treznor

Not the Circulator... unless the bus I'm thinking of was rolled into the Circulator after it started service. This was a blue bus, half the length of a normal bus (I think) that only ran from Foggy Bottom to Georgetown and Rosslyn to Georgetown. Agreed though, for the weekends, especially at night, it's probably best to just walk as it isn't that bad at all.

Is there still a bus that runs directly from Foggy Bottom to Georgetown? I know I've taken it a number of times but I thought I might have heard that service was stopped. If so, it's just to the right as you exit the Foggy Bottom station, not a wmata bus, but something else.

Having not seen a post in this thread for 8 hours, I propose a new law: The mention of assless chaps ends conversation as nothing is left to be said.

Quirk's Exception to Godwin's Law. Intentional invocation of Godwin's Law is ineffectual.

Getting back from Italy soon myself (sitting in a Rome hotel at the moment, packing for a flight to Munich tomorrow morning and then on to the US the next morning). The Tuscans have great food, but good god has the bread been bad. We didn't eat all that much salume (I know, heresy, but the pasta, etc. has been so good) but some of the bread we've had, even at excellent restaurants, was so bad it was tough to even use to mop up sauces. And yet, the bread that they use for bruschetta (and not the bread basket) has been pretty good. Bringing back two bottles of olive oil, three bottles of balsamic, a bottle of limoncello, and as much Brunello as my suitcase will hold (which unfortunately is only about 4 bottles after clothes and such are factored in)... and shell-shocked at how much some of this stuff would cost in the US compared to what I paid after I looked it up online. I'm sure I've drifted off-topic by now... Two of the bottles we purchased we couldn't fit so we are drinking them now Thankfully only Rosso di Montalcino and Sant'Animo and not Brunello

Unfortunately tomorrow morning is our last day, heading out on a train at 11:30 or so. We'll definitely make it to Mario's next time (and there will be a next time!).

