MC Horoscope

Enjoyed our meal there last night! Sorrel soup for me. Wow. Really had a kick! Just a touch of sour cream. I was tilting and scraping my bowl for every last drop! Frisee salad with duck confit, duck cracklings, and poached egg for my wife. Wish there had been more duck cracklings as they were the best thing about the salad. Roast pork tacos with pork cracklings, and fish and chips. These were the best French fries I have had in a while. Our entrees were in the 15-17 dollar range. Had to skip dessert, but I saw chocolate cake and saffron crême brulé and others on the menu.

How about this quote from the TechCrunch article? "Whats more likely? In ten years, everyone goes to a restaurant and talks to one another without pulling out their phones at the table or in ten years, the table is designed in a way to enable you to more easily use your phones? Thats an easy one." I don't see that happening. "We'd like a table for four, with everyone looking away from one another."

Good to know!

We have only been to the Rockville location once (always left when they said we'd have a 40 minute wait). We lucked out and got a seat at the counter in front of the ovens. Of course we were only 2. The bar area would have been deafening! This was at 6:30 on a Wednesday night. Bigger menu than Mia's in Bethesda, which is also always crowded but still cozier. I can't think of another non-chain place for pizza on this stretch of Rockville Pike. I would try the sandwiches next time. It'd have to be good for a 90 minute wait!

Had a delicious clam pizza special at Mia's last night! Surprised that the clams were in the shell. I have never seen that on a pizza before. I didn't get the memo. I just took them out of the shell and dripped the juice on my pie.

This place recently closed. In its place is a restaurant called Pollo Mex.

Suporn's in Wheaton closed recently. I was going to post about it but didn't see a thread for that restaurant! We liked a few things on the menu, and they used catfish instead of tilapia in a few of their dishes, which I appreciated. Nice people, too!

You'll be just a hop, skip, and jump away from Manteo, where we've been to 1587 in the Tranquil House Inn for fine dining and Adrianna's (pork pot pie!) for casual. Both down by the water in the historic district. Kill Devil Grill will be pretty casual. Have fun!

What in the world was this article talking about, foodies being center stage and having cultural influence? This looked to me like a personal, nonsensical rant about a stereotype most people would not even recognize as really existing, much like the characters in the TV show The Goode Family.

We went for our first time this evening, a Wednesday. No reservations. Got there at 6:15 and were lucky to be seated. There were two large parties waiting to be seated and some others who had reservations, I guess. I would reserve a table next time. It IS small and loud. You ARE close to your neighbors. But the service was very good. Our waiter gave us good suggestions for dessert (a rum-soaked baba with roasted pineapple and creme fraiche). The menu was larger than we expected. The tasting menu (4 courses for $68) was tempting. Chestnut soup, scallops, squab, and a crepe for dessert. Both of us would have had to get it. I would try it another night. Wasn't ready for it tonight. There must have been over a dozen specials of the day. From that list of specials we had an appetizer of foie gras, which was delicious if a bit pricey at $26. Came with marinated plums in some kind of wine reduction. Outstanding! I expected the plums to be tart but they were sweet. Other specials included veal chop, rack of lamb, duck confit, boudin blanc, escargot, lobster bisque. Others I can't remember. The regular menu had several fish dishes: whole branzino, roasted Dorade, grilled salmon, roasted monkfish with lentils, sea bass, bouillabaisse. Meat choices included hangar steak, NY strip, roast chicken. My wife had the monkfish and I had the Dorade, which came with a wonderful potato gratin dish with parmesan cheese, toasted well on the exterior. That was probably the best part of my entree. I don't know how it would compare with the potato dish mentioned upthread from the chef's previous restaurant, but I think I would try potato dishes here again. Didn't notice if potato was on the list of vegetable side dishes you could choose for sharing family style. Wish I could do that potato dish justice in my description! I hope this place does well!

The veal roast is back, after having been off the menu for a while now. Still serving the white pizza with cheese and herbs.

Wouldn't be a bad idea to have a Like button, but if you do adopt it, please don't make it an option to either Like - or Reply like I see on some sites. Like Reply Why should you have to Reply to explain why you don't like when, on the other hand, you can just click Like without amplification or explanation?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/16/AR2010111604112.html?hpid=moreheadlines My favorite quote: "UNESCO honored traditional Mexican cuisine as well, although that fact tended to be lost in the din of self-congratulation in France over the world body's acknowledgment..."

Don't laugh, but I think they make a good one at the new Glenarden Wegman's in the cafe area! I find the one at Cuba de Ayer to be dry, but this one is not. Lots of other choices in the cafe.

Jerry's Seafood in Lanham? From the Beltway it's the Maryland 450 exit to Lanham, then Lanham-Severn Road. May be a bit pricey, but good!

