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chazas

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Joe Montana (17/123)

  1. We enjoyed XO Taste a great deal on several different visits - but the last time had such an unpleasant experience I am unlikely to ever go back. We ordered several dishes - including beef chow fun with black pepper sauce, a menu item. It came - with what appeared to be black bean sauce. I asked the waiter if we had the right dish. First he told us that black pepper sauce and black bean sauce were the same. He got a quizzical look - then said they were different, but that we would like black bean sauce better and stalked off. At this point we decided the point wasn't worth discussing, and decided to eat what we had. Then a more senior waiter approached and started raising a fuss - made a loud production of taking the dish away and bringing us another one - by which time we had finished most everything else on the table. Plus we were kind of afraid to eat it after all the commotion. The original waiter didn't appear again until he threw the check on the table. Clearly, they made a simple mistake but then dug themselves a big hole by assuming the gweilo wouldn't notice and then compounded it by escalating into a situation designed to make us lose face. All over a plate of noodles. To top it all off, the other dishes that night were not nearly as good as the other times we had gone. I could chalk it up to just a rough night, but frankly, why risk that kind of treatment?
  2. I think I've mostly blocked it. Other than way too much garlic in everything, the thing that sticks out in my mind was the orange beef. Huge, flabby, greasy pieces of meat in a cloyingly sweet sauce. Blecch. We ate a taste of everything and threw the rest out.
  3. We had enjoyed this place for American-style Chinese delivery a couple of times - something sorely lacking in Arlington. But I doubt we will no longer go back to TNR. We had delivery a few weeks ago, and it was so bad it was insulting. I mean, really, really bad. I don't know how they could have let that slop out of the kitchen.
  4. To me, the issue is not so much Asian Fusion (which to me denotes a level of thought and accomplishment, when done right) but all of the run-of-the-mill "pan-Asian" restaurants in this area. It seems to me to be a DC thing, and I think it's a dreadful trend. Sushi, kung-pao chicken, bulgogi and pad ka prao - it's like a place that has tacos, Maryland steamed crabs, wienerschnitzel and coq au vin all on the same menu. Blecch. Guaranteed, none of them will be any good.
  5. And what is it with D.C. and these god-awful "pan-Asian" places? Blecch. That's like going to a restaurant that specializes in wienerschnitzel and tacos.
  6. The pupusas are great, as are the fried plantains. A couple of times I've had the whole fish (I think they use trout) with lemon butter and caper sauce. Very tasty. This place is a hearty favorite, and we've never had to wait for a table.
  7. We went on Saturday afternoon after the antique show at the Convention Center. We were fairly impressed - though we were told that all of the dishes on the wall were also in the "specials" section of the menu. I don't know if that's true, but it wouldn't be the first time we were told that in a Chinese restaurant to save the pain of translation. No ong choy was available, but we wanted something in bean curd sauce so we had the snow pea leaves. They were fine in this preparation. We ordered stuffed bean curd with black bean sauce. We had asked whether this was stuffed with shrimp paste or pork, and got a confused reply. What we ended up with was stuffed with fresh-chopped shrimp and lightly fried - no black bean sauce, oddly, but a soy-based dipping sauce. Wonderful. Other dishes were spareribs in pepper sauce (delicious), chow fun with beef and Chinese broccoli (good), and orange chicken (ordered at the behest of an unadventurous dining companion, no orange peel to be found, but very good nonetheless). We'd go back.
  8. Just tried this place for lunch a couple of Saturdays ago after a visit to the Kreeger. All of my lunch companions had sandwiches, which they avowed were very nice, with homemade potato chips. Unfortunately, I had the daily pasta special. About two ounces of fish - and the pasta portion was so small that at first I didn't even see any underneath the tiny piece of fish. The quality of the pasta and fish was fine, but for $15 at lunch the size of the dish was truly insulting. It would have been small for an appetizer. I wouldn't go back.
