Tujague

James Beard Foundation Humanitarian of the Year. Who's going to argue with this?

23 hours ago, Pat said:

From Popville: The restaurant might be reopening downtown in a couple of months.

Presumably not under the same name? Is there a downtown demand for mediocrity?

My point was solely to Don's expression of confusion over the days on which Tom's reviews appear, and how they are all headed as "Reviews," without a consistent use of "First Bite." This is a legitimate, but wholly separate concern that affects all his review articles, not just this particular endeavor.

22 hours ago, DonRocks said:

If I'm not mistaken, this is a "First Bite" column titled as a "Review," which happened with Chloe last week for what may be the first time. Fridays used to be "Review Day," and Wednesdays (?) were "First Bite Day" - now, it seems like the days may have shifted around, although who knows if it's a permanent strategy thing. 

Maybe it would be more palatable if it were marked as a "First Bite," or an announcement was made as to when to expect what? For example, everyone's used to Wednesday at 11 AM for "Chat Day" (until a certain critic came along and tried to steal the thunder on Tuesdays) - if that were to change, it might cause some confusion at first.

Tom's First Bite columns appear online on Fridays, and in print in the Food section on Wednesdays. His Magazine reviews appear online on Wednesdays (usually) and in print on Sundays. All the "First Bite" pieces are cited as "Reviews" in the header, but as "First Bites" on Tom's own page. Perhaps therein is the confusion; they would do well to make sure that "First Bite" appears somewhere on the actual review page.

Regretfully, I never went to Mia's, and this from Popville suggests that I may not want to try out Loaf Coffee, either. 

19 hours ago, Finatic said:

Lincoln Park Cafe is a horrible location for a restaurant! 

Well, a horrible location for any restaurant that isn't orienting itself explicitly to its immediate neighborhood. Maybe Aaron Silverman would like to venture a little farther into the Hill and open "Little Pineapple"?

I bought the InstantPot Mini (3 qt.) a few months ago, which seems just the right size for one or two people, or for doing side dishes. Cutting recipes in half to make them work isn't too tricky. I've cooked the Trader Joe's Cabernet pot roast in a couple of times now. Once I had to cut it in two to make it fit, but the one I made last night was just the right size, though I should have cooked it for 5-10 minutes less to account for the smaller size. I just bought a glass lid for it (which has been out of stock pretty often), so now I want to see how it does as a slow cooker. Pretty pleased so far.

Bob and I stopped by yesterday (Friday) evening for happy hour. We were the only customers in the place at just past 5:30. No one else showed up until about six, when one couple showed up for dinner, and before we left, one other man came for happy hour, waiting for a friend. Five people total on one of the busiest dining nights of the week (though Barracks Row was less busy than usual, it seemed). The cocktail special was a French 75 ($7), and we also ordered the (great) poppyseed gougeres, which didn't arrive until we were nearly finished with our drinks--about 25 minutes. The bartender wasn't unfriendly, but she didn't engage us in conversation or do anything to make us feel particularly welcome, so we went elsewhere for dinner. Sad to say, I really can't imagine returning.

I was shocked at the number of MKs in NYC on our recent visit; they seemed to be everywhere in Midtown East. I don't remember seeing any when we were there six months prior. I had a small, ready-made sandwich which was just OK, nothing special.

That's what I mean by a place "more worthy" of the spot---and that will mean having an owner and operator who really understands the neighborhood and the way that the DC and Capitol Hill scene has changed since the place's earlier incarnations.

I see that the building housing the Lincoln Park Kitchen and Wine Bar is once again up for sale. It appears it is still open, but I don't know what this means for its future. Hopefully, a restaurant more worthy of the space.

Closing December 16, 2017.

I haven't been here in probably at least a decade. Even at its best, the food was mostly mediocre, and after one too many salt bomb entrees and crappy margaritas, I gave it up. Sure, it was iconic on Barracks Row for being one of the few places that had a bit of style, well before the recent renewal, but that wore out long, long ago. Still, this is a prime location, and it will be interesting to see who takes it over; here's hoping its not a chain or another Xavier Cervera joint. Maybe a new outpost for Bindaas? Capitol Hill could use a really good Indian restaurant.

