baczkowski

Under the recommendation of my Boston-born father-in-law and my nostalgic wife, we ventured to No Name's Restaurant on the pier of South Boston. A city landmark since 1917, this is supposedly the place for great "chowda" and simple seafood right on the water. There is no pretension here, with the waiters wiping down the tables for you by wetting the napkins with the pitcher of water on each table and pushing all the residual fish parts and fried batter crumbs onto the floor and chairs you're about to sit on. In many ways, my kinda place. With all the framed plaques boasting it as "Best Seafood in Boston" with occassionally no qualification of it as the winner of the cheap eat" category, obviously this is many people's kind of place, too. But the food was just aweful. I knew I was in trouble immediately when very little on the hand-written and then reproduced menu actuallylooked decent. You essentially have two options for your cooked seafood: fried or broiled with butter. If the seasoning or other flavor enhancer you seek or expect isn't captured in the butter or the frying oil, you're not going to get it in or on your food. We both ordered cups of the The famous seafood chowder, whose flavor was dominated by a fishy pungence instead of the expected richness of cream and butter. The most difficult thing for me, though, was the texture of the stringy yet overcooked fish that replaced the clams I prefer in my chowder. For an entree, I picked the least offensive item, the fried oysters. I actually picked fairly well because I didn't hate the heavily battered and underseasoned gooey globs, since they were cooked fairly well. They just didn't have any flavor. My wife. on the other hand, got a combination of broiled swordfish and scallops that was difficult to eat. The scallops weren't "offensive" but she barely touched the big slab of swordfish b/c it, too, had a strong fishy flavor. Exactly what you don't expect from a seafood restaurant perched next to where all the fresh fish comes into Boston. My wife was less dissatisfied with our experience b/c she has so many fond memories from her childhood of visiting her grandparents in Boston and enjoying a filling meal over lively conversation with the extended family. But even she admitted that now she realizes the food is not good and that it must have been an unoffensive backdrop that didn't interfere with the comany present. But I guess this place will always hold an important place in Bostonian's hearts: We took a pint of the chowda to Alison's 97-year-old grandmother so that she could eat it for dinner the third time this week. And she loved it. Pax, Brian

I stopped in a couple weeks ago at the Wheaton location remembering one of Don's Lettres claiming it to be his favorite fast food fried chicken. I, too, found the chicken on the dry side and, like Don, salty as hell, by I also enjoyed the crispyness and other seasoning. If it's a choice between KFC and here--and that choice exists in Wheaton--El Pollo Campero wins in a heartbeat. The real highlight was the side of fried plantains. Rice and beans were just pretty good. I didn't even notice the salsa bar until I was leaving so I tasted each in a little cup and liked all three. They're worth using next time. And I thought the place warranted a "next time," as in the once every 6 months my body will let me eat fast food fried chicken. Pax, Brian

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...391.html?sub=AR Last line of the article... Potentially the only time I will laugh outloud while reading the Business section of the Post. Unless I'm figuring out the depreciating value of my portfolio, that is. Pax, Brian

She could be covered in cat blood and have cockroaches crawling all over her--I don't care. She's flippin' hot. My wife understands that she's on my list...

Yes, no competition between TR and Isabella's. The only things Isabella's does better than TR are beer, number of dish options, and wallet damage. Pax, Brian

In a week my wife and I are going to take a day trip to Nantucket to see how the other .00001 percent lives. I've never been before and all I've heard is everything is ridiculously expensive. We're taking our bikes on a morning ferry and probably will have lunch and dinner somewhere that we can afford and would welcome us in our shorts. We were thinking a cheap eats place for lunch and a place for dinner with $25-30 entrees but I got the impression that that's a drop in the whaling bucket. Any recs? Pax, Brian

