jasonc

just to add a data point and nothing else, i'm not wild about the connotation fusion carries either.

O.J. Mayo

Thanks Don!

Yeah that is definitely BS.  Someone should notify Arnold Palmer about this.

And if they fresh squeezed lemonade costs so much, why would half of it cost more than a full glass?  Surely it's half as hard to squeeze half as many lemons.  Maybe I'm overthinking this.

I like the line on the place setting:   "Send a Salami to Your Boy in The Army".   When I went away to college my mom used to send down salami's.  Of course as a kid we also had this randy pet dog that would burst out of the house when he could and race around as much as possible till he got tired and hungry.   We used salami to entice him back into the house and so we could grab his collar when he was gallivanting around outside.  The dog and I had similar tastes!!!  

Should be boy or girl.

There is no indication that these are their interpretive variations of the traditional Mexican  recipes. I also meant to mention that "enchiladas roja" should be enchiladas rojas. I'm not even a Spanish speaker, but I know that the adjective should match the noun if the noun is plural.

Yeah, I think you are right, now that I think about it more.

Maybe it's not meant to be a duplication of standard recipes.

How did the Hunter's Stew go, don?

deft photoshop work.

For some reason I have a vivid memory of an ad I Ricchi used to run in the Washington Post Magazine with a bunch of animals wearing evening wear and dining in the restaurant. 

This is my blog that started as an attempt to find the best pho in Toronto, but eventually morphed into a general food and travel blog.

This is a post I'm particularly proud of about the people behind the restaurants I enjoyed in Hong Kong.

"truly unique" indeed

Indeed, my brother was recently torn up over whether to pay $500 to get free BBQ for life from this place in Eagle Rock.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/320417703/max-city-bbq

Amoo's House of Kabob embodies the notion of family.  For one, it's a true family-run enterprise with several generations working towards a common goal, driven largely by the sheer will of their brother and son.  It is also an incredibly family-friendly restaurant with an approachable staff and setting.

So with only a couple of days in DC, I decided to take my dad here for his 84^th birthday.  Based on everything I had read, it seemed like exactly the kind of restaurant he would love "“ honest, but elevated cuisine, and a staff that would go the extra-mile to make him feel like a VIP.  I've been wrong about 90% of the things I've done over the past year, but this wasn't one of them.  Amoo's was the perfect restaurant this night.

It's not hard to understand why Amoo's has racked up such impressive scores on the various social dining websites.  Throughout the meal, Chef Seb and his staff made us feel completely at home.  Of course, in addition to the stellar service, a great deal of thought is put into the menu.  I've never had Persian cuisine beyond the standard kabobs, but after one meal here I was left wondering what the heck was wrong with me.  And I was also wondering why the heck Chef Seb doesn't write a cookbook because there are not many people out there doing what he is doing, and people should know about it.

On this night we had a stuffed acorn squash filled with gheymeh bademjan (beef, yellow split pea and eggplant stew; $18), zereshk polo with lamb ($18), and a lamb chimichurra dish ($30).  There were several bright spots and not a dark one.  I focused on the zereshk and it was fantastic.  The lamb, impossibly tender, was deftly flavored with saffron.  And I have never seen such detail paid to rice, which depending on the bite, was light, sweet and sour with just the right amount of oil.  The stuffed squash was similarly complex, with the sweetness of the squash playing well the earthy split peas.

I'm greatly looking forward to returning and trying some of the combination platters to see how Amoo's does the standards.

A lot of nice things have been said here about the restaurant, Chef Seb and his staff.  I wouldn't quibble with a single one. 

Just saw they are expanding to Ballston's Liberty Center (across from the mall and erstwhile location of Leeks) in 2014.  Isabella cannot be stopped.

eta: countdown until it has to be moved to Rocks' dreaded multiple locations list.

My reaction can be explained by the following series of comments on the article.

In these comments, someone replies to the Babe's article -  a very well reasoned reply.  The Babe's assistant responds to most comments but she left this one alone.  The reaction of the Babe's readers portrays the type of anti-scientific, undiscerning promotion of anything natural that I was talking about, and really gets under my skin.

Melissa:

Do you realize that ALL foods that are consumed are processed in some way? The organic milk you buy from your grocer? Yep"¦ PROCESSED (pasteurization is a form of processing). Unless you're milking your own cow (which I don't recommend because the pasteurization makes your milk safe to drink), your milk is processed. Spray-drying skim milk is simply removing the water from milk. And the carrageenan you so vehemently abhor? Made from, you guessed it! SEAWEED! Do you eat sushi? What's the difference?

