treznor

I will say this for Hooters wings, they are passable IF you order them naked (i.e. without all the breading). With all that breading on there I can't stand more than a couple.

I travel to DC 2-3 weeks a month... I've stayed at the Four Points a couple of times and it was always just because Corduroy was downstairs.

Well they had a kitchen and the hotel needs room service... I'm not certain, but I thought the plan was for Corduroy to move out well in advance of plans to demolish the building.

Just think of how bad it would have been had you been sitting at the tables :-) Now that you mention it though I have had my food delivered to me a time or two at the bar while I didn't have utensils or napkin. Typically when I shove my whole face into the plate they come over to ask me what's up :-)

I continue to eat at Bebo once every couple of weeks or so. I haven't sat at a table since a couple months after they opened. Maybe if I were dining with more than one other person I'd consider a table, but otherwise I ALWAYS go for the bar at Bebo... the service isn't stellar but it's at least mediocre at the bar.

My recipe, from memory since the recipe is at home (but it should be close): Dry ingredients: 1 cup AP flour 1 Tbsp sugar 1 tsp salt 1 tsp baking soda Wet ingredients: 1 egg 2 Tbsp butter, melted 1 cup buttermilk Sift all the dry ingredients together. I know Alton often says sugar belongs with the wet ingredients, but I've always added it here with the dry and haven't messed around with it. Beat the egg until it changes color to a lighter yellow. I almost never have buttermilk around (which is a damn shame) so I usually end up using 1 cup of milk mixed with 1 1/3 Tbsp of apple cider vinegar instead. I heat the milk for about 20 seconds in the microwave and then give the apple cider vinegar 5-10 minutes to do it's job, stirring every couple of minutes or so. Add the buttermilk to the egg and give a good whisk to mix it together. I don't know if most people do there mixing with a hand mixer, but I stick with a whisk for pancakes. A, I don't want to get the hand mixer out and B, it makes it harder to overmix. Add the flour mix to the egg mix and whisk together. I usually just add it in one large batch, though I'm sure Alton would probably say it should be added in seperate batches. I typically whisk until almost all of the lumps are out, but a couple lumps aren't going to bother me. Then I add the melted butter to the mix and give a short whisk to get it incorporated. This has worked well for me. I still have troubles balancing outside brown-ness with inside done-ness but that's a work in progress. The few times I've made this with actual buttermilk I had to add a bit more to get the consistency of the batter right. I basicaly aim for what I'd call "gloopy". It doesn't pour out easily, but rather pours slowly and at the end has a couple "gloops" that come out of the measuring cup onto the griddle. This may be a bit too thick and is what is causing my insides to be not quite done when the outsides are the color that I want... something to experiment with I guess.

Had the prosciutto and riccatta pizza last night and was sorry that I had missed this earlier. Rolls of prosciutto with riccatta cheese inside that when bitten into have a gushy, creamy texture (but thankfully not so hot as to feel like molten lava). It really hit the spot last night. For those keeping track, Donna was manning the oven.

To give him credit, he may have just been getting this mixed up with the (fairly) common adage "Hot water freezes faster than cold water". That actually can happen under some conditions (it was actually found, and named after, a schoolboy from Tanzania that noticed that his ice cream mixture straight from the boil froze faster than his classmates that were put into the same freezer but after allowing them to cool to room temperature before putting them in the freezer, more info here). However, even this adage isn't normally seen as the affect typically doesn't occur for cold water from a tap versus warm water from the tap in an ice cube tray. Cold water actually -can- boil faster than hot water if the cold water was previously boiled and the water originally contained alot of impurities. But something tells me Bobby wasn't talking about pre-boiling your water so you can re-boil it later faster... Long story short, he either was mixing it up with an effect that is real, though typically not seen in kitchen settings, or with an effect that would be very odd to duplicate in the kitchen. And now that the science lesson of the day is over, we can return to the thread :-)

The background music has to be the best part. Does that come with the unit?

I don't get it... maybe I'm just being obtuse. Simple sugar is literally about the easiest thing to make out there... Dissolve sugar in heated water, tada!

A full listing of area chefs that are included in the nominations. Outstanding Restaurateur Ashok Bajaj (Ardeo, Bardeo, Bombay Club, The Oval Room, Rasika, 701 Restaurant) Best Chef Mid-Atlantic Cathal Armstrong (Restaurant Eve) Carole Greenwood (Buck's Fishing and Camping) Eric Ziebold (CityZen) Koji Terano (Sushi-Ko) Outstanding Pastry Chef Naomi Gallego (PS7's) Rising Star Chef of the Year Johnny Monis (Komi) Outstanding Chef Jose Ramon Andres (Minibar) Outstanding Restaurant Vidalia Outstanding Wine Service Vidalia Outstanding Wine & Spirits Professional Todd Thrasher (Restaurant Eve) Terry Thiese (Terry Thiese Estate Selections) Best New Restaurant Central Michel Richard The Source

Tasted something similar to a Retsina at a winery in western NC that is Greek owned and makes some. An acquired taste to say the least I believe.

