Busboy

I'm curious to see your documentation. I can't find anything comprehensive on the web, but I'm happy to trot down to the library. And there is this , for what it is worth, that says truffle oil is a traditional product made with shavinges etc. that would otherwise be wasted.

You're best bet would would be to check the hotels in the area, although none leaps to mind as being particularly memorable. Not sure how traditional it will be, but you are unlikely to get a better dinner on Christmas Day -- and would be hard pressed to get a better one any day -- than at Cordouroy, in the Sheraton 4Points in DC. It's a quick shot from Old Town, just across the 14th St Bridge and (if you know the shortcut) over to 12th. They are open, their number is (202) 589-0699, and I believe they have seats available. Search eG and you will find dozens of posts discussing the greatness of Chef Powers and his team.

please tell me they don't actually LOOK like miniature hamburger buns or rolls - just maybe shaped like them? when I'm in a hurry and can't make homemade, I confess that I roll out pilsbury in a can and then cut miniature biscuits from it - a far cry from homemade, but not bad in a pinch. (I might get booted off of egullet for this kind of confession). If theirs are an upgrade on this, and I don't have to do the cooking or ham stuffing, that would be a huge help. ← I just glanced at them, overtired and a smidge hungover, so don't take my word as gospel. But, at a quick glance, they looked more like "rolls" than "biscuits." Of course, it's the texture once you bite into the things that really tells -- yeast versus baking powder. Having not bit, I confess that they may well be lovely. The just didn't look right to me. (my confession: I love the biscuits from Popeye's. Not Grandma's, but pretty tasty.) ← Turns out that the biscuits are yeast biscuits, which I regard with great suspicion. More on Calhoun's hams from the Washington Post's article on Culpeper (here): "Side by side with the new shops and restaurants are classic survivors such as Calhoun's Ham House, which has produced moist, lower-salt country hams for more than four decades. (The White House has ordered 80 Calhoun hams for the holidays.) "The perfect soft yeast biscuit for Calhoun ham is baked fresh daily at Knakal's Bakery, which opened in 1935."

I like the way the Greeks, and, to a lesser extent, the French dine. Unless you have a ticket to an event, dinner is the evening's entertainment, it begins late -- after you've had a chance to change and shower -- continues virtually until bed time (or club time, on weekends), and is almost never done alone. Sure, I'll do whatever it takes to be home in time for House or, someday, maybe, The Sopranos again, but most nights I'd much rather wind my day down in the company of friends and family, with wine, food and conversation, than staring at the tube. Early dining just seems so, I don't know, uncivilized.

So, I've decided to cook some tripe this weekend. After skimming through the usual suspects -- from Larousse Gastronomique to some tripe fetish site in (why does this seem so appropriate?) Australia, I have a couple of questions, if anybody can clue me in. I have dozens of recipe choices, btw, but feel free to suggest anything you find particularly compelling. 1) According to my sources, most tripe is sold pre-cooked and bleached, so it looks pretty. Is this bad? How bad? The stuff I want to buy looks gorgeous. The stuff at the neighborhood bodega looks nasty (and previously frozen). Do I suffer from buying the good-looking stuff? Does tripe suffer from freezing? How long until it goes bad? How can you tell (since it smells bad anyway?). 2) How can I tell if tripe is already cooked? Bite it? 3) If it's not cooked, some recipes call for boiling and scraping. Quick boil and decent scrape? Long boil and Oldovai Gorge-level detail in scraping? Can you tell the stuff you need to scrape from the stuff you eat easily? 4) Many recipes basically seem to be ways of finishing cooked tripe. If the stuff from the butcher is cooked, is it cooked enough? If I have the raw stuff (see question 2) is getting cooked stuff just a question of the long, slow simmer in stock and herbs that some recipes call for? Thanks. PS -- Bourdain, if you're reading this, I'm going for the certificate of achievement offered in your book, in January. If I cand find enough adventerous friends. Get your pen out.

Charles: What you write about this book is fascinating...and seems to me to suggest that the book has great value as a cultural and historical document. I personally don't think a cookbook is ever just a cookbook, nor a cigar merely a cigar. ← If not a cigar, I'd suggest that the books are more about their writers than their subjects, that a poor African American woman and a poor (one assumes, as he went into the Navey because he was unable to afford school) Filipino who are pleased to write a little hardback letter to the old neighborhood and the various relatives saying: "look at me, I worked hard, I done good."

