jca76

I was just talking to friends last night about how we want to go back to Bangkok Golden! I've only been once, but we really enjoyed it. (Although to our utter shame we had to ask them to scale back the spice on our second round of dishes, and we'd only originally requested the mid-level "Thai spicy." I shudder to think of what Lao spicy is like.) It hadn't occured to me to think of them as direct comparators -- there just wasn't nearly enough overlap between LS's menus and the dishes that we tried at BG, and atmospherically they are so different. LS's (and Komi's -- Bill is a great asset) excellent pairings (house-made vermouth, beer, interesting wines, etc.) are in a league of their own and a big part of my enjoyment of meals there; a bottle of beer or a Thai iced tea isn't even playing the same sport. However, I like the idea now of trying to pick out the equivalent dishes to test them more directly against each other. (And is it just me, or is Little Serow a bit less spicy these days? Not particularly complaining, just noting.)

On the heels of Tom Kliman's rave last week (although he's been endorsing it in chats for months), a friend and I finally checked out Sushi Capitol last night. The place is a tiny hole in the wall, wedged between a wig shop and a liquor store, but I think it serves better sushi than most of what I've had in DC. (Not as good as Sushi Taro's counter, but possibly comparable with Sushi Ko, where I've only eaten once. Better than Kaz or Kushi, where I've eaten many times.) The standouts were the nigiri specials that we ordered: surprisingly flavorful, pleasantly textured amberjack; lightly sauced eel; rich, silky uni. We ordered the uni both as nigiri and sashimi; I prefered the nigiri with its tiny dab of wasabi and rice for textural contrast. (Perhaps not quite a fair comparison given its more composed nature, but we both still prefer Izakaya Seki's excellent uni dish.) We also got the very fatty tuna (as opposed to the medium fatty tuna that was also on offer) sashimi. My dining companion liked it more than I did, but I think that is just my personal preference for less fatty tuna. He also prefers a softer rice, smaller-grained rice, but I liked this. The yellowtail scallion roll was more flavorful than I'm used to -- I tend to think of it as a pretty neutral roll -- and the Florida roll endorsed by Tom Kliman was a nice change of pace with its lightly seared top salmon layer. In response to JoshNE's concern above, the spicy tuna wasn't overly mayo-y, in my opinion. (Green salads were the generic lettuce-and-ginger-dressing that's standard at sushi restaurants everywhere; serviceable if you want some raw greens with all your protein and rice but entirely skippable if you don't. When we noted that they weren't on our bill, our very friendly waiter said that was because they'd come out a bit late. Unnecessary but nice of him.) We also enjoyed the grilled yellowtail jaw, although it definitely benefited from a squeeze of the lemon wedge that was served alongside. They've also apparently solved the liquor license problem since JoshNE's December post; we shared a very pleasant bottle of crisp sake. Fair warning: although their website says that they close at 9:30, when we walked in at 8:50, we were told that the kitchen was closing in ten minutes. I think that this is more of a we-stop-seating-at-9:00 than anything; they didn't rush us to order and were entirely fine with a subsequent addition after we'd placed our initial order. Our waiter asked if we'd come in because of the Washingtonian review (yes), and when we asked, he said that it was still a bit early to tell how it was impacting their business, but that they had been steady in August instead of experiencing a typical late-summer dip. We'll definitely be back.

For anyone who has been wary of Etto at peak times due to long waits (as I have been), the addition of the patio this summer, which about doubles the restaurant's capacity, appears to have significantly helped the issue. My group of four was seated immediately at around 7:00 last Saturday night, and there was another four-top that sat empty next to us for awhile more. The burratta was as fantastically creamy as always (we just had to order two!), and I very much enjoyed a pizza special with squash blossoms, tomato puree, heirloom tomatoes, and burrata. It was a perfect seasonal pie and didn't suffer from the sogginess that plagues the margherita extra at 2 Amys.

