jpschust

Apologies, I'm just coming back to the area after being away too long!  Staying in the DuPont area and need to grab a bottle as a gift for a friend- who's got a decent scotch selection?  I'm going to be all Metro and cab this trip, so close to metro is helpful.

Thanks and I miss DC!

J

Louisville

Any more recent reports from Proof on Main or recommendations for an alternative within walking distance?

Probably too late for your trip, but we were there a few weeks ago. It was OK, but not the outstanding, overwhelming experience people have raved about. There's not much within walking distance for dining unless you want to go to Morton's. Brunch at Proof was better than dinner.

One of the companies that I do marketing work for is looking for an "of the month" club to work with to turn your billing from an invoicing or manual credit card run to an internet based automated system.

Please e-mail me if you're interested- jonathon@sproutbox.com.

Hope all is well- I miss you all in DC!

So, someone on another board was looking for an inexpensive place to dine in Old Town and I thought "hey -- the Bistro at Restaurant Eve." And then I looked on line and the menu doesn't list any apps for under $16 or any mains for under $36. Is this bistro pricing? No doubt the food is worth every penny and I didn't really expect that you'd be able to get a 3-course menu for 20 euros, like in an actual French bistro. But still, isn't that appellation, with its implication of solid, moderately priced fare, wildly misleading?

At any rate, I'm glad I looked at the website first, and I'll probably mention the Majestic. At any other suggestions for Old Town?

I've spent a tremendous amount of time studying Eve and their group from the outside. I actually used them as a model for a client I had, so this is where I'm coming from when I give this reasoning. I think the term Bistro is confusing in the case of Eve- it's maybe my one minor critique of the group. I think they used the term Bistro to define a certain set of dishes and set it in a different place than the tasting room from a marketing segmentation perspective. The problem, however, is in acquiring the majestic and in opening Eamonn's they find themselves stratifying basically every price point in the food realm, and thus Bistro takes on a new meaning, one defined by price rather than by food. So I don't think it's misleading per se, but I think it's maybe not all that clear.

I know of more than a few iPhone developers, if this becomes something of interest let me know.

Week of May 24, 2009

It seems as if Summer's already here, but don't let this week's DC weather report rain on your dinner plans. Get out and grill. And if you're preparing steak, dust off a bottle of Brunello and enjoy. It's not doing any good laying around in your cellar.

I dunno, it feels like dolcetto season to me

Crust = great idea, terrible execution. Food is generally crappy with a chance of yechy.

Within a short distance of crust is Piece which is awesome.

It sounds like this particular person is merely deranged. Like somebody with 73 cats.

As it happens, and I REALLY mean this as no criticism of Dino, the one time that I ever made and kept a reservation on OpenTable that was flagged as a no-show, it was at Dino. I even made a point of saying "I have an OpenTable reservation" when I showed up, but the host person probably got distracted, which is understandable enough, and a couple of days later I got email from OpenTable telling me I was apparently a no-show, and asking me to explain. Which I did, and it was straightened out, but it's kind of funny in the light of this thread. (Just to make it clear, OpenTable or otherwise, I have never made and failed to either keep or cancel a reservation in my life.)

It happens everywhere. Seriously- it happens to me at restaurants where I'm a regular and ones where I'm not. It's more of an issue that unfortunately hosts get distracted and either forget or enter seated parties names wrong.

How is this person gaming the system? Is she somehow getting points without showing up?

My guess is that they are making multiple accounts under multiple email addresses but similar names. If you have more than a certain number of no-shows, OT suspends your account.

Crust = great idea, terrible execution. Food is generally crappy with a chance of yechy.

will i be able to get an iced espresso?

This year was a pretty ho-hum year for restaurants, but a fantastic year for books.

First day of cooking my way through every single alton brown episode. Pan-seared ribeye. Fan freaking tastic

Recognizing that credentialed marketing and finance types have a great faith in formulae and spreadsheets (obviously necessary in a larger concern), wouldn't you suspect that any small businessperson that can stay in business for more than a year or two has an instinctual feel for cash flow, margins and so on?

No, there are many underlying things that can keep a small going for a couple of years even when they have no control over their cash.

The smart operator will give up a few points of margin to turn inventory and have good cashflow for their business.

As a side question- how many operators know what cash flow is and how to manage it in a sustainable way?

As a marketing guy with a specialty in pricing and innovation in pricing and strategy (who I might add is looking for an unpaid internship), the general rule is that you charge what the market will bear. That is far easier said than done- what hte market will bear is a combination of market demographic, market trends in pricing, and how an individual restaurant is run. So for example, you can use wine as a profit or a cost center. I'd imagine for a place like Dino wine is a profit center, though not quite as much as the food is (I have no internal knowledge of Dino's books) but their apparent margin on wine wouldn't seem to support too much beyond the variable costing of the business, though I could be way off.

If you ask me from a non business based view, I prefer not to pay more than a 30-40% markup, though I'm far happier to pay larger markups on better, rarer bottles of wine served with appropriate wine service.

first is having the servers happy, second and we already done it, have more servers in the dining room, and any way we are looking for more, and also more bussers and food runners, we start over another training to the servers.

I hope this can change a little the service problems.

for the front door, the best way, for me, is having there the manager

what you think?

