Mark Sommelier

Holy shit. I might move to DC and start a restaurant just to get a piece of that. I will be pouring it by the glass for the next month or so. Stop in! The big dilemma: What to charge?

Dear theakston, Thanks for your response. You are right, the legitimate, published kudos far outnumber the petty, vicious jibes. My favorite recent one was in Food and Wine magazine: "Best place to bring a wine snob".

Wow, bugsy man, we must be friends already. I have a Parker event coming up that will require a thousand glasses. We should talk.

I've been in the business for 25 years. Much has changed in the last 5 years or so. Here in the Washington, DC market, long time family owned distributors have been bought out by large national corporations. These corporations have inventory policies concocted by accountants. No product should linger in the warehouse for more than 3 months, regardless of its price or stature. Some examples that have been offered to me in the past 3 years: Pavillon Blanc du Chateau Margaux 1998, list price $46 a bottle wholesale, given to me for half price at $23 Penfolds Bin 707, list price $56 at wholesale, marked down to $20 a bottle Hermitage Blanc "Chante Alouette" 1997, list price $48 a bottle at wholesale offered at $8.50 a bottle. The first time one of the large national chains produced a close-out list, it started with wines marked down to 25¢ a bottle.

Dear Mr. Buxbaum, Thank you for an eloquent response. Citronelle suffers the same bashing with the same story time after time. I personally am tired of reading it. I am so tired of reading it that I took the extreme step of posting this thread and mentioning Tom in the header. Tom said he dined there "anonymously" recently. Everybody in my place knows who he is. Was he wearing a beard? A dress? A jalaba? Robert, you should look at the Post website and see the stupid shit that is posted and left there about many restaurants, mine included. The reader reviews are brutal, and fabulous, both. In our case, the same jerk posts the same stuff. Too timid to complain in person, but brave as hell in front of his keyboard.

Wow, Jason, you're right! Lucky our review page is blank.

Oddly enough, the chef I work for had a copy of MB's menu on the table yesterday, so I perused it. The "English" version was a riot of mis-spellings, bad grammar and incorrect punctuation, the funniest of which was the "Scallop with sauce made from his choral".

Rochelle asked: BTW, Mark, you must follow up on your comment about Citronelle's iced tea. What makes it the best in town? Paradise Iced Tea has a subtle passionfruit flavor that makes me drink gallons of it every day. I love this stuff!

I've grown to really like this place. I've been 5 or 6 times now. It doesn't hurt to be friends with the chef. Bryan Voltaggio is very talented and has been most generous. Now, if I could only meet the elusive Keith............

Wow! Thank you Steven, Tom, Steve, Rochelle, Darren, Bill for responding. (so much for anonymity ) What grabbed me about the incident yesterday was a tiny salient detail in the wording of the original complaint. The person claimed to have just dined with us last week. A month and a half ago I will admit we received a complaint letter outlining the same story right down to the "people at the next table telling us the food is great but the service is obnoxious". That complaint was dealt with by the management. Why does it resurface yesterday? Some anonymous person out there has an axe to grind against Citronelle. Look at the reader reviews on the Post's website. The same person posts there, too. Always angry, always derogatory. The story is always the same: "I was just there last week for the second time, and......bad table and lousy service". This person would have us believe he/she is too timid to ask for a different table and too timid to let the manager know something is wrong. Suddenly, on the internet, this person becomes a brave martinet, crying foul, seeking revenge. I am copied on all complaint letters the restaurant receives. In all honesty, we get 4 or 5 letters a year. All of them are handled by the management. A thousand people a week eat at Citronelle. 5 letters a year ain't a bad average. In my particular position, I go overboard trying to be warm, sincere and friendly to counter the image of the snooty sommelier. It works for me. Thanks for listening. I find this stuff demoralizing. That's what moved me to post this thread.

Do all of you read the live "chat" on Wednesdays that Tom Sietsema does at 11AM? ( http://washingtonpost.com ) It isn't really a chat since it is heavily moderated and has an incredibly slow server. The q's and a's take 10 or 20 minutes to get posted. Today, 9/24/03, was another session that Tom allowed some anonymous person to bash my place. It is not a secret that I work at CITRONELLE. What do you all think about anonymous critiques? Are people too timid to speak up in restaurants these days? If you want a different table, ASK FOR IT! Why accept a table you don't like , and then complain anonymously on the internet? I have spoken on the phone with Tom Sietsema about this anonymous crap that goes on. It is hard to deal with. What do you guys think? It is not easy going to work everyday hoping someone hasn't posted an anonymous personal attack against you or your empolyer. I would like to hear some answers here. Tom claims to read this website. After his Q&A he hasn't repsonded here.