I didn't see a thread about Florence yet, though did see the Tuscany thread. I thought Florence probably deserved a separate thread, but feel free to merge with Tuscany if that's the preference. We've spent the last couple of days in Florence after having been in Venice for 5 days. Compared to Venice, finding good food is like shooting fish in a barrel. So far in Florence we've been to: Il Latini Gobi 13 Il Profeta Il Latini and Gobi 13 were suggestions from a friend of ours that spent a couple of months in Florence a couple of years ago, Il Profeta we found on TripAdvisor. At Il Latini we were at the door by 7:15 (they open at 7:30 for dinner, as many of restaurants do in Florence/Italy) and there was already a couple of people waiting, growing to a decent crowd by 7:30. Luckily the restaurant is fairly decently sized so they had no problem taking everyone at once. Though there was a menu posted outside, once we sat down you never saw a menu again. One guy goes around taking everyone's order and just asks what they would like and gives a couple of suggestions. Wine is on the table and you just get charged for what you drink (theoretically... We didn't get charged and neither did the other couple at the table with us and we drank almost the entire 2L bottle). The low point of the meal was the dessert, a profiterole that was simply okay. The rest of the meal was excellent. We had prosciutto and melon for antipasti, which also comes with some other salumi as well as duck liver pate on crostini; gnocchi alla quatro formaggi and pomodoro soup for our primis; and a veal chop and beef in tomato sauce for our secondis. All executed very well. The veal chop in particular was very flavorful and tender. On the house came out vinsanto and biscotti, as well as a glass of muscato. We definitely understood why it has earned the reputation as the loudest dining room in Florence. You are seated communally if there are two of you, so you end up with at least one other couple at your table. Inevitably you end up talking and soon the whole room is learning about the people they are sitting with. We ended up with some good tips for Rome from the couple we were sitting with and we gave them some tips for Venice as they were going the opposite direction compared to us (we are going Venice -> Florence -> Rome). The check ended up being 85 euro for two cover charges, 2 antipasti, 2 primi, 2 secondi, 1 side dish (roast potatoes, also done well) and 1 dessert. Not a bad price at all for the quantity or quality of food. The second place we went out to is Gobi 13. This was on Friday night, which we had somewhat forgotten about as the days kind of run together on vacation This appears to be the place to be in the area of town we are staying as there were alot of people eating here and many more waiting to get in. We ended up waiting for a table for about 30 minutes, but then were finally seating on the patio around 9:30-9:45 or so. Here we had caprese salad, ribolita soup, rigatoni and Veal Osso Buco with mashed potatoes. The check ended up being around 60 or 65 euro I believe, which included a liter of house wine and a bottle of water. Everything was executed well. The caprese had a nice saltwater taste to the buffala that really went over well with us. The rigatoni is a house specialty and had nice layers of flavor. Neither one of us caught what the sauce was on the rigatoni (I thought it was some sort of a tomato-vodka sauce, Pam thought it was something else) but regardless it was excellent. The Veal Osso Buco was very tender and the mashed potatoes helped pick up the sauce around the osso buco. Our meal last night was at Il Profeta, and has been by far the best meal we've had in Italy thus far. Location: Via Borgonissanti, 93 R 50123 Firenze Dinner consisted of: Bruschetta Ribiletta Gnocchi with Pecorino di Fossi il Gratinato del Granduca Bistecca del Fiorintino House wine Sopa di Profeta Cheesecake Limoncello In Michelin 26 years in a row evidently. Claudio (co-owner with his wife Martina) walked us through the menu, which was good as there were a number of items that I wasn't certain what they were (not that I'm an expert on Italian cuisine). He asked each table they sat if they needed some help with the menu, and each one that answered that they did, he walked them through the menu. The secondi were all translated, but the specialties of the house and the daily menu were not translated and I certainly did not recognize some of them. The bruschetta was made with the olive oil judged as the best olive oil in Tuscany. Possibly the first time I've had good olive oil. The flavors seemed to burst off the plate. The gnocchi were the best I've had, including numerous other dishes in Tuscany as well as Palena. The gnocchi themselves were perfect pillows that burst in your mouth and the cheese sauce (made with Pecorino di Fossi/Fassi ?) was wonderfully smooth with just the perfect texture and weight. The Ribiletta was very good, though not a show-stopper. I liked it much better than Pam did (who ordered it), but wasn't about to give up my gnocchi for it. The layers of flavors in the soup were evident and in talking with Claudio after the meal he said alot of the difference between the Ribiletta we had at Il Profeta and what we had at Gobbi 13 (which was also satisfying, but not nearly as good) was that all the vegetables for the soup were fresh, which isn't all that common since it takes alot of time to prepare all the vegetables. Bistecca del Fiorintino was everything that I expected it to be. It was good, possibly even great, and I was thankful that I ordered it. However, it was difficult for it to stand up to the Gratinato del Granduca. The Gratinato del Graduca was kind of like getting hit in the head with a large block of Parmesan. If you don't like Parmesan you will absolutely hate this dish. It's basically a bowl made of Parmesan cheese (and some kind of filler to get it to stay together... meant to add flavor to the dish but not to eat), with angel hair pasta, Parmesan cheese sauce, truffle oil, and a gratin of Parmesan cheese on top and then baked. It was easily the best dish of the night. In talking with Claudio at the end of the night we were talking about the dish and we asked him if they used real truffle oil instead of synthetic. He answered that they did and starting describing how they made their truffle oil. He had me sold I really don't have words to adequately describe this dish. I'm not certain that I could eat it every day as it was powerfully flavored, but the dish itself was balanced well between the truffle and the Parmesan. Really quite a wonderful dish. At that point we had finished about a liter of the house wine and were thinking it was about time to head out (as it was almost 11pm) but figured we should take a look at the dessert cart. The waiter described what they were unfortunately out of (what, to torture us?), the Chianti-poached pears, the creme caramel, etc. They had a couple of options remaining, namely creme puffs, cheesecake, and sopa di profeta. We chose the cheesecake as we had been wanting to try it somewhere and figured here was as good a place as any. They evidently disagreed, as they brought us out some sopa di profeta gratis, just so we could try what we had decided against. The zabaglione on top was wonderfully light and yet creamy and altogether brought this rather unusual tiramisu together. It certainly wasn't the tiramisu that I was expected when they described it as "like tiramisu", but really quite good. I know every restaurant fiddles with tiramisu, and I'm not certain that this one could replace what I think of in my mind as tiramisu, but I'm pretty certain that I would take it over tiramisu any day. You could definitely tell that tiramisu was where they started from (the soaked ladyfinger were still present, as was the powder that's typically on the top of tiramisu, though moved to the edge of the plate), but the sabayon really made it something different and better. The cheesecake itself, which they brought us after, was fine - nothing special. It was topped with a lemon and chocolate sauce that probably would have been better if it hadn't been following up the sopa di profeta. After a round of limoncello on the house and talking with Claudio for a few minutes we headed out to our hotel a couple blocks away, talking about the food the whole way back. The check was for 120 euro. Certainly not a cheap dinner by any means, but easily the best we've had in Italy. We have one more night in Florence before going to Rome. We are still trying to decide whether to go with a new restaurant or go back to one of the three that we've liked so much so far. A tough choice but a good one to have

