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iamthestretch

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Everything posted by iamthestretch

  1. The place in Wheaton is called Sabang. It's on Ennalls Ave and has been around for a while. I don't know if it's any good, but do seem to recall it has occasionally cropped up in discussions here with a "not what it used to be" qualifier.
  2. That looks really good. Puts me in mind of the fantastic rijsttafels we used to enjoy when we lived in Amsterdam. Indonesian seems to be one ethnic cuisine that hasn't had much of a shake in the DC area. Compared to, say, the nearby neighbors over the border in Malaysia, where there's at least a spectrum running all the way from the very good (Malaysia Kopitiam) to the bloody awful (Penang.) I'd like to try Satay Sarinah sometime, but would also be interested to know if there any other decent options that you know of?
  3. Fortified by his share of last night's Colorado Kitchen onion tart and jerk chicken wings, young Alexander Brian Stretch this morning succeeded in his bid to be born in time to catch the end of Restaurant Week thanks to a quick display of flashy knife skills by the good docs at Sibley Memorial Hospital. In keeping with the value theme of the week, he was something of a heaping helping himself, weighing in at 9-1/2 lbs and a measuring a chart-busting, if unsurprising, 21+ inches. Mom's on morphine and loving it. Since they wouldn't give any to Dad, he's going to self-medicate later with single malt. Anyway, I'll be hanging around MacArthur Blvd. for the next few days if anyone wants to propose lunch at BlackSalt.
  4. True. On the other hand, I do boast unmitigated gall. They asked for good pizza, Bumboy. Bacon-wrapped rabbits are a dime a dozen in Hampton Roads dontchaknow?
  5. Second 2 Amys for pizza and it's not hard to get there from the hotel. Straight up Wisconsin a few miles and first left past the National Cathedral on Macomb St. Go for lunch, as they don't take reservations and weekend dinners are a riot. Also make sure to get a few pints of the LaChouffe on tap and to check out Darth Vader on the way past the cathedral. For a bistro in the Georgetown area, they won't go too far wrong at Bistro Lepic, though this, too, can be crowded. If so, good alternatives would be either Montmartre on Capitol Hill (be wary of road closures etc. due to Inaugural preparations) or Bistro d'Oc downtown -- always a good fallback. I don't know from dim sum, so can't help there, sorry.
  6. Bistro d'Oc has a good RW menu going. Peppered duck pate, mesclun salad or potato-leek soup for starters. Blanquette de veau, fricassee of chicken in Thai green curry sauce or sauteed Atlantic salmon with crabmeat, potatoes and spinach to follow. Peach melba or chocolate pudding for dessert. The soup and the blanquette hit the spot well today. Probably be even better on the weekend, when it's supposed to get really chilly, maybe with a glass of their 1970 Darroze Armagnac to round things out and totally blow the budget.
  7. Had a good lunch at Mendocino today. Parsnip soup, pulled pork sandwich and upside-down banana cake. You can also add a glass of wine to the RW menu for $5, with three red and three white selections. Georgetown is weird, though. On the walk up M St. an angry skell stopped rooting in a trash can just long enough to shake his fist and yell something unintelligible at me. By the time I got out, he'd gone off shift and handed over to an even uglier mutt -- who asked me for a cigar and offered some unsolicited advice about "fancy bitches." I suggested he stick around until next week, when there should be no shortage of either.
  8. Missed the goose, but was consoled by an all-fat-immersion evening tonight: pork rillettes followed by crispy confit duck leg and apple fritters with caramel dipping sauce. Accompanied by two bottles of surprisingly good Italian Pinot Noir to keep the plaque from the arteries. Another high point, the tipsy gentleman who tripped at the top of the bathroom staircase and hit every single step on the long, steep slide back down into the Bistro. Bravo, sir.
  9. iamthestretch

