Rhone1998

On 4/28/2024 at 6:55 AM, DonRocks said:

 One question people may wish to ask any candidate Ethiopian restaurant: “Is your injera made with teff?”

Often the menus will offer a “gluten-free” injera option. Those are the teff ones. 

I’ve never been but my wife is raves about the food and service there. She says only downside is a fairly limited menu without many vegetarian options. 

What are people loving for Ethiopian these days? Bonus points for recs that are an easy drive from Union Station.  We're picking someone up from the train station friday night and promised Ethiopian food, but I'd rather not trek it up all the way to Silver Spring.  Thanks!

On 12/15/2022 at 4:47 PM, DonRocks said:

Last Friday, I had the best gnocchi I’ve ever had at Roberto’s. Every dish was good, but the gnocchi was extraordinary - it’s enough for a meal by itself.

Don, curious if you paired a wine from their list with the gnocchi? I would be at a loss to make a good match especially as I really don’t know Italian wines. 

We are hosting several vegetarians this year for the first time, and so need to make some adjustments to our usual routine.  It's all good! Haven't made any final decisions yet but we are leaning toward making this Mushroom Wellington recipe, in addition to some sides (vegetarian sides are a lot easier). Anyone tried it?

Besides Qualia, which other local roasters do folks recommend for mail subscriptions?

On 6/24/2021 at 12:43 PM, ScotteeM said:

No pressure, but this is likely our one and only chance to experience the food of this part of the world. We want to enjoy as much as we can of the food of the high-end restaurants in the area, as well as more traditional dishes. What are the can’t miss places? Are there any places that we would want to avoid?

It's been a long time since we were in that area, but when we were in San Sebastian we wandered into many wine bars and small restaurants that just caught our eye walking down the street (crowded with locals is a good sign) and never once left disappointed.  So my only advice to you is to leave one or two slots on your meal itinerary empty and hit up whatever place strikes your fancy in the moment.

13 hours ago, zgast said:

Reviving this topic.  Looking for recommendations for a fun restaurant that might make for a good 21st birthday dinner for my daughter.  Looking to spend $50-100 per person for 2-4 people.  Food should be good, but the lively scene is where my knowledge falls apart as these are the places I generally don't go out of my way to frequent.  Would be great if they had a cocktail menu or interesting drinks as well.  Would Nina May fit the bill here?  Any other new places I should consider?  Thanks!

Le Diplomate? Definitely fun and lively, with consistently decent food (pre-pandemic at least). They also have a variety of different seating options depending on your party's preferences.

2 hours ago, zgast said:

I would be fascinated to know how this tastes. Was quite thrown off by the white wine appearing black. 
Unfortunately, I have no clue how you should go about tasting this. 

I have two bottles from two different years, and they are markedly different colors. I've never had Rivesaltes before and honestly have no idea what it's supposed to look like.

I’m thinking of opening this bottle up to celebrate with some friends.
 

Questions to those of you more knowledgeable than I: does it need to stand upright for a period of time before opening? Will it need to be decanted?

Hello DR hive, I’m looking for a pizza place, in DC or Montgomery County ideally, with a patio suitable for a party of 10 to 15 people. Bonus points if it’s got heat lamps since the weather might be cold when we head there.

Thanks for any suggestions.

Who knew, China grows coffee? This is from my biweekly delivery. I’m no good with coffee descriptions, but it’s pretty tasty to me.

27 minutes ago, naxos said:

I’m intrigued by the tiny amount of starter!

I know, right? But it works if you give it enough time.  I started the dough about 9pm, let it proof on the counter until about 1 or 2 pm the next afternoon, with 4 stretch and folds every 30 minutes at the end.  Then in the refrigerator until late the following morning for baking.

I've been doing the whole sourdough thing, really starting to get happy with the results (though I am still terrible at the final shaping stage...the bread winds up rising to a decent shape but I still struggle to get it from a blob of dough to an actual round loaf before putting it in the oven).

I have settled on a version of this recipe except I use a 2:1 ratio of regular white bread flour to whole wheat flour, and I cut the hydration back to 70% from 80% (I can barely handle the 70% version).  You get a tighter crumb that way but I still like the way it turns out.

My latest loaf.

41 minutes ago, Count Bobulescu said:

With the caveat that prediction (especially about the future) is difficult, one of the editors of the Rabo bank quarterly report on the wine industry, recently told a California audience they don't believe the on premise sector will recover to pre Covid levels before the end of 2022. That's the good news. Black Box Intelligence, which researches only the restaurant industry, has a time scale of 2024 to 2025+ depending on how the virus is contained.

I think how the virus is contained is only half the equation. The commercial real estate market is a huge piece of this as well. If businesses suddenly wake up and realize that they can save a shit ton of money by cutting their physical footprint and letting employees who can continue to work from home, that’s going to totally transform our downtown areas, obviously to the extreme detriment of restaurants and other businesses that depended on the people who worked in those spaces. 

On 7/10/2020 at 11:56 AM, Bart said:

First, there are literally no rental properties available in July or August from Corolla to Ocracoke.  None!  I thought I wasn't using the search function properly on a couple sites because I kept coming up empty so I called, and the woman told me that because people can't go to Europe or Disney, they are driving to the beach instead and everything is booked.

For what it’s worth, I was curious about this and texted the lady whose condo we rented about her availability for the rest of the summer. She says she has one week left, from August 29 to September 5. This is a very nice, modern two bedroom condo on the ocean side in Rodanthe. If anyone is interested I’m happy to put you in touch with her.

52 minutes ago, Ericandblueboy said:

Their online menu shows 5 items.  Is that all they're serving?

Their menu is quite limited but the quality is good.  We like the Char Kway Teow best but nothing here has been bad in the 4 takeout meals we've gotten from them. 

