Capital Icebox

Apparently he tried to sell in 2003, as well.

A little background on the loss of MM and the creation of BL.

These two links are very helpful. Anyone know if he is still thinking about opening a wholesale bakery, as reported in the first article? I would like to know the location so I can do an old-school hold-up on one of the delivery trucks.

I didn't mean to imply that you were being critical, but I think the idea that he has some kind of glutenous ADD that causes him to become "dissatisfied or bored with his projects" is perhaps inaccurate.

"Dissatisfied or bored" is a poor choice of words, I admit, and apologize. (I have glutenous OCD, btw.) The answer I am after is "Does anyone know why he sold Breadline, suppositions aside?"

Curious, not critical, indeed. I'm not saying his decision to move on from either of these enterprises is a bad one (well, it's certainly not good news for people like us that are addicted to his baguettes), but it intrigues me as to why Chef Furstenberg seems to become dissatisfied or bored with his projects. Maybe it is none of my business, but as a devoted admirer of Breadline, I am curious to see if anyone knows the answer.

I don't know why the Crystal City part was "hardly news," but the fact that the building and restaurant are closing for renovations for a year has been talked about for a while now, so it is justifiably "no secret."

I predict Tom's chat will soon move to Monday mornings, then Kliman will go the Friday before, and pretty soon they'll each just give up and do a daily blog a la Bruni.

It does seem that we learn more about what's happening with openings and closings this way, having the two big guns in town vying to out-scoop the other. But I can also see it getting out of hand, as with the whole "Palena is moving!" thing. It's not fair to the restaurant to tell people they're moving when it isn't going to take place in the near future, which seems like it could hurt their business.

The question I have yet to see answered is why Chef Furstenberg has now twice moved on from what were initially very promising enterprises. Was it for financial reasons? Did he just get tired of competing against large chains serving inferior products? Does he get restless and need to try something new every once in a while?

Breadline is not as good as it was when he owned it (though I think it is good, bread-wise, but not as consistent or impressive as before), and from what I read in this thread and elsewhere MM is a pale shadow of what it once was. But when they were under his direction and ownership, these were the places to go for amazing bread. So can someone tell us why Chef Furstenberg is so... fleeting?

And the Most Surreal Use of an MRE award for 2006 goes to Colorado Kitchen, for their red soapbox in the corner displaying several Military Ready-to-Eat meals with a sign in front advising customers not to whine or complain, because the soldiers in Iraq "can't always get what they want," either.

Feaful of being asked if I had ever fought in a war, I decided not to request extra tartar sauce with my catfish.

(P.S. The quote above is probably not exact, since I'm working from memory here.)

The rules may have changed, however, the game remains the same. We do not encourage any practices that are unfair to any of our guests. IE how would one feel if they knew they were not being waived corkage simply because no one informed them of the dr.com forum. I, for one, promote a just cause, and the ideation that one is priveleged simply because of a website forum seems absurd, especially since that privelege carries certain courtesies, be them exceptions to the rule or whatever. This is simply unfair, and to hold the current management team to an exception that was implied by the previous management is unreasonable.

How does that square with this?

Legacy Libations Lives On!!!

Notti Bianche warmly invites the community of Don Rockwell to continuein our own legacy in honoring a monthly tradition, celebrated the last Friday of every month. After all, the more we celebrate in the spirit of great food and fine wine, the more we will get better acquainted

We proudly strive in our commitment to providing exquisite cuisine equally paired by our everlasting service to our guests.

You seem to be placing the blame on ScotteeM, going so far as to call her "unreasonable," but it seems that before her visit you had posted that one DR "privelege" was still intact (Legacy Libations), but failed to mention that another had been changed (waiving the corkage fee). Her issue isn't with the fact that this corkage policy had changed (which I hope we would all understand), but rather that management didn't communicate that fact, or even tell her what their current corkage policy was, despite her notifying you a month ahead of time that she was bringing in a bottle of wine. She wasn't "holding" you to anything, she was just disappointed that your policies (and changes in policy) weren't communicated in an adequate way. Telling someone who is "already dreaming" of going back to Notti Bianche in spite of all this that they are being unfair seems like bad business to me.

