iamthestretch

I was also at the Eden Center for lunch today. Fancy that. Pho was in the air, along with many scraggly pigeons. (Has anyone ever had the beef blood sauteed with ginger and scallions? I keep getting really close to ordering it and then losing my bottle.)

The big question, though, is with those two under one roof, will there be any wine left over for the rest of us?

If you're anywhere near Gordon Biersch in DC, why not beat feet a mere few blocks North to RFD, which even on a bad night will certainly have some better suds on tap? Of course, if you want to eat too, it's a toss-up which is worse. Little known fact, RFD actually stands for Repulsive Food, and Drink. They leave the comma out of the abbreviation.

Fear not, Al. I've been nagging Tim Giamette for ages about letting me open 2Amys2 down on the Hill and I think we've finally come to an arrangement. I'll raise all the money and he'll take all the profits. Between lunch carry out for the House office building hordes and your bar tab in the evenings, we're all gonna get richer than Dick Cheney! (PS: This is fantasy, but you've got to admit that a decent pizza place down your way would be a fizucking goldmine. $15,000 gets you in on the ground floor. )

Bumped into one half of the team behind Jackie's, the very affable Patrick, last night at the bar at Palena, where he's apparently something of a regular. Rather a good sign that, I think. Anyway, he said they are shooting for a soft opening next week, probably Friday, and would welcome early custom from knowledgeable (presumably), well-disposed (hopefully) local eGulleteers. He's enthusiastic about the beer and wine service and it sounds like they will have some good brews on tap, including Chimay Tripel and my favorite pilsner, Jever. Yum yum. For wine, they've had to go quite far afield to try to find reasonably priced stuff that is nonetheless available through Monkey County's stupid distribution system. Lots of South American bottles, sounds like. On the food side, Patrick said they're very happy with their chef and the kitchen is cooking most days now as they get the menu nailed down. If anyone's walking by this week (JPW?), he said you're welcome to knock on the door and say hello, and maybe you'll score a few tastes.

The fried catfish sandwich on the Friday lunch menu at Colorado Kitchen. Horace and Dickie can only dream of frying fish this well. PS: You've never been to Horace and Dickie's? For shame! Definitely a contender for the "authentic DC food experiences" thread a while back.

Some good news on the Colorado Kitchen liquor license front -- there were no objections at their recent public hearing so you should be able to have real drink with your dinner starting the week after next. As for dinner itself, there have been some nice autumnal dishes showing up lately, including a very savory cod chowder and, last night, a monkfish schnitzel served with braised cabbage and little fluffy dumplings in a sherry-spiked pan sauce. So. Damn. Good.

Hi all -- DC eG seeking advice on where to eat out during a week in Scottsdale later on this month. Here's the short list I've gleaned from previous threads (some fairly stale) on this board, please let me know if you think there are better options or if I've missed something new and wonderful. Would particularly welcome some more hole-in-the-wall recs for good Mexican food, something that just doesn't exist out our way. Many thanks. Pizzeria Bianco Barrio Cafe Sea Saw Elements Christopher's Fermier Brasserie Cowboy Ciao Los Sombreros Oceana

Sure, but did you cut them yourself?

A new nominee after lunch today. If not the very worst burger, then at least the worst served in a place that actually claims to specialize in them: Hamburger Hamlet. Granted, we only ever eat here on the way to one of my least favorite places on Earth -- EXPO Design Center (May the fleas of a thousand camels infest your 437 varieties of ceramic tiling! Yeah, and thy $300 faucets, also.) -- so general moodiness may be involved. But on the flip side, I actually really want to like it because Julia Phillips made the one on Hollywood sound so good in "You'll Never Eat Lunch In This Town Again." (She also strongly recommended cooking up your own freebase, so maybe that says something about her palate.) Anyway, I had a plain burger today to see if they could do the basics and it was pretty sad. Overcooked, tasteless and served on a stale bun. Bah. Not wanting to waste a good sulk, I crossed over Democracy Blvd and bought an extremely overpriced bottle of wine from Sutton Place just to rub it in. Humbug.

At the risk of sounding like I'm impersonating another member we all know and love, what about Maestro? Those dudes are really, really high touch.

Michael -- Thanks for the great steaks tonight and all the tidbits that kept appearing. It's true what they say: no one beats your meat. Anyway, we were spying on you through the front window afterwards while you were doing some butchering and the women all agreed they'd be happy to be handled that tenderly. (Minus the knives and cutting, of course.) How did you come by your obvious reverence for a good piece of beef?

The former, surely, is a tautology? And the latter, just as surely, is an oxymoron.

If you had, you'd have been First Of The Gang To Die. (Obligatory food element: Mmmmm. Meat. Aaaarrrrggghh.)

Had dinner at Tosca last night and can second many of the recommendations above, particularly the strategy of ordering half portions of the pastas in order to experience several. You can do this at table as well as at the bar, it turns out. We had the scapinasch and the duck agnolotti, both excellent, a yellow pepper soup with calamari "spaghetti" from the tasting menu, a prosciutto crudo and, my favorite, roasted Branzino with a balsamic vinegar sabajon and sautéed spinach, pine nuts and raisins. This was sensational, with a crackling crust more akin to a well-roasted chicken than the limp skin you too often find on fish. A word about the service. The first time I went to Tosca, years ago just after it opened, our well-behaved corporate party was condescended to so thoroughly that I long harbored similar feelings about the place as I have for the Staples branch in Ballston that had my car towed when I walked off their lot for a minute to post the envelope I'd just purchased inside. There was thus a momentry shiver of deja vu last night when our waiter opened proceedings with: "So, I'm assuming this is your first time here?" To his great credit, though, he caught the frown, moved right along and was extremely pleasant and helpful all night -- steering us to dishes we would not otherwise have ordered, bringing us bits and pieces to sample, taking the time to talk about the chef's background and culinary philosophy and, finally, structuring the check, entirely on his own initiative, to allow us to take advantage of their $32 pre-theater special. Well above and beyond the call of duty. All is forgiven, Tosca. I'm only sorry we sulked so long. (The Ballston tow bastards, on the other hand, are still going to accidentally brutally cut their own heads off while shaving one day, you'll see.)

