Busboy

Actually, while I've never seen it translated literally before, the term "pavé" -- "paving stone" or "cobblestone" -- is commonly used to describe a piee of beef roughly the size of a U.S. filet mignon. My daughter, when we hit the local bistro here in DC, usually requests the "paving stone."

I will agree that Ethiopian should be on the list, but 1. I was looking for good Thai, Vietnamese, Chinese and Malaysian IN the district. 2. It was nearly impossible to find. For Vietnamese Falls Church is where it's at. All the good Thai places seem to be in Arlington. Okay, I have heard of some underground place run by a guy named Toth, but I haven't tried it yet. If lives up to the hype, then maybe they should have mentioned that. Chinese is DC flat out sucks. We have one of the worst Chinatown's ever. Tai Shan is reasonable but only if you know the owner. Eat First can be good, but is highly inconsistent. Full Kee is alright, but mainly because it's open so late. Some of the more expensive places are better, but don't fit the requirements of the article. China Garden in Rosslyn is good, but again, not in DC. I blame it on Tony Chang thinking he is the godfather of chinatown. I haven't really looked for Malaysian food, so you've got me there. ← ← No one's going to dispute that the best Asian in the area, on the whole, is in the 'burbs. On the other hand, will you get better Chinese at Meiwah, which is full of "insiders" eating at a reasonable price, or Full Key, than you will get Latin at Lauriol? Absolutely. Better Thai at Sala Thai, Thaiphoon or Rice than bacon and eggs at The Diner. Yes. And, to Foodgeek's observations, I add that Straights of Malaysia -- opposite Lauriol Plaza -- is well regarded, and that Pho 75 (on Connecticut Avenue, near the Uptown Theater) can run with some of the better places out in Fairfax (though Viet Royale, in Eden Center, is my favorite).

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.

← Dude (ette?): Despite the butch name and the big steak, Buck's Fishing & Camping is way too sensitive male for a bachelor's party. Though, if Carole herself would burst out of a cake, sashay over to the table and....substitute both the sauce and the vegetable from one of her entrees, I'd be pretty excited. ← I think you are missing the gist of the request. I don't think he plans on having the party at the actual restaurant. Besides, if this was a restaurant appropriate for a bachelor party, could you really expect to have the best meal of your life there? So as far as a place for a steak, not too haute, I think buck's fits the bill. lap dances, football and male bonding, probably not so much. ← Ahem. It's a joke. (except the sensitive-male decor. Too gauzy and romantic for for a BP) Carole Greenwood has a reputation as a brutally inflexible chef. She once told the Washington City Paper "I don't cook to make people happy. I cook because I'm an artist. And food is my medium. I have no need to nurture the world." Check out the first two customer reviews, here. For many, seeing Carole substitute both a sauce and a vegetable would be much kinkier and more daring than the ecdysiastical frenzy traditionally associated with a bachelor's party. I'd buy the video on the web.

For what it's worth, my wife and I did a cook-off betwee the flank and skirt steaks, apparently corresponding to bavette de flanchette and bavette d'aloyau, just for the hell of it. We were a bit surprised how clear our preference for the skirt/d'aloyau was. I wonder if the difference between the two cuts was exacerbated by the generally lower quality of beef (so I've heard, so I've found) in France, as opposed to in good-quality U.S. shops. Here, we cook flank steaks every now and again and, while they'll never replace prime rib (or skirt, for that matter), they're not bad. On the other hand, the one time we cooked up a bavette in France -- from what was reputed to be a good butcher in a swank ski town -- it was much as BdA described her experience in the original post, dry and stringy.

Well -- we usually get through Luray a couple of times a year. The Busboy family "secret" swimming hole is just off that two lane that connects Luray and Front Royal in the general vicinity of Limeton, so we usually pass through town going one direction or the other (I hate driving out and back by the same route). Maybe we'll drop by and try to talk some of that sausage out of sausage next summer. Or we can come out and hel next spring, and help with the hams. Not that I expect that we'd be particularly useful, but I've found that the kind of people who cure their own hams are often pretty amused by the antics of city kids trying to be helpful around the farm.

