pidgey

Well, Chef Geoff has done it again. The downtown location recently unveiled a new menu, with more than 50 items on it. Included on the menu are the new "Simple Meats"...at steakhouse prices, with steakhouse accoutrements (read: no sides included). For example, you can order Ribeye Steak with Zinfandel Jus for $29.95. If you want such sides as "tempura onion rings," its an additional $5.95. Its like Chef Geoff woke up one day and said, "How can I make this location even more mediocre?" Despite the fact that my husband really wanted a steak last night, I told him that its probably a rip off, and we both got the burger. I passed on the "chipotle mayo" that's now apparently a standard on the burger. The kitchen apparently mixed up our burgers, because I got his medium rare and he got my medium. And we were both surprised that lettuce and onion no longer appear on the burger (just tomato and pickle, and of course bacon and cheese). In fairness, the specials seemed to be at more reasonable prices, ranging from $16.95 to $31.95 (that would be the ribeye), more in line with the old menu. On the plus side, half price wine night is now apparently every Monday at the downtown location, and happy hour is extended all evening on Mondays and Tuesdays. But the wine list seems to be very pricey as well...only a few wines were in the $20 range, with most of the wines more in the $40-$60 range. The new menu does not seem to affect the New Mexico location. If I go to the downtown location again, I'll sit in the bar.

I have to second the nomination for Standard Tap. The beer was great (and I'm not even a beer person), and the food was really good. I had the chicken pie, which was finished off with a little swirl on the crust, and my husband looked at it longingly while I ate around it and then made it my last bite. He had the duck breast, which he really enjoyed, but I found a little sweet. Also had Pat's cheesesteaks (me: provolone, him:Wiz) and we both wished that the meat was more seasoned and a higher quality. On Sunday, we enjoyed an Italian dinner at Dante and Luigi's, which may be the oldest Italian restaurant in the United States. No credit cards, just cash or checks. It was good for what it was, which was exactly what we wanted: simple, tasty and filling Italian food (not terribly cheap, but whatever).

Okay, now that the dreaded Valentine's Day has come and gone, I think we can plan a date for next week. Wednesday the 28th, maybe? That way we don't look like losers who can't have a TMB dinner during the month of February.

So...me and legant? That's it?

I'm not as familiar with that area, although I am more familiar with the area north of Tenley town on Wisconsin Ave. There's a pretty good Thai restaurant up near there, 4912 (not excellent, but cheap). Any interest? Or, hey, there's always the Dancing Crab.

Anyone interested in trying again? Maybe some place in Cleveland Park?

I got this in an email from Food and Friends: Dining Out for Life – March 8th It’s time to invite all your friends to join you for Dining Out For Life 2007! That’s right – you get to host an all-out fiesta with all the glory and none of the clean up! Sign up today to be a volunteer Ambassador for Food & Friends' 11th Annual Dining Out for Life, on Thursday, March 8. We recruit more than 150 restaurants to participate that day – each of which donates 25% to 100% of their sales to Food & Friends. Each Ambassador will ‘adopt’ a restaurant, recruit friends to eat there on March 8, and be on-hand to answer questions about Food & Friends and encourage diners to make an additional contribution. There will be a brief training session where we will teach you the fine art of table hosting! Sign Up Now If you have any questions, please contact Meg Coffman, (202) 269-6878. Help Us Ready Restaurants for Dining Out for Life ... ... by assembling and distributing Dining Out for Life promotional materials to restaurants around the area. Join us on Wednesday, February 7th, at 6:30 p.m. here at Food & Friends to assemble promotional materials for restaurants and then take some back to your neighborhood to distribute. Restaurant areas include: Adams Morgan, Capitol Hill, Bethesda, Silver Spring, Shirlington and Falls Church. Contact Meg Coffman if you can help with this critical task; in your email, please include areas where you are willing to distribute materials to restaurants. We will have pizza for all!

I hope you're list is laminated.I caught the RR show for the first time yesterday. I was on the elliptical at the gym flipping channels and there she is making tuna burgers nicoise with an olive tapenade spread and sushi-grade tuna, using a ton of oil I might add. The recipe looked interesting, something I might make at home. Until she said, "This tuna tastes exactly like the stuff you get out of a can, but better." I think I flinched. Really, what is going on with that audience? They sat there, clapping inappropriately for things like pepper (um, what?). Thank god I'm not at home right now, or else I could be watching a medium tell a woman that her dead mother is happy that she is happy on RR.. I have no problem with RR's food, although I would probably cut the fat in a lot of her recipes. They are quick and easy and accessible. I wonder how many people will go looking for sushi-grade tuna at the store this week. For introducing quality ingredients to the general public, I have to applaud her. For being annoying, well, let's just say I wish she'd stick with the print medium.

