Marty L.

Last night:  White pizza with cotechino-spiced kabocha squash, arugula & egg; Lamb souvlaki; Fig salad; Sweet potato, orzo & corn Salad; grilled kabocha squash with lime yogurt, hazelnut-garum vinaigrette, scallions, anchovy, nuts and dairy; Sesame ice cream with shortbread & sungold honey; Beeswax ice cream & cashew brittle.  All great.  The grilled squash was the biggest surprise.

Reveler's is now offering for carry-out ice cream/sorbet/gelato made by pastry chef Annie Coleman.  They're truly scrumptious.  Now you have (at least) three options for great restaurant ice cream:  Reveler's, 2 Amys and Happy Gyro!  It's the only upside of what COVID has wrought.

12 hours ago, DonRocks said:

smokey, if you do this, you should write gnatharobed (whose family owns A&J) and let her know - I'm certain they (the family) would be beaming over this.

We miss you!

You mean if smokey actually makes the 1400-mile round trip to grab some potstickers and spicy cukes--only then should she write to Debbie w/her appreciation?  😉   

Anyone had the $75 carry-out?  Worth it?

1 hour ago, smokey said:

@Marty L. Skimming through posts here, I've been reminded about so much that I liked and miss about this community, including people like you who I got to know!  Let me think about recs for your son.  The sad reality is that while I think the food scene here has improved, it's still not as strong as other places I've lived.    Any idea where he'll be in UT? 

Near Zion--but probably traveling through the north before that.

8 hours ago, smokey said:

@captcourt I'm so with you and @mtureck about the cuke salad.  Was back in the area over Christmas time and went to A&J for some of our family's old faves there, including the cucumber salad.  Apparently, there is an A&J in CA somewhere (Irvine, I think)  I'm now in UT and we've discussed driving to the CA location for some of their food.

Great to see you back here, Smokey!  Any Utah suggestions?  (My son will be out there soon.)

19 hours ago, captcourt said:

We also got carryout from them recently (last week, I think?  Time has no meaning anymore.)  and thoroughly enjoyed it.  What did we get?  Damned if I can remember everything right now, but we were happily overstuffed, with leftovers to spare.

Padaek and Hong Kong Palace constitute my personal favorite Restaurant Row right now.

Concur.  Had excellent carry-out from Padaek last night.

24 minutes ago, captcourt said:

We also got carryout from them recently (last week, I think?  Time has no meaning anymore.)  and thoroughly enjoyed it.  What did we get?  Damned if I can remember everything right now, but we were happily overstuffed, with leftovers to spare.

Padaek and Hong Kong Palace constitute my personal favorite Restaurant Row right now.

What's traveled well from HKP?  thanks

Taro is reopened for carry-out only and ... well, it's far better sushi than any other I've had during COVID.  Not cheap, of course, but not absurd (or NYC-level) prices, either.  We had both the Bara Chirashi ($24) and Jo Chirashi ($38).  The latter has better and more important cuts (a rich tuna/uni), but the Bara has considerably more food, and it's as great as it's always been (somewhere upthread above I've raved that it's one of my favorite DC lunches).  There's a lot to experiment with on the menu, too.

2 hours ago, DonRocks said:

Happy Gyro's are $32!

and they're about 32 times better ...

11 hours ago, DPop said:

If there is a better pizza being made in the DMV right now, someone needs to let me know.  I had the one Rocks had the other day and the one with italian sausage and red sauce from last week and I was amazed on the quality of the very different pies.  

Johnny continues to impress after all these years, a truly transcendent talent that has chosen to stick around in this area.  Lucky us.

Watermelon/fig/yogurt popsicles.  Yeah, they're delish.

1 hour ago, turbogrrl said:

In the old Hogo spot, the long-awaited (Oliver and Allee and Pearl are our neighbors, we've been waiting very impatiently) Pearl's is finally open for same-day online ordering. I'm not a bagel expert, but these are some of the best bagels I've had in a long while. (not like I am getting back to NYC anytime soon, alas...) Good bite, good flavour, they toast up excellently and aren't too dense on the inside. RIP my waistline. https://www.pearlsbagels.com/

Those look *way* too puffy.

33 minutes ago, DonRocks said:

Would you all say this is the best Thai restaurant in DC right now?