I saw that in Playboy and thought to myself, "How cool! I've had some of his drinks!". Sadly it is not lickable.

I would find it -very- difficult to believe that the cured meats are gone and that the only beers they are serving are bud, bud light, and miller light. I guess it's possible but that just seems counter to everything that Bebo seems to be about. Maybe the waiter really worked at Oyamel and no one told him that the restaurant moved? :-)

Frank Bruni Q&A with Fabio. Nothing terribly exciting but interesting nonetheless.

Seems like anytime we were entertaining out-of-town company Old Ebbitt ended up being lunch. The crabcakes were always my go-to entree and they really never let me down.

Didn't realize that. I actually still have a subscription even though I don't live in DC anymore so I guess I'll check it out when I get home later this week.

Link?

I ordered twice from Great Wall, two nights in a row (what can I say? Work is busy, my hotel is in the area, and I'm lazy...). Monday night I got the ma la wontons and ma la twice cooked pork belly. Both excellent and got a bit of the "furry mouth" feeling that was interesting. On top of that though both dishes had an excellent taste without relying on pure heat to be the extent of the dish as many hot dishes do. I didn't really think the dishes were all that hot (though my scale is much different than other peoples I've noticed) but built up a nice light sweat as I worked through the two dishes. Both dishes were everything that was described above so I won't go into them in too much detail. I really liked the bacon-like taste of the twice cooked pork. I would have liked it a bit crisper, but that's probably due to the 15 minutes walk I took in the cold from the restaurant to my hotel. Tuesday night was a different story though. Got the steamed meat dumplings and ma la kung pao chicken. The dumpling meat was good and the sauce was very good, different than other sauces I've had for dumplings. It was almost like the sauce that the ma la wontons are in but isn't quite the same. There was excessive dumpling for the most part though that I wasn't wild about. However, the ma la kung pao chicken was literally inedible. Possibly the first time -ever- I've had a dish that I considered inedible. I think it was the same experience that LoganCircle had and described as salty. If I hadn't had the twice cooked pork the night before I probably would have described it as tasty remarkably, amazingly salty. Having had extensive experience with ma la cooking at this point (i.e. one prior dish, the night before) I noticed that the "furry mouth" feeling was much more pronounced than the night before and I think it wasn't oversalted as much as it was over "ma la"d. Whatever it was it made it so I couldn't finish the dish. It certainly wasn't too hot as I didn't catch any spicy heat coming from it. It's certainly an interesting experience and one I'm fine with experimenting with every now and then. I'll probably order the kung pao chicken and the twice cooked pork one more time each (though not for a couple days at least I hope!) just to try them out before I pass final judgement. If I end up with the same feeling again as the kung pao chicken I had then I'm going to have to pass on dining here again as to iffy (or at least skip the kung pao chicken and stick with the twice cooked pork). ETA: Just looked up Sichuan Pepper in McGee. Pretty sure that's the first (and second) time I've ever eaten anything described as causing "neurological confusion" :-) ETA: So it is gnatharobed. I blaim my neurological confusion :-)

I did that exact thing last week. I walked into Butterfield 9's bar as I was in the area. After inquiring about a dinner menu I was handed the full menu as well as a RW menu. After a quizical look the bartender let me know that Butterfield 9 runs RW specials a week before RW in order to tune the menu. I had completely forgotten it was even the time of year for RW. Regardless I ended up getting a gorgeously prepared roast pork chop that was wonderfully juicy and tasty.

Wouldn't that make Cheesecake Factory the best restaurant ever?

Yes, though it's a six-hour drive (if 95 is cooperating) so that could put a bit of a damper on things :-) On the other hand it is home to some of the best Disc Golf (which is what I crossed over into from Ultimate years ago) around.

Hours and hours spent playing ultimate has to be one of the things I remember best from TIP. Even chosing classes (okay, only to some extent) based on the quality of the class ultimate team...

I'm anxiously awaiting the results of said testing. We're thinking about getting one but don't want more clutter in the kitchen unless it actually proves somewhat useful.

My guess is that the small amount of matter in the bowl in the video is so you can see how well it does actually scraping the sides. With much more stuff in the bowl the side-scraping action would be obscured. Would have been nice to see both though.