    Boudin noir

    Oh man. In haste, I initially read that topic line as "Bourdain Noir" -- and I just do not want to think about that particular blood sausage.
  10. The lounge sounds like a Heironymous Bosch vision of hipster Hell. A hundred "ultra-fashionable" codpieces and associated arm-candy pounding $200 bottles of middling booze and ranking on each other's arse implants. Perhaps the restaurant, early in the evening, would only be the First Circle, and hence more amenable to us style pagans?
  11. Snider's up on Georgia Ave. had Breadline baguettes the other day. They were good. Is this a regular distribution deal?
  12. Stopped by Bangkok 54 for lunch today and it turned out that a full 25 percent of the clientele were eGulleteers. The house special roll, with the crispy duck in roti, was great, as was the pork belly stir fry, which is listed on the lunch specials menu as "crispy pork." On the way out, we stopped in to the next-door Thai market to buy sticky rice. They've got a lot of good stuff. Pork bellies, ducklings, head-on feet-on chickens and loads of exotic frozen fish. Also something entirely new to me -- frozen Mang Da Na, three-inch water skimmer insects. I am too squeamish to be able to give you a tasting report on those, but this guy will.
  13. CK is back in cyberspace, for anyone wanting to check out their latest offerings. While it's not on the regular menu, there's been some recent boasting about a duck leg confit with cabbage and dried cherries that will have to be tried soon. Like tomorrow, I think.
  14. Because I can't leave well enough alone, and because I'm in the middle of a major cooking spree, I bought a magnum of Hearty Burgundy today for the princely sum of $6.99 to use in the construction of 10 or so quarts of Bourdain's boeuf bourguignon. While I was chopping and browning, I drank a glass, strictly in the interests of science, and I finally understand the appropriate usage of the word "denatured." No nose (not no nose as in very little odor, but no nose as in a complete absence of any kind of wine, or even alcohol, scent. Remarkable.), no flavor and no finish. The trifecta. The only lasting sensory impression is of a slight astringency on the upper palate -- disconcerting because it rather leaves the impression the wine has evaporated altogether before touching the back of your tongue. Down the sink with you! The stew, however, tastes just fine, which probably goes to show something profound about the miraculous effects of heat that I'd only be able to grasp if I drank the remaining liter of Hearty Burgundy, which I'm just not going to do -- not for science or even for shits and giggles. So draw your own conclusions.
  15. Potage St Germain $6.50 Split pea soup with apple wood smoked bacon Velouté de moules et chou-fleur au saffron $6.50 Cauliflower and mussels soup with saffron Crème de marrons $6.50 Cream of chestnut soup All currently on offer at Montmartre. Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose.
  16. Braaains, braaains! Use your brains to help us! Your delicious brains.
  17. I second Signatures. And if you arrange to go on the Friday of RW, you can enjoy half-price wine to boot. Mmmm, cheap expensive wine, aaarrrgggh.
  18. Cafe 15 are requiring a credit card to hold dinner reservations during Restaurant Week, when they say they have a particular problem with no-shows. Certainly fair enough, but they don't do it over the phone, for security reasons, and aren't set up to do it through OpenTable for bookings made through that channel. So it's via fax only, which is cumbersome if, like me, you simply don't have one. Back to appearing in the flesh ahead of time, I guess.
  19. For your booking convenience, OpenTable once again has a special RW app up and running. Doesn't have everybody, but certainly has most and at least you can see who's filling up fast. (Edited to add: They don't have Corduroy on the list for some reason, although they are doing RW and, until recently at least, had been on OpenTable.)
  20. We've had one in DC for a while now. Opinions are mixed about the food, if not the fun factor. Here's the take from the local alt weekly, anyway.
  21. Everyone else may already know this, but I didn't. Zaytinya is a very cool place to have brunch on Sundays. It's much, much less of a scene than usual, bordering on the tranquil, and the service and food were excellent. Liked the Kibbeh and Havuk Koftesi, loved the "Yogurt Creme with apricot two ways and Samos Island Muscat-vanilla gelee." Where else can one find apricots that go both ways? (One caveat: Parking down there by the MCI Center suck-diddly-ucks, even on the weekend. You can either choose to pay to park in a garage, or you can choose to circle the surrounding few blocks for 20 minutes while you curse and bicker with your significant other until you finally give up and pay to park in a garage. Up to you.)
  22. Lower down the Post story they cough up that today's Hearty "Burgundy" is a blend of Zinfandel and Carignan. Will anyone admit to nipping on it while you cook? I'd be interested to know what it actually tastes like.
  23. This doesn't really address the substance of the thread, but you should absolutely suck it up and go anyway. We went there for Christmas dinner and can happily testify that Corduroy will astound-a where the others floun-der. (PS: They asked for a CC when we made the reservation.)
  24. My better half has a rapidly-rising loaf in the oven, and the timer is set to go off next week. I've cleared out the freezer and stand ready to launch a major cook-ahead offensive to try and stockpile the necessary sustenance to tide us over the initial shock and awe of first time parenthood. Except that I'm somewhat lacking in inspiration. Blimp Girl is being no help, as she insists she intends to subsist on nothing but champagne, sushi, prosciutto and unpasteurized cheese once the gastronomic strictures of pregnancy are finally loosened a smidgen. But perhaps some of you could help fill out my recipe list, which currently reads: "Beef stew, chicken stew, lamb stew, lasagne, pasta sauces (assorted)"? Thanks for the ideas already proffered here, although most were focused more on the whoops-it's-morning-time-for-an-upchuck stage of the great journey toward motherhood. I am thinking of getting a breadmaker and a slow cooker to assist in the culinary adventures ahead because, after all, if you can't use the birth of a son and heir as an excuse to acquire more household gadgets, then what's the point of the whole exercise?
  25. It's been a multiethnic Christmas, and diversity is damn delicious. Christmas eve, we got invited to a proper tamalada, with homemade tamales flown in from Manny's Mom in New Mexico and posole made with parts I didn't know pigs even had. Yesterday was Corduroy, where they were doing unnatural, though uniformly delicious, things with winter squashes -- like serving them for dessert with ginger ice cream. This afternoon we ate honey-glazed geese stuffed with apples, and really starchy kartoffelklösse and way, way more red cabbage than anyone would consider prudent, all washed down with eye-watering cherry schnapps made on the sly by someone's uncle back in the Schwartzwald. Gassy, but happy. Stretch.
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