What have you found that is out of Florence? My wife and I will be in Florence for a couple days early next month and I haven't gotten around to planning the details

Just got back from Oceanaire a little bit ago. As Rocks pointed out, I was shocked at how full it was as well considering the prices. Good for them! We arrived 15 minutes or so early for our mid-week reservations and were asked to wait at a fairly full bar. Between the four of us we had crab cakes, Shrimp de Jonghe, and Oysters Rockefeller and Panamanian big eye tuna (both sashima-style and grilled between two of us), grouper, and Alaskan king crab legs. Everyone raved about what they ordered and not a bad word was said about any of the selections. The only thing I didn't love was the creamed corn, which was a bit (or a lot) creamier than I prefer my creamed corn. Still pretty good though. Would I go back on my own dime? No, probably not. It was quite expensive and I'm not 100% certain that it was worth the price we paid. On someone else's dime (as it was tonight)? It'd definitely be in the running.

Joe, While many of your points are quite valid, and I do agree that based on your experience and the experience of others that have posted here it appears that that many of the reviews' points are valid, do you not also see the other side that many of the critics of the reviews' points are valid? Knocking a restaurant's rating for opening in a poor economy (if that is what happened)? There's no reason for that. A brief mention in the review, sure, as people that are reading the review already have the context. But for people looking at the rating only, as surely many people out there do, there is no context to understand that. I think a large part of the discussion here comes from Tom's overall rating system and the way he employs it and the fact that many people here do have a personal interest (due to friendships, past dining experiences, etc) to see Inox succeed and thus the frustration with the rating system has boiled over. As Ericandblueboy pointed out, there are only 15 restaurants from Tom's ratings that have a rating higher, 3 to 4 stars. Tom also rarely hands out 0 or .5 stars. That means that the bulk of the restaurants in the Metro area are covered by 4 "buckets", 1, 1.5, 2, and 2.5 stars. It is already difficult to differentiate restaurants based solely on 4 possible different ratings for "normal" restaurants (i.e. not the truly atrocious and not the truly stratospheric) and given the fact it is difficult to match Tom's written reviews to his star ratings at times it becomes very difficult and frustrating considering the inevitable weight that the star rating gets compared to the written review.

While not everyone drinks, for those that do (which is most people at higher end restaurants), it's a very large portion of the overall consideration of a restaurant. I'm not going to want to go to Eve or Citronelle or CityZen or wherever that costs what those restaurants do and drink Little Penguin or Yellowtail. All parts of the restaurant experience are important and should be factored in. That would particularly be true at a restaurant where it appears (as I can't say definitely, not having gone myself yet) that they put forth effort to differentiate themselves based on their wine program.

