The Hersch

I had dinner with family at Fiola Mare the Saturday evening before last, and I should probably post a full review in the restaurant's own thread, but for now I'll say that all of us agreed that the service was pretty bad. It could be we had the only sub-par waiter in the place; I don't know: It was my only time there. We had to practically beg the waiter, repeatedly (when we could get his attention), to pour more of the wine we had ordered, both the first and second bottle. We couldn't pour it for ourselves, because it wasn't merely out of reach, it was out of sight and we had no idea where it was. If a restaurant takes that approach to wine service, they better damned well pay attention and pour the wine as the glasses get empty. The other major service lapse (and there were other minor deficiencies) was this: Three of the four of us fancied octopus for a main course. I think with younger eyes (even at my advanced age, I was the youngest of the party) we might have seen that the octopus on the menu was listed as one pound, but we didn't, and when all three of us ordered the grilled octopus, the waiter really ought to have asked us if we were aware we were ordering enough for about eight people. But not a word. As the only one of our party who lives in the area, I ended up taking more than two pounds of the stuff home, and after eating as much as I wanted in the following few days, threw most of two pounds away. I don't call that good service, I call it utterly careless. (The grilled octopus was delicious, as was everything else we had.) At some point there was some verbal exchange with the waiter about the food, and he said something like "I don't know, I'm not a chef!" as he walked away, and I commented "you're really not even a waiter." This got a big laugh from my companions, but it was, shall I say, rueful.

Does anyone know where I might find a fresh, not frozen, capon for Thanksgiving? Preferably without driving more than an hour from Washington and an hour back.

It's not actually NBC, it's nbc.com.co.

Yesterday evening I sat watching the 6:30 MPT2 transmission of BBC World News America, stopwatch (well, smart phone) at the ready to time the commercial interruption. But there wasn't one. Maybe the day before was a slip-up.

Except it turned out that there weren't any steroids at Pastorius's home. Also, urine samples collected from Pastorius after his arrest showed no sign of steroids. I know I may be coming across as an advocate or apologist for Oscar Pastorius, but I am not. I have no investment in him one way or another. But fair is fair.

Interesting, but unsatisfying. In the Simpson case, if Simpson committed the murders, which I too believe is overwhelmingly likely, given the details there could be no possible defense of "I thought they were intruders" or "I didn't intend to harm the victims". Simpson, of course, has always denied that he did it. Pistorius has never denied that he fired the fatal shots, but insists that he did not think that he was shooting at his girlfriend. Perhaps if I had heard all of the testimony in the trial I might come to a conclusion that there's little doubt that he intended to kill his girlfriend, but I can't reach that conclusion on what I know of the case. Perhaps he did, but perhaps he didn't. At best, he acted recklessly and can't be absolved of guilt, which he hasn't been. But okay, now, what warrant do you have for "Roids"? Was evidence of steroid use by Pistorius produced at trial?

I haven't timed the mid-program commercials on the BBC World News, because they took me by surprise on the only occasion I saw them, which was yesterday. I'd guess each of the two was 30 seconds. Since they show the news program at 5:30 pm on MPT and 6:30 pm on MPT2, they can't both be live (they are the same edition), and I doubt that either one is. However, although this is a BBC product, it's actually called BBC World News America, and is produced for the American market, with the anchors apparently sitting in a studio in Washington. Since Viking River Cruise commercials have been showing up all over the local PBS stations for several years, I doubt that running one of them in the middle of the BBC news program was a decision of the BBC, but who knows?

What warrant do you have for "in cold blood"?

From the October 19, 2015, New Yorker:

Half-way through the 30-minute BBC World News program, they cut away for two commercials. So every 9 minutes is a deal-breaker, but 15 minutes is no big thing?

But they've had sponsorship since forever. They just didn't allow their sponsors to run commercials. I don't think sponsorship by itself is necessarily a problem. I think the history of public broadcasting in the U.S. is largely admirable, and the kind of sponsorship that's existed for the whole history of public broadcasting almost never, to my knowledge (maybe even totally never) , gave sponsors any kind of editorial influence over the content they sponsored. I may be naive about that, but I hope not. But a really profound shift seems to be occurring, and it troubles me greatly.

Remember how public television didn't have commercials? They'd have crawls, or sometimes voice-overs, thanking various sponsors for financial support, and that was it. Then maybe fifteen years ago, they started letting the sponsoring companies run very short spots, only between programs, with a little plug for the company, maybe ten seconds long, which have been getting longer by the year. Then about four or five years ago, they started allowing actual commercials. Viking River Cruises has been running commercials on public television for several years now; maybe it's okay because the voice-over actor has an English accent. Then a couple of years ago, commercials for current theatrical-release movies started appearing. Still, only between programs, and only 20 or 30 seconds. Well, just now I was watching the BBC World News transmission on MPT2, and right in the middle of the program they cut away, without warning or apology, to two commercials: one for HomeAdvisor.com, and then one for the ever-popular Viking River Cruises. The HomeAdvisor.com commercial didn't even have any English accents! I haven't seen any discussion of this development, but I may just not be looking for it in the right places. The public television stations already have pledge drives going on about half the time, during which they replace all the programs you might want to watch with Suze Orman, Dr. Wayne Dyer, and Best of Do-Wop. What does this invasion of actual commercials portend for the future of public television? Is anyone besides me alarmed and appalled by it?