It's excellent but it's no Little Serow (nor is anything else).

On 7/11/2020 at 10:00 PM, PollyG said:

And. . .they're closed after a staffer tested positive.  Quite sure there is zero causality, of course.

Just to be clear:  That's Alinea, not Makan.

Not having made it to Albi before COVID, we finally got carry-out last night--the whole bass dinner.  Absolutely delicious.  And a very generous series of dishes for the price ($35/person plus 30% tip & tax).  The Levantine Old-Fashioned was also fantastic--and a good deal ($20 for what amounted to three drinks).

GRILLED BLACK BASS
-- MD crab + blistered tomato + corn butter --

wood-fired pita

beiruti-style hummus 

pea-hini + harissa + grilled onions 
tomato + melon fattoush -- sumac + smoky labne 
tabouli -- heirloom tomato + a lot of parsley & mint 

burnt cinnamon cookies -- brown butter + sea salt 
lebanese olive oil cake -- blueberries + lemon + mint oil 

(there was a light cucumber dish in there, too)

Head's up:  RH reopening Friday for service -- prix fixe ($45 plus tax and 22% service fee + beverages for choice of three options for each course).  If anyone is going to be able to pull this off safely, responsibly and deliciously, Jill, Jon and Bill surely will.  Check out their plan on the website.

1 hour ago, seanvtaylor said:

Wonderful takeout last night from the Rockville location. To my surprise, the highlight of the meal was the vegetarian delight with rice; served in a carryout container it looked, honestly, bland. But it was really, really delicious. The potstickers were as good as always, the turnip pastry as well, and the beef wraps fell apart a bit on the ride home but were flavorful and fun to eat. We have so many good options for interesting food, and this remains one of the best. 

The veggies on rice is one of my faves.

2 minutes ago, Marty L. said:

Interesting, thanks.  I've never been (too far) but am tempted.  After tonight they're moving to a few indoor seatings and a $48 bento-ish takeout.

6 minutes ago, DonRocks said:

I just asked DIShGo what she thought (we each had one), and her answer was identical to my thoughts: The quality of ingredients was beyond reproach, but the dish was too busy, with too much going on - it needed editing (incidentally, the sauce atop the squid on the left was quite mild, and worked well with the dish).

$20 was a very fair price.

Have you had any luck w/carry out at Takumi, Don?  How's the chirashi there?

2 minutes ago, DonRocks said:

I just asked DIShGo what she thought (we each had one), and her answer was identical to my thoughts: The quality of ingredients was beyond reproach, but the dish was too busy, with too much going on - it needed editing (incidentally, the sauce atop the squid on the left was quite mild, and worked well with the dish).

$20 was a very fair price.

Interesting, thanks.  I've never been (too far) but am tempted.  After tonight they're moving to a few indoor seatings and a $48 bento-ish takeout.

On 6/6/2020 at 11:47 PM, DonRocks said:

Sashimi Bowl ($20) this evening:

How was it?

On 6/3/2020 at 1:40 PM, deangold said:

We saw thier umbrellas in California which didn't read like much.

The gates in Central Park were amazing and worth the trip to see them. at first, our reaction was is this really it? But as we saw m ore and more, it got breathtaking. Thank you to Chriso and Jeanne-Claude.

And remember that they spent much more time getting permissions and fund raising than doing their art. The art of making art is a hard business. 

The Central Park Gates was an extraordinary experience.

16 hours ago, deangold said:

Can't say that I ever had an Ollie Burger at any outlet. But I remember the Lumsburger of my youth but I could not tell you anything about it. 

My youthful burgers of nostalgia are three:

The Hawaiian Hut: a little old fashioned burger stand taken over by a heavily tatooed ex-fireman who chain smoked as he slapped burgers down on the grill. Hand formed, maybe 3/4 or 1" thick. There was a totem pole out front and the patio was overed in thatch. He wore Hawaiian shirts. And there was that cigarette, the ash always threatening to fall on your burger but never doing so. He would shake his "secret seasoning" out of a dredge which every kid there knew to be Lawrey's seasoned salt. He knew everything about you and he knew your mom from her shopping across the street at Gelson's. They tore the hut down for a gas station expansion. Today is is a luxury car lot.