Has anyone been recently? I need some intel.

I went looking again last night (on our HD tv instead of the other one) and found it. I was able to watch After Hours with Daniel Boulud. What the heck was Cat Cora doing there?

I know, she was a fish out of water. And the Julia Child impression was priceless.

This is the type of show you would never see on the Food Network these days. Take some of the best chefs and actors in New York and film them eating a family-style meal of baby goat after hours? With no script, no cheeky nicknames for ingredients, and no voiceovers? It'll never sell!

Zora, did the scallops look even better in HD?

Brr, have you used pepper greens before? I happen to have these in my garden this summer as well, and wouldn't mind putting them to use. What would you do with them?

And what about carrot tops (having in mind the leafy greens and not the comedian who gives me nightmares)?

Tomato leaves are poisonous. The leaves (as well as the stems) contain an alkyloid called Tomatine that if eaten in quantity, causes serious gastrointestinal distress. Tomatoes, (also potatoes aned tobacco) come from the nightshade plant family.

Not sure you're right about that one:

"Tomato leaves have long been considered potentially toxic because they contain a defensive [aka poisonous] alkaloid, tomatine, but recent research has found that tomatine binds tightly to cholesterol molecules in our digestive system, so that the body absorbs neither the alkaloid nor its bound partner. It thus reduces our net intake of cholesterol! (Green tomatoes also contain tomatine and have the same effect.) It's fine, then, to freshen the flavor of tomato sauces with the leaves."

(From 'On Food and Cooking,' by Harold McGee, page 331)

Google "Tomatine" and you will see some of the "recent research" he refers to.

Comcast doesn't seem to offer this channel, unfortunately. Hundreds of channels of crap, and one with shows I'd really like to see isn't available to me...

It's on Comcast, somewhere up in the 200's, and is part of their basic digital cable package.

The one annoying thing is that all shows are in letterbox, essentially, because it's an HD channel. So the top and bottom of the screen will have grey borders unless you have HD.

Caught a few minutes of 'Three Sheets' last night and am not an instant believer, but I'll pay more attention to it in the future.

My tomatoes are coming along nicely this year, but there are only two of them on the giant vine, and as much as I look forward to enjoying them later in the season, for now I am addicted to stooping down to smell their leaves, which have a wonderful, peppery tomato fragrance. Can I eat them?

According to McGee (p. 330), I can, and he cites the example of some chefs who add them to their tomato sauces. But can they be used like celery leaves, chopped onto a salad like fresh herbs? I wonder if this would add some tomato-ey zing to my next bowl of mixed greens. And what about those beet stalks, which greatly outsize the bulbs at the end? What about the leaves at the end of the stalks? Are these destined to be refuse, or can they serve some other purpose? Obviously peel of lemon, lime and orange, etc. can be candied or zested and used in numerous dishes and desserts. Are there other fruit or veggie scraps that typically get thrown away that shouldn't be?

Going camping this weekend, and we're planning on doing a pineapple upside-down cake in the dutch oven. Here is my question, and it is one that betrays my limited baking experience:

Can we make the cake batter a day or two ahead of time and just keep it in a ziploc bag in the cooler until we're ready to bake the cake? I was planning on using this recipe.

This show is a guilty pleasure palace of mine. I loved the prior episodes. When is it airing now?

Wednesdays at 9 p.m.

Poisoned Ramsay? Do tell...

This young twit named Tim was running the kitchen of a Yorkshire bistro. One of the first things the chefs at the troubled restaurants do is cook their signature dish for Ramsay. In this case, it was scallops. But they had gone bad (the chef was notoriously bad at keeping his stock up to date), and Ramsay spent the next few minutes of the show throwing them up and cursing the kid. Granted, it would have been more entertaining if it had been intentional, but all the same it makes for great TV.

Excellent...I hadden't heard about that. If it's like season two, it'll be half new episodes, and half revisiting places from season 2. That is...in the half hour show, they'll re-play most of the season 2 episode with seven minutes of new footage for the visit.

Yeah, I think these are all-new, one hour of cheeky goodness shows. The one I saw last week didn't involve going back to any of the old joints. But I would love to see what happened to the kid who almost poisoned Ramsay in season one.