I've frequently enjoyed DGS for both brunch and dinner, but only recently realized that they also have an excellent deal if boozy brunches are your thing. This past Saturday, one of my best friends and I were planning for an overdue catch-up brunch, and DGS fit the bill: it's a place where I'd actually want to go for the food that happens to offer a well-priced bottomless deal. For $27, you get a choice of any appetizer or dessert and an entree plus drinks. There was no wait when we walked in a few minutes after noon, and we were seated at the sunny second floor two-person table back under the window. (I hope the lack of a crowd isn't a bad harbinger for the overall business health; DGS is a great local spot!) I always like their pickle assortment -- although no mushrooms this time, which was too bad -- and the Bendictberg was excellent. The eggs were well-poached, perfectly runny in the middle (overcooked eggs in a Benedict are disappointingly all too common!), and serving the smoked salmon on the side (rather than stacked with the latkes and eggs) allowed me to appreciate the quality of the components without their ending up as one hollandaise-soaked mass from the start. The chocolate babka bread pudding was thinner and less fluffy than I'd prefer my bread pudding -- I believe they've used challah in the past, which would be better, I think -- but it was still pretty tasty, especially with that delicious ice cream melting over it. The mimosas, while nothing special (unlike better cocktails off DGS's list), were perfectly palatable, strong enough to create a pleasant brunch buzz, replenished speedily by our attentive-but-not-rushing-us waiter, and of good enough quality that we were left without the late afternoon headaches that can result from some places' ubercheap bubbly. Given that bottomless brunches can easily top $50 around DC at places where the food seems more of an afterthought to the copious booze, DGS's brunch was a very happy alternative.

I had a really disappointing meal with three friends at Thai X-ing last night. I'd been a fan from multiple previous meals, but hadn't been back in over a year. It's nice that the reservation system has evolved from leaving a voicemail to online reservations, and BYOB is great, but I didn't find much else to recommend. I was fine dealing with inattentive service and cramped dining rooms -- our drop leaf table for four was so small that we were all sitting with a table leg between our legs -- when the food was excellent, but this meal didn't provide sufficient consolation. Everything was much more bland and less spicy than I remembered. The vegetable soup starter barely tasted Thai; it mostly tasted of mushy celery and potatoes, with some ginger. Salmon was somewhat dry and coated in a very sweet sauce. The pumpkin in the curry that I'd loved on every prior visit was just okay, and the pumpkin itself wasn't cooked at soft as I would have preferred. The green papaya salad and pad see ew were the best dishes, but even they didn't taste out of the ordinary, like what you could get delivered from a decent local Thai place. I don't know if this was an off night or it's really gone downhill, but I'm unlikely to go back to find out. I'd rather keep returning to Little Serow, which provides excellent service, a great beverage program, and fantastic, more interesting food at a price comparable to Thai X-ing's large group/weekend pricing.

I have always enjoyed dinners at Ripple (under both Logan Cox and Marjorie Meek-Bradley) without its being quite exciting enough for me to crave it regularly (the way I do Rose's Luxury). Nevertheless, I've never understood why Ripple hasn't caught on more, but the ease of getting a table is convenient. A late Sunday dinner was the perfect opportunity to check it out again. Silky creamed cauliflower soup with saffron, blue crab, cucumber, and radish was excellent, with spots of sweetness from raisins (a classic with cauliflower), subtle vegetal brightness from the cucumber, and a nice portion of crab. I was surprised by how much I liked a simple-sounding salad of heirloom tomatoes, housemade ricotta, peaches, and cashews. The cashews were a great, unexpected addition to the more standard combination, and well-seasoned, quality ingredients made for a winning dish. My only complaint was that there weren't more peach slices; I loved their sweetness with ricotta (see Rose's recent salad) and as a foil to the tomatoes' acidity. The smoked eggplant agnolotti was a bit disappointing, because the tasty pasta, chanterelles, and cheese (burrata?) were overwhelmed by a perfectly-fine-but-still-just-pesto sauce. I would like to see what a subtler sauce (and/or more eggplant outside the agnolotti) would have done. The better of the two entrees was the delicious, Louisiana-evoking seared shrimp, flageolet beans, fried okra, tomato, and basil. A vegetarian entire of crispy squash blossoms (breaded and stuffed with creamy chopped chard, I think?), quinoa, wild rice, beets, and a Greek yogurt tzatziki was good but needed a bit more salt and acid. Ripple does a great job of offering interesting, unusual wines by the glass, and we enjoyed our server's recommendations of Fernando "La Torrazza" Erbaluce and a not particularly oaky Chardonnay. (Staff at Ripple is always very nice about offering a taste of the by-the-glass wines for the indecisive; we opted for full glasses of these two out of three that we sampled.) For the first time, we finished dinner both at an appropriate hour and with sufficient appetite to check out the limited-hours, bar-only grilled cheese menu. We paid our dining room check and switched to bar seats. I subbed out the proscuitto in the rich e rich for the seasonal bluberry jam, which sweetened the combo of morbier and truffle butter on brioche enough to satisfy both dessert and grilled cheese cravings. My boyfriend's choice of the Greek-themed sandwich (I think it was called the Helen of Troy?) of feta, olive tapenade, tzatziki, cucumber on ciabatta (sans bressoala) was tasty but not as satisfying as my order. A dry Wandering Aengus cider made for a nice light accompaniment. Ripple continues to be the reliably enjoyable place that keeps us coming back.

