Capital Icebox

It's also not nearly as good as it used to be and much more expensive. My friends and I were disappointed compared to prior visits.

Much more expensive than when? The prices on my last visit two weeks ago were the same they have always been.

And can you be more specific on how the food isn't as good as it used to be?

March 15th - Save the Date! I'm putting together a $20 Tuesday gathering at the fabulous Los Tios Grill in Del Ray for a special meal with fingers and forks. PM or post if you think you can make it or if you have questions.

Yes to both Los Tios and BCC, aka The Best of Del Ray.

Downstairs at Cafe Saint Ex smelled AWFUL on my first post-ban visit.

Some of us are whimming on the "other" side of the bridge after work: at the Stardust (I know, not a sacred cow) at 608 Montgomery St. in Old Town. Anybody able to join us?

Wish I could -- but please enjoy an oatmeal cookie martini in my absence.

James is a great guy and though the one-of-a-kind Staccato will be sorely missed, I look forward to what he'll accomplish here. Please keep us posted on the opening.

Options are indeed bleak, but there is are a few places to recommend. The No Name Saloon, on Main Street, is your ideal mountain bar (antlers and skis everywhere, roaring wood fire, and a popular after hours spot for the resort workers) and serves some tasty buffalo burgers, wings, and housemade potato chips. Drinks are well-priced and they have some prime seats right in front of that fire.

Also fun is the fireside dining at the Empire Canyon Lodge at Deer Valley. Fire-roasted lambs, stews, raclette of swiss cheese melting in front of you, and fondues for dessert. It is rich, heavy stuff, but perfect after a long day of skiing and is on the mountain.

And another good option for dining in Park City is to ski Deer Valley and do breakfast and lunch there.

Rachel [cough!] Ray did a $40 and under in Park City that might have some good ideas. I think she had a mac and cheese dish at Butcher's that looked good.

And Rocky Mountain Chocolate on Main Street for dessert is also a must.

so, how is the upcharge for Farrah Olivia??? I've heard there's one on almost everything... true??

Roughly half of the appetizers, desserts and entrees come with upcharges, most of them at different prices from the others.

Thank God for Corduroy tonight.

Farrah Olivia. I go so you don't have to.

I'm short on time, but here goes: The aforementioned upcharges are difficult to comprehend, as they pop up at different prices (i.e. $6 for one entree, $8 for another, $12 for a third) that make the already difficult-to-navigate menu even harder to comprehend. (I counted no less than three different symbols next to some dishes. A black asterisk meant that consuming raw or undercooked items may be unhealthy, a blue asterisk meant that the item was part of the RW menu without upcharges.) On the dessert menu, all the desserts (except for ice cream) are priced a la carte at $9, but several of them came with a $2 upcharge for restaurant week. I felt like I should've shown up to the meal with some Scantron sheets and a No. 2 pencil.

But this would have been forgivable if not for the service and food. Wine ordered before anything else did not arrive until a reminder was given while receiving the main course, plates were constantly being auctioned off, and there were lags between courses. This is something that usually doesn't bother me (who wants to dine in a hurry?), but... The Food. Hangar steak tartare was underseasoned, with all the elements of the dish deconstructed and placed far apart from each other on the plate, leaving it to the diner to blend them in the right amounts. It felt like homework. Butternut squash soup tasted more like an oatmeal cookie, Pork tenderloin was overcooked, ordered medium rare and arriving well-done. The 'chocolate merlot' sauce overpowered the (also underseasoned) meat. Overall the meal lacked flavor and intensity, and again I do not like having to hunt across my plate just to put the elements of a dish together. This place falls too easily into trite gimmickry: "yogurt foam" appears in one dessert, and if you ask how the salmon is prepared, the server will answer "We cut a log from the salmon, then sear it and then bake it in the oven." Who wants a cut of fish to be called a log?

It was a rare meal when I couldn't wait to leave, thinking of the dozen other places in town (RW participants or not) where I could've dined for the same price but received far superior food and service.

Doesn't seem like a good sign that Bastille is offering 1,000 Open Table points for reservations during RW (well, it is just for those prior to 7:00 pm). Anyone been there lately?

Bastille isn't participating in RW, however. I still haven't been, but I hope to check it out soon.

Certainly not Versailles, but there are three rooms: One to the left as you enter, one with a bar, and a bigger one that you have to cross through the bar room to get to. Jlock and I spent a little time in each last week. Maybe tonight we won't feel the need to be so mobile.

Edited because I have no idea what the name of each room is.

The first room on the left is sometimes known as the champagne room (with the purple couches), then there is the main room with the bar, then the corner room with the bench-style couches is known as the "blue room."

I like the flavor and texture when egg yolks are included. And it should be fine if refrigerated overnight covered with plastic wrap.