Woody's: first discovered one day going to a UCLA or Rams game at the LA Coloseum. Huge crowd and we were hungry. You got into a line and chose a large or smaller burger {still large} that were thin pressed and grilled crisp. No rare, medium rare, medium or medium well. Burnt was it. You could get bacon, grilled onions and cheese added. Then you went to a long condiment bar and you could load up as much as you could fit on your tray. Despite all the USC paraphernalia, it was amazing. They later tried to create a chain and it was not the same. There is a huge difference between pulling a burger off a grill just as its outside is perfectly charred and caramelized and just starting to actually burn. It was perfection and their 3 old black guys on the line knew how to do it perfectly. When they went to a chain operation, they were just burnt. And cooked by teen age white kids who didn't give a eff. They went bankrupt.

But the burger of my youth, the non-jewish deli sandwich of my youth was The Original Cassel's. if you didn't go when Alban Cassel himself was running it, you did not have a Cassell's Burger. It was at 6th and Rampart {not positive about Rampart and maybe it was 3rd.} in Downtown LA. There was a smallish shop for the line to order, the salad bar and the cookline. Alban was on the cash register. There were four older black guys who rotated between the order station and cooking. Alban was a perfectionist and he designed his own grill. There was a flattop on top for toasting the buns and grilling the sandwiches. Then there was a pull out grill on the bottom with a broiler on top of that under the flattop. The burger artisan could move that contraption up and down and in and out with a handle with a lever on it that let the grill swing free. 

When you got in line, you had to decide what to order. The entire menu:

Burger
Ham
Tuna Salad
Egg Salad

The sandwiches were served on thin slices of either rye or egg bread, made especially for Alban, by a local bakery. When I spoted the name of the bakery making its very early daily delivery, I went there because they had to be master bakers. They weren't. Their bread was worse than super market bread but the stuff they made for Alban was custom and it was his recipe. The slices were 16" by 9", sliced thin on a deli slicer. The burgers came in two sizes, 1/3# and 2/3# served on the same eggy bun, always toasted perfectly. The entire time for making a sandwich from start to frying it on the flat op in a pool of butter with a flat weight pressing it down, the weight sized to match the bread perfectly, was maybe 3 minutes. The burgers were cooked top and bottom simultaneously so ordered medium rare, they took 3 to 5 minutes.

They had their meat custom grown in Colorado to spec. They used only the chuck, delivered in the morning every day they were open and ground on site. When I was really accepted as a regular, Alban even told me the restaurants that bought the rest of his cows for fancy $30 steaks. This is 1973 so $30 was a big drop of green! But a 2/3# Cassels with the salad bar and a big lemonade was about $5. My mom took me there once before I turned 16 and when I got to high school and had friends who had cars, we would cut school to go to Cassell's as it was open Monday thru Friday 11 am 'til they ran out. 

But the real genius was the ordering system. The gruff guy taking orders would point and say 'whatta ya have?' It was more an accusation than a question. You had to answer with no hesitation or be pushed aside for a regular to explain the system to you. Each item was numbered. 21 was a plain 1/3# burger and 31 was 23. *2 meant Swiss. *3 American. And so on. You knew you were a boring regular when the guy taking your order would say you are always 31 medium. Live a little! They all knew I ate most everything but American cheese and egg salad, so I would be greeted with 'here comes trouble' but I never messed up my orders so I was allright. 

Sandwiches came on an oval platter. Burgers on a square one. So when you ordered, you got a plate put down on the counter. There were strips of hand cut butcher paper in boxes and the rest of your order was coded. If you had a burger, the temp was pink for medium rare, blue for rare, brown for medium. I believe there was a graveyard out back for anyone who ordered their burger more than medium. If you did, you got medium rare no matter what. The strips went on one side of the plate for 1/3# and the other for 2/3#. Cheese was at the back of the plate, pink for Swiss and blue for American. Everything needed for burgerperfection with a plate and 2 strips of paper.

For a sandwich, on one side of the platter, it was pink for ham, blue for tuna. I assume that brown was egg salad but I never saw one ordered. If you wanted your sandwich grilled, you got a pink strip on the other side. Bread was indicated by a paper strip at the back of the plate. No strip was rye, the only real choice.  Burgers were stacked separately than sandwiches. 

