The Hersch

I dined with two friends at Blue Duck Tavern this evening. My first comment would be that they need some signage outside to let people know the restaurant is there. It took us a while to figure out how to get into the place, and we never saw "Blue Duck Tavern" until we saw it on the bill.

That aside, the food and the service were both very nice. I had the green pea soup with Amish poached egg and chanterelles. The soup itself was lovely, deeply flavorful and silken in texture. We did, of course, speculate that the poached egg would be dressed in black and driving a little horse-drawn buggy around the soup-plate, but it was quite nice. The chanterelles were strangely tough and chewy, but the dish was still a winner. My friend's heirloom tomato salad was kind of wan, but it's just too early for tomatoes.

The lamb hot pot was wonderful, although apparently (judging from previous comment) there used to be more vegetables in it--aside from the sauce, there were only carrots in the pot, although they were lovely young babies. The roast black-feathered chicken had no feathers actually in the dish, and was just excellent. The rockfish was fresh and sweet, and simply presented. The fava bean side dish was an astonishing $12 for at most a cup of beans, but they were very good. The fries. The FRIES. Among the best fries I've ever encountered in a long career of seeking out good fries. Wow. We had one order, and as soon as they were delivered we ordered more, before even tasting them, they looked that good. And they tasted perhaps even better than they looked. They came to the table obviously just out of the duck fat, very hot, with a wonderful thin, crisp exterior, and a luscious, creamy inside--altogether so hot that you had to suck air into your mouth...oh, just astonishingly good.

The espresso was pretty good, but SIX DOLLARS for a demi-tasse??

Overall, though, not an overpriced dinner. About $80 a person, including tax and tip, for apps, mains, sides, 2 desserts, 2 bottles of sparkling water, one coffee, a glass each of an Oregan sparkler, and a bottle of Bonny Doon Vin Gris de Cigare...for food this good, that's not expensive.

The place was almost empty, I'm sorry to report.

The clams are great, but now they charge extra for those.

They charge extra for one item in the buffet? How do they do that?

I love the Lucky Three buffet. It's probably the best buffet I have ever encountered anywhere in my life. Ten bucks! Wow! It's basically a great dim sum selection that you have to go get yourself instead of having it wheeled around on carts, and it's all for ten bucks. I'd just as soon go get it myself anyway, instead of having to wait for the carts to come around. And it's ten dollars. Ten dollars. TEN DOLLARS.

it lacks that lactic quality that so many of the Southern Rhône rosés tend to have.

Can you explain what "lactic quality" means in this context? For the life of me, I cannot recall tasting any wine, rosé or otherwise, that reminded me of milk.

1970 - Ristorante Portofino (Alexandria)

By the way, Portofino is in Arlington, not Alexandria. I didn't realize at the time how recently opened the restaurant was when the parents of one of my best friends in high school took a bunch of us there for a graduation celebration. I haven't eaten there since. Has anyone else ever eaten there? Is it any good? I remember it as a fairly solid Italo-American restaurant of the old school, but then, I was only 17 when I ate there.

it is unfortunate but Corduroy is not open on sundays.

Didn't you use to be, or am I imagining that?

Is Corduroy open on Sunday nights?

I thought Corduroy was open on Sundays for dinner (in fact, I'm pretty sure I've dined there on Sunday), but their website currently shows them closed on Sundays. Is this a change? Temporary? I have an out-of-town visitor who will be available for dinner only on a Sunday later this month, and I was hoping to take him to Corduroy.

In fact, outside of Citronelle and NRG

Excuse me, what is NRG?

Pearson's has the Luxardo line. Besides the Maraschino that's an excellent Limoncello & Amaretto.

When I checked Pearson's a couple of months ago, they had only Stock maraschino, no Luxardo. Things change, of course. What they did and do have that's fairly hard to find around here is Vya vermouth.

In descending order of approximate total visits:

La Fourchette (my dependable standby)

Mark's Duck House (not nearly as often as when I worked nearby)

Miu Kee (ditto, and an often overlooked excellent Cantonese place)

Le Bistro Français (usually for brunch)

Kinkead's (for lunch mostly)

Corduroy (not often enough)

Palena (ditto)

Marcel's (can't afford to go often enough)

I'm not terribly fond of even good hushpuppies, but the little hushpuppy morsels that come with the fried clams at Kinkead's are straightforward and very good (as are the fried clams).

Finish

Okay, for another wine dope, can you explain the term "structure"?

I've been having lunch at the bar at Kinkead's about once a week for the past couple of months, and have come to love it, but to regret the expense. Don't go looking for a lower-priced alternative to the dining room: the menu, and the prices, are the same. Having just lunched there today, I can report that the lobster corn bisque they're dishing up is very good. And it's a very pleasant place.

Queen Bee was indeed the queen back when it opened -- back when the first great wave of Vietnamese restaurants broke across Northern Virginia in the late 70's and early 80's. It's been eclipsed, I think, for many years, but it offered the first taste of pho for many of us way back when.

I had the pleasure of carrying the US Mail in Clarendon back in the 70's...from late 74 till late 78, and witnessed the transformation of Clarendon into Little Saigon. It seemed to happen very suddenly, and I seem to recall it was concurrent with the demolition of the south side of Wilson Blvd. west of Highland St. for the Metro construction. Suddenly that whole row of buildings was gone, and everything on the other side of the street was Vietnamese except the Little Tavern. It was very, very cool.

