dracisk

To be clear, my issue was less with the waiter's personality quirks (who knows? maybe I'm the one with the quirky personality) and more with the fact that he decided we didn't need bread (highly lauded bread at that) because we ordered sandwiches as our entrees. Then when I asked for bread he implied that I was eating too much bread at my meal. Mirabelle seems like it should be the kind of place where if I order bread for my appetizer, bread for my entree, and bread for dessert, they would be happy to bring it. I did think it was a training issue stemming from the top.

I never got around to writing up my lunch here at the end of August, but I felt similarly to @squidsdc in that I enjoyed the food but not so much the service. I didn't have the issue with allergies (I thankfully don't have any) or HVAC (we ate outside), but I just thought our waiter was odd. I felt like I was on a (don't get me wrong -- totally platonic) first date with someone I just wasn't connecting with, like when you're constantly stepping on the other person's words. So maybe our personalities just didn't mesh, and that's fine. But my friend and I ordered an heirloom tomato salad as an appetizer, and we split two sandwiches (the jambon buerre and the burger) for our entrees. When we were almost done with our tomato salad, which was drizzled with amazing olive oil, I realized we didn't have any of the amazing bread and butter, so I asked for some. Our waiter was happy to bring some but not before pointing out that he didn't think we'd want any bread because we were having sandwiches for our entrees. Which made me feel like a pig. So maybe that's a lot of bread in a meal, but there was no way I was going to miss out on that bread and butter! I thought the waiter should have offered us some when we sat down, and it would have been up to us to decline the bread or not eat it. Maybe they had a bread shortage or didn't want to waste bread on people who were already having sandwiches for our entrees? I don't know, but I wanted that bread, and I didn't think it was any of the waiter's business. I think there were a couple of other minor incidents, but I'm not remembering details 2 months later. I expected more from the service at this place.

As far as this female is concerned, males should feel free to offer any ideas as well. This isn't women's problem to solve.

They've rebranded as Rock Creek Kitchen. Per their website they have comfort food at comfortable prices. They're now closed on Sundays and Mondays, which surprises me, as I was under the impression that their Sunday brunch was popular. Google has them listed as closed, but they were open last Friday. We briefly checked out the new menu but decided to go to the Limerick Pub across the street (and owned by the same people) instead.

Tom's not impressed. At the 38th iteration of Nobu, the pretense tastes awful.

Cauliflower steak for $32, wow.

Growing up a Red Sox fan prepared me well to root for the Nats.

Please not another Ethiopian restaurant. I like Ethiopian food but enough is enough!

Apparently the location in Wheaton is unlikely to open after all: http://eastmoco.blogspot.com/2017/06/wheaton-tilted-kilt-future-in-question.html. The Wheaton location is no longer listed on their website as opening soon (or at all). I can't say I'm upset.

I think you and I feel the same way about this film. I mostly enjoyed it, but I was kind of baffled by all the Oscar attention (with the usual caveat that the Oscars are a crock). I seem to remember thinking it was formulaic (as you wrote) and at times cheesy. I haven't seen it (it's on my list!), but Jennifer Lawrence is supposed to be amazing in "Winter's Bone." That was the first I'd ever heard of her. A very different movie and a very different role from "Silver Linings Playbook."

I started watching Season Three of "Better Call Saul" and lost interest pretty quickly, so I'd say saxdrop was right. I think I watched two episodes. I liked Seasons One and Two, though (not that I remember many details about them at this point).

I'm going to have to remember to celebrate the International Day of the Nacho on October 21st.

I've been meaning to post in this thread about the amazing nachos I had at Mother's Cantina in Ocean City, in case any nacho lovers find themselves out that way. Here's what I wrote in the Ocean City thread: The culinary highlight was probably Mother's Cantina..., where we had the best nachos I've had in recent memory and possibly ever. A huge portion of fresh chips appropriately covered in toppings (nary an untopped chip!), nicely melted and in places delightfully crispy cheese, chorizo admirably lacking in grease, and flavorful chicken. Somehow I also managed to eat the burrito combo (consisting of a burrito and an enchilada plus rice and beans). I really appreciated the deep flavors and their herb garden hanging in pouches against their outdoor back wall. My husband enjoyed his margarita, and I enjoyed my not too sweet sangria -- I could have drank a whole pitcher.

With the number of Portuguese-American people and Portuguese restaurants in Rhode Island it's criminal how little Portuguese food I"ve eaten in my life. I'll need to rectify that on some future trips! I've read great things about O Dinis.

A million might be a slight exaggeration, but with all the Italian restaurants around there's really no reason to eat at Olive Garden. Even if a cheap independent place isn't that great, at least you're supporting a local business and the local place probably isn't worse than Olive Garden. I've eaten at Olive Garden, too (not in Rhode Island), and it's also been awhile for me. I really don't remember much about it. I ate at a Carrabba's in Maryland a few years ago and couldn't believe how expensive it was for the quality of the food we got. Obviously. ;-) There's also no Red Lobster in Rhode Island -- as it should be!!

