The Hersch
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Everything posted by The Hersch
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Oldest Restaurants in the Washington, DC Area
The Hersch replied to DonRocks's topic in Washington DC Restaurants and Dining
I remember getting a bizarre flyer from Yenching Palace, some time around 1994 or 1995. I wish I'd saved it. I guess it was a menu too, but it had all these blurbs from the press about how wonderful a place it was. I have to give it to them for being honest, because every one of the quotes was dated, and I believe the date range was from the Johnson administration all the way to the Nixon administration. It was quite odd. I never ate at Yenching Palace, but have always loved their façade, which I will hate to see go if it goes. -
It should be noted that the Washingtonian review you linked to goes on to say: I've eaten at the Cleveland Park Nam Viet a number of times, and also had delivery from there (yes! they deliver! -- or at least they used to a few years ago), but it's all several years ago, so I don't know if my observations are worth much. I never had their pho, acting in part on the advice of a Vietnamese colleague who warned against ordering pho in a restaurant not devoted to it, which Nam Viet is not. The Vietnamese wonton soup the reviewer mentions, however, used to be really, really good. Ditto the spring rolls and the summer or garden rolls.
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Am I alone in thinking that seeking out and paying LOTS extra for rotting, decayed, spoiled, moldy meat is both silly and disgusting? How would we feel about, say, dry-aged fish? Mmm-mmm good? Some rancid butter with that?
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When I worked in the Seven Corners area, I used to frequent a little place called Pho Satay in the strip mall on Annandale Road just south of Rt. 50 (the one with a post office, a thrift shop, a grungy little supermarket). A marginally pleasanter place than many pho joints (which tend to be over-illuminated and often have large-screen TVs with lots of volume), they have full table service, beer (although nothing any good), and serve up a very tasty bowl of soup. There were probably at least twenty pho houses within a five-minute drive of my office, but Pho Satay was the one I kept going back to.
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Cook a lot of octopus.
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Ah, the Nanking space.
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I made a raw green sauce the other day out of parsley, chinese chives, coriander leaf (cilantro), capers, salt, and olive oil pureed in a mini-processor. I forget what I made it to go with (which sort of indicates that it will keep for several days), but last night it was really good on pan-seared skirt steak.
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I have a very pungent limburger in my refrigerator. I put it inside a little plastic food container -- Rubbermaid or something -- and put the lid on tightly, and it hasn't caused Stinky Refrigerator at all.
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I figured they'd call it "tinna crusta". Mama mia!
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This has always been a big problem at the Tenleytown store as well, since way back when it first opened. I'd estimate that over the years, typically about 25 % of produce items have had no price available to the shopper (or what I always call "surprise price"). It's exasperating. And asking one of the produce clerks for the price is always a good way to become even more exasperated. With the in-progress renovation at the Tenleytown store, the percentage of "surprise price" items has gone much higher, of course.
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Do they serve "Italian thin crust" in Italy? I've eaten pizza in several different parts of Italy, including Naples, and it's pretty much all been as you describe Neapolitan. I blush to reveal that I've never been to 2 Amy's.
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What is the distinction between "Italian thin crust" and "Neapolitan style"? Also, it's not surprising that the food at Piola would be indifferent. Their annoying WEBSITE is all concept and hipness, with hardly any information (that I could discover) about their food. I won't be rushing across the river to this place.
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It appears that there are two schools here, then: A Cold Butter school and a Room-Temperature Butter school. Perhaps when I have some time I'll try making biscuits both ways and compare the results. My intuition or whatever it is certainly tells me that whenever you're going to cut butter into flour with a pastry blender, you want the butter to be cold. But the folks here who aren't merely saying that room-temperature butter works, but that it is essential to a good result have presumably formed their views as a result of experience. Empirical research is certainly called for.
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And I would think that what would produce such a result would be the same thing at work in pâte feuilletée (and in pie crust), which is distinct bits of butter that are cold when the dough goes into the oven. But I don't make biscuits, so I could be all wet.
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Thanks for finding that. Fascinating.
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This seems to be in conflict with others' insistence that the butter be at room temperature; room-temperature butter will not stay in chunks. In making pâte brisée, which is the fancy name for pie crust, all the leading authorities ordain that the butter must be very cold in order to produce a flaky result. How does room-temperature butter produce a flaky biscuit, then?
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The reuben is certainly treyf, although that doesn't completely rule out "Jewishness", as there are millions of Jews who don't keep kosher. On the other hand, the reuben supposedly originated in Omaha, which is not, as far as I know, a center of Jewish culture.
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Guanciale.
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I can never remember the names of any of the farms, but the one that's the first produce stall on the left as you approach from Q St. had haricots verts for a couple of weeks a few weeks ago, but they were charging $6 a half pound. I bought some even at that price and they were incredibly good (boiled briefly in lots of salted water, then tossed in a hot pan with olive oil and garlic).
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That is now one of my favorite stories of all time.
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I once found a beautifully cooked cockroach in a plate of food at a restaurant in Boston's Chinatown.
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Actually, he went on to criticise the goat-cheese-filled phyllo cup ("like a beginning cook's attempt at something fancy") and the Thai-style beef ("so itty-bitty a portion"). Still, it seemed like a three-star review to me too. (It also sounds like a restaurant I need to visit soon.)
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Good at Trader Joe's: The mayonnaise is probably the best commercially prepared, bottled mayonnaise I've ever encountered. I've never seen a tri-tip roast anywhere else, and I bought one and roasted it and it was lovely. They used to carry some wonderful tuna packed in olive oil, but at least the Bailey's Xroads store seems to have dropped it. It was actually affordable. Another attraction of the Bailey's Xroads store is that you can have lunch at Full Kee and shop at TJ's from the same parking lot. A drawback is that I live and work in NW Washington.
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Portioning out Plonk and not so Plonk
The Hersch replied to DameEdna's topic in Beer, Wine, and Cocktails
Since Nixon wouldn't have been paying for the wine himself, did he keep it to himself out of his typical mean-spiritedness, or was there some sense in which allowing others to have it would have deprived him of it? -
I haven't been in years, so any comment on the food I might make would be meaningless, but I always used to think that Bombay Club was one of the pleasantest dining rooms in the city.
