DanCole42

Still one of the best bar lounge deals in the city. Plenty of bar bites hover around the $5 range (pork belly sliders, crab cakes, crayfish hushpuppies {try the sauce!}). The "Buben's Reuben" (Smoked brisket, smoked Gouda, house made sauerkraut, Benton's bacon aioli & caramelized onions on rye) - $16 - may not be traditional, but it's creamy and beefy, and who doesn't love that in a sandwich?

Vidalia seems like the obvious choice.

Vidalia's usually my go-to, but I was thinking of trying something new.

Also, I have a very specific outfit in mind: corduroys, a hoodie, and a nice t-shirt. Would that be too casual for the bar?

Where should I go for cocktails/drinks/food on a Tuesday in February? I'm looking for somewhere near Courthouse or Farragut West metros. I guess South Dupont works, too.

Looking for relatively douchebag-free.

Served on homemade sourdough rolls, homemade coleslaw with ginger and celery seed, and sour pickles from Chutzpah.

Holy crap has it been a long time since I posted in this thread!

Tonight - BBQ beef brisket with Texas-style BBQ sauce.

You're going to be having breakfast there, too, don't forget, so even with one dinner that will be three meals at the restaurant. I think the dinner is *so* special, that I'd see if the weather may cooperate enough to sit on the patio, and pick the warmer of the two evenings (lots of luck in January), and go elsewhere for the second evening - having a second dinner at Ashby may diminish the memories of the first. Such problems you have.

I would add to that that, as you're out and about, you can have them prepare you a picnic lunch. Ours included duck neck sausage, speck, ciabatta, crackers and crostini, pate, purple mustard, pickled leeks, coleslaw, a cheese plate, mignardises, and some of the best fried chicken this side of the Colonel's string tie.

Thanks, everyone.

I'm booked at Fiola.

Every once in awhile, I'm reminded how glad I am to have Ray's down the street.

I frikking love sauce. Like, love it. If it were socially acceptable, I would eat Bearnaise sauce like soup.

The dry aged anything at Ray's are the first steaks I've ever had where I actually prefer them sauceless (not that the sauces aren't great!).

Every year for my birthday, I try to go to one restaurant that Don has bolded in the Dining Guide.

Where should I go this year?

Currently, the bolded restaurants I haven't been to are:

Restaurant Eve Bistro

Restaurant Eve Tasting Room

The Inn at Little Washington*

The Oval Room

Adour

Marcel's

Fiola

Sushi Bar with Koji

*I will pay lots of money for amazing food, but will not pay a surcharge for being pampered (hence why I did not like The French Laundry).

Bold birthday dinners from years past:

Vidalia

Komi

Cityzen

Citronelle

Palena

Corduroy

The Ashby Inn (technically anniversary, best meal ever)

Or maybe I'll say fuck it and head to The Ashby Inn in Paris, VA, where I know my mind is going to be blown for less than the cost of a plane ticket to actual Paris, France.

Santa brought me a Sous Vide Supreme Demi for Christmas, which I've already used to great success on eggs and chicken.

Now for my greatest challenge: 72-hour sous vide short ribs!

Here's my question.

The bags are full of liquid from the meat. It seems a waste to discard it. Would those juices make a suitable sauce? How would I make the sauce? It seems like trying to reduce it would leave me with a muddy, dirty sauce full of coagulated proteins and a dull flavor devoid of the roasted notes you'd get from a sauce made from traditional "pan drippings". But to do anything more involved I'd need the meat out of the bag for so long that it would likely get cold.

Any ideas?

Coscto sells PSMOs, as do a number of other grocery stories like Wegman's.

I have two hours in Fairfield tonight. Where should I get my pizza?

I happen to LIKE cooking pretentious foodie bullshit!

http://www.theonion.com/video/celebrity-chef-ted-allen-cooks-his-favorite-preten,26571/

Dan, looking at the photo of the Hilltop Creamery, it looks like a frozen custard stand. Is it? Or ice cream? I would actually suggest Neilson's on Church street in Vienna for a concrete with chocolate chips. Serious. I'd put Neilson's up against Ted Drewes, only a step behind Milwaukee's Kopp's. It is that good. Actually, their concrete is better than Ted Drewes...