Michael, I think it's a fascinating topic and I appreciate your willingness to talk about your own experiences with candor. As I interpret your post(s) about RTC, you explain (or imply an explanation of) RTC's menue and restaurant evolution as a responsible adaptation to its surrounding community that the restaurant serves. As one who has lived in Silver Spring for only the last few months, I'd appreciate you explaining this a little more in depth b/c I am one who actually preferred the original path on which RTC started. Now, don't get me wrong, RTC is still a great place and the one place in downtown SS that I enjoy the most (when I got a new job, my father-in-law took me to RTC to celebrate). But when RTC first opened, I was EXCITED by everything I saw: ridiculously cheap but amazingly varied appetizers of superb quality, affordable and delicious entrees again with impressive breadth, and astoundingly good desserts which included my all-time restaurant favorite dessert--the seasonal Peach Charlotte. Mind-blowing quality for cheaper-than-Bethesda-average prices. ANYPLACE would benefit from such a restaurant, but Silver Spring--IMHO--NEEDED such a restaurant. I couldn't wait to tell others to start heading to SS. On my return visits, I felt a pang for the variety within the courses that I experienced in my initial experiences. The price increases I expected, but it's the variety and up-classed Southern cooking theme that I really missed. Yes, you can now get 47 billion different preparations of many different cuts of great beef, but I miss the biscuits. I never got to taste the fried chicken. Maybe the variety and value proved unsustainable. But those changes always felt like changes made by management to adapt to a change in personnel as well as difficulties in maintaining an efficient chicken [ETA: I meant "kitchen"!!!] (e.g. refer to your explanation on why you pulled the fried chicken). I did not, however, think these changes were made to adapt to the SS community that the restaurant serves. Prices are now higher but there's less menu variety and options. I wouldn't think that a still growing downtown SS would benefit from those changes, but I'm a newbie to the area and not in the restaurant biz. So I appreciate your willingness to expand within the context of your own experiences. But feel free to preserve your career by excluding damning personal details/decisions. Sorry this is so specific to RTC even though the thread is meant to be a general discussion of restaurant review timings. But I thought this board might appreciate the indulgence in specifics that inform a larger discussion. Thanks for going out there on a limb, Michael. Pax, Brian

If price truly isn't an object, then I'd say Maestro. Early reservation got us an amazing table in front of the kitchen on a Friday, but I assume weekdays open these two tables up significantly. Good luck! Pax, Brian

Don't hate me, but we walked right in and got a table outside. Now, we did come at the odd time of 2 PM. The place was busy but people were seated rather quickly then, but, yes, I'm sure it became a show later. Longest wait time for a restaurant I've ever been quoted: 3 hours and 45 minutes at the Columbia PF Changs. They did us a favor by allowing us to eat somewhere else that night. Pax, Brian ETA: I'm sure it didn't help that the Annapolis Magazine just came out and named it the best place in Annapolis for crabs. I saw it on sale in Silver Spring today.

On a whim we went to Annapolis today and decided to go to Cantler's before heading downtown. We kept it simple with a dozen large crabs for $50 and an order of onion rings. Overall a positive experience with 2 mediocre weighted crabs, 1 dud that they unflinchingly replaced, and 9 above-average to Sumo-heavy crabs. Filling and well worth the stop. Pax, Brian P.S. My wife grew up going to Mike's as a "treat" and felt Cantler's was "comparable", but nostalgia can poison one's memory.

This is spurred by Al Dente's question. Little more than a week ago I went to Pizza Zero and thought it was good pizza but not as good as Mia's a few blocks away. My wife and I were in Bethesda Sunday and stopped by Mia's again to find that there's a much larger gap between the two than I had remembered. Despite the slow business, Sunday's lunch was our best of our three Mia's experiences. Compared to Pizza Zero, Mia's had better crust, superior cheese, and decent (but not great) toppings. This last visit made me realize I'd probably only go back to Pizza Zero if I wanted an empanada or was looking to explore other non-pizza items. For what it's worth... Pax, Brian