I haven't been in for ages, partially because I moved, partially because my food trips to DC are quite limited in space. Just one suggestion, and perhaps I misread your post, the worst place for a manager in the restaurant is the front door. In my mind, and from my experience, the best place for the manager is to be at every single table at least once during service to ask how service is going and to act as a filter for comments, good and bad directly to their source. In the case of positive comments they should be shared, in the case of negative comments they must be communicated immediately and rectified as soon as possible. The front door is important, but the activity of the restaurant occurs far beyond the front door.

for some of you I am sorry but BEBO is still open and running, and yes, we have some problems like every other restaurant have in this moment of crisis, the pizza is open only for lunch, is almost 2 months we are close on sundays, and probably some of you are right on the mediocrity of the food, but from when I change the menu, and change the prices" on range of 15-20% less, 3 weeks ago, we increse the sales , now we have 7 different pastas and 3 different risotto.

just a reminder: BEBO is not GALILEO

by the way, thank you so much to TomA and Don for the constant support.

I was thinking about this post last night and I kind of felt compelled to respond as someone who previously posted on Bebo. I doubt anyone on this board wanted Bebo to fail, nor did they wish it to be Galileo, but they did want consistent high quality food for a fair price with decent service. These are the hallmarks of any great restaurant. It's clear that Bebo can succeed if it executes correctly, I think we'd all like to see it happen.

Ahem, can you turn the volume down a bit? If you read the DCist interview, I think Carla quoted Fabio saying "this isn't cooking, this is rushing," and truly that's what it seems like on this show. Cut some slack! You may need to watch the whole season again, if you're making these comments on her. Yes, she does have some consistency issues, but so did the other chefs. I think the top three did a nice job and was glad that at least part of this season was very entertaining compared to past seasons.

Yah and her technique sucks, and making food with love isn't an excuse for crappy food. I'll take the food made without love that comes up right.

Yah, I think the argument isn't that Minibar isn't outstanding, but rather that Andres has absolutely nothing to do with minibar. Look at my restraint on talking about minibar. You should be impressed

This morning I saw a sign, posted on the outside wall of Murky Coffee, which read "Notice of Sale" and was written by the Arlington Treasure Department. It said that on February 19th, various materials, which included an espresso maker, 3 coffee grinders, a refrigerator, and an ice machine would be sold at auction to collect on owed taxes. Please, oh please...say it ain't so.

Didn't something similar happen in DC?

David Tallent for Midwest was awesome to see. He's putting out amazing food.

Wow - seems a little steep granted without knowing much about the details of the menu. By comparison:

CityZen - $110/5 course

Komi - $125

This would put the cooking in the price range with some exceptional company. I look forward to trying it out soon.

Wish them all the best on the opening.

Just as a note, I wouldn't expect any restaurant to get its pricing exactly right on its open. I spend a lot of my day looking at pricing of various things from CPG's to securities, and it's extremely rare that in goods and services that touch consumers that new businesses or new offerings get it right on the first shot, so I wouldn't hold too much stock in anyone's pricing when they open.

Portillo's serves delicious hot dogs and they serve big frosty mugs of beer like this:

Portillos is a staple. and it's freaking awesome.

Well, you have a few great options right nearby. They're not exactly in the heart of things, though at least one is technically within the city limits.

First up, you have Superdawg. This is very close to Rosemont and it's a ton of fun, if somewhat controversial among Chicago hot dog junkies. It's one of the oldest stands in the city, but it's somewhat non-canonical. Though they use pickled green tomato rather than fresh tomato, the main point of contention is that it's a skinless dog, which is borderline offensive to some hardcore purists (even if Superdawg has been around a few decades longer than other stalwarts of the canonical dog). All of the other elements are in place. Strictly canonical or not, though, it's a great dog and the place is a trip. The website will illustrate it far better than I could.

Another stalwart that isn't too far away is Gene & Jude's, which is in river grove. Gene & Jude's is also something of a lightning rod of controversy, as it's one of the most favored spots of the "minimal" Chicago-style dog enthusiasts. The whole "garden on a bun" thing is actually a rather recent invention, which seems to have standardized sometime in the mid-'70s. But many feel that this was as much a creation of Vienna marketing -- wanting to sell more condiments -- as it was a natural evolution. Most of the really old school hot dog stands, and really just about all of those that have been around since the '50s, dress their dogs solely with onion, mustard, possibly relish and the optional sport peppers. This is what Gene & Jude's does, and they're one of the best at it. Their dog is a natural casing Vienna beef frank. Incidentally, there's noplace to sit at Gene & Jude's if that's important... unless you count the hood of your car. But there are counters for standing.

If you want the new standard (which, at the risk of getting uber-nerdy about it, I usually call the Vienna/Royko standard), which is the whole natural casing Vienna beef, poppyseed bun, mustard, onion, neon green relish, tomato slices, pickle spear and optional celery salt and sport peppers (even if only a small percentage of Chicago dog stands actually serve it this way), frankly (no pun intended) one of the best and easiest options is to hit one of the Portillo's locations, which are strewn all over the city and suburbs. It's a chain (if a local one), and they lack the charm of some of the hole in the wall joints, but they make a great dog and many a hardcore Chicago food nerd will defend them despite their ubiquity.

Alternatively, a solid rendition can be had at Hot Doug's, which you may have heard of. Hot Doug's has the benefit of also being a great stop for his specialty sausages (check the weekly specials on the website), they have duck fat fries on Fridays and Saturdays, and Doug is just an awesome guy. Another upside is that it's just off the Kennedy (interstate 90/94), so it'll be an easy stop coming in from Rosemont. Downside is you'll wait. Outside. In the cold.

There are a lot of other favorites strewn about the city. Here's a good thread at LTH on the subject:

Chicago Hot Dogs for Tourists

Oh, and incidentally, if you're only going to get one of Chicago's holy trinity of downscale food (dog/pizza/beef), I say skip the dog and get an Italian Beef... I think there's a bit upthread on this already, but I'm always happy to revisit that subject :-)

The exception to that rule is that there's a Gibson's in Rosemont. One of the better steaks in a steak town!