When the grill was empty, the cook would come and collect a stack of plates. The oldest order was on the bottom. So he would put his hand on top of the stack and and flip it so all the plates were face down and the oldest was on top. Say the burger grill was empty. He could count out the burger strips and know how many 1/3 and 2/3 he needed on the grill. He knew the temps again by counting another part of the pile. The grill tilted so rare was at the front, medium rare in the middle and medium at the top, closest to the upper flame. A shake of salt and pepper mix out  the dredge was all that touched the burger except the cheese added half way thru cooking. All the burgers cooked at the same time, no matter what temp you ordered because of the design of the grill. When the grill was just about fully cooked, the cook guy spread out the plates with the paper and everything was offloaded in perfect order. I never got something other than what I ordered. Not once. And nothing ever was less than perfect. I think any cook who made a mistake after their first day got shot and put out back in the cemetery along with those who insisted on well done burgers.

They called out your number and temp and you grabbed the plate or platter for a sandwich. And then you went to the salad bar. iceburg, sliced onions, none of this grilled onion shit. Yellow mustard made from powder every day. But the star, the best of all was homemade potato salad. it was creamy, spiked with chopped pickle and a ton of horseradish. It brought tears to the eyes like a bottle of Gold's at Passover. 

Drinks were bottled soda and homemade lemon aid and iced tea. They prepped in the morning starting at 5 am {you could go by to see the process, we would go after all night poker broke up, pass by Cassells to watch before going for Chiu Chou noodles in China Town. When they ran out they ran out. If you went late, say 3 o'clock and were standing in line you might hear the mournful cry, no more 2/3# burger and you were eating something else. They would cut off the line when the ends of the prep was in sight. And when everyone was thru ordering, there would just be enough left for family meal.

There was a patio and an indoor dining area. When your food was ready, you would go out and wait for a spot to open. There were two Latina's with brooms and trash bag to clear and clean spots as they opened. if you lingered you would get told to move your culo in Spanish once, then poked with the broom. More than once, the Cemetery.  but the whole operation was set up so that your seat magically appeared as you came with your food. Alban was a genius. And I don't ever remember any staff quitting. 

Alband rules: Never had fries: They are a world of their own. Never had ketchup. Nothing ever changed. Nothing. Except Alban grew older as time went by. 

Downtown redevelopment closed the Original Cassell's. The original Cassels was actually his second place. His first, just Cassels had to move as his legend grew. He said that was it, no more. A few years later someone convinced him to reopen on Beverly in a more high falutin' neighborhood. But Alban couldn't recreate the magic and the black guys took over the business. They recreated the magic but I guess the money part was too hard to make a go of it. Instead of lines with 50 or 100 people waiting {that would take no more than 30 to 45 minutes to clear} they had lines of 10 at peak hours. They sold to their developer for funding and he had visions of a chain. The 4 black guys took their money and left after a very short time. Apparently they did well for themselves. The new place closed in ignominy with people asking what is the deal with Cassel's. It's just a burger!

Sort of like people asking what's the big deal with this Mikey Angelo guy.. Didn't he just pain ceilings and walls? 

Proust>The Madeleine = Dean>The Original Cassell's

2 hours ago, gnatharobed said:

Happy Anniversary! We are honored to be your special occasion restaurant. Thank you so much for your support. We are getting ready to sign on with UberEats so you can also have A&J delivered soon. We had too many issues with DoorDash. 

Debbie:  Yours has been among the very best carry-out options we've enjoyed -- thanks so much for making such delicious food so affordable!

22 minutes ago, PollyG said:

Padaek is open with limited hours and a pared down menu. 

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5624de11e4b0b8034f819d3a/t/5ebe06005c7d92109ff91d60/1589511680117/Padaek+Contactless+CarryOut+%26+Delivery+Menu+(3).pdf

1 hour ago, sheldman said:

As of tonight (I think) Tail Up Goat is doing take-out. Ordering link here. We ordered a couple days ago and picked up tonight and were very very pleased. They have 3-course meals (with very good clear instructions about any little bit of cooking or plating required to make them wonderful) and other awesome stuff including ALCOHOL thank god.  The pick up system is good and safe and you get to say hi to Jill through your mask and hers. Delicious stuff, and if places like this have been important in your life as they have in mine, we should do what we can to increase the likelihood that they will continue to exist in whatever form the future makes possible.

What'd you order?