Duh. (a long-term sore point for me personally, from back in my political hack days) But, anyone who recalls Bush's pork-rind eatin', Lee Greenwood playin' and cowboy boot wearin' 1988 presidential campaign knows that he certainly branded himself as a Texan and not as a New Englander.

True, but I suspect that as Bush is an elected representative of the nation and therefore would be expected to represent a majority view, it is easy to make the leap that the food of the Bush's is also representative in some way. Not nessarily true obviously.[...] ← Obviously not. If election returns are the basis for judgments on who the current occupant of the White House might represent culinarily, he would generally tend to represent residents of rural and exurban areas rather than cities, the South rather than the North, the interior rather than the coasts (especially not the Pacific coast or the Atlantic coast starting with Maryland and points north), whites rather than blacks, and Christians rather than Jews or Muslims.... ← I don't know how closely you follow politics, Bux, but you might note that the Presidents of the last 30 years or so pretty much fit you description: white Christians from Georgia, California (but raised in a small Midwestern town and made his first big career move in Iowa), Texas, Arkansas, Texas... Maybe Adam is on to something In other news, I found my copy of Thirty Years in The Mansion , by Liza Ashley -- autographed by the Liza herself. It 's actually not just a Clinton-era cookbook, but covers all the governors under whom Ashley cooked. Of course, The edition I have is the "Clinton White House Edition" and has Ashley posed with the Clintons on the cover, so it appears she and her collaborator repackage the book after Bill came to Washington. I wouldn't call it a must read, but for someone who likes politics and food, it's a fun book to flip through: [Legendary Segregationist] Orval Faubus: "In 1957, when the integration crisis started, it was really hard on us...The Mansion staff had been off, but we were called back in. I watched out the window and and saw the federal people come and serve the warrant on Governor Faubus...Eisenhower sent in the troops...There were people coming and going all the time and we had a lot of people to feed through the crisis." Winthrop Rockefeller: "I did not cook for the Rockefellers much, because they brought their own cook...the Rockefellers didn't eat the same kind of food that Southern people eat...First time I ever heard of artichokes was when the Rockefellers lived here." Dale Bumpers: "Now it was back to cornbread, blackeyed peas and green beans again...The Bumperses were attended church every Sunday, and so, for the first time, we had Sunday off too..." David Pryor: "Governor Pryor had a burger called the Pryorburger, two patties he grilled himself with cheese and pickle relish in-between...he would get up and clear the table; he was about the only one who would." Bill Clinton: "The Governor and Miss Hillary liked different food to what the previous governors liked. They loved lamb, veal, fish, Mexican food...they didn't want to eat too much, because they were afraid they's get fat. So we were on lots of diets." Frank White: "Governor White loved to eat, too. He loved Mexican food...Every Sunday he cooked steaks on the grill for his family and the troopers." Clinton redux: "Since Chelsea has been back at the Mansion, we have all enjoyed celebrating her birthday...she always has me make a carrot cake for her." After reading this book, I'd beware the selective recipe-slagging of some of the Bush book's critics. There are some truly awful recipes, like the Clinton's Jello Pineapple 7-up Salad, with and there are enough calls for canned green beans, mayonaise margarine to horrify any self-respecting gourmet. And I don't care what Perlow says about folk-cooking: nasty food is nasty food. But there are a lot of perfectly fine recipes too, as I'm sure there are in the Bush book. The book also reminds us that not everyone who has the means to eat "well" has any desire to do so. I remember being disappointed at wandering through the house of a hi-tech millionaire in Seattle and being disappointed that the quality of his art and his sound system; they just weren't his "things" (though he seemed to like food: Tom Douglas was catering and it was the only political event I've ever attended where I had a choice between port and Sauterne at the end of the meal). I think we all project our own desires and priorities on others, so it's odd for an eGulleter to see someone as wealthy as George Bush (or as powerful as a governor) and see how "poorly" he eats, when we'd make good dinners well our first priority. And reading through Thirty Years also reminded me that, in a paranoid age full of web-rumors and skepticism, there are still people out there who are proud to work for someone whom the respect, and who treats them with respect, without regard to larger agendas (and who frankly couldn't give a rat's ass about the foreign food press). Sometimes a cookbook is just a cookbook, not a political tactic or the window to anybody's soul.