The problem with a poor economy is that people stop feeling securely employed, especially when we keep hearing about job cuts in the press, etc. A self-fulfilling circle... People hear about job cuts so they cut spending to prepare if they get cut, which causes overall spending to go down, which causes job cuts. I've fallen into this myself as well. I'm saving more, though that's partially because the stock market is so low right now that as long as I'm fine with keeping the money in for 4-5 years that it presents a good investment I believe. We've also started recently to take wine with us to restaurants and use corkage. Not sure if that's really a economy thing though or the fact that I have too much wine at home... Guess it works out on both ends. Realistically though we end up paying corkage (which isn't all the expensive at all where I live now) plus we get a round or so of pre-dinner drinks so we still end up spending a decent amount to help out the restaurants

An interesting solution, but not certain the wife would go for it in the kitchen or dining room Another problem (or so I've heard) with using a standard fridge/freezer for wine is that a standard fridge or freezer vibrates quite a bit from the compressor which can hurt the wine. Have no idea as to the truth of that statement though.

Is the mailer different than their website? I took a look at their website and noticed they don't really have much for less than a grand. They do look like good prices, just a bit more than I'm looking to spend at the moment. If most of my wines were more towards the $30-$40+ range it might be different, but most of my wine is in the $10-$20 range with occasional forays into the $30-$40 range. The front runner at the moment is a Danby Silhouette 75-bottle unit for $600 from Sam's Club, which we have near us (though don't know if they have or can order this or not). Still trying to figure out a reason to not get this unit as it seems to be very attractively priced compared to other units.

The problem with that is the wine collection just grows to fill any space allocated. When I originally bought the wine fridge I have now it was because I had 20 bottles or so of wine around and figured we needed a wine fridge. Went out and bought a 55-60 bottle one. The wine collection grew pretty quickly to take up the space of the 60 bottle fridge, so if I expect to twice what I think I'd need (which would mean I'd aim for a 130-150 bottle fridge) I'm pretty sure it'd just expand I'm going to force myself to stay around 60-80 bottles so I don't go crazy buying more wine.

Though note that the prices on foodler are 80 cents higher per item than on their website. This website is different than what I've seen others use, but it's what was on the flyer I found stuffed under the hotel door last week. Don't know how common it is to charge a different price on foodler as I haven't had a menu to compare to for anyone else I've ordered from for foodler. Had a couple of the cooked items last week: 1) Steamed dumplings - Giant, doughy, bland dumpling shell with a nicely seasoned meat filling. The filling I was fond of, though the giant dumpling shell was a complete turn-off 2) General Tsao's chicken - I order this pretty frequently from take-out places that I'm not all that familiar with or that I don't have a wonderful opinion of. Basically it's fairly tough to screw up so I use it as a barometer since I'm much happier with meh General Tsao's chicken as opposed to other items that I generally prefer. Their General Tsao's chicken is about like most other delivery places, which means they didn't screw it up too bad. 3) Honey Walnut Chicken - Pretty horrible, and had a slight taste of cardboard somehow. Honestly, I wouldn't read too much into this. I get this dish about every 2-3 years from different places and hate it every time. I have no idea why I still order it from time to time. The goopy white sauce stuff I just don't like at all. This could be the definitive version of Honey Walnut Chicken and I'd probably still hate it On one hand I'm not a huge fan of the food (though it's passable, and I'll probably order from them again and try some different dishes). On the other hand, they deliver Ben & Jerry's, beer, and wine, and that's tough to pass up