I'm putting together a list of places for a very large conference that will be held at the Convention Center in mid-June. I'm trying to keep things relatively near the area or metro accessible, preferably within D.C. proper. The categories I'm working with are: Hotel Restaurants, Cheap Eats, and Hidden Treasures. Any suggestions? P.S. If I were you, I'd generally try to stay away from that area while the conference is in town (June 21-27, with most of the programs happening on the 23-26), or at least make your reservations early. Last year, almost 17,000 people attended the conference in New Orleans and attendance is expected to be a bit larger this year.

In truth, Bond never drank a classic martini. His drink is vodka and gin.

I was in Seattle last weekend for a very large conference, and that really seemed to affect the wait times at restaurants, according to my friends who live there, who aren't used to waiting an hour for a table. Here are a few of my thoughts on Seattle food: Medin's Ravioli Station in Ballard is a gas station converted into a restaurant. The prices were good, the ravioli was okay, and despite its size, we were able to get a table immediately (we had tried a few other places). I had the ravioli sampler, which had four different kinds of ravioli and sauce. Unfortunately, our waitress was not very good. She forgot our wine, could not make sauce and ravioli combo recommendations (hence why I got the sampler), and when she did bring the wine, she plunked down the open bottle in front of us with three glasses and walked away, so she didn't notice that she brought us the wrong bottle. Back to the ravioli: the filling was plentiful and well seasoned, the sauces were good (tomato cream, marinara, alfredo, and red bell pepper), I wasn't so enamored of the actual dumpling part, as it was a little mushy. If you're traveling with kids, this might be a good place for them, but otherwise, I'd say spend your money elsewhere. Ray's Boathouse is a Seattle institution that has been mentioned here before. We ended up eating in the cafe bar upstairs, since there was an hour wait for a table (that conference again). In the summer, the patio is supposed to be the place to be, but in the winter, when it was cold and rainy, we were perfectly content to stay inside and enjoy our meal of calamari, lentil soup, crabcake, seafood salad (mixed greens with chunks of seafood), and smoked salmon skewers. The skewers were a wonderful surprise, with a kind of sweetness and smokiness, but I found that the crabcake had a little too much filling for my taste. I also recommend the seafood salad. Beecher's Handmade cheese in Pike's Place Market makes the best macaroni and cheese in the world, according to them, and honestly, I think I may have to agree. They make it from their house cheese, and there are large chunks of cheese attached to the pasta. Actually, their regular house cheese is pretty good as well. We took some back to my friend's house, and pigged out. on cheese and a loaf of bread that we got at one of the bakeries in the market. We also picked up some mussels and produce to cook at home. Mussels were $4/lb at the market. We finished off that meal with cupcakes from Cupcake Royale, in Ballard. Cupcake Royale puts all my cupcake experiences to shame. There was a special red velvet cupcake for Valentine's Day, and it was good. All of the cupcakes that we sampled were not too sweet, dense and fresh (i.e., not dry). Their zucchini bread was also quite good, and the portion was hefty. Plus, the store was a little off-beat as well, and you can buy such merchandise as a "Legalize Frostitution" t-shirt.

I called yesterday, and they said they are all booked up, but put my name on a waiting list. If we don't get into Komi, then we're staying home and making fondue.And did y'all see DCfoodies.com got a mention in yesterday's (1/16) Express for his where to go on Valentine's Day post?

I ended up buying two dozen assorted cupcakes from buzz on Saturday for my husband's birthday party and they were a huge hit! At $2 a cupcake, at first I thought it was a little expensive, but it was well worth the price. My friend and I purchased two cupcakes to do a taste test beforehand; she had the red velvet, I had a lemon-filled lemon. Both were good, nice and dense, icing was not overly sweet, but it was just a teensy weensy bit dry. I asked if they could get me 2 dozen on the spot, and they happily obliged. My friend lamented that there wasn't such a cool, hip bakery in D.C. proper, and I agree. Much better and cheaper than nasty Cake Love cupcakes. I'll make the drive out to VA again for such high quality baked goods.

