The Hersch

One thing I love about this restaurant is that its name is actually "Famous Luigi's". I ate there for the first time in decades a year or so ago, and thought it was not bad at all. It didn't feel quite as much like entering a time warp as I had imagined it would, but there was a bit of that. Excellent fried squid. Decent pasta. I don't think we tried anything else. You can see their menus and other stuff on their WEBSITE. When we first were seated, the server asked if we'd like drinks, and I said I'd like a Campari and soda. This was clearly a first for her. I had to repeat it a couple of times before she got it down, but then she returned from the bar saying they didn't have any Campari. So I ordered something else, and then she came back and said they had Campari after all, and did I still want the Campari and soda. So I said yes. A couple of minutes later, she returned with my drink, which appeared to be plain soda water (or I suppose it could have been 7-Up). I said, what's this? And she said "That's your Campari and soda". I said no it isn't, Campari is bright red. She said "oh", and took it back and moments later reappeared with an actual Campari and soda, which was perfectly fine. To be fair, she appeared to be about 16, and it was all so weird and silly that it made the whole evening.

I have a friend who likes clams (cooked) but refuses to even try oysters (cooked).

But have you had Cathal Armstrong's tripe? I'm not a big fan of tripe, but that was probably the best thing I ate last year. I ordered it because I could tell from the menu that he wanted me to.

Thank you, Dean.

Anybody know if this happened?

Rocks is fucking with us.

There really was a Trader Joe? I was wondering about that. It's part of the Aldi empire now. Google turned up a fairly interesting, brief article HERE.

Mmmmm....salmon scales. Love dem salmon scales.

Um...do they get cooked at some point?I do the individually-wrapped-in-foil thing. I always make extra. The ones I don't use right away just stay in their foil wrapping, go into a plastic bag, and into the refrigerator, where they'll keep for days and days. This is really a fool-proof cooking method. A couple of years ago, I wrapped some beets in foil and put them in the oven for about an hour, or so I intended. About four hours later I remembered them. They were still perfectly good!

I haven't heard a favorable comment on this place in more than a decade. I last ate there in the 1980s and thought it was pretty lousy. Are you recommending it?

There's also Grand Mart, with locations in Gaithersburg, Germantown, Alexandria, Centreville, and Seven Corners. I can't vouch for the continued existence of any of those locations; I've only been to the Seven Corners store, which I love. Great selection of mostly very nice produce at really appealing prices.

Yes, generally. But the selection and quality are generally so much better than Safeway I end up buying produce there anyway. Of course, the farmers' markets are generally much MUCH better in the quality department, but may charge you $12 a pound for green beans. Oh, and the produce section at the new Trader Joe's is pretty pathetic...it's almost like, why bother having a produce section if that's what it's going to be?But speaking of Whole Foods, I happened to be driving along River Road in Bethesda this morning and thought "hey! I think I'll stop at this Whole Foods for the NY Times and a few grocery items!" and I must say, what a nice store compared with the hell-hole in Tenleytown (which was rather a hell-hole even before the never-ending remodeling began) and that dreadful store on P St. The problem I have with the P St. store is that it seems like half the space is given over to ready-made food, which I have no use for, leaving little room for the things I'm interested in. And the layout of the overpriced produce section is, well, counter-intuitive at the least.

I realize I'm chiming in too late, but the obvious choices for 11 am drinking are champagne and Bloody Marys, which are not necessarily mutually exclusive.

Perhaps things have changed, or perhaps your eyes deceived you, but it seems that the new TJ doesn't carry duck breast. Finding none on display, I asked about it, and the fellow I asked said "I'll go check". He returned to report that they do not carry any duck at all. So my duck-breast craving goes unfulfilled for yet another day. Perhaps tomorrow I'll get some at Balducci's; they always have them, although they would certainly be about half as expensive if Trader Joe had them. But what is money? Trash. I spit on it. Ptui.

Thanks! The new TJ is the only decent grocery anywhere near my way home from work, and my duck-breast craving has been building for several days now.

I'm craving duck breast. Does anyone know if they carry it at the GW Trader Joe?

Is this the restaurant in the Hotel Canaletto? I stayed at the hotel a year or two ago (it's fairly nice for a fairly reasonable Venice hotel in a great central location), and we thought of trying the restaurant, which looked like it might be good, but we never did. I realize how utterly unhelpful this is, but I'm just curious if that's the place you're asking about.ETA: Actually, the restaurant I'm thinking of isn't strictly speaking in the hotel. It's in the same building (or I suppose it might be the building next door, but I think it's in the same building), but there's no access to it from inside the hotel. It has a separate entrance outside.

Yes, and you can drive nails with a wrench, too. Using an ordinary fork for this purpose is a lot more work than using a pastry blender, and will probably yield a less regular result. A food processor, on the other hand, can do the job with almost no work at all (other than cleaning the damned thing afterwards), but the novice must be very careful to avoid over-blending, which can happen in a couple of seconds with the food processor and is almost impossible with a pastry blender.

A friend and I were in Stresa a couple of years ago, and there was a restaurant with a menu posted outside that included donkey. I wanted to dine there and try it, but my friend, who is more squeamish than I, would not enter the place.

When you say "pastry cutter", I assume you mean what I call a pastry blender--the thing you use to cut butter or other shortening into flour. You haven't asked for pastry blender (or cutter) advice, but I'll give some anyway. There are two principal types of pastry blenders, one with sort of "wires" and one with sort of "blades". You should get the blade type; they're much better than the wire type.

Many of the restaurants are decent; some are wonderful -- Corduroy, Circle Bistro, Marcel's, many others. On the other hand, regarding: -- I don't think there's a restaurant on the list (see link upthread) that I would eat at except perhaps Jaleo Crystal City, and some I would pay money to avoid (Teatro Goldoni, for a start).

Geez, couldn't you just give her a bit of a talking-to? I don't think I've ever gotten anyone fired, but if I did I'd feel terrible. Well, in most cases anyway.

Perhaps I was over-provocative. I have eaten dry-aged beef, and the "funk" mentioned earlier seems like spoilage to me. If others don't perceive it that way, and draw pleasure from eating it, I wish them nothing but joy. On the other hand, I've had a life-long love-affair with cheese, the smellier the better, and I particularly love blue-mold cheeses. Call me inconsistent. Zora, I largely agree with everything you say. But it wasn't my whole intent to say "ewww". I asked a question ("am I alone?"), and, from the responses here, apparently I am, at least among the folks participating in this thread.

I shopped at the new store yesterday, and was pleased on the whole. They are to be commended for establishing a single-queue system for their checkout stands, although the implementation is a little peculiar. The way it's set up, the person at the front of the queue can't actually see all of the cashier stations, and must be directed by a store employee acting as traffic director. The line was pretty long, but they had all ten (I think I counted ten) registers active, so it moved along at a pretty good pace. I bought a tri-tip, among other things. The one item I actually entered the store in quest of they didn't have. I wanted a bottle of peanut oil (not an outlandish demand of a grocery store, surely). In their oil section, they had several kinds of remarkably reasonable olive oil, walnut oil, and grapeseed oil, and nothing else. Is this typical of other TJ stores? Or were they simply sold out of other oils, or not yet stocked?

As your parenthesis indicates, it is a preserved product. If cod were simply left to "dry age" for a few weeks, I don't think I'd want to eat it.