Oh yeah, I love Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares! Great show! Is there another season coming up?

ETA: DUDE! A quiz on British restaurant slang! brb!!

EETA: 4 out of 5!

Ah, I should have mentioned that the new season started at the end of May (something I was unaware of until this Tuesday, but I'll have to catch those episodes in re-runs). There's going to be eight episodes this season -- that's twice the bollocks as last time!

And you fared better than me -- I got 2 out of 5.

With all the (deserved) drubbing Gordan Ramsay's received for the Tempation Island-meets-Apprentice culinary sinkhole that is Hell's Kitchen, it has been wonderful to see again the chef doing what he presumably does best: whispering, not barking, orders in the kitchen. Each week on Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares, Chef Ramsay is summoned to a fledgling restaurant (his vision of a nightmare), and he has only a week to turn the place around. Last week he was sent to a French outpost in Scotland (now known as Abstract), completely staffed by chefs who had previously worked in Michelin-star establishments and were oblivious of the fact that their high-minded French approach was alienating the locals, and Ramsay had to work slowly and subtly to get them to completely change their approach. I won't spoil the details, but watching him jump into an unknown kitchen and immediately grasp what's working and what isn't is fascinating, and listening to him curse is almost musical. I wish FOX had the mind to do this show instead.

Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares (Wednesday's at 9 p.m. on BBC America)

Review of Season One of RKN on Slate

Danny makes some excellent points above about extreme examples where "firing" a customer is necessary, and I couldn't agree more.

But this, from the column, doesn't seem to be one of them: "Remember, it is meant to be special. If your bottle is cheap and unremarkable, your server will know. The manager will know. The restaurant will know. And you will know they know -- by the quality of service you receive. Because in the eyes of the house, guests who abuse the policy are trying to take advantage of staff, and deserve exactly what they get. (P.S. OpenTable will know, too. Blacklisting corkage abusers is common -- which means your chances of getting a reservation at that place again may disappear forever.)"

Before my minor gripe (well, leading into it), an example from my own experience: Last Christmas, a superior from work was in town. He loves Champagne. Having been recently educated on the subject by a fine column in the Washingtonian, I bought him a nice bottle of bubbly. Nothing ridiculously expensive, but not cheap, either. It didn't seem "unremarkable" to me, but I hadn't had a chance to drink the stuff yet. The day he got in, I gave him the champagne, which he appreciated, and said, "Hey, we should bring this to dinner tonight!" I thought, "Yes! To dinner! At a restaurant with a low corkage fee! Where I have made the reservation on OpenTable! And I have no time to check to see if it's on their list! And when we arrive, since you don't know much about corkage policies here and come from a BYOB state, you can even protest the low corkage fee! (Which he did, albeit in a polite way.) And it's my first time dining here!"

Now, if I didn't know better, I may have read this column and thought to myself, "Great Caesar's Ghost! Am I blacklisted from this place forever?" It was my first time there, so I didn't have any other dining experience for the staff to rely on, I brought in a champagne that was good, but probably not great, the occasion wasn't special, and I even went so far as to complain about the corkage (not me personally, but the guy in my party). I might think this incident is forever etched into my OpenTable profile and I'll never eat be able to book a table there again. Or, if I do go back, the service will be so bad I won't want to return. Is it really so? (I haven't been back to eat there so I have no idea, but I suspect the answer is no.)

It might have been helpful to note in this part of the column that repeat corkage abusers, a la Messr. Ensphinctered-Duck-Call, will be subject to their own ring of OpenTable hell, while the ignorant-until-now should feel free to call the restaurant to ask about their corkage policies, wine list, and if they could bring a certain bottle in for dinner. (And if they have commited corkage faux pas in the past, no worries, but you may want to start a new OpenTable profile in your grandmother's name. Or in my case, leave a gigantic tip and give "Forgive him, for he knows not what he does" looks to our waitress.)

That said, this was another great column by one of our own, and I think the comments section underneath the column shows how needed this feature is. Either that, or all the lead in the drinking water has turned our fair city into a den of underworked, entitled schmucks, I'm not sure which.

