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Finatic

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  1. Finatic
    It is not.
  2. Finatic
    Last week, my sister and her fiancé took me to Siren for a belated birthday dinner. I had eaten there once before. I took my son and his girlfriend for Christmas dinner. They offered a special menu for Christmas. Basically, all appetizers, salads, sides and desserts were offered buffet style. You then ordered entrees from a separate menu. Because I was not able to taste the regular offerings on Christmas, I was eager to return. It did not disappoint! To start, we shared the big eye tuna and the yellowtail crudo. The big eye tuna was served with Kalamansi lime, sesame seed, wakame seaweed, macadamia nut and avocado mousse. Not only was it beautifully presented, it was absolutely delicious. The tuna may have been the best I have ever had, and I am very picky about my tuna. The yellowtail crudo was also fantastic. For entrees, my sister and her fiancé split the whole salt encrusted branzino stuffed with lobster mousse. They brought the fish to the table to present it in its salt crust before taking it away and freeing it from its crust. The two of them could not finish the branzino. For my entrée I ordered the black cod with an Asian style glaze. It was cooked to absolute perfection and was delicious. Looking forward to going back again!
  3. Finatic
    I do not know what that means. I can tell you that the last one we drank was really good!
  4. Finatic
    Oops! Just realized that I typed the wrong date for the Chateau Lynch Bages. It is 1962.
  5. Finatic
    Yes. Montgomery County has shitty wine selections at their county run liquor stores.
  6. Finatic
    I live in Virginia just outside of DC. Liquor is significantly cheaper in DC than Virginia. Virginia has state run liquor stores. Virginia ATF agents have been known to sit in unmarked cars at DC liquor stores looking for VA license plates, then following them across the bridge.
  7. Finatic
    I view myself as a libertarian. Interesting to see you can edit your posts without it showing they were edited. Here versus hear! Now it says read!
  8. Finatic
    We live in a country (at least I do as you claim to be in Barcelona) that seemingly has 300,000,000 guns. If guns were so inherently dangerous. we should all be dead. It is not the gun, but the person holding it. Glad you picked up om the reductio ad absurdum. An effective way of communication. After all of the abuse I have received from you over the years, I am officially signing off of this website forever. You are supposed to be a moderator. If you want to espouse your views, start a blog!
  9. Finatic
    I do not think the pharmaceutical industry is responsible for the abuse and overuse of narcotics or antibiotics. A licensed doctor has to prescribe the use of their products. Do doctors abuse that? Definitely! But the sleazebag doctors doing so do not have deep enough pockets, so the government goes after the people with the money. The whole tobacco thing is very different. When the multi-state legal action against the tobacco companies occurred, the states' attorney generals seemingly threw their constituents under the bus by granting immunity to the tobacco companies for cash in their pockets. If tobacco is as inherently dangerous as many (including me) think it is, why enter into a settlement agreement that incentivizes the companies to sell more, and incentivizes the states to have them sell more? I do suspect some of our politicians have accepted bribes. The Clinton Foundation comes to mind. The congressman with $80,000 in his freezer comes to mind. (Gave a new meaning to cold cash!) You are forgetting the Pharma.org building on the corner of 23rd (or is it 24th) and Pennsylvania. Have you been to the AARP headquarters?
  10. Finatic
    I do not know what bitcoin is, but before you invest, I strongly suggest you research the Dutch tulip craze.
  11. Finatic
    I am going to go out on a limb here. The 2nd Amendment will never be repealed. To do so requires two-thirds approval from both the House and Senate, followed by three-fourths approval of the states. While I am at it, I am going to go out on another limb. The NRA is not responsible for our gun laws. The NRA is functionally no different than the NEA or AARP. Each one lobbies on behalf of their members to further what they believe their members' interests are. The people responsible for enacting law are the 535 members of the House and the Senate (Eleanor Holmes Norton gets no vote, probably a good thing. I had her as a professor in law school, she always seemed a little confused). Every member of Congress is not only lobbied by the NRA, but they are also lobbied by anti-NRA forces. Why are the anti-NRA forces not blamed for their perceived failures? One of the most recent shootings shows not the lack of gun laws, but the complete failure of government on every level to enforce the laws on the books and to input into the national database perceived and proven emotional problems that should prevent people from being approved for purchasing guns. Finally, I am proposing that we ban tablespoons. Obesity will be gone tomorrow!
  12. Finatic
    The wall is not a total solution. It is merely one arrow in the quiver of our border control agents. It will allow them to better focus on preventing illegal immigration and import of illegal drugs. The Pope decried the plan to build our wall, yet he lives inside one!
  13. Finatic
    Santa Rita 120 Sauvignon Blanc for the white. $6.00 at Total Wine before the 10% discount. Cline Cashmere for the red. Might be a little out of your budget, but I suspect your average cost will be close to $10 if you go with the Santa Rita. Any bottle of wine with Dave Phinney's name on it. Try his location series. I question your ratio of reds to whites. Afternoon or evening reception? I suspect the ratio will change for the time of day. Also, 120 bottles is 500 to 600 glasses of wine for 400 people. For that amount of wine at one time, you can probably negotiate a 20% to 25% discount from you local wine purveyor. They will special order it for you and it will be sold before they pay for it. What jurisdiction is the reception in? You do not want to get caught driving that amount of wine across state lines. Good luck and congratulations!
