hannnah

They're not trolling, exactly - they're pandering for ratings because it's February sweeps. Every other news outfit is doing the same thing at the moment. (An SNL parody of Fox News promos comes to mind. "Nine area schoolchildren are molested to death while their teachers buy drugs from your dentist! HAAAAARGH! Toxic mold!") That being said, WATE does run the health department reports as a nightly feature (which is fascinating, in a train-wreck kind of way, because they go into graphic detail as to why places failed), so this story doesn't totally come out of left field for them. To their credit, they do feature the places that got the highest scores as well as the failures.

From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Feb. 14, 2006: Full text (free registration required).

I'm reasonably sure I've seen it in Giant as well, but it's been a while since I looked.

If you know where Mom's Pies is on Spring Street (there's a self-storage and a pack-and-ship place in the same strip mall/park), Jamaica Jamaica is literally right behind it. The goat curry and oxtail are both tasty, but there are a lot of little bone chips, so be prepared for them.

There's an organized Senate Spouses group (easier to keep track of since there are substantially fewer Senators than Representatives). Details here. They do one official "luncheon" per year for the First Lady, plus various less formal ones.

The accent is a close cousin of my husband's (who's from Wembley), also known as the "if I spoke in my regularly scheduled accent no one over here would understand me so I've had to slooooow doooown and e-nun-ci-ate" accent. Apparently the actor's Welsh and graduated from RADA, so he's probably had the official "generic British accent" course.

You're thinking about the food section blurb a couple of weeks back on West Meat in Gainesville, VA. The prices there are closer to standard grocery retail because, unlike Hemp's, they don't appear to be growing meat at their farm a couple of miles down the road. It makes a difference.

*ahem* from the Daily Telegraph (reg. required) on the British wine industry The Nyetimber sparkling wines would also have been an appropriate choice - they've won a number of blind tastings and are receiving significant international recognition. Ironically, the only places they appear to be available over here are in Texas.

Harris Teeter carries White Lily flour and Martha White cornmeal.

The Times ran a correction to the story - the show's safe for now.

When I was there for grad school, Cafe Eccell was pretty much the only non-chain game in town. Of course, that was 10 years ago, but I still have fond memories of the pizzas and pasta. Out of curiosity, where else has sprung up?

I've been to Supper Club many times and it's always been good. I've been to Minerva precisely once and haven't ever had the desire to return. In fact, I've said pretty much the same thing you said above, just in reverse. It's undoubtedly a difference in preferences - Supper Club's menu is mostly northern Indian, Minerva's is southern. You're going to get thinner sauces and more thermonuclear heat at Minerva, you're going to get a little more subtlety (and yes, more ghee) at Supper Club.

The conversation Friday evening around 6:30 went something like this. "What do you want to do for dinner?" "Hmmm. Meat." "OK. Where?" "Wouldn't mind Ray's, but surely we won't get a table for tonight. I guess we could call and see if there are any cancellations." By 6:40, we had secured a table for two at 8pm, with not one word from the staff about time limits or any conditions to the seating. Dinner was stupendous. If you haven't tried the grilled calamari stuffed with clams casino, you should - it's a paragon of squidly/clammy/bacony goodness. The New York strip and cowboy cut were both excellent. The key lime pie deserves every bit of the praise that's been heaped on it, and the white chocolate mousse, which I haven't seen anyone mention before, would be positively sinful if it weren't so light and fluffy. The wine was a great accompaniment as well - the Peter Rumball sparking shiraz, which we liked so much we went out and bought some the next day. Our well-paced, leisurely dinner took all of an hour and ten minutes, so even if they had needed to turn the table in an hour and a half it wouldn't have been an issue. Don't believe the hype - it's not impossible to get a table, the staff are not standing around waiting to poke you with pointy sticks if you take too long, and, even if they were, the food's good enough to make a jab or two worth it.

A particularly nice piece in today's Telegraph, along with photos of the van, online here.

