Joshua Grinnell

I like Jimmy's -- they dragged some upstate New York faves with them, such as a bizarre devotion to the Bills and the roast beef on weck. You can get the beef on weck with a side of poutine and the four pound bread pudding and then crawl over into the Herndon portion of the W&OD for someone to run you over with a bike and kill you before your heart does. No garbage plate, though! That's... for the best, actually. Website

A hot cake donut, with dripping chocolate icing and peanuts on top... very good. If you wait too long, they can be revived on a hot car dashboard. Most mornings have out-the-door lines at the Herndon spot, since they're made to order, but on a weekday the line-order-eat took about 15 minutes.

Also on the new secret menu is a variation of Hainanese chicken rice (on the Thai menu as chicken and rice with broth or you can ask for Khao Man Gai) which is poached chicken in rice that's been cooked with rendered chicken fat. I say variation because when I had it in Thailand the chicken was very tender but the Thai by Thai version was made maybe with an older bird, because it swapped tenderness for a really flavorful bite. I can see why it's on the secret menu, as fat-soaked rice with yard bird isn't an easy sell, but man that was tasty. Here's a page talking about the regional variations. The new secret menu has some things I definitely want to try. Luckily they kept the Moo Ping (grilled pork sticks) and sticky rice, because my three year old eats those just like she used to eat the Bangkok street food version. Just, you know, without the dipping sauce.

Oooooo even canned jackfruit and lychee are good if you've got condensed milk in the equation. Basically this fits into one of the foods that are just too hard to do at home for me because of technique -- look at how thin that roti gets.

Ah nuts, she's looking for the sweet kind. But you're not far off -- the more complex Malay/Southern Thai stalls had savory versions; for example, sweetened poached chicken with nuts and cinnamon or paneer, potato, and caramelized onions. On the touristy islands there would be ham and swiss, even. The sunburned euros could pretend it was a crepe. So based on your finding (and I'm glad it was delicious) I may expand my googling to South Asian places. In this video, I don't know what the red things that get tossed in are (cherries?) but here's a master at work:

My wife is craving the southeast asian banana pancakes and it's resisting easy googling. Does anyone recall finding them served in Northern Virginia? They're on Soi 38's menu as Kluay Roti, but downtown DC is a little too far away at the moment (two small kids in tow, sparse date nights to be had). This is the closest description I can find: Roti Canai However, the specific one that you get in major cities/tourist centers in Thailand is roti with egg and bananas mixed in, topped with sweetened condensed milk.

Also, trying really hard to lay politics aside -- for all the things that the Vietnam War did, at least it very slowly created an opening in the US for Vietnamese food. Will we see that for Iraqi and Afghan food in a decade? Possibly not; one, in both deployment and on R&R, my understanding is that Americans were getting Halliburton/Bechtel DFAC food, with the only deviations from basic Army mac and cheese being what the Pakistani, Bangladeshi, and Filipino contractors could sneak on the menu. I saw chicken adobo on the menu suspiciously often, for example. But did US soldiers in Vietnam come back with a taste for Thai and Vietnamese? Second, (and again, no politics on a food board) there's not the sizable wave of refugees to both start and sustain the restaurants. But even that's not a given- I've been told by midwesterners that there aren't really Hmong restaurants despite having a locus of refugees. Again, not looking for an American Sniper-esque flame war, just looking at some historical parallels. Especially not in a thread with a lighthearted link to Lick My Love Pump.

When my wife and I lived in Bangkok, we often staggered out of burger joints and BBQ places shaking our heads, thinking "ah, if only we could give these people the real thing, the REAL AMERICAN cuisine" but then we realized that sourcing the ingredients and building the smoking pits and convincing people, a la Hellburger, that some burgers are better a little less thoroughly cooked... Long way of saying, I'm still waiting for an Iraqi place to have the balls to put masgouf on the menu: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masgouf "But... it doesn't have the fire altar! Or the apricot logs! This is NOT masgouf!" etc. etc.

It was in Sweifieh, in Amman. Down the street from this amazing bakery, it was in this open-air corner of a building. The only toppings were a pile of various pickles and some toum.

Like the manufacture of the hot dog, this may be more than anyone wants to know, but I believe most commercial shawarma and gyro logs are formed from trimmings that are par-cooked and then high-pressure loaded into cylinders. The rotating spit doesn't cook the meat as much as it browns it, which is how you don't die from eating the hunks that they shave off that haven't browned. On the other hand, holding any meat in the sub-cooked danger zone for that long seems ill-advised, so maybe you're right. In Jordan I encountered one of the old-fashioned wood-fired shawarma places (they also did rotisserie chicken) and I watched them make the individual spits by stacking flattened raw chicken strips and spices and weighting them down with a brick. Really tasty and without the compressed uniformity you get from the mass produced kind. Anyone with actual food prep experience, please correct me before I kill us all. On the other hand, we had to eat uncooked hot dogs in the boy scouts when we couldn't get a fire lit and we were fine. Just fine.

