year-old to stay at the top of their game for a long, long formal meal, but maybe my kids were just ADD. On a more selfish level, though, I don't have three or four hours worth of continuous conversation for a kid that young. I'd rather do a shorter nice meal with them and talk to a grownup for the long one. On the other hand, if they get restless, you can just ask the sommelier to take them on a tour of the wine cellar and have them practice their French with the other guests.

I've always found the whole menu quite passable if you stick to standards -- a pretty goo mu shoo for example -- and find the crispy whole fish quite tasty. You're not from New York, are you? ←

Une sac a chien, s'il vous plait. I can't help but think that in famously pooch-indulgent Paris, such requests are hardly unusual. (Waits for Talbot to set him straight).

Whatever happened to Tunks? Didn't he used to be cool?

If they are 9 and 5 they will have many years to have a gustatory experience, and they will surely appreciate Taillevent more after a year or two eating at lovely, but lesser, Parisian establishments. More to the point, give yourself a night out in Paris with your husband.

Whether you're excusing the actions of parents or you're excusing the actions of cynical marketing machines that contribute to the problem. It's an odd double-standard to expect perfection of parents, but to excuse the actions of corporations. Yes, they're supposed to make a profit. No, the profit motive isn't an automatic excuse for every action they may take. Let's let everybody be held accountable -- the schools who no longer teach nutrition (not I ever was taught that) and eliminated gym, and the voters who refuse to fund those programs. The sugar beet farmers whose huge subsidies help keep the cost of CoCo Puffs within reach of poor families. The television networks who think they're entitled to free use of public airwaves -- surely we capitalists can agree that a spectrum auction would have been fair, right? -- but resist oversite by the public sector. An economy that has made the two-wage-earner-family mandatory for most income groups. Rampant materialism (not a recent phenomenon, I fear). Growing affluence. Parental paranoia and overscheduling (why Jonny's not allowed to wander over to the playground to shoot hoops by himself any more). And corporations who shamelessly flog high fat, high sugar, artificially-everythinged foods to kids. And parents who let their kids live wrong. And people who want to fight complex problems with simplistic solutions.

Greeks eating at the taverna level are all over this. Everyone gets an empty plate and then the dishes start piling out of the kitchen. I've never eaten Asian food in Asia, but compared to what I've eaten here, the Greeks often send out a larger number of smaller plates -- one-serving size -- as opposed to fewer, larger dishes in a lot of Chinese restaurants here in the U.S. Whatever kind of restaurant I'm in, I enjoy it. And, of course, we often eat like this at home, especially when having guests. I think the passing, sharing and running commentary ("try this" "ewww, you eat eyeballs?") have the same effect on conversation and ambience as a good cocktail.

Transport could be a problem, since our car won't transport six comfortably and two cabs to the suburbs is a bit pricey, but those are both ideas to consider (and to file away for future reference). Also, it dawned on me as I took the bus to work that it's possible that the place my parents want, may be (gasp) Old Ebbit. Damn them! I'll get my revenge via the wine list.

It's a chain but McCormick and Schmick's isn't too bad. The Bethesda location in particular seems to try hard.Hank's? Or is there nothing for the kids there? What about Al Tiramisu? I've always had great fish there. Good luck! Jennifer ← M&S might be worth checking out. It would kill me to go to a chain joint instead of Black Salt or Pesce, but maybe their chain-ness forces them to put a little more non-fish on the menu, which will keep the (let me be clear: too old to be so damn whiny about fish) kids happy. I'm boycotting Hank's because they took over from Trio's subs. Also, the parents (and I, with this crew) prefer a reservation-oriented, formalish-ish spot. I don't see us standing in line on Q street for a table. I'll look into AT. Anyone know if they serve fish in Palena's front room (besides that on the formal menu?)

OK. Mom and Dad want fish. The kids hate fish. Mom is relatively adventurous, dad is relatively not. My wife and I are omniverous, but not in charge. The upscale joint we proposed have been vetoed. Money is no object, but kind of an object. Where do we find "some place with a larger variety of menu selection. Perhaps a family restaurant that is a cut above the chains." Visions of Buco de Beppo are dancing through my head with the vehemence of cheap pop-song refrain, clouding my inability to think. The obvious (Ray's, Cordouroy) have been considered and rejected. Any other suggestions?

Do you think that could have something to do with the way it was cut? ← By us or by the butcher? It didn't -- to my recollection -- appear to be cut significantly different from a U.S. flank steak. And we cooked it as we usually do, and sliced it thin and against the grain when we served it. I think it just wasn't that swell of a piece of meat to begin with. ← So in the States, it does not come already sliced into individual steaks? So far I have not seen it offered whole. He lays it flat on the board and aligns it, and then makes a nice show of cutting it diagonally into as many individual steaks as you're asking for and then puts it away. What attracted me to the bavette at first was watching him cut the steaks for another lady. I'm a sucker for that kind of thing. My husband was actually quite suprised that they were so melt in the mouth delicious, because his experience with them had always been just as you describe, dry and stringy ones served in cafes. This prompted me to start asking about that particular delicious tender and juicy kind of bavette (d'Aloyau) and what made it so wonderful - completely different from the ones that are dry and stringy. They have this thing they call Pierrade in Lyon, a hot stone at the table, you get the meats on the side and cook them up yourself. It reminds me of this Korean thing where they bring out hot cast iron pans and you do the same thing. I think it's their way to handle the stringy type of bavette, now if I can figure out which of them is the stringy kind so I can make sure only to get that for fajitas, pierade, maybe Mongolian hotpot... The bavette de flanchet? ← It's not inconceivable that I've never seen a whole bavette either here or across the pond. I remember the first time I had an onglet butchered, realizing that what I had thought of as "an onglet" was actually only a quarter of the original cut. The bavettes that I've been sold are ovals, about the total area of a dinner plate, but they would hang over the edge on the long axis and be narrower than the plate on the other axis. We usually feed the family off one, but it's a bit of a stretch. They look like this, though this one seems a touch plump. I can seee the butcher slicing it into individual portions, but we just cook it whole and then slice it, like a road-kill roast. In the U.S, you can tell the flank from the skirt because the skirt is so thin. Comme une mini-jupe. Whether that difference translates literally into French butchery, I don't know.

Really, I've never heard of that used in English. I just thought it was Pavé that suffered a bad run through Babelfish. ← You're probably right -- the only time I'v actually heard the literal translation here is my daughter, who had a cobblestone for her birthday dinner a couple of weeks ago.

Lord help me Jesus. How the rest of your argument be taken seriously when you put stuff like this on line? Cranks and armchair critics used that line of reasoning against my grandparents' generation ("those darn flappers!") and they'll be using it against my grandkids'. Whatever is going on, cheap, easy and politically motivated pop psychology surely does not hold the answer. It's not TV commercials, it's Dr. Phil that needs to be regulated.