Waitman

On 9/10/2018 at 8:49 PM, DonRocks said:

PISHADOO!

Want to talk about product placement?

I'm on SE3 EP9 of "The Sopranos," and to the best of my memory (when I began to notice), EVERY single bottle of red wine drunk on the show is a Ruffino Chianti.

If you're watching the series, look at every single bottle of red wine opened in a restaurant (and there are *many*), and it's this. I can't guarantee it's for the entire series, because I don't know how long the product-placement contract lasted, but I can guarantee it's for a disproportionate amount of time, and I'm calling BS and SPARE ME!

 <--- This is a mass-produced Chianti that is "decent" at best. Don't buy into the marketing hype.

So, a quick Google (because what I was supposed to be doing was boring and hard) suggests that there is a lot of Ruffino being quaffed.  However, he did knock back at least fiasco of Chianti consumed.

Far more interesting, though, is Season 6, Episode nine, where Chris and Tony stumble across a couple of bikers looting a liquor warehouse ("wooden crates, that's good wine") and decide to appropriate a few cases for themselves -- of '86 Chateau Lalande.  No world on what Carmella and Ro drank at Le Grand Vefour, but I'm guessing it wan't Italian. 

Well, I guess it's to late, but I'd go for the Chambertin, the Pichon-Lalande and the Latour. 

(or did I misunderstand "lot" and one needs to buy they whole of each of the groupings, rather than the whole of each Producer/vintage, in which case I would take the second grouping with Ausone P-L...Latour.)

16 hours ago, Pool Boy said:

It's been several years since I read the book. She seemed to love being a chef a tiny bit, and hating it a lot. And then the whole marriage thing to the guy where she seemed to get very little and gave a lot....it just seemed like she had opposite priorities to which she refused to give priority to. I mean, you have to be you and you also have to do what you have to do but....I do not know. Maybe I need to circle back to it and see what I think now years later.

I thought the first two-thirds of the book were pretty fascinating -- she does indeed seem to resent being a chef/restaurant owner on some level, but her path there is unusual -- and the last third, which is a chronicle of her failing marriage -- a little tedious.  I confess that having read her book and several things she's published in the Times and I felt rather sorry for the husband.  

12 hours ago, DonRocks said:

A quick update: I went to Ray's Hell-Burger again today (ces1965, the only one is at City Vista in DC), and again got a Funky President (I added a Runny Egg for a $2 supplement), and it was, once again, my favorite "low-end" (under $15 (I know, I know, that isn't really low-end)) burger in the DC area. I wouldn't have changed a thing about it - pretty much perfection on a bun.

Have you been to Lucky Buns in Adams-Morgan yet?  The Bogan. This is a tasty burger, as Samuel L. Jackson might say.

1 hour ago, Simul Parikh said:

Is a hamburger place really a must visit anywhere? Like you travel to DC, and though there is so much SE Asian, Ethiopian, Indian, as well as new American, Ray’s is a must?

1 hour ago, DaveO said:

I was a consistent customer at Hell Burger Arlington and compared it to other burgers in the region always rating it above others...

BUT....Like Simul, I’m not making a special trip for a burger..

  I can probably walk to 50 restaurants, but some days only a burger will do.  And once you decide it's a burger night -- distance is no object to get the best. 

Found the MK in Paris to be perfectly adequate, for Paris, which has a higher standard for perfectly adequate.  Didn't thrill me, though.  

MK in Athens had the best baguettes in Athens.  But, it was Athens.

On 6/11/2017 at 3:10 AM, Tweaked said:

But Sam's, ugh, another waste of space.  That place needs to be knocked down and redeveloped too.  Although I'm sure the historic preservation people would have a fit.

They tried to knock down Sam's some years back but, as you suspected, the preservation people had a fit.  It's apparently one of the oldest strip malls in the country.  Personally, I don't think that they cared one whit about the historic value. but they found that to be a convenient issue of which to hang their knee-jerk anti-development instincts.  

16 hours ago, DonRocks said:

And it's getting a pretty negative review, along with a severe downgrade, from Don Rockwell on today's donrockwell.com.

Is this up yet?  Can't find it.

3 minutes ago, DonRocks said:

Solely because of your review, I just downgraded Ripple behind Indique.