It appears that the new near-Valley -- about 20 miles as the crow flies from Skyline Drive and a world away from DC -- hot spot is Culpeper, VA. Last weekTom S. weighed in with three stars for Foti's . And today, the WaPo Food Section profiles 18 places that are making, apparently, Culpeper a gourmet hot-spot. Personally, I always go into situations like this with low expectations. True gourment Meccas are few and far between, and small town food often seems better in comparison with the alternatives -- Food Lion and Appleby's -- than it does on an objective scale. I've had my heart broken. However, the town looks well worth exploring and God knows it's pretty countryside down that way -- oh, and that countryside is dotted with wineries. I look forward to reading an eG follow-up or, perhaps, penning one myself. Potential day-trippers should note that most establishments are closed Sundays.

Soon after it opened, my wife and I went to the Modern to have a couple of apps and a glass of wine. Among the apps was, I think, char carpaccio. We both agreed that the dish should properly have been called char tartar, just for the fun of saying it.

Very true. I think that part of the reason this cookbook creates such a discussion is because the Bush family has always had money. We tend to expect such people to be curious and adventurous, to travel and experience new things, and perhaps to develop sophisticated tastes. If the Clinton family chef wrote this cookbook, I doubt anyone would blink an eye at the recipes that begin with condensed soup and mayonnaise. But I guess even the very rich are not exempt from finding comfort in comfort foods. ← Indeed, the Clinton family chef from his days as Governor of Arkansas did write a cookbook, which may still be lurking in my basement. It was called "Thirty Years at The Mansion," and was written Eliza Jane Ashley. Clearly, only 12 of those years were Clinton years, but I recall the book being issued in 1993 with a lot of Clinton tie-in surrounding it. As I recall, (I will hunt for it tonight) it was full of recipes every bit as god-awful as the Bush Cook Book, but with a Southern flair, as opposed to the Bush's New England tastes. A lot of marshmellows, if memory serves me. There was a bit of smirkery around the President's bad taste,then, too. Perhaps it's the similarity in their food tastes that have allowed 41 and 42 to successfully become the dynamic duo of disaster relief, while the rest of the nation splits along partisan lines. Maybe if we all had a little more mayo in our lives, maybe the healing could begin. In the mean time, if some guy on a Navy pension (note that Jacques Pepin was in the Navy when he served as President de Gaul's personal chef -- different Navy, obviously, but is this some sort of tradition?) or a woman who started her career as a domestic worker in segregated Arkansas can pick a few bucks with an off-beat cookbook, I got no beef.

Hi Busboy,I think you are being a bit harsh. First of all, there is Asian on the list, so that was just a blatantly false statement. One of the requirements the piece sets for itself was being close to "the attractions," which I imagine means stuff in the district. I have a damn hard time finding good Thai, Chinese, Vietnamese and Korean in the district and I lived there for 24 years. So, I think we can go a little easy on them for the "No Asian" thing. The good sushi in the district is very expensive, but I might have put Kotobuki on there instead of Aoi. Matchbox and the Chili Bowl are places that I think a traveler on a budget should try, and Diner is pretty neat, especially for a visitor enjoying the adams morgan nightlife. Or would you reccomend a jumbo slice instead? Breadline is also an excellent choice. ← I'll see your 24 years in the District and raise you four. I believe that if the author were President, this piece could be presented as an articel of impeachment, to wit: Not having a single Ethiopian restaurant is a High Crime, given that this is the one ethnic (and inexpensive) (and funky) food of which Washington can legitinately argue that we offer the best in the country. And not choosing a Latin restaurant that actually caters to a Latin crowd is a Misdemeanor -- heck, Tamarindo is only a two blocks away from Lauriol Plaza, and Mt. Pleasant isn't that far off, either. Mentally -- if not officially -- "sushi" is a distinct category for me, as opposed to "Asian" generally but I'll grant you that. On the other hand, if you couldn't find good Thai, Vietnamese, Chinese or Malaysian food you weren't looking -- just as they weren't. On the Jumbo Slice front, after six hours of drinking, I'm sure they taste as good as anything at The Diner. And, at least jumbo slices are a bizarre DC tradition, as opposed to mediocre neo-diners, which are as common as SUV's at a soccer match. Hell, at least Tryst has a personality. Trio's diner has personality and a history (and serves milkshakes for breakfast). On the whole, I just don't think the author tried very hard and thus came up with a list that was worse than wrong -- it was boring.

