synaesthesia

I tried the toaster oven method. It's a wee bit better, but not significantly. Very sad.

Check out this NY Times article about what goes in to pulling a proper espresso. I found it enlightening when I read it 7 years ago.

There's a booth on top of the right side of the U that has a "cheesecake" called strawberry delight. Junk food, but yummy. They also had yummy crab balls, which were just small crab cakes. We grabbed 2 dozen oysters today and shucked them at home, and they were fantastic. They're brought in from the Gulf Coast. We also got a dozen crabs. They were $12/doz, but pretty small. The smallest one I had was tiny, but it was the strangest thing I'd seen. In the 20-some years I've been eating crabs this is something I've never seen - white-colored mustard. It was utterly pristine and happened to be the sweetest crab I've ever had. This made me think that because it was younger and hadn't filtered as much Bay muck it made it taste so much better.

I guess this demonstrates it's worth asking? The Thai curry pastes I have at home don't list shrimp in the ingredients. Though most Thai places worth anything probably have shrimp in their pastes.

Oh boy... tricky tricky.Korean is probably the safest. The least obvious thing to be cautious of is kimchee, which may contain fish sauce or oysters. Tofu stews (soon doo boo chigae) frequently have oyster broth. Barbecue is probably the safest, but make sure the grill is clean in case there's residual squid or octopus. I think some of the other stew dishes like yook gae jang would probably be safe, as well as bi bim bap and a number of the noodle dishes like naeng myun that don't already contain seafood. Thai curries - the curry paste doesn't have fish sauce, but I think when it's mixed with other things may have fish sauce. But otherwise would be pretty safe. But I'm not sure if it's one of those ladle the sauce over top type things, and already mixed together. Of the cuisines you listed, I think Vietnamese is the scariest. Fish sauce is the primary condiment used in marinades and in ngoc cham (the main dipping sauce). It's in practically everything.

The best tacos in town are currently at Pilar. Veal tongue tacos with avocado, thin slices of radish, serrano and cilantro. Instead of the usual slices of tongue, the meat is cubed making for a much more savory experience. I almost debated getting a second order. I also got the roast suckling pig with pickled peaches and radishes. It came with warm puffy pita bread, and the pork was cubed, which I'm not used to. It was a little hard getting everything into bite, but I was really digging the fatty piggie with crisp skin and vinegary sweet peaches. I almost wish it had been a little easier to deal with in taco form. I'm always so happy whenever I eat at Pilar. I would marry Justin Bittner to have him feed me every day, but then I would have 200 extra lbs of weight to deal with.

I just went to one there this weekend. It was pretty decent. I would say that most of the food was above average for most local Chinese places, but I didn't have anything that I found really memorable either - a lot of the dishes seemed pretty underseasoned. But I think it depends on the menu. This meal was very heavy on the seafood, and I think it might better with more land animal type dishes. The server for our table was very cranky, but the others seemed pretty nice. The two dishes that I liked were the roasted chicken, the lobster, and the cold jellyfish.

Didn't really love Tabaq or Policy, in terms of food. Tabaq is definitely very clubby, and I imagine the same is true at Policy. I assume you want to stay around U St., but someone told me that Firefly was pretty easy for his birthday. What about an Ethiopian place for your dinner? That could be fun, and there are decent ones aside from Etete that would probably welcome the business. My Ethiopian cab driver said that for meat dishes he prefers Madjet, and I know there are a lot of fans of Queen Makeda here.

Afterwords definitely tops my list of worst breakfasts ever, almost beating the bad college breakfasts that I've had. This was definitely one of the biggest ripoffs I've experienced. $14 for about two eggs worth of undercooked scrambled eggs and seven slices of undercooked bacon split between two of us. At first we thought there was cheese on the eggs, they were just not cooked all the way. We were drunk after an all night bar crawl, and this was still disgusting. The place also happened to smell like hobo and urine. We were trying to sober up between drinking and watching the sun rise. This is definitely not the place to do it.

Yeah whenever I see a bag of the King Leo sticks, I am always tempted to buy them for just this purpose. I don't know if Oasis is till at White Marsh Mall, but they would sell this, fried dough, and funnel cakes. Yum!

Every half an hour. I've sat on a really nice one, and a really gross one.

It's on U Street, but the currywurst is only around Oktoberfest.

Chicha thread

I like how the bread stands up against the heftyness of the sandwich though my sentimental heart is at the same time saddened by how thick the bread is. I miss my thin pita and eating my doner kebabs with a fork. Overall, not bad, but I have yet to find a chili sauce that beat my favorite place in London.

Doubt it'd be a big deal. Not super dressy. Plus it's Baltimore!

I guess this will verge into off topic, but Nat Geo cafeteria is at present unguarded, cheap, and sometimes delicious.

I've never been, but have always been fascinated by Champor Champor, which is a nice opportunity to try Malaysian food. I've had their chicken rendang at Borough Market and it was fantastic - a favorite among my Malay friends.

So realizing that the garlic crab is at Mo's Seafood, I would guess it's mediocre at best. It's a lot of creamy seafood pasta dishes and the ilk. You can probably get close to the Lake Trout experience at Horace and Dickie's on H St. I think the choices reflect a Baltimore narrative that he was trying to create rather than necessarily the best that Baltimore has to offer. I mean he generally goes to every city with the point to avoid the well-known places, for instance crab cakes at Faidley's. Though Lexington Market does make for an interesting stop, where you can get a more "rustic" view of Baltimore food like chicken boxes and stuff like lake trout.

I'm just wondering why it matters if Bud could be his favorite beer. Generally saying, the man can't be everything to everyone. And if he likes Bud well then that's just what he likes. It seems like everyone is projecting their own preferences and causes on him. The overburdened man should drink what he wants, despite what we think might be better.

I've always been a big fan of Marks and Spencer's sandwiches and other prepared items. I know M&S actually has some sandwich shops that are specifically just the takeaway items and not the clothes, etc. Though pretty much any of the grocery stores (Sainsburys, Waitrose) always have an excellent takeaway section - though I'd be less likely to get stuff from Tesco. And this is more of a grocery item, but I always love the Mueller corner yogurts, which are infinitely more tasty than the yogurts in the States. I enjoyed some of the Cornish pasties from the stand on the west side of the Covent Garden Market. You're not incredibly far from Monmouth Coffee Company, which is my favorite coffee place in the world. Wong Kei in Chinatown known for its rude service is cheap and pretty good. It's been years since I've been in the area, so I'm not sure how great all these recommendations are anymore.

I don't think I've seen anyone mention the green hot sauce that comes with these. Quite a nice spicy addition.

The best part of the article are probably the comments from "Ferran Adria", "Rachael Harriman", "Big Larry", and "Peraz Hilton"

Happy Birthday Scott! You prankster you!

Yeah. My dream would be to go to Alinea and have a birthday menu. I've seen postings where he's catered the number of courses to the age of the person. 30 wacky, crazy courses. That could be SO fun.

Do you mean Pho Dat Thanh on Snowden? A college friend's family owned that one. They were Cantonese, but grew up in Vietnam.