Good news: the Capitol Hill store now has a small supply of the smaller carts. Bad news: the shelf price tagging remains a work in progress, to be polite.

Don and B.A.R., I think those are both helpful and creative suggestions, particularly about how to handle bullets. But there is already a huge black market for both guns and bullets, and how we then deal with that, after making that explode in size is a serious consideration. I am surprised that there isn't more discussion about targeting the actual gun and ammo manufacturers and importers. Those are who the NRA is serving and protecting anymore--not so much gun owners--and simply banning certain weapons isn't going anywhere. Making it harder and harder for them to do business and make profits may be at least part of the way to cut off the source.

I will be surprised if he's not in the running for the Nobel Peace Prize next year. He is changing the whole paradigm of disaster food relief.

51 minutes ago, dracisk said:

What's the issue with the small carts? Why would the city bar them? Just curious.

I don't know. When I inquired about them at the Clarendon location, I was told they were not allowed to have them, so I wonder if there is a similar thing going on here. It does seem like those carts disappear fairly quickly from Safeway, HT, etc., so I wonder if they are concerned that they would become a street nuisance. Whatever the case, it's odd.

17 hours ago, Pat said:

I have to start with LOL, because my biggest complaint is the checkout system. They have customers butt-to-butt, with some big carts making it even more cramped. I'm not that fond of the customers on the inside, registers on the outside model, unless there there is a wide aisle. This store does not have a wide aisle.  I've only walked so I don't know about the parking, but the going out and back in sounds weird.

It would be odd if they couldn't have the medium carts since they have them at the H Street Whole Foods. But I have noticed that it is either hand baskets (which is what I have used) or full-sized carts. (Can't recall what they have at the Jenkins Row Harris Teeter.)

I've found the pre-packed produce not to be of such great quality.  I haven't noticed the misplaced tags, but that wouldn't surprise me. I find the employees friendly and a bit too overly helpful, but I imagine that's how they've been trained. The way they stack stuff over the freezer cases drives me nuts, but that's a chain-wide issue, not specific to this store.

The space is pretty small, thought I don't find the aisles any smaller than the TJ's I'm used to going to. and I'm still not sure why it had to be two levels below grade..

I agree that the checkout space is cramped, but thus far I've found the checkers pretty efficient in getting people through quickly.

Harris Teeter/Jenkins Row does have the smaller carts; but it has other management issues and a terrible self-checkout section. I'm increasingly using the Navy Yard location.

TJ's has never been known for great prepackaged produce, but they nevertheless sometimes carry items you don't regularly find at Safeway/Giant/Harris Teeter. And I think the smaller size makes the over-the-freezer case items more of an obvious issue here. Maybe this will improve when they're carrying fewer seasonal items; TJ's goes way overboard with pumpkin spice crap.

As happy as I am to have a Trader Joe's on Capitol Hill, I'm sorry to say that I've been rather disappointed in the store we got. First of all, it's small—I suspect one of the smallest in the DC area. When it's crowded, it feels super-cramped, which is exacerbated by the lack of small carts (did the city disallow them here for some reason?) or parents on phones obliviously pushing heavy-duty double-wide baby strollers through aisles barely able to accommodate the larger carts. Second, the shelf management there has so far been pretty poor--seemingly dozens of shelf tags are missing or misplaced, or the wrong products are located under them. Store staff seem to be unconcerned with tidying up items that have been mis-reshelved or correcting their own errors; I've gone back on consecutive days and found the same stuff just left in the same random place. And it seems like this store has more than its share of visitors who simply dump their unwanted products wherever. Third, the placement of products seems far from intuitive, particularly in the freezer cases; the smaller space demands that more items be placed above the freezer cases, and I find myself going back through aisles several times. Things I expect to be near one another are sometimes far apart. And some of the other logistics are weird: to exit to the street, you have to go out the door to the parking garage, then turn left and go back into the store to access the escalators. On a positive note, it seems like they have a fairly efficient check-out system, though it's hard to see the registers nearest to the exits. I expressed some of my concerns on the store web site, but thus far have no response. They may not be able to change the limits of a small space, but it seems like many of this issues should be rectifiable. And if the city is barring them from small carts, I hope they petition for a change of policy (the Clarendon store also lacks them, but it's a much larger space, so it feels like less of a problem).