My mom loved those and asked for them once at the Sans Souci -- long after its heyday. They're actually not hard to make, though I don't think they taste quite the same unless eaten in a French restaurant of a certain age.

You went down the stairs and it was like eating under a huge, gilded tent with golden draperies and big, overstuffed chairs. I went there in the late 70s with the father of a then-girlfriend and had my first lobster bisque and a great deal of St. Emilion, as he had worked there at one point. It smelt of old money and French food and, as a 19-year-old in my only suit, I was blown away by the sheer elegance of joint -- in my mind the room is always magically luminous. Years later, with my then-girlfriend-but-now-wife, we went a few months before the birth of our first child, at the end of a long political campaign. As I wasn't in the habit of taking notes at dinner then, I don't remember much except that it still seemed the quintessence of elegance -- in a way rarely seen any more -- and had excellent food. By my last visit in the early 90's, with my now-wife, its day had clearly passed and the food had grown tired. It was a little sad. Not that we'd ever been able to eat there on a regular basis, but it had been a legend and it hurt a bit to see the legend on the verge of embarrassing itself -- like when Willie Mays played that last season with the Mets.

Post as you will -- distant memories or casualties as they happen.

Hi all -- We made three different oyster recipes and my wife did her classic country-club Clams Casino to stretch the shellfish budget. The best effort was based on mikeycook's suggestion, we slow cooked the leeks until they were almost carmelized, their sweetness and the salty-crunchy chopped ham worked together brilliantly and didn't overwhelm the bivalve. A variation on this recipe Oysters with Bacon and Cognac Butter, was quite good as well. The third effort, with spinach, bechamel and so on was fine but lacked zing. We also turned a dozen oysters into oyster shooters -- not actually cooking, but a good way to get the party rolling. All shellfish were wolfed down, thanks for all your ideas.

This is what you’re doing Saturday morning. You’re going to blow off the farmers market, because you’ve already eaten enough tubers and root vegetables to last until spring. You’re going to have a double espresso mixed with Kahlua, ‘cause it’s going to feel like a celebration when you get there, and you’re going to the Great Wall Grocery Store (2938 Gallows Road, Merrifield/Fairfax, 703-208-3320) and buy yourself something for dinner -- and just marvel at the joint. First stop: the Great Wall’s Wall of Fish, 20…30…40 tanks lined up in the back of the store, with every kind of fish from carp as big as your arms to bored looking eels, swimming in that slightly scungy water you recognized from other Chinese fish joints. They have weensie little fetal sardines (OK, I have no idea what they are), pure white with pinpoint-sized black eyes staring up, ready for deep frying. There are whelks, clams of every variety and three kinds of Dungeness-looking crabs – Canadian for seven bucks a pound and Chinese for $25 a pound. I couldn’t tell the difference, but who knows (Rosebud – give me a hand?)? Sea snails, periwinkles, cockles and the like. And, I opened one container to find myself looking down a two dozen live frogs – nestled into the container next to the live turtles. But it wasn’t just about the fish. In addition to all the Asian hypermarche basics – inexpensive cookware, more varieties of soy sauce and rice vinegar than you could ever process, bags of rice large enough to feed the UVA freshman class, duck tongues and other miscellaneous poultry bits – there were the meats. They had water caltrop -- recipes gratefull accepted. Their pork belly approached perfection, both for freshness and for marbling. They had rabbits that had never been frozen, giving hacks like me a decent chance at cooking one that’s not too dry to eat. Rather than the tired, grey and formerly-frozen tripe one encounters in most markets, theirs was so fresh and gorgeous – honeycombe and gras double -- it appeared to have been carved from alabaster that morning. (If Tom Coliccio is reading this, you have a recipe I need now – the tripe with tomato sauce and a poached egg I ate at the Grammercy Tavern’s, uh, tavern, and which I’ve been afraid to try cooking at home until now. Just PM) In fact, there’s no reason to wait until you’re cooking Asian to go there. My wife picked up a few necessaries for spicy Vietnamese chicken dish she makes, but mentally, I was thinking about TC’s (and TK’s) tripe as I walked down the aisles; about turning that pork belly into Ruhlman’s bacon, about finally getting my hands on Paula’s SW France book and seeing what she has to say about rabbits, offal and eels (oh my)…as well as of the crispy fish in black bean chili sauce we whip up on occasion. The Wall of Fish is not to be denied. I hope to be back next weekend, not burnt out from Thanksgiving, and I’ll report on whether the stuff tastes as good as it looks. (Note: the shopping bag lists branches in Queens, Boston's Chinatown and Jersey. If they are all of this quality, they are well worth a look.)