Nah, it's ice cream. I'm really just after the chocolate chips.

One of the mix-in places like Cold Stone Creamery ought to have the chocolate chips she requires.

Eww.

Can't help with your question, but...what shop?

http://www.hilltopcreamery.com/

Strongly disagree with this comment.

Yeah, I'm not sure why I wrote that. I love VA wine. 6/7 pairings at my dinner at Ashby Inn were from VA, and all of them were phenomenal.

Maybe I meant that they're often not superior, but there are plenty that are? Who knows what I mean when I write these things.

Oh crap, I almost forgot! If you stay with them, you get an incredible breakfast! I had eggs benedict with poached eggs, beef brisket, pickled cabbage, and choron.

Also, you can request a picnic to go! Perfect for taking wine tasting. Ours included duck neck sausage, speck, ciabatta, crackers and crostini, pate, purple mustard, pickled leeks, fried chicken, coleslaw, a cheese plate, and mignardises.

God I'm fucking hungry right now.

Running list of Best Meals Ever:

1980 - Chez Breast Milk

1983 - McDonald's

1987 - Taco Bell

1988 - Flatbread

1995 - Mainland Inn

2002 - Allred's in Telluride

2006 - Citronelle

2007 - 2941

2008 - Komi

Other standouts of course include Cityzen, Sou'wester (when Rachael was there), Trummer's on Main, and Vidalia. But now we have a new entry for the Best Meal Ever list:

2011 - Ashby Inn

The current champion won us over a few weeks ago during lunch. My wife and I looked at each other and said, "we have to spent our anniversary here." So we did.

After checking into the Fan Room, which is directly above the restaurant and provides a glorious view of the surrounding countryside, we headed down and enjoyed a drink in the cozy library.

Then it was off to dinner where we were wowed in seven courses. A lot of meals have great, amazing, wonderful courses, but even at the best of times you'll have a dish that's "just okay" or "really good, but just not as great as the last course." At Ashby, every single item was a total blast. It was like a homerun derby. Everything was just out of the park and into my swooning stomach.

Two dishes stood out: the chestnut soup and the paw paw dessert. Fall is my favorite season - as I'm fond of quoting, "Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower" (Camus) - so to be presented with two dishes that embodied fall in smell and taste and sight was a real, real treat. I highly recommend taking a look at the paw paw dessert.

What really does it for me at Ashby is not that each dish is prepared with precision and is seasoned just so, but that every dish we had brought out some kind of emotion - everything we ate reminded us of something, even if we couldn't exactly place what it was - it was just familiar, and it felt good.

The menu is below. It's worth a trip to Paris.

Having a room right above the restaurant was totally worth it, BTW.

No reason, roast away. You will get all the browning that you want. If you have a convection roasting setting that would work well too.

How high? 550? Blast the shit out of it?

Why would someone do saute-based browning in batches, then?

So I'm making a massive quantity of chili for my wife's birthday. For me, one of the most tedious parts of making chili is browning the meat. You've got a stock pot or dutch oven that you intend to fill with beef, and the only way to get proper browning is to do the meat in batches. Lots and lots of batches.

Is there any reason I couldn't, say, ROAST the meat on a baking or roasting pan? What difference would it make in ANY braising application where you typically start with a browning?

My wife is not a picky eater, but she does have one particular requirement for proper chocolate chip ice cream: the chips must be actual chips. That is: round bottom, pointed top, and maybe 3/16" in size. Not chopped up bits of chocolate, not square chunks, not tiny dots of chocolate, but actual someone-mixed-a-bag-of-Nestle-semi-sweet-into-vanilla-ice-cream CHIPS.

What are some places in the area that do it right?

The only place we've found is a shop off of Black Horse Pike in New Jersey on the way to Atlantic City.

For me it's as more about supporting local businesses and appreciating the area in which I live than in appreciating it as some kind of superior product (which it isn't).

Here.

She has a bad history with tequila...

My wife's birthday is coming up, and I thought it would be a great idea to serve a "signature cocktail" at the party.

Sadly, I know nothing about mixology.

Does anyone have any suggestions for where I can go for help?

If the answer is "here," then: the main dish of the party is going to be chili, and the theme is going to be ancient treasure (so think gold, dark brown, blue).