On a related note, Steven Raichlen (who's speaking at the Folklife Festival on Saturday) will be at the Library of Congress on Friday (June 24) at 11:30am for a talk on the history of barbecue. Details are here.

I know it gets recommended for everything, but my parents really, really loved Zaytinya. Plus, it fits most of the other criteria (full bar, good design, takes Amex, etc. etc.) Or there's Sonoma, which gets extra trendy points for being so new.

There is a good article on Bill Neal and his ex-wife and Duke classmate, Moreton Hobbs Neal '71, in the Duke Alumni magazine. I'll send it to Varmint. ← The article in question is online here.

She did look vaguely familiar, but yes, I looked it up. IMDB is a wonderful thing.

Nope. The OC, Friends, and NYPD Blue, but no reality TV.

The cast list is promising, if weird. I'm having trouble with the concept of Frank Langella, as in Dracula and Skeletor, in a sitcom, but hey. I'll definitely watch.

Yes. It's worth every penny for the pastries/breads alone, and the stuff on the buffet was good too. Plus, if the weather's cooperating, the patio is particularly nice in spring.

1996 probably isn't too helpful either, so I can't help there. Just to chime in that I thought Charlie Palmer was very good on my recent visit and they have at least one good sized private room and probably more than that. It is more causal and a much more modern feel than the Inn, but I wouldn't exactly call it casual either. Bis is a little more casual but a also more upscale than most typical bistros. ← Ok, I was at La Colline back in December. Lunch was entirely acceptable, but I'd think CPS or Bis would hold up better in comparison to Inn at Little Washington.

Previous thread on Gatlinburg/PF in the Southeast forum - recommendations made then still apply. Another thread on Sevierville - which pretty much merges into Pigeon Forge at this point, so is easily doable for dinner as long as you have a car. Plus there's always The Inn at Blackberry Farm, which is on the Cades Cove/Townsend side of the mountain - with the full multi-star tasting menu experience. I'm not sure whether they let non-guests dine - at one point you could, then you couldn't, now their web site doesn't say one way or the other. Probably worth emailing to find out, though.

Speak no ill of Waffle House. They serve a noble purpose - the late night must-eat-vast-quantities-of-grease-NOW breakfast, which none of the late-night breakfast places around here seem to have mastered. And, for places like that, the corporate logos on the menu are a theoretical guarantee of quality - if the bacon's Oscar Mayer it's less likely to be not-for-human-consumption Industrial Pork Product that fell off the back of the waitress's cousin's delivery truck. It's the sign of "look, we're a big enough chain to make a deal with brand name suppliers," which in that market niche is no bad thing. A deal to promote Commodity A by a chef who's supposedly motivated by the best and freshest ingredients is another matter. What does Jose Andres do if his produce supplier brings him crappy California avocados? The dishes are on the menu, and presumably he's got some sort of contractual obligation to serve them, but the offshore avocados are much better this week. His choices get limited pretty quickly - either 1) knock those 8 dishes off the menu, 2) substitute the better ingredient and annoy the people who are paying him to use the worse one, or 3) dance with them what brung him and use the crappy avocados. Choice #3 is certainly the most profitable in the short term, but it's not very good for the reputation - how many repeat diners could he lose because they ordered the inferior avocado dishes and were sufficiently put off that they wouldn't return? I'm more willing to accept corporate shilling from the Waffle Houses of this world because, well, they're a corporation. If you're an independent restaurateur, even one with multiple outlets, waving the banner of creative food made from the best available ingredients with one hand and signing deals with various commodity associations with the other, that's a little harder to take - especially at a significant price premium over the average Waffle House breakfast.

There are pods of "Upstate New York products" all over the Dulles store. I've definitely seen the Bison dips, there are also a bunch of Dinosaur BBQ sauces. The bakery offers weck rolls, but never having seen a live one I'm in no position to judge whether they're authentic or not. (The bialys definitely are not.)