I had never heard of the Pasta Pass before, but one of my husband's friends managed to buy one this year. He gloated about it on Facebook. I feel very proud of my native state of Rhode Island, home to a sizeable Italian-American population and about a million independent Italian restaurants from mom and pop to fancy, that we only have one Olive Garden. To put this in perspective, Massachusetts has 18 Olive Gardens. Granted, the one Rhode Island Olive Garden is often packed (why??), but still.

I went to Ocean City last weekend, arriving Thursday and leaving Monday. I didn't make it to as many recommended places as I'd hoped (my husband is usually happy to let me choose dining locations, but he had more opinions than usual this trip, many stemming from his childhood trips to OC -- thankfully I managed to steer him away from the Phillips seafood buffet!), but we still had some yummy grub. Thanks to my husband we ended up at Bull on the Beach (94th Street) twice. The man loves red meat and remembered the place from an OC trip in the 80s. I'm no pit beef expert, but I enjoyed my pit beef sandwich on our first visit and my smoked brisket sandwich on our second visit. My husband loved the pit beef and got the same sandwich both times. However, on our second visit we had what were possibly the lamest nachos I've ever had in my life. The shredded cheese wasn't even melted, and the chips were out of a bag and very close to stale. We should have sent them back and asked them to put them under the broiler for a few minutes, but for whatever reason we didn't. The culinary highlight was probably Mother's Cantina (thanks, @Dr. Delicious!), where we had the best nachos I've had in recent memory and possibly ever. A huge portion of fresh chips appropriately covered in toppings (nary an untopped chip!), nicely melted and in places delightfully crispy cheese, chorizo admirably lacking in grease, and flavorful chicken. Somehow I also managed to eat the burrito combo (consisting of a burrito and an enchilada plus rice and beans). I really appreciated the deep flavors and their herb garden hanging in pouches against their outdoor back wall. My husband enjoyed his margarita, and I enjoyed my not too sweet sangria -- I could have drank a whole pitcher. Sunday night we hit Ropewalk, which was as described above -- light pours on the alcohol and mediocre food. But by that point we'd been eating in restaurants for 3 days with a 3-year-old, so we didn't really care because they had a playground! We were able to sit right by the playground on a beautiful night and supervise the child while we ate and drank and watched the sunset over the bay. I forgot the advice above to avoid the mixed drinks, which is very good advice -- our waitress couldn't facilitate our ordering of rum punches. I just wanted various fruit juices mixed with rum, but she made it seem like they wouldn't be able to do that. We didn't inquire directly with a bartender or push too hard with our waitress, but I thought it was odd, especially in a beach place. Junk food delights included Dumser's Dairyland twice for ice cream (thanks, @KeithA!), Fractured Prune (delicious when hot, not so much when not -- the simpler the better), Fisher's Popcorn ($25 for an extra large bucket that was gone in days but whatever we were on mini-vacation and I love caramel corn (in this case mixed with white cheddar corn -- extra yum)). Sadly we didn't make it to Berlin this trip, but I'm keeping it on the agenda for a future trip. On the way home we tried to stop at the Scottish Highland Creamery in Oxford, MD, but it was already keeping off season hours so was closed on a Monday. In case anyone is wondering about off-season crowds (we were there the weekend after Labor Day), the few crowds (mainly on the OC and Rehoboth boardwalks) were totally manageable. We had the beach (at 125th Street) almost to ourselves, and most restaurants were uncrowded. We'll likely go back the same weekend next year while we can take advantage of my daughter not being in public school for one more year.

The Ukrainian Festival starts today: http://www.ukrainefestdc.com/!

Second for Lures! We used to like to eat there when we lived not far away in Crofton.

Yes, congrats! I love how you had someone (a stranger, I assume) film it from afar. Very sweet!

Same, although I'll use OpenTable or whatever other online system the restaurant uses. I have to really, really, really want to eat at a place to pick up the phone to make a reservation (or my party's too big to book online). I generally hate the phone, and the fact that I don't want to be the jerk who calls for a reservation at the height of the dinner rush makes calling for a reservation even more annoying and complicated -- I have to remember to call when someone's at the restaurant but they're presumably not very busy.

Weird. The menu on the website now is the one we received when they had run out of the lamb shoulder for the mesibah/party time menu.

Yep, they're accepting reservations on OpenTable.

Trapped Mexican Bakery Staff Bake Hundreds Of Loaves For Harvey Flood Victims, by Lee Moran, on huffingtonpost.com.

Grilled lemon yogurt chicken and raw shredded Brussels sprouts with lemon and oil (all made by my husband). We ate the chicken in tortillas with the shredded Brussels sprouts as a sort of topping. Delicious! Even my 3-year-old, who's going through a picky phase, liked the chicken.