There was a thread on Luxardo maraschino in the shopping forum back in April, HERE. The upshot of it was that I went to Chevy Chase liquor and bought all three bottles that they had in stock. Whether they've restocked I don't know. Joe Riley told me via PM that apparently local distributors aren't carrying it any more. You should call Chevy Chase and ask.

I like the house brand of cornichons at Trader Joe's--nice and crisp, and plenty of flavor. Less expensive, too.

The Trader Joe's house brands in general are really good. The mayonnaise is about the best commercially bottled mayonnaise I've come across. Their tuna (skipjack, I think) in olive oil is excellent.

That said, this was another great column by one of our own, and I think the comments section underneath the column shows how needed this feature is. Either that, or all the lead in the drinking water has turned our fair city into a den of underworked, entitled schmucks, I'm not sure which.

It was a great column. Unfortunately, all the entitled schmucks who wrote comments don't get it, and the non-entitled-schmucks who wrote comments don't appear to need it. I think one lesson is that it's impossible to get through to entitled schmucks (other than, perhaps, by humiliating them in public).

This might be considered off-topic, but Mrs Oscar Hammerstein once replied to someone who credited Jerome Kern with having written "Ol' Man River" that Jerome Kern wrote da da da da; Oscar Hammerstein wrote "Ol' Man River". Similarly, Fats Waller (and Harry Brooks) wrote da da da doo-oo/da da da doo-oo-oo; Andy Razaf wrote "(What Did I Do to Be So) Black and Blue". Pops, on the other hand, made it famous. And for all I know, he loved a good steak (there! on-topic!).

One thing to keep in mind is that the chicken does require 45 minutes to prepare.

To me, this would make it exceedingly difficult to forego alcohol. As Rodney Dangerfield immortally asked in "Easy Money", what do people do when they ain't gettin' loaded?

Yikes! You can buy a bottle of it at Calvert Woodley for under $13.

By the way, can you really? I don't think I've seen it at Calvert Woodley...probably haven't looked hard enough, although lately they've certainly been pushing roses (which isn't a bad thing). I bought a couple of bottles of this wine at Rodman's, which I find usually undercuts Calvert Woodley when they carry the same thing, for $14.99 each about three weeks ago. $8.95 a glass for a wine that retails for $14.99 a bottle isn't all that outrageous when it's at a restaurant at the level of excellence and expense of Kinkead's. Sheesh, I'm starting to sound like a booster of the place.

But for anyone that is on the metro, it definitely is right across the street from the stop which makes it convenient.

It's even more convenient than that! There's a metro entrance on the same side of the street too.

parked right on Conn Ave south of Ordley

Ordway

Only slight drawback was the service, it was on the slow side.

The pace at Palena has always been slow, but I think that has more to do with the kitchen than the servers. Everything is almost always worth waiting for, let me hasten to add.

I thought the roast pork was better in theory than in practice (little austere for me, though perfectly cooked)

I ate for the so-far only time at Komi last month, and had what was listed as "suckling pig"...is this the dish you're talking about? To me, it was the only (minor) disappointment of the evening. All the other food, the generously poured wine pairings, the attentive,warm, gracious service, all were knockouts. The pig, though...it was nicely cooked and all, but austere is a good description. It needed a sauce or something, and the pairing on the plate with soft polenta tended to emphasize the softness and blandness of it all. (And I've been trying for several years to like soft polenta, so far without much success, although that certainly isn't Komi's fault.)

Oh, I agree, the salade nicoise for 20-21 and the wine for 8.95 a glass are really expensive indulgences for lunch. It is only in the context of the overall screamingly high prices at Kinkead's that these have seemed moderate to me. That asparagus soup, though, given its celestial nature, really was a bargain at $9.

I seem to be flying solo here. I started a new job at the beginning of May in Foggy Bottom, and have become something of a regular at Kinkead's, which is rather taxing to my pocket book. But Kinkead's is very good, despite my complaint above. Last week I had a chilled asparagus soup that was probably the best asparagus dish I have ever had in my life, and at $9 for a generous serving it wasn't even expensive. Although when you add in the fried clams and the glass of wine and the tax and the tip, lunch pushes $50. But he soup itself was a luscious bargain...silky, smooth, deeply asparagus-y, and the most gorgeous color. A work of art. Today I had the salad nicoise, which was a not very traditional take on this dish, but very nice indeed, and not terribly expensive at $20 (or was it $21?). The bread basket they give you is terrific; I don't know the source of their breads, but they're excellent. And they have the lovely, strangely named 1+1+1=3 Spanish rose, for an almost moderate $8.95 a glass. The bartender takes good care of me, and I am happy when I go there. I may go on spending $40-50 for lunch once a week till kingdom come.

Their website is definitely a candidate for the worst website thread.

This morning, New Morning Farm at the Sheridan School had several kinds of cherries, all labeled "sweet". Among them, a medium-dark cherry turned out to be among the tartest sweet cherries I've ever encountered, and among the best cherries of any kind I've eaten in ages. I couldn't help myself, I bought three quarts. I've got a multi-meal house party coming up in two weeks, and was thinking one of the meals could use a really good cherry pie. These cherries are tart enough to be good pie cherries. Now, how to get today's cherries into a pie two weeks hence...pit them now and freeze them? Keep them whole in the fridge and hope they last two weeks? Eat all of these fresh and hope they have more next week? I should have asked this morning if they'd have more of the same cherries next week, but I didn't think about it till I got home. What to do, what to do....