  14. Finatic
    A few thoughts, comments, about Chef Andres. Jaleo opened in 1993! That is 25 years ago! Chef Andres now has 4 or 5 restaurants in DC within blocks of each other. I have eaten in and enjoyed all of them. On some nights, it is impossible to get into any of them! So notwithstanding many of the criticisms in this thread, he is doing something right as diners are voting with their pocketbooks. Chef Andres redefined dining. By offering small plates meant to be shared, he changed our mindsets away from appetizer, entrée, dessert. Doing so allowed we the eaters to try many different dishes in one meal. Dishes were delivered as prepared, instead of in some predetermined order. This probably also helped the kitchen and the front of the house by allowing them to deliver whatever they could get out of the kitchen first if, for example, the grill station was backed up. It probably also shortens the average meal time, allowing him to get more turns. Many chefs who try to make the transition from cooking in one restaurant to building an empire fail because they do not have the managerial skills to put in place a system that guarantees quality control. I can attest that Chef Andres has figured this one out. Years ago, a dear friend of mine who is a fine dining chef, took a job working with Chef Andres. Fine dining chefs tinker. That is what they do. Chef Andres would not allow him to tinker. He wanted his customers to be served what they expected. Neither one is wrong. Just different. Chef Andres runs a tight ship, and his efforts are proven by his crowds. He runs a well oiled machine that delivers a good product at a fair price. DC is fortunate to be his home base.
  15. Finatic
    When interstate shipping of wine first began, I was fortunate (or was it unfortunate) enough to get on their allocation list. At that time, you had to manually fill out an order form and mail it to them with a check for thousands of dollars. When the wine arrived a few weeks later, it was accompanied by a note that said I made a mistake in calculating the total price, but that they shipped the wine anyway and would add the $3.00 to my next order. I never placed another order!
  16. Finatic
    From a personal perspective, I agree with you. ON the other hand, I strongly believe that people should pair wine and food in the manner that they enjoy without ridicule from wine snobs. Once at a very fancy DC restaurant, our waiter criticized my date's wine choice. I immediately walked to the maitre d' and requested a new waiter.
  17. Finatic
    To be fair, I think we should separate the discussion between fortified wine (port, madeira, etc.) and non-fortified wine. Fortified wine, with the extra alcohol added, can last almost indefinitely (no one has lived long enough to prove or disprove of this theory. Also in my house, it is difficult to get it to last more than one night.) That being said, I attended a wine dinner at Plume Restaurant at the Jefferson Hotel many years ago. (For those of you who do not know, the Jefferson is one of the premier boutique hotels in DC. The food was exquisite and the service was impeccably European, meaning tuxes, formal service with no real interaction between the wait staff and the customers other than describing the dishes. They were seeking a Michelin star at the time, and Michelin prefers that type of service. My personal taste is for a more informal interaction with the staff.) In any event, each course was paired with a different Madeira, some over 100 years old. The guest of honor was Mannie Berk from the Rare Wine Company. If I recall correctly, Mannie told us that Madeira was preferred by the pirates because it could withstand the conditions on a pirate ship for sometimes years at a time. A wonderful experience overall. On the non-fortified side, the oldest wine I have tasted and currently have in my cellar is a 1982 Chateau Lynch Bages. my girlfriend's birth year (yes, I am old), bought from Rare Wine Company. For major birthdays for family and friends, I have now made it a habit of visiting RWC in search of a bottle from their birth year. I also purchased a case of Penfolds Grange from my son's birth year. We have been sharing them on special occasions and Tuesdays ever since. For those of us without the foresight to buy a case from our children's birth year upon release, places like RWC are a savior. Stock up, enjoy, and share with friends and family. By the way, I have no affiliation with RWC other than being a satisfied customer.
  18. Finatic
    We had dinner at Brabo last Friday night. We ate in the hotel dining room at 7 pm. I was surprised how few people were there. Neither one of us can eat like in thee old days, so we each just ordered an entrée. I ordered the scallops which were served with mussels over risotto together with a few chips. At first I could not tell what the chips were. It was chorizo which had apparently been ground finely, the formed into a very thin layer and baked! Very clever! The scallops were cooked perfectly and the whole dish worked well. My gf ordered the lobster thermador. Our initial impression was that the portion size was very small. Mixed in the thermador were roasted (I think) chestnuts. They seemingly added no flavor to the dish, and had an unpleasant mealy texture. When the waiter noticed that my gf had pushed the chestnuts aside, he offered a side of bok choy to her. A nice gesture!
  19. Finatic
    I do not remember Santa Fe East as being fine dining. Before Santa Fe East, if my memory serves correctly, it was a dark dim lit English restaurant named Wayfarers. Certainly not fine dining!
  20. Finatic
    after 42 years, Geranio has closed. What a loss for Alexandria!
  21. Finatic
    I had the Dover Sole appetizer at Marcel's a few nights ago. If you have ever had the real thing, you will know when it is false advertising, The flavor and texture are amazing! It was served over a gateau of zucchini prepared two different ways with a mushroom sauce and a lemon butter sauce. Absolutely delicious! The scallops and duck confit napoleon were pretty good too! My favorite restaurant in the DC area!
  22. Finatic
    Too late for 100 King Street. It is going to become Mia’s Kitchen, an Italian Restaurant. How many Italian restaurants and ice cream joints can lower King Street support?
  23. Finatic
    You obviously have not been to the Safeway in Sonoma!
  24. Finatic
    100 King Street in Alexandria is available too!
  25. Finatic
    I am pretty sure that thread exists. Search for 100 King Street. Lincoln Park Cafe is a horrible location for a restaurant!
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