P.S. I think many restaurants with corkage policies could help us be better customers by putting up their corkage policies on their websites, along with their wine list, and some notes about corkage etiquitte would be helpful, too. There is a great deal of ignorance out there about corkage policies out there, which is why I enjoyed reading Nadya's column and the threads here and on egullet about popping your cork in a restaurant.

P.S.S. Trader Joe's Peanut Butter will give you bad breath for days, much like Cool Ranch Doritos. Buyer Beware. (Sorry, it's on my mind.)

Right now you can get 1,000 points for each time you dine out using OpenTable. The list of participating restaurants and reservation times isn't particularly appealing, but there are some good ones, like Notti Bianche and Majestic Cafe. Here's the list.

I have never had very attentive service at the bar here, i.e. on last visit we were made to wait fifteen minutes before ordering drinks despite the fact that there were only a few other customers there, and when the bartender did arrive service was brusque. I normally wouldn't mind much, but the clock was ticking (happy hour is only until 7).

Hey, you were all warned...

Try the shrimp scampi, anything with the word "Diablo" in it, the hangar, the culotte, and ask your server for some recommendations. You can't go wrong here, really, unless you ask for a double magnum of ketchup to pour over your steak.

Some time shortly after World War II, KGB scientists set out to find a drug that would prevent inebriation. The conceit was that KGB agents would take this drug and proceed to drink their CIA counterparts under the table, at which point the lightweight American spooks would divulge our nation's best kept secrets. The scientists were unsuccesful in discovering such a miracle drug, but they did stumble upon a pill that would prevent serious hangovers if taken between drinks, but it didn't serve their purpose. After the fall of communism the secret drug was declassified, and it is now available on the U.S. market and is known as RU-21.

It's a shame the KGB didn't send a team to find and kidnap Balraj Bhassin, the proprietor of Bombay Curry company, when they had the chance, since he might've been able to concoct the right blend of spices for their needs. At any rate, his kitchen turns out a much tastier alternative to RU-21. At eleven o'clock every Sunday morning, for a mere $8.95, he puts on a killer lunch buffet: plate upon plate of some of the best nann around, straight from the tandoor. Pair it with some Dal Makhani ("black lentils simmered overnight with spices") and you are well on the way to recovery. Various curries, usually some tandoori chicken, rice pudding for dessert, and they will even let you wear your sunglasses while you eat. Truthfully, I walked in one morning in bad shape and lost any semblance of a hangover by the time I got the check.

Even if you aren't reaching for hair of the dog come the dawn on Sunday, BCC is worth a visit if you're in the area. The onion bhaji -- four for three bucks -- are giant nuggets of onion and potato battered in flour and spices and deep-fried, and the yogurt dipping sauce that comes alongside adds just enough heat to induce a Lassi craving, which here come in three varieties (I am not partial to the "Salt and Spice" one, however). The broiled tandoori wings are a treat I haven't seen at other places, rubbed with some magical blend of spices I have yet to discern, and have a clean, bright flavor.

Service is another story. Always efficient and courteous, but can at times come off as perfunctory. There is one waiter in particular who does not go out of his way to make you feel welcome, but he doesn't go out of his way to make you feel unwelcome, either. He's just there to take your order and silently refill your ice water approximately every three minutes, without any forced warmth. This actually appeals to me in this circumstance. I don't need service with a smile, especially if my waiter is the type of guy who doesn't normally smile much (a fact I am sure of after many repeat visits). Check out the buffet one week and you might see regulars arrive with their kids, who upon entering the restaurant run to the staff to give them hugs and high fives. Yes, even to that guy that doesn't smile enough.

Yeah, it's a great oyster happy hour, better than Clyde's even. They have usually have eight varieties of oysters, with tasting notes for each, and every time I've been the quality has been excellent. I asked last time I was in and I guess you can sit at the raw bar instead of the regular bar, too. Oh, and they have housemade potato chips as bar snacks.

The infused alcohols are fun (and half price during happy hour like all their drinks, including wine), but I have never had very attentive service at the bar here, i.e. on last visit we were made to wait fifteen minutes before ordering drinks despite the fact that there were only a few other customers there, and when the bartender did arrive service was brusque. I normally wouldn't mind much, but the clock was ticking (happy hour is only until 7).