My current wine fridge has finally given out in a spectacular manner... It's been getting colder than it was set every now and then and I'd unplug it and let it rest for a day or two and it'd go back to working. I was out of town for about 2 weeks for work and my wife doesn't check the thermostat every day (because really, why should you have to?) and it ended up getting colder than it was supposed to. It evidently got cold enough to pop 5-6 bottles of wine down near the bottom of the fridge, making a spectacular mess. Mostly white wine, so it wouldn't have been so bad if it hadn't been for that lone bottle of blackberry wine that I had in the bottom of the fridge that busted its cork. So anyway, I'm in the market for a new fridge. My current fridge is a Vinotemp VT-58. Fairly compact and able to hold 55-60 bottles of wine pretty easily as long as some of those bottles are half bottles (which mine are). However, from what I've read Vinotemp doesn't have necessarily the best name as far as customer service and reliability going. Any thoughts from the gallery? I'd probably like to stay in the 60-75 bottle range. I'm currently looking at a 75 bottle Danby (who also doesn't have a sterling record for reliability evidently) from Sam's Club as a possibility, but also checking out some fridges from Costco and Wine Enthusiast. Unfortunately price is a major consideration as we really don't have the money to spend on a wonderful Eurocave or something. I would love to put in a cellar, but have neither the location or the money for that currently... Anything out there for a decent price that I won't be upset about buying? The Vinotemp was only around $500 and lasted 4 years. Not the record I'd like. I'm not all that interested that the temp stay perfectly constant, though +/- 1-2 degrees would be nice.

Article said fourth quarter... so... summer of next year maybe?

Works fine for me in Firefox. I don't even have Internet Explorer functioning on my computer anymore (a complicated story...) so end up being acutely aware of sites that don't work in Firefox since I have to switch over to IETab in Firefox to get them to work.

I've eaten at Ted's numerous times (as I stay in Crystal City hotels a decent amount and it's one of my top options there) and never had anything like that. Of course, I've also been described as having a steel-belted gut, so I may not be the best sample :-)

Though, of the times I've been there, I've only thought it was decent because of the area it's in. Anywhere else in the city and I wouldn't really think of it as an option. I second the suggestion for Palena. I've never eaten in the back so can't guide you one way or the other there (though it seems to be loved by many) but the Cafe up front is nice, though doesn't take reservations. It's also a bit small, which could be an issue depending on your group size. 4 shouldn't be a problem but larger than that possibly would. You can also order dishes from the full menu from the Cafe, so you can mix and match a bit. Dino, right down the road from Palena, is another option. I like to think of it as a wine place that happens to have pretty darn good food. It's owner is very knowledgeable about wine and very helpful working through the large wine list. Depending on when you are here they have wine specials certain nights of the week. My last suggestion would be to look at Restaurant Eve. I personally (and think most would agree) would place it solidly in a line-up with CityZen, Komi, Citronelle, etc. as far as level of dining goes. The food is excellent, the service is excellent, the drinks are excellent, the price is not so excellent (similar to other restaurants in this stratosphere though). If you are around Alexandria during the week near lunch time they have an excellent special at their bar called the Lickety Split which is a great alternative for eating at Eve more economically.

Sorry for the semi-hijack... Mark, what are your thoughts on the Santa Barbera ZCS at Ray's? I've ordered it multiple times now at Ray's without meaning to repeat as it always sounds interesting... and the we recognize it from before and are pleasantly surprised as we always enjoy it. I'm not sure if my palate just isn't refined enough to appreciate really fine wines or if this is just a great deal for the price point, but this wine is the only I've ever sought out after having it in a restaurant, ordered half a case from the winery.

26, but got lucky on the olive question, the only one that I picked completely randomly as I hate the things.

Ted's does indeed do bison burgers. They are a bit more expensive and a bit drier (as would be expected with less fat) but still very good.

I whole-heartedly agree about the scallops. I've tried the crab bisque when other people have ordered it, and it is indeed good. But I've never been able to order it myself as I can't pass up the scallops. We're talking punch-your-momma-in-the-mouth good. There's just no way I can not order them. Sometimes I feel sad that there's a decent bit of the menu I've never ordered myself and think about ordering something else... and then every time I order the scallops and the key lime pie (when I can fit in dessert). I change up the steak that I order, but the scallops are a given. ETA:Forgot to add. You do get enough scallops to share thankfully, especially if it's just two of you. That's really the only way I end up trying other appetizers at all...