Damn this is making me hungry.

The gourmet recipe calls for chopping the meat and in a separate bowl mixing all the seasonings, etc. together and then adding them to the meat. So methinks another option for breakfast tartare would be to chop the meat the night before and separately mix the seasonings, then blend the two together (plus yolk) in the morning.

Maybe we should do a tartare tasting at some point...

It's actually really good for breakfast - especially the morning after. Think of it as a more elegant steak & eggs.

Was the Gourmet version classic, or did they try to get cute with it?

So how long does it keep for? If I make two servings, one for dinner and one for breakfast the next day, I'm good to go?

The Gourmet recipe was fairly traditional: capers, horseradish, mustard, s+p, worcestershire, and green onion. There was supposed to be some radish and watercress on the plate for show but I left that out. No egg, either. Do the rest of you typically go the egg route?

Made some tonight using the recipe from the Gourmet cookbook, and it turned out really well. Sirloin certainly seems to be the ideal cut here, and cutting it by knife did take awhile, but was worth it. How great is it to learn that you can make one of your favorite restaurant dishes (that usually goes for $15-20) at home for three bucks? I know this applies to endless menu items, but for some reason I had a mental block against steak tartare.

Now that it is gone, how am I going to resist making this for breakfast?

I have the 200 watt version of this Braun stick blender . It works great for me

Turns out I am working with a 120 W toastmaster. It wanks.

I just noticed that the model of my stick blender is "Magic Wand" and apparently there is a companion book that will help me get the most out of my Magic Wand.

$100 might be worth it for the luxury of not having to do the blend-in-batches dance, which almost always results in soup splattering on the counters and burns to my hand.

And I thought this was the official companion book for the Magic Wand...

OK, I'm serious this time. Bombay Curry Company in Del Ray. How about the week before Xmas. I just had a wonderful dinner there this evening with my two boys and wow, my only complaint is that they ran out of shammi kabab before we were able to order any. The wings are a "must have."

As are the Onion Bhaji. I wish I could go, but I'm skipping town at the end of this week. Would love to gather sometime after the holidays, though.

I have a Braun hand blender and it doesn't work very well for pureeing soups, i.e. I don't get the smooth, silky consistency I'm looking for unless I put it in batches into a large blender and puree for a minute or so. I know there are the professional grade immersion blenders (seen on Iron Chef, for instance) that are as tall as Tom Cruise, but I don't see myself adding this to my kitchen anytime soon. Has anyone found a reasonably priced hand blender that can accomplish a fine puree?

Does this place have a bar area where you can eat?

Recent special in the Bistro and the Bar: 'An Explosion of Foie,' or perhaps it went by a more refined name, but mine is more apt. Two large triangles of Hudson Valley Foie Gras, the size of Texas Toast cut diagonally. This is being sold for twenty dollars, and when you see the amount of foie on the plate you will be very happy with that price. The sardines were back, too.

What happened to this place? My last two recent visits have me worried. The fried chicken (I don't care if it's simply legs and wings, it used to be damn good) tastes and feels like it has been sitting around far too long. Each time, I noticed that my order came from a bowl of already-fried chicken, and was not fried to order as it has been in the past. Does the fryer get turned off at a certain time? (This would explain why you can't order french fries after 4 p.m.)

The mac and cheese has become a soggy, gloopy mess, and the once-glorious sweet potato cake has been sitting somewhere so hot that all of its frosting has melted, leaving the cake sitting in a pool of frosting at the bottom of its styrofoam womb. The only saving grace has been the collard greens, bright and vinegary as always.

The sad part is that Indiah and Oji were there both times running the show, so I can't blame it on them being absent. I realize it's just a neighborhood soul food joint, but it appears to have really slipped.

Think I might have to reconsider my position on the nonexistance of substantial alcohol absorbtion: There's definitely not 750 mL of bourbon in this jar now that I strain it!

In order not to lose alcohol, color and flavor when straining an infusion, I wonder if you could puree the leftovers (i.e. cherries) with a little of the alcohol and then strain back into the infused alcohol?

I went earlier this year and it was godawful. I would've posted about it but I wanted to put it behind me. Major service issues, and a frightening menu (it's all over the place) that leads to some truly disappointing food.

The bar did look kinda cool, though.

I have snagged a table the day of at Komi before, so it is worth a shot. I would rank it at the top of these three choices.

Iota on Monday nights.

I have a friend who comes from a family of hunters and we always have venison-a-plenty thanks to him, but I am looking forward to trying out the selection at Cheesetique.

Question: Is their venison farm-raised or wild game? I had plenty of the farm-raised variety in Sweden one year and I liked it much more than the wild game type, much fattier and less... gamey.