2 hours ago, saf said:

I like the beaches!

The beaches were awesome.  You can literally stop by the side of the road and walk over a sand dune to have a pristine stretch of beach all to yourself.  I can't think of another place I've been in the US where that's possible.

6 hours ago, DonRocks said:

Where are people staying in OBX that they feel safe? 

Honestly, price is no object - I'd love to get away, even at the most expensive place on the Outer Banks, but I haven't a clue where that might be. I'm not looking to dine well, or to deep-sea fish; I'm looking for a nice, luxurious, safe hotel with a nice swimming pool area.

I am no OBX expert...this was our first time there. But are there nice hotels on the Outer Banks? From Kitty Hawk down to the southern point, where we were, we saw none. Only rentals and cheap motels. It’s pretty rustic. 

3 hours ago, stevem said:

Did you feel generally safe out and about there? Masks, etc?

While we were there the Governor had *just* ordered a mandatory mask order for retail establishments.  Prior to that, a lot of places had signs up asking or demanding customers wear masks, but apparently it wasn't the law until that order was issued.  So keep that context in mind.  If compliance in DC is maybe 95%+ (I'm talking about wearing masks inside shops/restaurants), maybe it was 85% there.  Certainly most people were, but we would definitely see people occasionally walk into a place without masks.  Sometimes they were challenged by the establishment, often they weren't.

Just walking down the street? No one would be wearing masks.  On the beach, definitely not.

That said, did we feel safe? Yes, because we never dined inside, spent very little time in stores at all (and when we had to go to a store, only one of us would go in, obviously wearing a mask, and retail workers were almost 100% masked), and most importantly we just never found ourselves in crowded situations (it's very easy to find space on the beach to yourself there, at least in the southern part of OBX where we were).

OK, after two weeks in the Outer Banks, it's clear this is not somewhere you go to for the food.  That said, we found a handful of places that stood out from the rest and that we would go back to:

Best of the bunch was a Mexican food truck in Ocracoke called Eudardo's. This simple taco stand produced our best meal of the trip -- freshly made hot tortilla chips with guacamole, carnitas tacos on masa tortillas, fried fish (local mackerel) tacos on flour tortillas -- everything was excellent.  I wouldn't quite say it is worth a trip to go to this place simply because you have to take a ferry to get to Ocracoke and the wait can be long, but if you're there I'd highly recommend this place for lunch (they also serve breakfast if you happen to be staying on the island).

80 miles north of Eduardo's, in Nags Head, a completely different experience - Woo Casa.  The menu is all over the place (tacos, poke, banh mi...) but everything we tried was tasty.  I was particularly impressed by the banh mi (which had all the flavors you'd expect from an Eden Center sandwich) and the truly excellent fries.  As of June 2020 they are technically only doing take out, but if you don't mind the strip mall parking lot ambiance, you can eat at one of the three picnic tables out front.  The owner is super friendly.

Toward the end of our stay we were craving spicy food, and my wife found Single Fin Thai-Sushi. Ordinarily I would run as fast as I can away from a Thai restaurant that advertises sushi but in OBX you don't have that much choice, so we gave it a shot, and at the end of the day it wasn't bad at all.  I'd say it was about what you'd expect from a B+ Thai restaurant in the DC area, nothing mind blowingly good but a place you'd be happy to go back to when the mood strikes.  The waterfall beef and garlic pork were both quite good, and drunken noodles, ordered spicy, were chewy and satisfying and delivered the needed kick. 

Honorable mention goes to Buxton Munch, in Buxton, for decent crab cakes, seafood tacos (the day we went they gave us a choice of three locally-caught fish), and fried oysters.

Ice cream shops abound on OBX but most serve up Hershey's or some other similar crap.  Booty Treats is no exception but at least they get really creative with their combinations and add-ons, so you can create something pretty unique there.  And it's just a block walk to the beach.

We just got back from two weeks in the Outer Banks. It was a great vacation. Tons of outdoor activities to do, with an obvious focus on the beach and the water— fishing, clamming, jet skiing, kite sailing, that sort of thing, and obviously just lazing about on the beach.

The food scene is not great. With a few exceptions, which I will post later, most of our restaurant meals were pretty bleh. But there is great local seafood, and produce this time of year, so cooking in your rental is definitely an option.

Restaurants are allowed to do indoor dining there, and some are choosing to do so while others are not. Many are 100% take out only, but lots of places have outdoor seating already in place so if you’re comfortable with that it’s an option in many restaurants as well.

On 6/29/2020 at 11:31 PM, DonRocks said:

Is this the lighthouse they moved about thirty years ago? I remember visiting a light house in the Outer Banks (not for the first time), and it seemed oddly unfamiliar - and then I found out there was some incredibly elaborate displacement that occurred in the previous decade (all dates written here are via faulty memory).

Does anyone remember this great bakery somewhere around Avon, or Frisco, or in one of those towns, with these really good donuts, and in the evenings they served really good pizza? I was much younger then, and my palate hadn't developed, but I remember being in heaven whenever I went here - it was on the east side of the highway. Might it have been called The Gingerbread House? That name just popped into my head as I was writing this.

Looks like that place is still there. 

Any recent Outer Banks experiences that folks would recommend?

On 3/18/2020 at 12:52 PM, lotus125 said:

FYI, Emilie's is operating a to go menu: https://www.emiliesdc.com/menus/

Emilie's is knocking it out of the park with their to-go cocktails, at least the frozen ones.  This is not usually a style that appeals to me but my wife has gotten two (the all-day froze and another called Lucky Frog -- cachaca, Singani 63, coconut, lime, passionfruit, pandan...I don't see on the menu right now even though she ordered it earlier today) that I would happily finish off if given the chance.  Check them out.