My favorite souvenirs from France are a simple "antique" place-setting for six and a branded pastisse water caraffe with matching glasses, both of which were purchased for a reasonable price in a parking lot in Carpentras. I wonder if sopme of the locals might know the kind of shops that sell used but distinctively French cooking and eating items for a reasonable price -- place settings, napkins, old china, beer glasses, cafe signs etc.... I should add that we also have a beautiful provencal tablecloth made by delightful woman whome we encountered at the morning market in Vaison la Romaine, after viewing untold hectares of the type of inexpensive and generally garish "provencal" fabrics that end up as placemats and purses here in the U.S. Tips regarding fabric shops in Paris that sell high-quality lace and fabrics, might be appreciated, as well. (Yes, you guessed it: I may be going to Paris this summer, so I'm being entirely selfish here while pretending to be helpful to Linda).

I would never enter the quasi-religious battle around the nature of the True Cheesesteake, particularly not with a Philadelphian . The "cheesesteaks" at the Factory were actually very similar to Pat's, though I won't claim that they were nearly as good. No Cheez Whiz, for examle. The sandwiches at Trio's Subs (which likely employed no Philadelphians either, unless that was a way station between Camaroon and DC) were certainly a different kind of thing than what you buy on South Street. You'd be apalled if I went into detail. Whatever they were, however, they were lovely things.

I should note here that Cibola Farms, which also deals in buffalo meat and hangs out at the Dupont Circle and Mt. Pleasant markets sells home-cured hams by the thick slice. Can't vouch for it -- I have a lot of other ham to get through, before I buy more -- but if their (ridiculously expensive but spectacularly good) bacon and pork chops are any indication, the ham is well worth investigating. Their goat's pretty good, too. More info here.