On 10/12/2017 at 10:12 AM, genericeric said:

It was an odd review...  The Inn seemed to score a lot of bonus points for the overnight stay, which most restaurants couldn't compete with.  Not that this is the first time he's expressed a fondness for the cooking, but it seemed a bit skewed.

The review in the print magazine is quite a bit longer than the early online piece, and focuses more on the food. The online version basically was the first and last paragraphs.

And we're all wrong; the winner is . . . The Inn at Little Washington.

It's an odd list: four high-end places, four Asian establishments, and, at numbers 9 and 10, a couple of slots that reasonably might have taken by any number of restaurants.

4 minutes ago, Marty L. said:

I think highly of Rasika, but that would be a very disappointing, somewhat absurd, choice.  I thought about the Dabney, but figured that Tail Up Goat is more likely along those lines.  Arroz is an interesting thought--I haven't been there yet, in part because I'm wary of the Isabella Industry.  

It occurred to me in part because he's recommended it a lot this past year in his chats. I've shared your skepticism about Isabella, but my visit there convinced me he's the real deal. And, with the big article in the NY Times about Isabella yesterday, this feels like his moment.

Y'all know that he loves Rasika. But I wouldn't count out Arroz as an underdog choice.

A really fine Restaurant Week lunch here yesterday (for Bob's 70th birthday). They have four or five options for the first two courses, some created especially for this week. I went for the special honeydew soup with fresno chile and pistachios, and loved every drop; it would have been even more refreshing on a warmer day. Bob's burrata with roasted peaches and tomatoes was generous and flavorful; he borrowed my soup spoon to slurp up the liquid left behind. His short-rib agnoletti with a cacio e pepe fonduta and onion gravy was a more autumnal dish, but another large portion. My cassarecce (sp?) dish with green onion, fresh corn, and speck was sensational (the only flaw being some sloppily trimmed corn). This and the soup were the true stars. For dessert, he opted for the chocolate lavender cake; I had the bombolinis with cherry compote (both expert), but since it was his birthday, they brought a third dessert, a sort of cheesecake with a purple ice cream, white and dark chocolate crumbles,  and mini meringues. We left stuffed, and very impressed with our first--much too late--visit to what is a real gem in the Navy Yard area.

(BTW, our waiter was terrific, but the manager, while friendly, was a bit slobby in his dress and appearance. If you didn't know he was an employee, you might have thought that he was just someone who had walked in off the street and was wandering among the tables. Odd.)

Speaking as a Lutheran theologian (!), as much as I love this quote, it's interesting that little else from Niemöller has really survived in theological discourse, particularly compared to Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Part of that is surely because his earlier antisemitism didn't die easily, and he did not leave as much of a written legacy as Bonhoeffer (or die a martyr's death). But the whole Confessing Church movement in Germany during Hitler's power is a fascinating phenomenon that many contemporary liberal churches have often sought to replicate or at least reference in our time, especially since T®ump's rise to power. The talk of this time as one of, in Bonhoeffer's terms, "status confessionis," is rampant in progressive Christian, especially Protestant, circles now. (And in the face of the Reformation's 500th anniversary, make no doubt that Lutherans are contending hard with Luther's vile antisemitism. Some of the worst of it is just now being translated into English. And I say this as someone who edited six volumes of the man's writings.)

20 minutes ago, Pat said:

Jim Vance   This made me so sad, and I haven't watched local news in ages. He was just such a DC institution, it's hard to believe he's gone.  On a trivial note,  I didn't realize until I read the obituary that he was born in the same town my father was...

He came to my first workplace in DC (well, Bethesda) and did a report on our organization as part of a series on religion in Washington. Seeing him walk down the hallway, he was larger than life, even to a newcomer. And this will probably sound all wrong to some, but what I admired most about him is that he was so unapologetically Black. Certainly, all newscasters play a certain character to some degree, but you never once caught Jim Vance changing himself to appeal to white audiences. I don't know anyone else in the TV news media who could do that like him, and I don't think anyone ever will. What a man.