The Five Smiley Award to Mr. Dente for most hysterical veer off topic.

The price is competitive. I don't care for them simply because the stems are too short. I use Schott-Zwiesel "Diva" series glasses. They are tall, large, dishwasher safe and cost @$4 a stem. Schott is distributed by Oneida in this country.

I believe that in Quechua, the language of Tawantinsuyu, which colonialists like you and I know as the Inca empire, this dish was referred to as a "hooker." Wow. And how do you say "onion ring" in Quechua?

I'll never forget going to the Trio for breakfast around 10 one morning. This was back when all the waitresses had those huge banana curls and wore hankies pinned to their blouses. One of these gals was behind the cash register. When she thought no one was looking, she turned around, grabbed the bottle of Popov vodka and did a shot....... warm. Thems was the good 'ole days.

To fully enjoy El Nuevo Wong Grande, you must be seated after 2 AM. Correction, John. You must be seated after 2AM in the company of a certain Spanish chef.

I like the flash mob idea. Reminds me of the time when I was the maitre d' at the Watergate Hotel. At lunch one day, a guy actually walked in the restaurant with a mob and said "Table for 30, please".

Tommy, That's exactly right. Dividing the check evenly among several cards is not difficult. Asking a server to keep track of who had coffee, who drank wine and who didn't becomes pedantic. On a busy night, the waiter has better things to do than play accountant. Just my opinion.

There is a very simple answer to this question of how to match wine and Indian cuisine and it is: don't bother. I know I'm going to get flak for this, and I hate to pick a quarrel with Raju's expertise but I've tired this many times, with many different wines, and it really doesn't work. I mean you can drink wine with Indian food and you won't drop dead and it can even be a reasonably pleasant glug. But you get nothing extra from the combination and that I always thought was the purpose of food-beverage combining. I also do not want to be rude to the many restaurateurs on this list, but I must note how this thread confirms an observation I've made that the people who ask this question most insistently are restaurateurs which leads me to think that they're more interested in boosting profit margins from liquor sales than really enhancing their customers' dining experience. What's particularly annoying is that there IS a drink that goes extremely well with Indian food and its beer - and I say this without being much of a beer drinker myself (I go for wine anyday) but its simply true. I don't mean beer in the curry and lager sense - notthatthere'sanythingwrongwiththat, and something has to explain the success of chicken tikka masala. What I'm referring to are Belgian and German wheat beers, particularly the ones that use spices like coirander in the brewing like Hoegaarden. They are light, cooling, very refreshing, have hints of traditional Indian drinks like limbu-pani (these beers are often taken with slices of lime) and the spice adds a sympathetic note. Try them the next time you're eating Indian food and you'll find everything you never got with wine. And since restaurateur's profits must be respected (I mean that almost sincerely), please could they consider the mark-ups that could be made on imported beers! Vikram Vikram, Thank you! I feel vindicated now. Not too long ago I was approached by the owner of an Indian restaurant and asked to devise a wine pairing program. Having only a casual acquaintance with Indian cuisine, my first thought was riesling, pinot blanc and syrah. We sat down to taste many different dishes. When the lamb vindaloo landed and I started really sweating, the thought crossed my mind that wine was a terrible accompaniment to this food. The curries and chilies accentuated the alcohol leaving unpleasant tastes on the palate and actually increasing the heat. I'm glad to see that I'm not the only one to think beer a better choice. One question: what is the tradition of wine drinking in Indian society?

Peanut butter, banana, mayo....... and the secret ingredient: BACON!!

Lowbrow? Count me in. My budget needs a break occasionally. I'm still anticipating another visit to RFD, or we could get even more lowbrow than that (see the dive bar thread). Sietsema always mentions Stoney's. I used to live next door to there. Chili and onion rings in a dive atomsphere. Its not the same, though, since they moved the hookers out of the hood.

I had an unfortunate customer who would not heed my prompting with his selection. He pointed at the '82 Lynch Bages for $900. I went back and confirmed his order, pointing not only at the wine and vintage, but the price too. He agreed. He ordered the second bottle and I suggested something else, around $400. He said "That's too expensive". Uh-oh. I mentioned the first bottle costing $900. He goes white. He thought he was ordering the wine underneath that cost $90. Since I had double confirmed the original order, the wine remained on the check. I have to say. The guy was a sport and paid the bill without complaint.

actually, i usually get cheesesteaks with mayo, ketchup, fried onions, hot peppers. sometimes sweet peppers too. The secret ingredient is tahini. Shhh! Don't tell anyone.

Here's Rocco and Ronald McDonald !

IS Pavie-Decesse considered a second label? I know has same owners as Pavie, but I thought they were totally separate properties. You are correct. It is not technically a second label.