Still waiting for a Shesimmers khao soi recipe - my wife has really enjoyed tinkering with her others so far.

Thai Luang in Herndon has it as one of their lunch specials, though I haven't tried it yet. It's on the list, because Khao Soi is a hard itch to scratch at home. Per Fishinnards post above, you can find a similar dish at Burmese restaurants as Kauk Shwe (which I think just means fried noodles). Khao Soi, Kauk Shwe, if you say it out loud you can kind of hear it. I've noticed in Thai places it's closer to a soup while the Burmese version is a thicker curry. Taste of Burma in Sterling has it - the curry broth is amazing, but the noodles are kind of unremarkable.

I don't see a separate page for it, but Zeitoun is worth a visit, even if it is out in the Sterling sticks. They have some appetizers that you don't see in the usual Middle Eastern rota and they're all vegetarian. I've had the zaalouk, which is an eggplant dip that is very bracing and spicy where baba ghanoush is creamy, almost like a North African salsa. The bastilla and tagines (my wife has had the lamb and the cornish hen) are excellent, though they seem to sell out of bastilla after lunch. I also have enjoyed their kofta, which is sizable, tender, and has a harissa kick. Also of note - excellent Moroccan mint tea and a very well executed espresso. Since the rest of the menu is kind of pan-Mediterranean melange, it's a good place to bring a date that loves to see you eat adventurously while they exercise the pasta option. The owners/entire staff are also incredibly friendly and always push the best dishes once they sense you're moving beyond the cheese pizza.

Sad to say it's closed, with the space up for rent. Never had a chance to try it.

When we moved from Arlington to Herndon, I was afraid my wife's heart would break from losing Me Jana/Lebanese Taverna market and the other local places to get a quick shot of shawarma when needed. In one of Herndon's many strip malls of ethnic delights on Elden (this one has four Indian places of various styles and regions, a halal grocery store, a Russian deli, a German place where the owner's Thai wife snuck some things on the menu) is Granada Cafe, which beyond doing excellent Lebanese staples such as shawarma/fettoush/kibbeh etc. has some Syrian and Iraqi dishes, including something which I never thought I'd see outside of Iraq, the delectable sammoun. Sammoun is a soft sandwich loaf that defies easy description. It's shaped like a baguette truncated into a crescent-roll shape, very soft with a hint of sweetness. If you've only ever had pita and lavash, sammoun is eye-opening. The Granada Sandwich (tender beef strips, pickled beets and carrots, marinated eggplant, and a touch of curry) comes stuffed in a sammoun, as does their version of shish tawook, which is like a yankee bbq sandwich because it takes a perfectly good bit of bread, meat, and sauce and then throws coleslaw in it. All the breads are fresh-baked in their brick oven and any sandwich can come on sammoun for an extra dollar, I believe. They also bake Turkish pide in this oven, though I haven't tried one. They do a fairly steady business for lunch, but I've never seen them busy for dinner outside of Ramadan. They have an impressive dessert case from the bakery side of the house - different strains of baklawa, bird's nests, knafeh, etc. So far I've only been disappointed with the meat and cheese fetayer - it's possible that they're not getting the turnover they need, so they end up a little dry; otherwise, this is a great chance for fans of Middle Eastern food to try something new.

Scottee, sad to say we haven't made it up to Chiang Mai yet, though there may be a weekend trip for Thanksgiving. I'll ask around, though.

I've lived in Bangkok for a year now (with a year to go before heading home) and I've been stuck on how much to post up on Bangkok dining for Rockwellians. There is basically too much to eat here to do justice to unless you're eating professionally, four meals a day. However, when you're in town you need to hit two food sectors and then you can be done. Otherwise you'll go insane trying to find "the best _____" in town and end up in screaming matches with cab drivers because obviously his cousin makes better som tam. First is street food, so find a grouping of carts that looks busy and look for three things- kanom krok, which are sweet coconut dumplings that are cooked on a giant ebelskiver pan. While these cool (because the filling is molten long after you're able to pick them up and will totally scald your tongue with coconut milk hellfire) look for the fried chicken drumsticks cart. These involve a thin rice flour coating that is lighter than tempura and should come studded with bits of fried garlic. Then, if you're lucky, find the grilled egg on a stick cart. As far as I can tell, they take eggs, blow out the contents through two small holes in the shell, whip the eggs with pepper and soy sauce, cook it until it starts to thicken, pour it back into the egg shell, then skewer the whole egg back through the holes, then put a stick of three eggs over a fire. You end up with a hardboiled egg that tastes like a divine smoked omelette. The second sector is sit-down restaurant fare, though you can find street food centers that have some seating (sometimes covered from the rain, too). In a generalization, if it comes with rice on the side that isn't given to you in a small plastic bag then you've moved into the second sector. I've had good luck with a place called Taling Pling, which is in the Central World mall on the food mezzanine level (not the giant food court). They have excellent curries (massaman duck is not something I've seen often in the US and it's a shame because it works much better than beef) and delicate fried dishes (chicken wrapped in pandan leaves or chicken fried with kaffir lime and a tamarind sauce) that are representative of what you eat when you're not eating on the street. It's a lot more expensive (meaning $6 a dish, it's relative) but you get napkins in return. Not unlimited napkins, mind you, because this isn't America. There's a third sector that I haven't explored as deeply, the seafood places that hang out over the river. Maybe an update in the future?