A confluence of wonderful events (my new job, our impending one year anniversary, my wife's school making AYP) spurred us to take the plunge into our next "great restaurant" experience. Despite our day-before call for reservations, kind hosting and our willingness to accept a 6 PM reservation placed us in front of the well-orchestrated kitchen of Fabio Trabocchi, and what a well-executed performance it was! Before we set foot into the restaurant, we had planned to tackle the more manageable five course option. The menu with which we were presented had several updates to its offerings differing from the web site and we were pleasantly surprised to learn of the opportunity to mix and match any five courses from three different menus: Tradition, Evolution, and Vegetarian. That means you can choose your five favorite of the more 25 dishes offered, not even including dessert. Unexpected and appreciated flexibility. The vast amounts of food and my limited palate force me to simply list the unqualified highlights: lobster ravioli (unquestioned victor and worth the $10 upcharge), carpaccio, oil poached halibut, and every single one of the amazing complimentary courses that Joe H's posts warns/alerts us to: mozzarella/tampenade finger food (which hilariously fell into my wife's cleavage at the outset of our meal); Rocks's maniacally described combination of fried basil and zucchini blossom, strawberry filled with aged balsamic, and the test-tube filled with the potion-like tomato water; a lemoncello panicotta palate cleanser before my pistachio cream dessert; a creamy chocolate cake that was special b/c we had mentioned our anniversary; and the hot and cold dichotomy within the petifours pairing miniature molten chocolate cake with white chocolate covered balls of frozen citrus cream. Everything we saw prepared on the counter in front of our table and continued leering at as it left that dynamic kitchen was breathtaking. The only change I would have made in my order would be to swap my very good hazelnut and osso bucco gravy enriched veal cutlet for the vibrantly red lamb chops, which I almost grabbed off the plate that walked by. If you get them, don't tell me how good they were. No need to deepen the buyer's remorse. Table service was gracious, patient, and flawless, and food service was impeccably timed by Chef Trabocchi at the head of his kitchen (we enjoyed being able to watch him peak up at his overhead clock and hear him matter-of-factly call for our individual orders "in one minute" on his wireless microphone). Not to take away from our wonderful experience in January at Citronelle, but our evening at Maestro was the best dining experience of our lives. Maybe this speaks to our preference of Italian food over French food, but if we won the lottery, we would choose to return to Maestro over Citronelle. If I was at all knowledgeable about wine, I would weigh in on which is the reigning titan of DC dining, but I will leave that for others to judge. Either way, though, you can't go wrong. Pax, Brian

This is probably pretty useless, but the Frederick Indian specialty stores have been telling their customers that Costco got the exclusive distribution contract and have been sending people there, but no one has spotted anything other than Mexican mangos.Pax, Brian

At 7:45 on a Tuesday, the line for El Pollo Rico's smoky-flavored rotisserie chicken continued out the door ten deep, and for good reason. Damned good chicken, though the side options do not elicit similar excitement. Is there an area in DC for greater dining value (dollar : flavor) than Wheaton? Pax, Brian

My visit tonight confirms most of what ol_ironstomach experienced, including the good and the bad: tasty crust and toppings, affordable prices, way too much gobby cheese, surprisingly good service for a low-cost joint, and excellently delicate empanadas (though the cubed chicken filling was a little dry and flavorless). Though I prefer Mia's a few blocks away, I'll go back and definitely ask for them to hold back on the cheese. But will its hidden location (across from the Bethesda Crab House) and terrible parking situation discourage too many customers from experiencing its positives? pax, Brian

My buddy is letting us use a week of his time share and we can choose from several Mexican resorts in Acapulco, Riviera Maya (near Playa del Carmen), Nuevo Vallarta, Puerto Vallarta, or Puerto Penasco. Food options would be a nice thing to consider as we make our choice. We've been to Playa del Carmen before, so we know that there are a lot of restaurants (some relatively decent) that you can walk to, especially in the touristy area. Essentially we'd like to have options that go beyond resort dining. For what it's worth, this is the web site of resorts http://www.mayanresorts.com/index.cfm?lang=en in case anyone happens to have actually been to any of these places. I'll take non-food tips, too! Posts or PMs are welcomed. Thanks! Pax, Brian

I apologize to the person whose shoulder I drooled on when I eyed your beautiful Mariscada as I was heading for the door. Please tell me it tasted as good as it looked. Pax, Brian

Stopped here before a show at the Roundhouse last night and we shared oysters, a house salad, and the twice-cooked chicken. A dozen oysters for the $8 happy hour price was a steal if you like Bay oysters (your only choice for the deal), but they are not nearly briny enough for my tastes. The house salad was quite good with bitter leaves, sweet slow-roasted tomatoes, and a tasty mustard vinaigrette. The chicken, though, was a disappointment. Right after we ordered it, my wife said, "I don't know why we order chicken anywhere other than Palena," having the taste on our tongues from a return visit Friday night. I think the bartender said Black's chicken is poached first and then fried so that, in his words, "It's really juicy and tender." Wrong on both counts for our pieces. It was so hard to cut meat off that my wife thought it was undercooked and didn't eat more than two bites. The chicken meet itself was remarkably flavorless and the breading had little seasoning. The gravy underneath seemed like a strong beef gravy that didn't pair well either. Best part of the serving was the excellent wilted spinach side. Overall, though, the chicken entree is not worth your $24. Pax, Brian