...

Also, good luck trying to make frozen yogurt maintain its consistency without stabilizers and emulsifiers (the gums I just mentioned). Unless you're going to make homemade ice cream/frozen yogurt to eat immediately, those things HAVE to be in there. What's wrong with corn? What's wrong with processing? If you don't want processed foods, grow your own garden and livestock so that you can feed them whatever, whenever, however. That's the only way to get around processed foods.

Some Replies:

Melissa, Don't you understand that God made it just the way you need it"“complete and ready to go. All of this "we make it better" is what is causing the terrible health problems in this country.

"What's wrong with corn?" Are you kidding? And the PROCESSING of natural foods, like seaweed, is the problem, not the food itself.

Whatever it is you're eating, it sure doesn't seem to be making you very happy.

That was a bit knee jerk, and I do think the general point, that it's not particularly healthy is correct.  But a lot of it was based on her listing ingredients that are hard to pronounce and saying, "Well I don't want that in my body, do you?"  While the science simply doesn't support the conclusion that these fillers and preservatives have any adverse health effects. 

Sorry, but that is just an awful article.  She might as well just delete every other word and replace it with "NATURALISTIC FALLACY."

Indeed, the nearly universal praise is another reason I decided to take the plunge on the first one

Feeling out of touch with the zeitgeist, I watched the first Hunger Games movie a couple of nights ago.

Generally, I'm predisposed to like post-apocalyptic science fiction movies with attractive lead actresses.

But I'm also predisposed to dislike movies based on teen novels.

So how would these two sources of bias interact?

(Plot Discussion and Minor Spoiler Alerts Follow)

I guess my conclusion is that if you can convince yourself that the plot device the movie is based on is plausible, then it's a pretty enjoyable movie.  The device, of course, is that this society keeps its proletariat in check by having each district submit two teenagers to a yearly battle royale in which only one survives ("The Hunger Games").  Donald Sutherland (the leader of this Nation) explains it as a way to remind the Nation of futility of previous uprisings, and provide hope, but not too much hope (hope for what, I couldn't say - perhaps hope that you or your child can be that one person who survives and lives on as some kind of pseudo-celebrity).  I should also say that the Hunger Games are televised and treated like the most popular reality show of all time in this world.  Sort of like the Truman Show.

So as I'm sort of indicating, you really have to do some mental backflips to make this twisted prison logic make sense.  My guess is the reason kids like it is the confluence of action, the there can only be one reality TV/Kardashian component, and the easy to draw social commentary (Obama is President Snow - OPEN YOUR EYES PEOPLE!).

It's also not hard, knowing there are two other installments, to figure out where this is all going.

But that said, it's a pretty well-executed action movie with a compelling performance by Jennifer Lawrence.  It's hard to not make parallels to her coming out party in Winter's Bone, which I'm sure the Hunger Games producers were much influenced by.  A  lot of similar ground is covered.  In both movies she hunts and cooks squirrels, is beat up, and takes care of a younger sister (and is indeed driven by her desire to protect her siblings).  Of course, it was all done in a much more evocative way in Winter's Bone, making it even harder to take Hunger Games seriously.

That said, Lawrence is a commanding presence, and there are times when she portrayed internal conflict in such a strong yet understated way that I had to pause to movie to try to figure out what I really thought she was feeling.  

My only other complaint is that, out of no where, we learn that the Hunger Game producers can manifest giant pumas at will and insert them anywhere in the tournament grounds.  That was a shocker.

There was a day, not too long ago, when this website was the most respectable source of DC-area food news and writing.  I don't know anyone on here personally, but I've come to deeply respect many of your opinions and writing flourish.

After several dust-ups over the past few weeks involving personal attacks and baseless outbursts, I don't know if I can say this is still true.

Of course, people will disagree from time to time, but that doesn't mean it has to get nasty.  Please, let's go back to being an example for others to follow, rather than a cautionary tale.  Isn't that what heroes do?  They live as if the world was what it should be, to show it what it could be.

great now i have to be nostalgic all night.

Dr. Oz actively and regularly promotes pseudoscience. 

whoops.  I swear I read it

Do they have wifi?