Others may know better, but I'd just slice off a piece and see if wasn't too salty to eat. If it wasn't, I'd get eating, and if it was I'd soak it it and cook it. I don't see why you couldn't slice some off for raw eating and then soak and cook the rest. I think you should do all of this and post back. I think you might need a band saw if you're going to cut through the bone. I just slice it off with a knife, leaving the bone intact, which makes it hard to get a good ham steak but doesn't bother me.

As are the martinis.

← Dude (ette?): Despite the butch name and the big steak, Buck's Fishing & Camping is way too sensitive male for a bachelor's party. Though, if Carole herself would burst out of a cake, sashay over to the table and....substitute both the sauce and the vegetable from one of her entrees, I'd be pretty excited.

I don't recall asking them to babysit, but in case I was unclear, let me restate the question in a way that's more specific to the discussion at hand: are corporations free to knowingly contribute to a significant public health crisis, without censure or regulation, in the name of shareholder value? A parallel question, just for fun: If marketing harmful products such as junk food to children, whose critical faculties are undeveloped is OK; why are we so happy to regulate the sale of harmful products to adults, who theoretically have the ability to make adult judgement? Why not pitch booze, cigarettes and, for that matter, fine Lebanese blonde hash on the tube?

I hope someone from the General Mills Amen Corner answers this -I want to know who they are. In the meantime, can the rest of us have a crack at it? (I personally admire the parents who stand up to a shrieking toddler. It ain't easy, but it happens all the time.) ← Go for it. I'm moving on into something less controversial. Something along the lines of "in praise of sauce."

I woke up Saturday with a powerful urge for red meat and red wine. My first thought was to hit Whole Foods for their dry-aged rib-eyes which, maybe half the time, taste as good as they look. But then I recalled Ray's, and how Landrum's steaks always taste as good as they look. And then I further recalled that meat and wine weren't enough -- I needed diablo sauce. I ended up getting a couple of their double-cut Cowboy Steaks -- which fed two adults and two kids -- and, after asking politely, was awarded diablo sauce and various other fixins, as well. It was kind of like Ray's in Bag. I was a little surpised to see (Executive? Sous? de Cuisine?) Chef Herzer out front, I'd never seen him except for a long night of drinking after a long night of work, and had no idea that he'd clean up so well. It also gave me a chance to discuss cooking strategy with a talented professional, which is always helpeful. It was agreed that we'd sear the hell out of the boys and then finish them in a cooler-than-you'd-think oven, around 300 degrees if I recall. My wife, in a masterstroke, seasoned the steaks with McCormick Montreal Seasoning (don't snicker!). We barely overcooked the one -- more medium rare than rare -- so we gace it to the kids, and split the other one, with mushrooms and diablo sauce ourselves, while knocking back a 1999 Clos du Cailloux Chateauneuf-du-pape. Very Swell. Almost as good as a night at Rays.

Truly, you have to admire the precocious ability of the three-year who manages to find their own money, tip-toe out of the house, travel to the store, and buy their own cereal without any gaurdian supervision. I myself have never seen a three-year buying Lucky Charms. I bet Stewie Griffin could do it, though. ← Actually I admire the tenacity of three-year-olds who are willing to beg, cry, wheedle, connive, charm, stomp, shriek, threaten, shoplift and whimper to get what they want. Kids have ways. And, before anybody responds with another smug lecture about parental responsibility (nobody's disagreeing, ok?) I just want to point out that in the real world -- where the phrase "terrible twos" has meaning -- these tactics exist, sometimes work and are often inspired by advertising. More to the point I also admire the tenacity of advertisers who spend billions of dollars and many years building a demand for thier products, image by image, beginning with children younger than three, in hopes of warping their tastes for life. Which brings me back to the question, which I haven't yet gotten an answer to from the Gernaral Mill's Amen Corner here, is: Are corporateions allowed free reign for their actions, regardless of the consequences of those actions, if those actions are taken in the name of shareholder value?

I could not agree more with this. ← You forgot the second half of the thought. "It should be pointed out, though, that may regulations are indeed effective and beneficail Our air is cleaner, our food safer, and our furniture less likely to burst into flames because of regulations." Surely you didn't mean to take my words out of context and reverse the original intent of the paragraph.

Do you do your own curing?