Oh, Don! Your trip could only have been worse if you stayed for the terrible live music they bring in on Friday nights. Makes one wish for the dearth of live music that plagues Montgomery County bars. There's a reason I haven't been to Griff's for food since Clinton was visiting Camp David... After 9 years of Frederick living, the only places I would confidently recommend folks to go would be That Cuban Place for a tasty and filling bargain meal, The Tasting Room for drinks and fine dining, The Carriage House Bakery (actually outside of Frederick) for old-fashioned baking, and Hemp's Meats (also outside Frederick) for butchering. Those are the only places I will really miss. There are some big development plans in the next couple years, though, that hopefully will offer more than the chains that seem to follow suburban sprawl. And a Wegman's is coming, too! Pax, Brian

This is the type of simple advice I need! Does it harm the plant or just make its growth unwieldy? What other herbs is this true for? I've got sage, Italian parsley, oregano, thyme, rosemary, and the aforementioned basil growing in herb boxes. I've just randomly snipped from the sides or tops, which seemed to have made sense, though sage now seems to be treated like basil. True? Anyone willing to offer a quick primer guide on herb care (snipping vs. pinching, sun exposure, and water requirements would be of help). Thanks as always! Pax, Brian

To morph a line from Pulp Fiction, "Zest is dead, Baby. Zest is dead." Well, almost. We were packing our POD and moving truck Saturday when I noticed the owner/chef of Zest walking along my street with a young Latino couple and another man. I waved to him since he would recognize me from our several long conversations while I was the only one in the restaurant. When he made his way up to my house, he put a petition in front of me and said that the couple accompanying him would like to open an Italian restaurant in the neighborhood and would like me to sign the petition if I had no objections. I asked him if he was selling the restaurant and he said he was. "I'm taking a month vacation, man. Running a restaurant with two young kids is just too much." "It doesn't help when you have no parking, you price your meals outside the comfort level of your dining audience, charge almost $6 for a bottle of Bass, and deliver uneven quality of food," I thought to myself. I said, "Good luck to you, Dave. Enjoy that vacation," signing the petition. I really do wish him well. He's a great guy who served me SOME of my best meals in quality-deprived Frederick. But it does say something that when we chose our last meal in Frederick after closing on our house on Friday, we didn't just walk two blocks to Zest; instead we drove to Monocacy Crossing. My only fear is that he's forcing another mediocre Italian restaurant on my now-former neighborhood. Pax, Brian P.S. I guess I gotta change my moniker now, huh? "NoMoDiningInFrederick"?

We went here last night after a long-ago suggestion by Lydia R. It was quite interesting. I ordered off the recs from her Chowhound links http://www.chowhound.com/topics/175427 and http://www.chowhound.com/topics/359517. We got the watercress yum appetizer, which is huge, fries the hell out of anything remotely healthy, and is damn good. By far my favorite. We also got the smoked eggplant, which tasted like, well, smoke. Very unique, and I can see how that would be appealing to some here, but I didn't finish it and wouldn't get it again. My entree was the larb with fish that was surprising in texture and taste. It seemed to be "cooked" in lime juice a la ceviche and served at room temperature (I actually liked it better cold out of the refrigerator for lunch today but the onions were quite strong today). My wife, please forgive her, got the shrimp pad thai. Didn't suck, but it's pad thai! Overall I wasn't blown away but I was very intrigued but different tastes and textures enough to warrant a return. But, DAMN, that place is a hole! I think I also got a contact high from the pot smoke wafting through the air from the apartment building across the street. Pax, Brian

If you're at a bar with friends or colleagues and a tv kills your conversation, you need new friends or a new job. If you're dining alone at the bar, TV becomes that friend. But please remember to put on the closed captioning! Pax, Brian

Just curious, does anyone know of places that double-fry their fries? Many probably do and I just don't realize it. I thought I read somewhere that Blue Duck triple fries theirs, but I might have invented that memory. Pax, Brian

When we went to Citronelle earlier this year, we stayed at the Latham but our room was far from luxurious. We were so exhausted and drunk from food and libation, however, that proximity to a bed was far more valuable than the quality of the room, and sleeping in was our greatest desire. Unfortunately, we were also awoken at 7AM on a Saturday morning to the crashing sounds of trash pickup, which lasted for almost an hour. To the hotel's credit, though (since the city controls trash pickup), they did comp our parking, which wasn't a totally small gesture at $35 a night. Don't know if this helps in your decision making... Pax, Brian P.S. The Latham did afford us the possibility of trying Pizza Paradiso the next day.