I think there's a categorical-imperative argument to be made here, albeit a facile and probably illegitimate one in Kantian terms. If everyone availed themselves of the GAR call-ahead policy, it would work all the better. If everyone at the supermarket used their shopping carts to wait in line for them, the system would break down completely.

It seems to me sort of like those, er, people who park their shopping carts in the queue at the supermarket and then go back to do some more shopping, expecting others in the queue to respect the time the shopping cart sat waiting as if the customer had waited with it. Or getting out of the Civil War draft by paying someone else to take your place. Or something. I will never experience this particular form of the behavior because I won't stand in line to get into any restaurant ever.

Little Serow also makes no effort at all to accommodate vegetarians (let alone vegans) or people with nut allergies. To give them what credit they may be due, they're upfront about it.

One of Sietsema's most idiotic comments in this discussion: I guess he'd much rather go stand in line at the box office than order theatre tickets online, too, since the online system is so much more of a hassle than waiting in line at the box office. Recall what Mark Furstenberg said last year on this very website, in reference to his joint project with Frank Ruta: Who are you going to go with, Mark Furstenberg or Tom Sietsema?

Yeah, but it was still funny. I tend to take funny over making sense.

There's probably a better place to put this, but I had family in town over this long weekend, and we had multiple restaurant meals. Dinner Friday at Villa Mozart in the City of Fairfax. Dinner Saturday at Fiola Mare in Georgetown. Lunch Sunday at Maple Avenue Restaurant in Vienna. Dinner Sunday at Curry Mantra on Main Street in the City of Fairfax. Dinner Monday in the lounge at Marcel's in the West End. Not everyone was at every meal, but my sister and I were at every one. Which one would you guess we agreed was the best meal of the lot? Go on, guess. ....................................... Got it yet? ..................................... Yes, it was Curry Mantra on Main Street. I've eaten there several times before, and it was always at least okay, but last night it was shockingly good, and I don't know how to account for it. We had pappadums to start, which I doubt they make there, but the green chutney they came with was vibrant and exciting. For our meal we ordered mixed tandoori grill, which was pieces of chicken, lamb, spicy lamb sausage, and shrimps, all beautifully spiced with some sort of residual saucy goop, all of it wonderful except the shrimp, which were kind of tired (but there were only two of them); the sausages bordered on incendiary, but managed a sort of subtlety all the same. Lamb saagwala exuded extravagant but precise spicing; the spinach was what you'd dream of, not the baby-food-textured spinach you get in many Indian-restaurant spinach dishes, but still recognizable spinach, with cubes of chewy but wonderfully tasty lamb. Yellow daal was a brilliant side, again, quite piquant but not merely hot-- with richly textured spicing and a silkiness to the lentils. Garlic naan was crisp around the edges, elastic and chewy, a little oily, and with wonderful garlic flavor: Obviously right out of the oven, it was certainly the best naan I ever ate in my life. This restaurant never performed like this on previous visits. I guess the really good cook rotates among the branches, and was in this one last night? One thing we all agreed was that on previous visits we erred in ordering mediocre but very filling appetizers, which diminished the dishes that followed; but those dishes were never as good as these. All of our other meals were good. It was the first time at Fiola Mare for all of us, and we all had mixed feelings about the place, the service, and the food, although I certainly ate some great food that night. Villa Mozart was its usual quiet, competent, smoothly excellent self, still one of the best restaurants in the area. My sister and I had dinner alone in the bar/lounge of Marcel's, and I mean alone: we had the entire room to ourselves for the evening. I didn't look into the main dining room, but from the sound of it they were doing pretty good business, but we were in blissful solitude and quiet in the lounge. The food was solid, top-notch work as always, and the service is what one has come to expect from the over-all best restaurant in the city, which I consider it to be. The wine prices continue to be brutal, though. We had a lovely bottle of Mas des Bressades Costieres de Nimes Rosé, a wine I've been enjoying for years. They currently have it at Calvert Woodley for $9.99. On the list at Marcel's it's $50.00. That seems a bit extreme, 500% of retail. Anyway, I have praise for all of these restaurants, but single out Curry Mantra on Main Street for the highest praise. I couldn't have been more impressed, and my companions absolutely agreed. I wish there was something comparable in Foggy Bottom.