Quick report on dinner with friends on Saturday night: Excellent ma po tofu, very floral from the peppercorns. Sichuan string beans were nicely gingery. A start of edamame and tofu out of the cold case was also very good. One of my friends really enjoyed the sauteed shredded potato, a favorite dish of his (which I never particularly love, so don't feel capable of judging). Unfortunately, calamari in basil sauce was chewily overcooked within minutes of hitting the table (and the thai-basil sauce didn't seem particularly Chinese, but we probably should have expected that). Salty & crispy eggplant was a little bland without the garlic slivers scattered throughout the dish (and one friend was put off by the thick batter). Overall, while we enjoyed the meal, it wasn't nearly as good as either Panda Gourmet or Hong Kong Palace, which both have the added benefit of being closer to where we live in DC. (Sichuan Jin River has gone down hill in post-name change visits, in my opinion.)

Deterred by the 350 mile drive, we'd never made it to Town House, ending up disappointed at the missed opportunity when it closed, and disappointed a second time when the DC project was put on hold. We weren't going to miss the opportunity to attend one of the Riverstead dinners, which we did this past weekend. Upon our arrival, we were immediately greeted warmly by Neil, whom we'd met previously when he was at the Ashby Inn. (I would love to be a regular at a DC-based restaurant with John and Karen in the kitchen and Neil running the front of the house.) Neil introduced us to Karen, who was the only one in the kitchen at that hour; main prep is done at the Town House space and then plastic wrapped and carted over around 4:30. Given that she probably had lots of other things to finish up (not to mention that she's a month from giving birth!), I felt a bit bad about how long she spent standing around chatting with us, but we really enjoyed it. (Thanks to a Kickstarter pledge, we were also able to spend a few hours on Sunday in the kitchen at Town House observing prep and generally pestering everyone with questions. It was a great insight into the whole experience, and a lot of fun.) Big picture: we had some outstanding dishes, and an excellent experience. I am glad we made the trek, and very excited to taste what they can do in a permanent restaurant setting. We began the evening by enjoying the unseasonably pleasant weather -- thanks polar vortex! -- on the porch, where we were served a few canapes, including a delicious "sunchoke cannoli" of fried sunchoke skin filled with pureed sunchoke cream and topped with marigold petals. (Marigolds are apparently in the same family as sunflowers, making their inclusion nicely thematic.) The standout dish of the night was a seaweed-infused tomato water granita that got briny seasoning from sea grapes, trout roe, and dashi. Fermented vegetable sourdough biscuits were accompanied by a fabulous butter mixed with Grayson cheese. Desserts were outstanding: A fascinating smear of rich, densely flavored beet fudge cake was topped with fresh mint, smokey embers ice cream -- made from infusing embers in the milk before churning -- and mint ash. A combination of white chocolate and preserved carrot was paired with a gorgeous (in both appearance and flavor) salad including carrot flowers, lemon thyme, and purslane. Other courses were less impressive -- although everything was enjoyable -- but our conversation with John on Sunday made clear that he has a great sense of the weaknesses and that many of the issues seem attributable to the kinks of this temporary format. A last-minute replacement corn dish was a bit sweet; on Sunday John was tinkering it into a dessert. A delicious combination of chard, roasted beet, slightly sour cooked raspberries, and grated preserved egg yolk felt a bit incomplete without a protein to replace duck heart omitted for our pescatarianism, although I imagine that this would be less likely to happen in a full restaurant than a set-menu pop-up. Overnight guests are greeted in the morning by an array of cold breakfast items. Homemade yogurt, blueberry chia seed compote, and granola made for a very good parfait, but the standout was a delicious chard and roasted spring onion crostata. Descriptions of everything we ate (and photos) on my blog.

Has anyone tried showing up late (say 9:00) on a weeknight and getting seated? I've only done the line-up-before-opening thing, but this week we can't leave work early and don't want the first or second seating in any event. Not sure if they reach capacity for the entire night long before then. Thanks!