  9. I visited Corduroy a couple of weeks ago for the first time - took some out of town clients. The food was reasonably good. Not exquisite, but good. The service was willing though a bit thin (not enough folks for the size of the room). The location and ambience, however, really do detract from the experience. It's too bad.
  10. Good to hear. We live in Clarendon (soon Va. Square) and the place we have been using on Glebe just north of Rte. 50 (the name of which escapes me) appears to have changed hands and gone downhill. It was ok, now unbearably greasy. Looking forward to trying TNR.
  11. My favorite was Pho Ha Tay - but last time we tried to go it looked like it had closed for good. My former second favorite (now the first string choice by default) is Pho Vinh Loi, a couple of doors down from Full Key in the Best Buy shopping center at Bailey's Crossroads. I'd appreciate any other suggestions in the Arlington/Falls Church area.
  12. I do not understand the appeal of Pho 75. We went to the Arlington branch last weekend - decided to try that for the first time instead of driving to a Falls Church haunt because it is so close to home. The broth was the only ok thing, and it was just ok. It tasted good, but it looked like they hadn't skimmed any of the scum off the top of the pot when they were making it. Otherwise, blecch. The place is filthy - walls, silverware, tables, dishes, and even the waiters' clothes. The basil was browned and wilted and I actually found a bug on it. I ordered a tai gau and my partner a tai gan - and we had to search high and low for a tiny bit of the fatty brisket/tendon. And the staff was rude - the busboys were literally throwing dirty dishes into a plastic tub as they "cleaned" tables.
  13. Great find! We had lunch there the Saturday before Xmas. It was almost empty when we arrived about noon, but there not a free table when we left at 1. We were asked how spicy we wanted our food, and asked for it to be spicy. I think that our request was heeded. I remember eating at a Szechuan restaurant in Beijing where the food was so hot and I was sweating so much my hair was matted - and the other patrons were giggling at us. It wasn't quite that spicy, but did come close. The meal started with complimentary 5-spice soybeans, a nice touch. We officially started with the Spicy Szechuan Beef Tendon, a nice cold dish that appeared to be very popular - we saw it going to a lot of other tables. Spicy hot, but not unbearably so. For our mains, we split three dishes between the two of us. That's standard practice for us at authentic Chinese restuaurants when we're hungry, but here it was just too much. The portions were quite large, and we had too much food on the table. For me, the highlight of the meal was Fried Chicken with Dry Chili Peppers. This was fried boneless chicken chunks, dipped in tons of ground Szechuan peppercorns, stir fried with dried red peppers and sliced, unseeded jalapenos. This dish came the closest to making my head sweat - and clearly made my mouth tingle, so much that I finally had to stop, even though I would have liked to eat more. I suspect that I'm grateful for the use of jalapenos rather than something hotter. We also had the Twice Cooked Pork with Dry Long Bean. I was ready for the belly pork, which a prevous poster reported - and it was delicious. I was also expecting the long beans to be dry fried - basically, stir fried until they were wrinkled. I was surprised to get some kind of long bean that clearly had been dried and then reconstituted. They were very dark in color, and a little sweet - very unusual and very good. The dish had a nice flavor of hot bean sauce but wasn't too spicy at all, a very refined flavor. It was quite oily, however. Finally, we had the Stir-Fried Pumpkin, which was a huge plate of shredded squash of some kind, in a very mild, light sauce. Very simple, but very cooling after the other dishes. We're definitely going back - I'm even willing to try the "Ox P" and will also try to get some translation help for the specials on the wall.
  14. We live nearby and occasionally picked up carryout from this place, but have not done so for several months because we found the quality declining every time. I believe this place started out all Thai, when it was ok, but went downhill rapidly when they added the Chinese dishes (which I suspect resulted from a change in ownership). I last found the Thai food quite crude - I can make better myself. If it's gotten any better, I'd like to hear about it.
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