I don't think many other DC-area gourmands will note, much less lament, the passing of the Philadelphia Pizza Factory, late of the corner of 9th and O, just a block from the "Crack Giant." It came to my attention years ago through the pre-Internet marketing technology of a flyer slipped under my welcome mat. No Philadelphians were involved in the place, as far as I could tell; its pizza looked frankly so horrid that I never dared try it; and even my wife wouldn't eat my favorite Factory dish, their buffalo wings (she would, however, have an occasional go at their cheesesteaks and gyros). But I loved those wings, and I loved the joint itself. I was a delivery customer for years before I walked into the place, having bailed from a party full of well-scrubbed ex-Dukies who seemed determined to prove how shallow and white-bread such people can be (no offense to Dukies at large, just this gang). 9th and O was a grim corner back then, and both staff and customers clearly found my appearance -- fully yupped out for the party -- a little curious. No matter, we all bonded there in the flourescent light and the bullet-proof glass, with that bonhomie that springs from a few drinks and an unseasonably warm Saturday night. One of the delivery drivers chased me down as I was leaving: "what, my service isn't any good for you?" but he was smiling and we of course saw him again many times. I never found wings that really did it for me when I moved to Denver -- wings are among the most subjective of gourmet treats, I believe -- and so we left the Mile High City for someplace within the Factoy's delivery zone (and closer to edible Thai food). The location of our new home, on the edge of the delivery zone, seemed to befuddle the drivers, though, and so I took to carrying out -- enjoying the chaotic views of a big kitchen seemingly run by -- and occasionally overrun with -- an extended African or Caribbean family who served interchangeably as cooks and drivers, it seemed. One evening, after my order had been lost, I stood watching some callow son-of-the-lanlord (or whatever) smirk into his phone so long that I told him -- through the bulletproof glass -- that maybe if he'd get off the goddam cellphone long enough to do some fucking work, I could get my wings and get home in time for the game. After that, the lady who worked the register always smiled at me when I came in, and would pass the food through the glass on that little plexiglass merry-go-round thing before asking for my money. Her daughter used to do her homework in a corner of the kitchen; one day I got her to play "Good King Wencenslaus" on her clarinet for me. Yesterday I couldn't get them on the phone. Not entirely surprising. Maybe they took the weekend off. Maybe there was another tussel with the health inspector. But I was worried -- full of existential dread. And when we drove by, the joint was gutted and there was a handlettered sign out front, reading "restaurant equipment sale." A few months back they closed another one of my favorite dives, a sub-shop whose cheesesteaks I had loved for many years. It's now a well-regarded seafood place, I hear they do a pretty good job. But, there's a lot of places around town now where affluent Washingtonians can get sea-food from attractive and efficient servers, and drop sixty or seventy bucks on crabcakes and chardonnay. There aren't many places left, it seems, where a stoned college kid or a hungry cab driver or just a buzzed up yuppie trying to hold cash until payday can can get a cheesesteak or two dozen buffalo wings extra hot, please -- and where the staff isn't forced into marketing-friendly polyester uniforms and you aren't assaulted by the grim, forced cheer of chain fast food. I hope the family found a place that they can work together. I hope the lady behind the register found another place where her daughter can learn math at the manager's table. I hope their wing recipe is finding an appreciative audience, and that I can find a new place of my own. And I hope to God that the place isn't becoming another Starbucks. Philadelphia Pizza Factory: requiescat in pace

Heritage should be asterisked as having both the best food and the worst service of any Indian restaurnat in town. Bryan -- kind of a broad request, anything hints you can give us to narrow it? I throw down Marcel's and Palena as the two best-for-the-money (though not cheap) restaurants in town, with Citronelle and Il Laboratorio at Galileo as the two best, damn the expense (haven't been to Maestro). When I'm hanging out, I end up at Bistro du Coin, which is about attitude as much as food, and Firefly, where beautiful people eat very well.

All good suggestions, thanks everyone. I'll probably try two or three different recipes based on suggestions here and whatever pops into my head. Just got back from Whole Foods with three dozen PEI's and two dozen cherrystones (kind of an "oyster helper" at 39 cents a pop, vs. $1.19 for the Sunnyside's and $1.49 for the Northumberlands). Any opinions on whether the oysters will hold better actually on ice than in the fridge? Also, it seemed as though it had been a while since the oysters were harvested, based on the date on the shipping order. The fishmonger said that they stay alive after harvest and that freshness was unaffected, but I'm a little skeptical. On the other hand, the shellfish I've gotten at WF has always tasted fresh, so maybe I'm just paranoid. I was unloading the bags from the car this morning and reminded myself of the Thanksgiving where I'd found some Belons at one of the local fish markets -- something that has never happened since. I was staying at a friend's house and another friend had showed up to help cook for the 12 or 15 people expected and we decided that, since there were only a dozen Belons, there weren't enough to go around for all the guests, so we should eat them ourselves. And, even though it was only 10AM, we should have a little Sancerre with the oysters. Well, once you open that first bottle, you get a corkscrew rhythm going real fast, so cooking became a pretty jolly affair. As I recall, everything went well, and dinner was served at the traditional hour of about an hour after we said it would be served. After that, things get a little blurry, especially troubling as I was seated next to an acquaintence who is unquestionably the most intellectually intimidating human I know. I apparently served admirably during the cleanup phase as well. Nonetheless, I intend to hold off on the oysters -- a dozen of which are reserved for shooters -- until at least noon tomorrow.

Are you allowed to use a word as Kosher as "oy" when talking about combining meat, shellfish and cheese? On the other hand, is it required?

Deliver me from the purists!