It's pretty obviously the Beach Boys doing a pantomime "live" performance for video to go with their audio recording of "I Get Around", but without the audio of the record. When this was put together with the audio, we got this: which is actually pretty wonderful. I love the Beach Boys, who were no more dependent on studio recording than were the Beatles to make a great sound: I can hardly convey how happy "Shut Down" makes me, every time I hear it:

May I point out, once again, that the current state of 2nd-Amendment jurisprudence dates all the way back to 2008, when a 5-4 majority of the Supreme Court threw out centuries of settled law and discovered in the amendment an individual right to guns that had never been found there before (other than in the D.C. Circuit Court decision they affirmed)? As Justice Stevens pointed out in his persuasive dissent, if the framers of the amendment had meant it to cover gun ownership for such private purposes as hunting and self-defense, they could have written that into the text, as did the authors of the Declaration of Rights of Pennsylvania and Vermont. They did not; they mentioned only a "well-regulated militia". So much for originalism. I refer the reader to Plessy v. Ferguson and Bowers v. Hardwick: Horrible Supreme Court decisions can be undone when wiser judges replace foolish or misguided ones.

I saw "Do the Right Thing" when it was fairly new, and I really disliked it. My memories of it are pretty dim, but I seem to recall finding it distastefully didactic, and that the lesson being set was one I found pernicious. Perhaps I should watch it again. I suppose I might like it. On the Academy Awards and your last sentence: Do they have something to do with each other? Critics don't get a vote in the Oscars. But yes, they've pretty much always been a travesty. I like to point out that Cary Grant never won a Best Actor Oscar. Pauline Kael wrote of "Dances with Wolves"

I was in the Glen Allen area on business the last couple of days and had take-away dinner last night from Cheng Du restaurant on West Broad Street in Henrico, out towards Short Pump (home of Peter Chang's restaurant, which people compare this place to). I just stumbled on it online, looking for sources of dinner, and started reading the menu, finding all these dishes that you just don't see on the typical lousy American-Sichuan restaurant menus. Then I looked at some Google and Yelp reviews, for what they're worth, but people were saying some really intriguing things, and posting some pretty alluring pictures (on Yelp). Most of the reviews were very strongly and plausibly favorable, and the unfavorable reviews mostly complained that the General Tsao's Chicken and the Fried Rice weren't up to par. Anyway, I placed an order on line for pickup. I ordered the spicy cucumber salad, the "Boiled Fish in Hot and Spicy Chili Sauce", and the "Chong Qing Spicy Chicken". I drove over to pick up the order, and the service was very strangely harried, especially given that the restaurant was at most half full at 8 pm on a Friday night. I ended up having to wait about ten minutes for my food, even though it was already packed up and ready to go. Anyway, I took it back to my hotel, and had a little feast. The cucumber salad was only so-so, but the other two dishes were superb. The chicken was a dry-fried dish, with morsels of chicken coated in rice flour or corn starch or something and fried till slightly crisp, and tossed with a prodigious amount of dried red chilies, plus garlic and sesame seeds and I don't know what else. Delicious. The boiled fish was soup-like, with lots of chunks of soft, moist, fresh-tasting fish of unknown type in an explosively tasty liquid, with various bits of vegetable. The food was nicely hot without being searingly so; I gather they'll tone the heat up or down on request. The three dishes came to about $42 including tax and tip, and could easily have served five people. I had a second dinner of it this evening, and there's still a lot more than half of it left. I'd love to return to this place, especially to dine in with several adventurous companions, but that would mean cultivating some adventurous companions and coaxing them all down to Richmond, which is unlikely to happen.

Yes it does. I hadn't figured out your train of thought, but what you say must be true.

I found this story just totally shocking. Negligence and cover-up, as with the GM ignition problems, are appalling, but this kind of deliberate corporate fraud just shocks me. I own a VW car, and have owned two before this one, (although never a diesel), and feel kind of personally violated by this crime. I think people should go to prison over this, if anyone goes to prison for anything. But Don--how does this harm the electric auto industry?

Sondra Radvanovsky alternated with Renée Fleming, but I too saw Radvanovsky in the title role, and thought she was a knockout, both musically and dramatically. I probably didn't attend the same performance, but I don't recall any inappropriate laughter from the audience. I'm at a loss to understand how it was "everything that's wrong with opera in Washington". It was, to me, a very well-staged production of an opera I love with great singing (along with Radvanovsky and Grigolo, Ruggero Raimondi played the Duke), great playing (Domingo was in the pit, for what that's worth), and a bare-chested Vittorio Grigolo. I was enchanted. I don't think it's second-rate Donizetti at all. I'm a long way from knowing all the operas written by that very prolific composer, but of the ones I do know, Lucrezia is my favorite. Speaking of DVDs, there's a fabulous video recording of this from Covent Garden (c. 1980), with Joan Sutherland and Alfredo Kraus in the two main roles. (I also love the Joseph Losey Don Giovanni, by the way.) --- [Actually, I'm not good; I'm amazing. DR]