Apropos of nothing here, my wife was wondering when Mr. Landrum was going to open a chicken fingers and grilled cheese place called "Ray's: The Kids." Plain buttered pasta for the wee ones, 32oz wine flights for the parents.

The real trick for us local kids was to sneak into the employee cafeteria, where you could get the same food for a third of what they charged in the park. Wouldn't work for me now, but maybe some of you could pass for teenagers or indentured Ukrainians?

Also, they'll drop an egg on it for a buck or so. It remains to be seen if they'll let you take a nap on the couch afterwards, however.

There's nothing like joining a debate between giants by throwing out some words that aren't my own, but Calvin Trillin's "Anybody who doesn't think that the best hamburger place in the world is in his home town is a sissy" is apropos of everything here. You can be ecumenical and appreciate the beauty of a thousand thousand women, but we have our signature regional beauty (either Helen Hayes for classic style or Alyson Hannigan for the nerd vote) and suddenly all the folks from NYC won't shut up about this woman who is gorgeous and has nice legs from walking everywhere but thinks you're the frumpy friend who was in student government instead of drama club. I love this post from my favorite hamburger blog (because I take hamburgers SERIOUSLY, man) that tries to compare the regional champions. It doesn't really work, because everything had to be overnighted for fairness. I believe the end result is there has to be a Springfield vs. Shelbyville factor that makes YOUR burger better than THEIR burger. Hell, I say that even knowing that Five Guys has slid in quality from the olden days before the expansion. I'll gleefully eat a Shake Shack or In-n-out (in fact, I can't wait for my first West Coast burger) but deep down my native heart comes in a greasy paper bag with too many fries. Also, it's easy for Mr. Landrum to say, "Girls, girls, you're all pretty" when he makes a burger that would make any burger partisan weep tears of tallow.

Van Gogh's Starry Night, rendered in bacon.

Lord knows it's too late, but in high school my AP English teacher took all of us out to The Log Cabin on Rt. 1 to celebrate passing the exam. They had surf'n'turf and filet mignon and utterly dazzled my podunk eyes at the time. Looked like the sort of place that would have some decent scotch behind the glass, too. Given that the fanciest place I'd been to prior to the Log Cabin was Red Lobster, it was pretty impressive. This was over a decade ago, but now I have to give an approving glance that it notes on its website that it's closed most holidays and Super Bowl Sunday. http://www.thelogcabinrestaurant.com/ (warning, website is entirely in Flash AND has music)

Two years ago, in Ubud for our honeymoon, we enjoyed The Dirty Duck (Bebek Bengil). It seems to be getting mixed reviews of late, but it has a lovely setting out in a rice paddy and specializes in fried duck (thought it was a little dry), but the smoked duck was quite good.

My wife and I also came by for lunch yesterday; I couldn't tell if people were prying the doors open after the owner (I believe) had locked them when ingredients started to run out or if customers were sneaking in after satiated people left. Their opening day was like a zombie movie, so that's a good sign, right? Hell, they ran out of gumbo. I can't compare what we had to New Orleans standard, as I've never been. Almost everything was excellent, so even if the cuisine is new to you this is worth trying. The only complaint would be some of the greens in my wife's salad were tired, but the chilled gulf shrimp that came on the side were perfectly done. My muffalotta (their spelling, I think) was filling without being overwhelming (shot it through with the red crystal hot sauce for spice) and put together well. The beignets are going to be problematic, as multiple customers had powdered sugar spots on their work clothes. They were warm (slightly underdone/doughy in the middle, which I prefer) and I have no idea why no one is filling them with nutella or raspberry jam or lesser doughnuts. I would eat a beignet stuffed with a krispy kreme, why hasn't this happened? The decor is better than Courthouse deserves- old shutters atop the bar, a comfy pair of armchairs in the corner, an outboard motor hung on the wall with a bucket under it. The menu said the evening hours would bring a revolving set of entrees and we both agreed that we would come back to see what that would mean.