My wife and I went to Obelisk for the first time this weekend and really loved it! The dinner is $75 per person, extra for wine pairings. We thought that overall it was a very good value considering the quality and variety of dishes we had. The antipasti came out quickly. Actually the pacing of the whole meal was excellent. We had the delicious burrata mentioned upthread, as well as a dish of roma and lima beans with some kind of shaved fish roe. Stewed octopus which was very tender. Fried sardines. And rillettes of lamb and pork. That was really good! The burrata and rillettes were my favorites. For first course my wife had ravioli stuffed with eggplant and fried green tomato. I had spaghetti alla chitarra with clams. The ravioli were soft as we like them, not hard, but not as fine and transparent as the ones you can get at Tosca or Zaytinya. Very good flavor, though. Compared well to the wonderful raviolis we love at Sergio's. At first I wasn't too sure about my pasta but the flavors grew and grew on me as I tasted the sauce with fresh parsley. The third choice which we didn't have was a hearty lentil soup. I probably should have tried that. For our second courses my wife had grilled lamb chops with chick peas, and I had pan-cooked fluke with fennel and guanciale. She said the lamb chops were done just right and were quite tasty but a little fatty. There were two of them. You get a lot of food, but there isn't any waste with uninteresting fillers on the plate. My fluke was well seasoned and a bit blackened on the outside, making for a nice combination of textures and flavors. The fennel just didn't have it that night (maybe too hard to get good fennel in the area?) but the guanciale was spectacular! There wasn't a lot of it but it was so flavorful. I wasn't expecting it to be as crunchy as it was. My wife said it was almost like cracklins! The fish compared well with what you can get at Pesce, which I think is one of the better places in DC for fish. The other second course available was squab. Hard to top the antipasti, but the cheeses and dessert might have been the best things we had! Somehow I got a second wind at that point. There were three cheeses, but I can only remember the name of one of them, a sovrano hard cheese like parmigiano reggiano. One was like a blue cheese, and the other was soft and creamy. One of the best cheese plates we have had in DC, though I think we might put CityZen at the top of our list for cheeses. The fruity jam that came with it was quince. For dessert we both had the chocolate cake with caramel sauce. I can't describe it to do it justice! So light and moist! The other choices were a strudel with dried fruit, and a yogurt with quince and cranberry. Service was excellent. The atmosphere was comfortable and leisurely. I would love to return. Very good value for what all we got.

I have a feeling the editor of Cooks Source doesn't know that her SpaceFace page is being flooded with comments, some of them funny, some of them maybe overboard. If I were her I would have tried to do something about that. After having made a sincere apology and a donation to the author. I picture the Cooks Source being floored with surprise. Anyway, her comments may have set the cause of Public Domain and Fair Use back a few years!

Stayed in Kill Devil Hills a couple of weeks ago for some delightful weather and a bit of the Duck Jazz Festival. The standout on our trip was again Blue Point in Duck. We went twice for lunch. First time my wife had a panko-encrusted baked flounder on a bed of grits and I had a shrimp-crab salad poboy. Dessert was our best peach dish of the season, a peach and plumb cobbler. Second lunch was a salad for my wife while I had what they called a Strata. I would describe it as something like a savory bread pudding with gruyere cheese. Outstanding! And the cobbler again. We went to The Pearl at around mile 6.5 on the Virginia Dare road. Nice setting but a bit pricier than we expected, even though we'd been warned. Our roasted tilefish was great, but at $34 (we should have asked) a bit high. Fois Gras was also high. $22! We had better at the Oval Room recently, for more like $14. (We should ask when the specials are not priced on the menu. I should have learned the hard way recently at Jerry's Seafood in Lanham when I had the fish of the day, orange roughy with lump crab meat on it, for $40! Perfectly fresh and well cooked, but a bit of sticker shock! Live and learn. I thought it would be in the $25 range). In Manteo we went to 1587 again, in the Tranquil House Inn on the waterfront. My osso bucco was made with a pork roast. Very tender but a little lacking in spices. Great setting! The surprise was Adrianna's for lunch, also down in the historic district. I had a pork pot pie special that was fantastic! And only $9. I guess it offset the surprise at The Pearl.

"This month, Ruta served a crudo of New Zealand sea trout, marinated with ginger and lime and topped with Burgundy truffles." My wife got a dish very similar to this last Saturday, but unfortunately the truffles were flavorless. Guess we weren't lucky. Aside from that, the dish was terrific, as well as the kabosha squash soup with a scallop in it. A single scallop. And I had my best mussels soup of the season here Saturday. We really love this place and the cooking. Hope it maintains its high standards after the move. Can't imagine that it won't!

Try the red beans side dish next time. If there's a better rendition in the area, let me know! It's a 95 cent upgrade over the black beans, which are also the best in the area in my experience. The red beans have bits of potato and some ham hock in them.

Thanks, Ignacio and Waitman! Time for me to get started! The ham croquette sounds like something I could do.

This sounds good! The sandwich at Cuba de Ayer in Burtonsville is far too dry for me, although from what I understand "dry" is supposed to be a virtue. What are your proportions for cumin-lime mayo? I have been making mayo from Paul Prudhomme's recipes in his family cookbook.

Donald Link's cookbook, Roberts Cove German Fest white beans and smoked ham stew. We had some tasso from Louisiana but the smoked ham we got from Safeway, Hillshire farms. Goya brand Navy beans. Rosemary from the garden put it over the top. Cornbread was Bobby Prudhomme's recipe from the Prudhomme Family Cookbook.

I'm in Silver Spring and find it easier to get on the train for downtown DC than drive to Rockville sometimes, so maybe I should get acquainted with the train stops in Northern Virginia! There must be some good restaurants near metro stops in Virginia. Going east west by car in Montgomery County can be a killer.

Yes, this would have been the year for me to plant okra again, seeing how it's been a hot one this summer. Too bad I didn't try! Glad to hear you're finding good okra in the markets. Back to your regularly scheduled topic....