Could somebody please explain to me how marketing messages can be delivered to a 3-year old, without the parents' participation and consent? [see my signature line, please.] Numbers talk. Turn off the television and say NO to your kid, and stick to it. No one has ever died from a nagging. And no one has ever been a mark without allowing it. ← I defy anyone to insulate their child utterly from media and advertising, short of moving to a cave in Montana. And while I have read about parents who were able to be utterly perfect over many years, I have never actually met one of these creatures. Admittedly, I live in a challenging zip code, so perhaps my own bad choices have doomed my children to be raised in an atmosphere of licentious media and snack food consumption. The question I am curious to hear you answer is the one about whether corporations, by dint of their corporate-ness (corporeality?), are free from any responsibility for their actions? Mottmott: I'm not sure I'm down with the Friedmanesque idea that corporations should be responsible only to shareholders -- I think it leads both to damaging externalities (fat kids, poisoned rivers, collusive behavior, etc.) and can damage the economy as a whole when a compony focusses incessantly on next quarter's numbers. I don't think that they are obligated to become agents for social change, either. Not in their job description. And the profit motive -- when not turned into an object of fetish worship -- is generally a positive force. But, somebody needs to be hanging around to whack them on the bridge of the nose with a rolled up newspaper (coincidentally, the same technique I use to keep my kids out of the Doritos) when they get out of line. Given their immense power, resources and talent, the market only imperfectly performs this function, and individuals are more or less helpless, so the government assumes the regulatory role. Assuming, then, that there is a childhood obesity problem and that companies' actions are contributing to it, it's unrealistic to think that they will voluntarily change their behavior or that a handful of eGulletors are going to get them to change. Thus it is legitmate to call for government regulation. It is fashionable -- if intellectually lazy -- in some quarters to tar all government regulation with the same brush, and many regulations and prohibitions are indeed bad, inefficient, whatever. It should be pointed out, though, that may regulations are indeed effective and beneficail Our air is cleaner, our food safer, and our furniture less likely to burst into flames because of regulations. So, in the junk food case before us, I haven't necessarily thought enough about the balance between regulation and potential benefits to come down for or against new regs. I am, however, fully committed to the idea that it is a legitimate approach and could well be appropriate here. I get by with a little help from the feds; I get high with a little hep from the fed; Gonna try with a little help from the feds

The Washington Post puts Cali canned sparkling wine (one assumes that any French Champagne firm proposing such an outrage would be seized by the government and its graped crushed fo vinegar) on the front page of the Style secion. Ladies, you're being blamed for this one. "Sacre bleu ! But who would sip bubbly from an aluminum can? Those who would eat filet mignon from ze paper plate, no? View the Mona Lisa through ze sunglasses? Ahhh, perhaps Americans. Perhaps American chicks. That was what vintners at Niebaum-Coppola Winery were betting in that moment of can-do innovation when, thinking outside the bottle, they came up with the idea of selling champagne in a can." The website is here. Flipping through it confirmed for me that this whole idea is actually as unfortunate as it sounds.

So corporations can lie, cheat, steal, bribe, despoil the environment, defraud the consumer, burn the competition to the ground, and, of course, sell Lucky Charms to three-year-olds, as long as it benefits the stockholder? ← I'd think that if a 3-year old was able to, without parental or guardian assistance, earn the money, make the purchase, prepare and eat Lucky Charms, you'd have that one on tour by now. ← That doesn't answer the question, though.

So corporations can lie, cheat, steal, bribe, despoil the environment, defraud the consumer, burn the competition to the ground, and, of course, sell Lucky Charms to three-year-olds, as long as it benefits the stockholder?

Call me old-fashioned, but I don't think the point of a bachelor's party should be the food. If I had to worry about food, I'd do Sam and Harry's for steaks, martinis and red wine, and then stagger around the corner to one of the naughty bars on the 1800 block of M street. For my own bachelors party , I began at Austin Grill and ended up at Good Guys. It was sleazy, admittedly, but the marriage is going on 18 years. Good lord, just get drunk and have fun! Re Bilrus's suggestion: it should be noted that Ray's occupies the space once occupied by one of Northern Virginia's few topless joints, so the karma might be right.

