jasonc

Thanks very much Don and I'm sorry for that younger guy. 

Is anyone else getting errors when trying to go to this website? https://www.arlingtonva.us/covid-19/vaccines/registration/

I didn't expect to get the feels this morning!

On 4/27/2019 at 3:29 AM, DaveO said:

There is a Five Guys around the corner from me- extremely convenient.  I almost never go.  Don’t like it.

Just went.   It’s still lousy and expensive 

Not expensive expensive—expensive for the crap they serve.

Why do you think it's so bad? The burgers taste good and the fries are plentiful and also real nice.

i'm getting old

On 8/18/2018 at 9:19 AM, DaveO said:

BTW:  My comments about the ultra casualness were of surprise when I focused on it—not criticism.  I was dressed not only casually but sloppy.  I’d have kicked myself out of a fancy expense account restaurant in that attire.  It was great to be able to have that meal out at a restaurant dressed so casually

Agreed - seems like the problem is in the prejudices carried by expense account-type people, rather than the folks dining at Ray's. 

Quick question about those cheddar bay biscuits. Is there crack in those things?

8 hours ago, rorkin said:

Disappointing.. limited menu. Nothing outstanding. Big cavernous space

Details!

Is Lauren still working there? She's great!

9 hours ago, Finatic said:

I normally think their food and service is pretty good, but had the grouper special at Carlyle the other day and the fish was way over cooked.

username checks out.

12 hours ago, DonRocks said:

Thanks for the picture. What are those "corn-muffin"-looking things in the corners? It seems like this is fairly starch-heavy, not that that's a bad thing - how much was it?

they are called pineapple buns but they don't have pineapple in them!

3 hours ago, DonRocks said:

I think I was just made fun of.

(But I do the best I can, given my circumstances.)

I was just feeling cheeky don - feel free to delete!

The statement of one's preference that there is no quality of dining experience that justifies waiting two hours provides no information about Rose's and should be reserved for a different conversation about waits in general. This is distinguishable from a statement that Rose's is not good enough to wait in line for two hours.

why would they have Spanish beer?

Kwames just can't catch a break in this town.

6 hours ago, Simul Parikh said:

She can handle spice, after the intensive training I've put her through, but didn't want to chance it.

How did you do the spice training?

1 hour ago, kitkatpaddywak said:

eek. food good. service bad. 

care to elaborate?

15 hours ago, sandynva said:

 Thank you for elaborating your thoughts a bit more, and helping us understand where you're coming from.   I have not noticed Chang being  in the media a tremendous amount, or doing any more self-promoting than other celebrity chefs, so I can't comment on that.    And I think the idea of comparing the prices here to the prices in the country where the  food is from is an unfair  road to go down, because  The good versions of food we have here will almost always be more expensive than the equally good version from the homeland.  For example I've had a $10 plate of pasta in Italy that was as good as anything I've had at fiola, or  I'd imagine that good pho in Vietnam  is the fraction of the price we pay here.   I don't so imagine that in Tokyo there were more expensive versions of Ramen available Than the 400 yen.  

 What I do take issue with is the idea that Ramen is inherently a cheap food and that one cannot charge more than X dollars for it.  A recurring problem that many "ethnic" restaurants have is that consumers are not willing to pay the same prices for say, Chinese or Indian, food as they are for say French or Italian food  and it's a pet peeve of mine.  So I may have read something into your post that you didn't mean.    But what drives me nuts is the idea that X food, inevitably from a non-European country, somehow isn't worth the same prices as other cuisines.  If you look at it in the abstract, $18 buys you a meal from a celebrity chef, that if you count all the meat used to make the stock and in the bowl  (  I remember seeing a recipe for Changs broth once, and it seemed to use an insane amount of meat) costs as much in ingredients as an entrée at Central or the Daniel bolud place in city center.   Why then is it OK  for Central and DB to charge $20-$25 for their entrées, while Changs 18 is too high? It is my understanding that cassoulet  was not originally a particularly high end or refined dish,  and I know polenta was definitely cheap food, as a friend's Italian parents refuse to eat it because to them it's a food for the poor.  Pizza wasn't a particularly expensive food, and hamburgers until recently weren't fancy food either.   But many  restaurants in the area offer $20 versions of each of these   And I don't hear a general outcry about it being too much to charge for a simple food.  

