Keithstg

Great call! Here it is: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/29/dining/r...&ref=dining

He basically says what I'd been worried about, that with each dish individually priced, the whole experience would seem extra expensive.

Thanks for the intel - our train gets in around 6:30, so might end up getting there after its already busy. What did you think about dining in the lounge in terms of prices? From what I've seen of the menu it seems that it is (obviously) still expensive, but w/o knowing how tiny the dishes are, its hard to gauge. And I think we're ruling out a dining room reservations because we don't want to spend that kind of money.

I was at Per Se two weeks ago Friday (write-up coming soon), and the lounge was not full until about 8:30pm. If you want to dine early, I don't think you'll have much of a problem. You could also call and get on the wait list for dinner in the dininig room - we did, and were given an early Friday reservation. If anything, I think that the experience has improved there, at least when compared to my first visits.

I am very excited to try the new Lab as soon as possible! I'll wait on the "regular" galileo until (if?) the service is proven, however.

Buy something twice as big as you think you'll need.

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.

Best of luck in the new location - wonder when this will happen? I will not look forward to fighting traffic to get all the way out there, though.

The Hartford Whalers - 1/11/1975 - 4/13/1997.

I come to the esteemed DR.com community with the following need:

a place where 20-30 people can have a sit down dinner where entrees range from $15-$30 and be seated in a private or semi-private area without having to pay a guarantee or a minimum. Something chainish is fine. Ethnic is probably not what I am looking for for these meetings. Oh, thinking somewhere from Gallery Place to Dupont Circle to Foggy Bottom....

thanks!

We're just going up for an evening and probably will pick Palladio for dinner, but no one has mentioned anything about Keswick Hall's Fossett's. Does anyone have any experiences or knowledge? Any more recent lunch recommendations (we'll be up there for two possibilities)? We're open to all ideas.

Pax,

Brian

Wine pricing IS an issue, and rather than simply shrug it off as simply a matter of "they can charge whatever the market will bear," perhaps it would be useful to discuss it further. Most restaurateurs have come to depend on huge markups for wine and liquor to increase their profits. If they marked up their food as much, their customers would not return. What's the problem with that, you ask? Here's my list:

1) I enjoy drinking wine with dinner. It burns me up to see a familiar $10 or $11 retail bottle of wine being sold for $10 a glass (5 or 6 glasses per bottle depending on the size of the pour) or for $40 a bottle. If I am allowed to, I will often bring a good bottle of wine from home and pay the corkage fee instead of buying wine from their list. So I am paying $10-$20 for the use of their glasses and for someone to pull the cork, but I can drink a wine I would not be able to afford, if it were on their list and subjected to a huge markup. And a much better wine than if I am limited to what is "in my price range" on their list.

2) One of the reasons that I don't dine out more often is cost. One of the major contributors to the cost of dining out is wine, especially in places that don't allow corkage. Sometimes, when I do go out and haven't brought my own wine, rather than drink overpriced crappy wine, I'll drink a beer or tapwater. But I might not enjoy my meal as much, and if I don't enjoy my meal they've lost me as a return customer. Lots of people are now cutting back on restaurant meals because of a need to save money. This may be a time when "what the market will bear" will force places with wine programs stuck in an old mind-set to re-think their pricing.

The person most qualified to discuss it from a restaurateur's point of view is Dean Gold, who has built a brilliant wine program based on the philosophy that if he puts a smaller markup on his wine, more people will drink more wine, and will return to his restaurant more frequently. And he has become a destination restaurant for people who know and care about wine.

On Thursday evening, I discovered diningin.com, a terrific online system for ordering delivery from restaurants which is unfortunately not available in Washington (currently it covers Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, and Denver, and has the further drawback that the site can be painfully slow), and found that I could actually get delivery from Tinto. I decided, though, that that was not a particularly auspicious way to experience a good restaurant, so I decided to order Chinese. I checked on the eGullet Pennsylvania forum, and found that Lee How Fook was thought pretty well of, so I ordered from there. Diningin.com lets you select a restaurant, pick dishes from their menu, specify a delivery time, enter credit card info, and specify a tip, either by percentage or fixed amount. Then you go clickety-clack, and the food shows up at your door. So I chose a spring roll, a shredded turnip and pork soup, and a hot-pot of oysters, scallion, and ginger. The food arrived earlier than promised, the spring roll was still crisp and hot, the soup was dull if inoffensive, and the oyster dish wasn't nearly as good as the similar dish at Full Kee, but was pretty good. Perhaps diningin.com will come to Washington some day; it would be a nice complement to OpenTable.

Try Seamlessweb. It's fast, not slow, and is available in more "big" cities (and London), like DC. One caveat - it does seem like they are working through takeout taxi for some restaurants at the moment, but that is bound to change. Seamless has made late nights at the office here in NY bearable.

I have heard from knowledgeable sources that the wine in question can be obtained wholesale for $11 a bottle. How can you justify adding $35 to the cost of that bottle for wine knowledge, overhead, service, chilling, and the use of the glassware? That seems usurious, considering that other restaurants manage to operate on a much more reasonable wine markup.

Yep. The Red Porch is the bar above section 100, in centerfield.