Busboy, with all due respect, this post is as offensive to me as my original one on personal responsibility was to you. To be clear, I never said corporations should be absolved from all responsibility in marketing. My argument, however, is that it is not a corporation's responsibility to ensure people are good parents and feed their children properly. What a young child eats is fully in the control of the parent, at least until they are of school age; and if children are taught healthy eating habits -- by their parents -- from the beginning, they will know that the occasional treat is meant to be just that. If we are to be the "victim" of every marketing scheme in existence, we may as well call it a day and start eating Twinkies. The very labeling of marketing as "exploitative" implies that a human being -- in this case, the parent -- is unable to think, and then act in accordance with those thoughts. Philosophically speaking, that is called "passing the buck." ← Not sure what was offensive -- I wasn't offended by your post, I just disagreed. I have never argued that parents should be absolved of responsibility, nor that it's Nabisco's responsibility to raise my children. I'm not passing the buck; I got kids, the buck stops in my living room. On the other hand, you are giving rich amoral corporations a by for their actions -- letting them pass the buck. What I'm saying, simply is: That children are not raised in a vacuum, influences beyond parents affect behavior; That corporations should be held to the same standards as individuals; That marketing shit to children is reprehensible; That the idea that parents have total control of their children is nonsensical; That, if corporations are contributing to a significant public health problem (and I'm willing to debate whether this is the case) (1) they should be held accountable and (2) government has the right, if not the obligation, to take regulatory action.

Yeesh. Not even a peep about my "hooker" comment. Hey -- my point was this: Until a certain age, the parents and the kids are one unit. No 7 year old can do much of anything without the parents' support or lack of interest. How can such a young child fulfill desires instilled by marketing and advertising, on her/his very own? ← Got a 17-year-old boy of my own. The hooker line hits a little too close to home. What does he do until 3AM, anyway? I agree with your point. But, perhaps because of my own poor parenting skills, I also don't believe that parents are able to embody the Platonic Form of the wise, sensible, judicious etc. mother or father for the 24/7/365/18 duration of parenthood. I think that large corporate entities that consciously and effectively exploit my imperfections and my children's immaturity in order to sell things that are bad for them, are bad, and that -- along with parents -- they should be held accountable for their actions, as well. I have a significant philosophical problem with corporate amorality. If it's wrong for a parent to allow something to happen, it is also wrong for a corporation, friend, relative, or whomever to encourage that behavior. On the larger sense, I'd run through the following checklist: Does government have a legitimate role in public health issues? Is obesity a public health issue? Is childhood obesity a contributing factor to that public health problem? Is food advertising a significant contributing factor to childhood obesity? There's a lot of play in some of these questions -- what is "significant?" -- but, if you answer yes to the questions then government has a legitimate role in regulating the advertising. Note that government's role is NOT to make a moral judgment on parenting. Its role is to guard the public health, as it does with food inspection, cigarette and alcohol regulation, food handler regs etc, with whatever tools it has. We can disagree as to whether kids eating Coco Puffs is a significant problem (or whether government has any legitimate regulatory role, period) But, if it is a problem, and you accept that governments have the right to regulate, it's legitimate to ask the government to ameliorate the problem in the most effective manner -- perhaps by banning advertising aimed at kids.

Advertising to children is advertising to parents. ← If the advertising was aimed at me, wouldn't it be on the shows that I watch, not the shows aimed at 7-year-olds?

If that type of thing happens occasionally, no you're not a bad parent. Just imperfect. But if you consistently allow yourself to be pressured into making bad choices for your child's health, then yes, you probably are a bad parent. ← Just want to get this straight: manufacturers and marketers, no matter how odious their product or methods, bear no responsibility whatsoever for the results of their actions? To be incorporated is to be without sin? I'm not taking parents out of the equation here. I'm just saying that giving them all the responsibility and all of the balme, despite the systematic efforts of other to undermine thier work, is a bit disingenuous.

I don't think anyone is advocating that the government take no role in public health, though there may be some disagreements about how and when in should intervene. And of course the smoking comparison is a little shaky, since even light smoking increases your risk of death significantly, which is not something you can say about the occasionaly snickers bar. ← I seem to recall something in the news about -- oh wait, it's coming back -- a childhood obesity epidemic and the emergence of obesity as the second leading cause of preventable death. So, maybe the cigarette comparison is not so strained after all. The object of all advertising is to develop consumprion habits in their targets that last a lifetime. Advertising that promotes long-term consumption of unhealthy food by children too young to make their own judgement, which may result in a lifetime of health problems, is well within the range of actions that could and should concern the government.