Actually, I can't say that I've ever noticed a smell. Though it should be noted that they are allowing smoking on the semi-enclosed heated patio, so it definitely reeked out there.I did indeed speak with Josh today, and he apologized, and said that the manager admitted to him earlier that he had a bad attitude. His apology doesn't change my mind: we're not going back there.

Had a really bad service experience at R.F.D. last night. We were a large group (about 15 of us), coming in from bowling, celebrating my husband's birthday. Waitress glared at us the entire time. My husband accidently left one of his (rather large) gifts behind, which we realized about ten minutes after we left the restaurant. Unhelpful manager. We ended up finding the gift in the trash, thanks to the busboy. I asked the manager if it was general policy to throw items left behind in the trash, instead of waiting to see if the owner showed up. He "suggested" that I make it a policy not to leave things behind. What? If it was my purse, they would have thrown it away? I told him I would have to speak to the owner, and he told me to "go ahead." Says I'm supposed to ask for Josh? Isn't the owner's name Dave? Whatever. My friends and I are never going to this place again. But I'll definitely be calling Monday, when the manager said "Josh" would be available.

Mondays are out for me too, since that's the day I always work late. I'd like to propose Cafe Ole on Wisconsin Ave. in the spring time. The restaurant is pretty small, but they have a huge patio. Food (Mediterranean) is pretty good, and definitely the best thing between there and Tenley metro (its a little less than a mile south of Metro, kind of close to the Popeye's).

Haven't been here in a while, but its not bad. My husband really liked their lasagne, but he's a lasagne fiend. Its been about a year since the last time we went, and I've enjoyed sitting by the open window on a nice day. I'd much rather go to Bistrot du Coin over this, but would choose Odeon over, say, Bucco di Beppo.

I don't think I've ever had a cupcake give me indigestion before, but the vanilla cupcake I had today from Reeve's certainly did. I was so disappointed. The icing was too sweet with a weird kind of stickiness, and the cake itself was light and fluffy, but I prefer my cupcakes to be a little denser. The cake was a good flavor, so I'm thinking my aversion to the cupcake probably comes mostly from the icing. It was reminiscent of a cupcake I had once from Giant (although I think I prefered the cupcake from Giant a little more...it certainly did not give me indigestion). Oh well.

I'm in too. My goal for this year is (another) 40 lbs.

I had the tuna tartare there, and it came with seasoned crackers, which definitely overwhelmed the tuna. It wasn't until I ate all the crackers that I could really taste the tuna, which was delicious and just a little spicy. The crackers were useful for scooping the chopped tuna up, and actually quite good.

I was drinking pinot back when everybody else was drinking merlot, and I was drinking that cheap Oregon stuff, thinking to myself, wow, this should cost way more than $7. Recently, I've been extremely disappointed to only find Oregon pinots way out of my price range, especially at restaurants. Damn that Sideways! Drove me back to merlot, let me tell you. Anyway, anyone know of any other good pinots priced under $20 retail? Especially in DC?

Our favorite pizza from there is the Meat Classic, formerly known as the Meat Tease (informally known as the Meat Slut). Bacon and sausage and ham, among other meats, grace this pie. My main complaint about Angelico is that they don't put their toppings close enough to the edge of the pie, so that most of the toppings end up closer to the center, leaving an outer ring of cheese.

Texas Monthly magazine just named the Picadillo Taco at Fuel City in Dallas the #1 taco to have before you die. There are 63 tacos on the list. If you'd like to read the article, PM me and I'll send it to you.

My family was in town this week. Coming to DC is always a challenge for the my parents because they don't dine out too often at home, and when they visit me (almost exclusively during the week of Thanksgiving) that's pretty much all we do. So its usually up to me to find an affordable dining option in a non-intimidating environment. My sister is an adventurous eater, however, and she and I wanted sushi, but we couldn't mention the s-word to our parents. I suggested Spices since I knew that they could get more traditional Asian fare there. I'm so glad we went there! Not only was the wait staff attentive, but the menu was accessible and recognizable to my parents. In addition to dumplings and edamame (a first for my father), my sis and I had sushi, my +1 had Chinese fried rice, my dad had Thai fried rice, and my mom had shrimp tempura. For my parents, this was the first time they had eaten their respective dishes. And they both enjoyed their meals! Although I think my dad was regretting that he didn't order the Peking duck after he saw it go by on a platter.

That Armand's on campus is now a McDonalds.