Recently went back to minibar (almost exactly two years to the day since our last visit) with four friends, three of whom had eaten there before; the fourth had come down from New York especially for this reservation. It's still a fun, frequently quite delicious experience. Unfortunately, despite being two-thirds more expensive than our last minibar meal, it's no better -- and in some ways not as good -- as it used to be. We had a great night, but I'm not sure how strongly I could recommend it unless money was no object to the prospective diner. While there have been complaints here about the lack of posted phone number and the opaque email reservation system, I found it to be significantly easier to navigate than the old call-right-on-the-hour-and-hope-to-get-through system. (I've literally spent hours getting a busy signal and redialing over the years.) I wonder if the increased capacity and price have decreased demand, and the email system is a way to cloak that. From a design perspective, the new space is beautiful and I suppose in keeping with what most people expect/want from a meal at this price point, but I think the larger space is to the detriment of the chef interaction experience. Layout issues aside, Johnny Spero and the rest of the chefs were great -- answered our (probably increasingly annoying) questions patiently and with a sense of humor. So, the food. Given the time lapse and significant price hike, I was most disappointed that there were so many dishes that were basically unchanged. I understand that this sort of food requires a lot of development time, and at this price point they probably don't expect many repeat diners (certainly not frequently). But after two years and a restaurant move/revamp, we shouldn't have recognized approximately a third of the non-canape/petit four dishes as things we'd eaten on our last visit (a few of them as substitutions to accommodate my pescatarianism). The meal also felt shorter/less substantial; despite complaints I've read over the years, this was the first time that I left minibar wanting a snack. (Luckily barmini's snacks are great.) The expectations-defying hot-and-cold contrast of the opening pisco sour was a fun start; an icy quenelle of sorbet melted beneath the hot foam (produced from a heated-in-a-waterbath whipper). A frozen shell of melt-in-your-mouth (or fingers, if you dally) pureed almond filled with blue cheese was delicious . . . as delicious as it was when we had the same dish years ago. The best dish of the night showed only a very limited, ungimmicky display of modernist technique: a raw spot prawn with shaved apple miso ice was so refined that it would have fit perfectly on the Saison menu (my favorite meal of the last year). My second favorite dish highlighted how precision techniques can be deployed to create truly delicious food: spirals of "pasta" made by dipping a corkscrew into a bath of gelling agent were injected with a vibrant basil pesto. (Chef Spero kindly brought out some empty fusilli and a syringe to show us how they're filled/let us taste the empties for contrast.) "Andalucian Tofu" was also great -- I loved the gazpacho ice and the textural contrast with "tofu" (of almond, I think?), although I would have preferred smaller cubes of the latter to play up that contrast. I understand that dietary restrictions can be difficult for restaurants to manage, but it's still frustrating when the most disappointing dishes are substitutions because it feels like accommodations are a bit of an afterthought. "Spring is Coming" was a beautiful-looking but boring-tasting salad of edible flowers on shaved ice; flavoring the shaved ice would have helped significantly. Even more frustrating is when a repeat isn't as well done as the first time: in this case, the "white" of the parmesan egg was insufficiently set and therefore dissolved into a puddle -- losing the cool textural similarity to a real egg -- as soon as it was cut open. I did love this dish in its previous incarnations, and it still tasted good here, but it was a poor way to see us pescatarians out of the savory courses. A disappointment to everyone in my party: smoke-filled balloons were snipped open with great fanfare to release an enticing, roasty aroma, but when the smoked cleared, we were left with a bowl of not-particularly-exciting mushrooms. The black truffle shaved on top may have helped to layer the earthy flavor had it been a stronger truffle, but it was imperceptible in the taste. We were moved to barmini for petit fours (where we were later joined by two additional friends for hours of cocktails and snacks from the bar menu). The highlights among the cute petit fours: We all loved the yuzu marshmallow. The "doughnuts" were Krispy Kreme ice cream inside; awesomely Momofuku Milk Bar-esque. The liquid raspberry center of the bon bon was delicious but had only the barest hint of wasabi -- and that might have been mostly the power of suggestion because we were told it was included -- and would likely have been outstanding with more. The gummy whiskey bottles -- which I've had somewhere else before, made with different types of whiskey if I recall correctly? -- where a fun throwback to the cola bottle gummies that I loved as a kid. Course by course details, including photos, on my blog.

How do you (or anyone else) think it compares to Komi? Do you prefer one to the other? I love Komi -- we go a few times a year -- but I never ate in Eve's Tasting Room (and wasn't blown away by the one meal I had in the Bistro years ago).