Le Paradou was a place we frequented over the years, usually deciding on a whim to have dinner in the bar and lounge area - sometimes off the bar menu, sometimes not. We always enjoyed speaking with nicholas, the on-again, off-again sommilier. Wonder where Yannick will end up next?

Please show us where Wolfgang Puck made this claim.

Jake DeSantis.

One of the two bottles of '76 Bosconia Gran Reserva that I had last year was among my favorites of 2008. Those wines are great!

Two meals from a week ago...

Gotham Bar and Grill

We made it out to Alfred Portale’s institution last Friday for lunch. Unbeknownst to us, they are running a deal right now in celebration of their 25th anniversary where prix fixe lunch and dinner menus are available for $25 and $75 respectively. The menus featured popular dishes over the past 25 years, and seemed like an excellent deal. Unsurprisingly, the restaurant was packed! For starters we had the warm goat cheese salad, and the veal carpaccio with bresola, basil, lemon oil, and parmigano. Both were good, and were reminders of how influential Portale has been, as these dishes (particularly the goat cheese salad) are now everywhere. Mains were broiled cod, and lamb loin. Both were well presented, and cooked beautifully. Desserts for both of us were chocolate cake, which we also enjoyed, but were not wowed by. Combined with a half bottle of rLdH todonia (1999), this was a nice, serene, enjoyable lunch.

Jean-Georges

As my brother and sister in law were in town last weekend, we went to Jean Georges. I found the experience much different than the other 4 * tables in NYC – first, J-G’s bar (the Nougatine Room) was hopping. Slammed with people, music, the whole nine yards. Had we made reservations in the bar conversation would have been difficult, so caveat emptor when booking on Open Table (Nougatine shows up separately). The main dining room is off of the bar, and takes up the south side of the Trump building on CPW. Although there are doors separating the dining room from the bar, some noise does spill over, but not enough to be of concern. The dining room is sparsely decorated, and relatively long. Much to my dismay, our table passed up the tasting menu in favor of the four course menu. Of the first courses, my favorite was the peekytoe crab dumplings, served with a celeriac – meyer lemon tea jus. The jus was a bit spicier than expected, which gave a good counterpoint to the sweet crabmeat. The only dish among the first courses that didn’t meet expectation was the foie brulee, which my sister in law thought was too sweet…not a reasonable critique in my opinion (it’s crème brulee for heaven’s sake), but whatever.

Second course for me was roasted foie with candied apples – for whatever reason the menu indicated that this preparation would be served with concord grapes, but the foie showed up with apples instead. Either way, the sweetness of the apples was a nice counterpoint to the rich foie. I was also able to steal a bite of my wife’s Arctic Char, which was roasted with garlic and jalapeno.

Mains were smoked squab l’orange for my wife, and lamb loin for me. The squab wasn’t too heavily smoked, and worked well with the asian pear accompaniment. The lamb loin was cooked perfectly, but lacked excitement, I thought – the black trumpet mushrooms were good, as were the baby leeks, but I came away thinking that I should have gone with a different entrée. There wasn’t anything wrong with it, but in retrospect maybe a fish dish would have been nice, as opposed to lamb immediately following foie.

Desserts were served tasting style, based on a few components. Each diner was given the choice of Caramel, Chocolate, or Apple as the main ingredient and was then presented a plate divided with four small portions of dessert, with different preparations of each ingredient. I didn’t really come away with notes on the desserts, other than I preferred the “apple” plate to the others.

All in all, J-G was a good experience. The service was somewhat more aloof than, say, Le Bernardin, but the atmosphere itself was less formal. One of the better meals I’ve had up here in the last ten months, and certainly worth the trip up / celebratory dinner.

Does a clear distinction any longer exist between someone like Vongerichten on the one hand and Rachael Ray on the other?

I will be a solo diner in NYC Monday and Tuesday nights of next week, and am looking for some recommendations, preferably in Manhattan. This is going to be a pain in the you-know-what business trip for me, so I'm really hoping for some wonderful, memorable food that can help me forget about the day I know I will have just had. Price is not that important, but what is: someplace where I can have a comfortable dining experience at the bar, and where I can find a seat without a wait, or too much of a wait. I'm willing to eat early (6:00, maybe 5:30). If it matters, I will be dressed in a suit both days, though I'm not necessarily looking for anything formal.

Some places I've always wanted to try in NY, but never have:

Esca

Prune

Babbo

Do any of these fit the bill? Others you'd recommend more highly?

Thanks for any advice,

Dan

Eleven Madison Park

Gramercy Tavern

Daniel

Call me crazy, but I think that this is something that perhaps should have been done sooner, economy nonwithstanding. If anyone's familiar with the layout of Per Se, they know that the bar and lounge area was pretty much dead space - used as people waited to be seated, etc., and did not see a ton of traffic from those popping in for a drink or whatever. Heck, had I known about this last Saturday I would have stopped in for a drink and a salmon cornet prior to heading across the circle for dinner!

Apparently they will be open within a month, per a report on NY1 today...some more discussion of this in the NYC thread.

Brian Pothier - welcome back!

Awful news - the original Totonno's location in Coney Island has burned down.Clickity