Can I add yet another caveat? Worst burgers that I nonetheless regularly return for: Tune Inn. I guess the ambience makes it all worth while. Or something.

Had to shoot down to National today to pick up a last-minute hurricane refugee from Florida, so we decided to stop at the Crystal City Jaleo for lunch. Since we were one of the three occupied tables scattered around the cavernous space, the service was beyond solicitous and everything came out of the kitchen pronto and pretty much perfect. Particular hits were the apple and manchego salad, the chorizo skewers, the smoked sausage omelette, the potatoes with cabrales gravy and a superb mushroom and cheese risotto (though not, obviously, billed as such). There's free parking downstairs in the same building -- so you could do much worse than to take a drive out of your way to eat here on the weekend while you can still, essentially, have the place to yourself. Drinks wise, the sangria was OK but I ultimately preferred the Shiner Bock Hefeweisen. The flan was, as ever, terrific.

So, did you manage to maintain the appropriate balance of gin and jang? (ba-da-bing!)

Can't make Firefly. Sorry. Got to slice the breadwinner's bread tonight. And no, that is not any sort of euphemism, Mssrs Dente and Nebergall. Will be meeting a mate at BdC on Monday evening, though, if anyone else hasn't sat down at le zinc for a while?

Man, there's nothing wrong with that sandwich. OK, those sandwiches. Burp. Me and mdt got through the pork sausage, pork shoulder and pork ribs at lunch today. (Notice a theme emerging here?) Then he had a frickin' cannoli, too. Some people should be disqualified from being thin for gratuitous showing off. Chef Shogun joined us a bit later and then DCMark and friends arrived just in time to take over the table. They were ordering wine when we left. Those Gallic fellow-travelers know how to live, man.

This is probably needlessly pissy, but I'm flipping through the City Paper tonight and, sandwiched between the offers of Research Opportunities for Cocaine Users and the chance to spend time with a 36EEE All Natural Italian Beauty, is an ad for "what will become Dupont Circle's and Downtown's coolest hangout!" Preview open was tonight, apparently. I missed it. I am not so cool. Anyway, they claim to offer: Awesome cuisine (Maybe. "Fine" would probably suffice, though.) Great martini's (sic) (Sigh.) Leisure brunch (Because you're so tired of those rushed ones before dashing off to work on Sunday.) Smooching booths (Dude, other people are trying to eat. Get a room.) Great wine selections (Actually, that sounds OK. You better not be lying, though.) It's at 17th and Rhode Island, anyway, I guess in that hotel they've been renovating across from the Y. Someone hip should check it out. Because, and you read it in 26-point type: "We Simply Could Not Wait Any Longer!" (Boy, is that review going to write itself if they can't sling it fast enough.) Fin.

Like all of DC's other outdoor tables, on the sidewalk, with a great view of passing traffic on a major road. (Rhode Island Ave. in this case, I think.) With the honorable exception of Melrose, which sunk its patio to create at least the illusion of seclusion, outdoor dining options frankly s-u-c-k in this town. All you're debating is how far you're gonna be from the kerb. (I had a German friend who always used to look up into the cloudless summer sky as we were sitting at Cafe Berlin sucking down Weihenstephan and city bus fumes and say wistfully: "What this town needs is a proper beer garden, yes?" Personally, I propose siting it on the Mall. On top of whichever site they're eyeing up for a memorial to the Gipper.)

Kinkeads? Only if "outdoor" means "in a mall atrium." (edited to add: And Buck's? Really?)

I probably sound like a broken record, but 2 Amys is one of the best solutions to the dining with kids dilemma. Great pizza that pleases all ages, and interesting little bits and pieces (super cured meats, cheeses, cakes, sorbets) for the foodies. It is also almost always at least 1/2 full of young children at lunchtimes, so there's no cringe factor, and can be combined with a trip to see the National Cathedral, which it abuts, if that floats your boat. Unfortunately it is not adjacent to a Metro stop and would require either a 5 minute bus ride from the nearest station (Tenleytown) or shelling out for a cab. The board thread is here.

Everything else I agree with, but of that I'm not so sure. My Mum was, and happily still is, a lovely lady, but she was an old-school British cook, if you get my drift. And then there was the boarding school food. Oh God, please don't make me remember the shrapnel chicken and smeggy custard puddings, the compulsory cold showers and regular floggings were nothing compared to those. Point to this nostalgia, I guess, is that even those unfortunates like me who grow up in a taste-poor environment (to coin a sociological-sounding phrase) can still experience a food epiphany much later on. And indeed, like most converts to a different belief system, our zealotry can often far exceed that who imbibed it (so to speak) with their mother's milk. All that said, I lived all over Europe and yet didn't become really interested in food or wine until I moved out here to America. So who knows? Perhaps this is simply a function of rising affluence, if not sophistication. Because beer, I was hip to that from the get go. (PS: Damn you Mark. Though you may be faster at the keyboard, I am more verbose!)