 Nor do I think the comparison to packaged Ramen is fair-- I love the stuff, and consider myself a bit of a connoisseur of the vegetarian varieties available at the local Asian supermarkets, but  I think the stuff I've had at Momofuku is clearly elevated beyond the stuff I get from H Mart.  And the fact that the packaged stuff exists at a certain price point shouldn't drag down how much the more elevated version should cost.  After all, I believe you can get a Totino's party pizza for a dollar or two in your local frozen section if you're lucky,  but no one cites that and says that the pizzas at etto or Ghibellina are consequently too expensive   

 I'm not  going to defend the pricing on the DC dining scene generally, I think there are far too many places that are really middle level charging top end prices and it seems to be a self perpetuating spiral with prices inching steadily upward. But given that model seems to be dominating now, I don't see why chang is any worse than anyone else or why $18  is too much for Ramen.

It's funny you mention this, Bourdain mentioned this just yesterday on Reddit(!):

I would like people really to pay more for top-quality Mexican food. I think it's the most undervalued, underappreciated world cuisine with tremendous, tremendous potential. These are in many cases really complex, wonderful sauces; particularly from Oaxaca, for instance, that date back from before Europe. I'm very excited about the possibilities for that cuisine, and I think we should pay more attention to it, learn more about it, and value it more. This is frankly a racist assumption that Mexican food or Indian food should be cheap. That's not right.

22 hours ago, dinoue said:

Sorry to post what might be considered something inflammatory and then not log in again for a few days. I stand by my Fieri comparison because I think what they are fundamentally trying to do is similar. Fieri's based his career on the concept of dive restaurants where one can presumably get good food in an unexpected location, and tending towards more homestyle/stick to your ribs. Chang is trying to do exactly this by promoting ramen as something costing three to four times what one can get in Tokyo. Yes, you can actually get a bowl of ramen in Tokyo for under 400 yen. I didn't try it, but was shocked that it is possible, and Tokyo is not exactly known for reasonable rental rates. Yes, its only a few dollars more than Daikaya, but that few dollars is more than 25% more, that's the thing when you're "elevating" what should be a cheap quick meal in price, but not in the fundamental quality of the food itself. You can't get a 25% increase in quality to justify that increase in price. 

Chang has done some great things with some of his restaurants and in one of his interviews he was pretty emphatic that he didn't want to do the greatest hits, and wanted to be creative at Momofuku DC, but I don't see that happening. He is becoming a caricature of himself, a lot of self promotion, particularly of a specific image he thinks will appeal to his perceived audience. Seriously, the only time I drink watery beer is when it's the happy hour deal for $2 at All Set. He claims to drink it all the time.

In my opinion, Chang has become a caricature of everything he has always claimed to be against in high end dining, but still thinks he speaks for the essence of pure food. The food might not be as bad as Guy Fieri's, but the marketing concept, which includes the location and it's accompanying high rent, driving it is more powerful than the culinary concepts.

Can you just lay your point(s) in a few sentences? I can't for the life of me figure out what bothers you about Momofuku. It's overpriced? You don't like the chef's attitude? Neither? Both?

it's probably a chinese restaurant.  Lamian is just the Chinese pronunciation of ramen - "pulled noodles" as you know.

I go to the one at 123 Front Street in Toronto. If you ever come, it's where the free airport shuttle drops you off. I used to go 3-4 times a week and the staff got to know me pretty well. We'd always joke around and they'd often comp at least my chips and guac and sometimes the entire meal. 

Did you see that a-hole's yelp reviews? He's a jerk!  A JERK! I know the type of people who write and say things like this - fucking know-it-all privileged a-holes. This is not an isolated incident or misunderstanding. These guys are JERKS!

I'm sort of torn here. I truly believe those a-holes needed to be taken down a notch. And it really bothers me that those a-holes now get the pleasure of knowing the servers were fired - and I do think these are the type of a-holes that get pleasure out of others' pain. 

But they did get caught red-handed.

I appreciate that.

On 4/20/2016 at 3:17 PM, farmer john said:

Making effort on defense didn't seem to diminish Jordan, Kobe, Lebron, Wade, Curry, etc etc too dreadfully on offense. If a guy has to take a bunch of time off on defense in the name of his scoring average you are more than welcome to him. 

You should read this and explore the links: 

"Kobe Haters are Stuck in 2008" by Neil Paine on fivethirtyeight.com

TL;DR version: sabermetricians used to disregard guys who could score and do little else (for a lot of the same points you make, e.g., it's selfish, anyone can do it if they take the shots, etc), but it turns out the ability to score is rare and valuable. 

The Dugout