I'm not sure I would do that -- it was fine meal (and my recent Indique experiences have been good but not great). I think the quality is still there, it's just a different style. 

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The manager says that he's encountered somewhat less resistance to the style change than expected ("maybe five percent object") and I suspect that that's because the cooking remains quite good.

Well, take off the "New American" tag on this thread because -- if the meal my friend and I had there the other night was an accurate indicator -- Ripple ain't that no more. Think in terms of (as the manager put it) "Modern French."  Whether or not this is a good thing will depend on your point of view.  

Laura, who had a tasty set of trout-flavored latkes and one of those Frenchie-style entrees where they scatter little rounds of lamp tenderloin, shreds of leeks and dabs of sauce picturesquely around the plate, was pining for the more robust preparations (and great soups) of Chef Meeks. She did, it should be said, enjoy the meal.  She just found it a little "precious" which -- at lease as far as the lamb was concerned -- it probably was.

I began with fabulously, ludicrously, rich concoction of lightly poached (goddam near raw) hen's egg buried -- along with chunks of sauteed sweetbread -- in a snowdrift of foamy mashed potatoes which was, in turn, shingled with a couple of slices of black truffle. It was the sort of over-the-top dish that Donald Trump would want to slap his gilded name on; borderline bad taste that, nonetheless, tasted very, very good. Fortunately, my veal loin was comparatively austere: pink, served with a reduction and (I believe) something duxelle-ish and simply delicious.

It strikes me that the prices remain somewhat restrained. The night we were there, a number of entrees were pushing towards $35 and over, but the hen's egg orgy was only fifteen bucks.  

The manager says that he's encountered somewhat less resistance to the style change than expected ("maybe five percent object") and I suspect that that's because the cooking remains quite good.

Bonus points to the manage for pouring us a nice-sized swig of Domain Tempier after I somewhat facetiously asked if it was really twice as good (and not just twice as expensive) as every other Bandol rose.  It just might be.  

Passed by there a couple of days ago -- lines out the door as you might expect.  One night years ago I dropped in (I think it was during the 1992 Democratic Convention) and Jackie Mason was holding court at the next table.  Everything tasted a little more New Yorkish that night. In '88 I was doing an event for the Dukakis campaign and staying down the street from the Carnegie. Every night I'd get a pastrami sandwich (a "pistol") and eat half for dinner and then the other half for breakfast. Those were some big -- and delicious -- sandwiches. 

Oh, well.  RIP.

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My meal here was a decidedly mixed bag, and I realize that I'm in a minority of just about "one" by saying so, as Hazel is receiving near-consensus raves and plaudits. Was my experience a one-off? Or, was it because I hadn't eaten all day long, and my biology was just hangry-weird by this point? Or, was it just bad timing, possibly due to a miscommunication which may have been partly my fault? Read on ...

I don't have notes from my dinner so I can't offer a detailed review, but I will chime in to say that my companion and I left the restaurant wondering what all the fuss was about.  

On 12/5/2016 at 8:38 AM, Al Dente said:

Can someone tell me what that sculpture means? Is there anything deeper here beyond a large-scale reproduction of an animal balloon? It's shiny and kinda cute, but who gives a $58M rat's ass?

It's probably ironic to refer to the New York Review of Books in an attempt to brand something pretentious drek.  Nonetheless, has some deliciously scathing stuff to say.:

"The Koons retrospective is a multimillion-dollar vacuum, but it is also a multimillion-dollar mausoleum in which everything that was ever lively and challenging about avant-gardism and Dada and Duchamp has gone to die… Koons’s overblown souvenirs are exactly what Duchamp warned against, a habit-forming drug for the superrich."

"For the Gilded Age avant-garde, such legendary events [the premier of "The Rites of Spring"] have become the model for new marketing opportunities, and there is an assumption that if the public has a very strong negative reaction to something—if a work of art disturbs or annoys or flummoxes some of the public—it most likely is important. Incredibly enough, there are highly intelligent observers who believe that Koons challenges them in more or less the same way that Matisse, Picasso, Nijinsky, and Pollock might once have done.

I thought he was best known for marrying a porn actress and depicting her/them in a variety of NSFW poses and media.  

I keep trying not to think of him as an exploitative hack, but I'm having a hard time.  The fact that the New York Times Magazine has a two-page color ad every week for some new co-op being marketed as Russian oligarchs, hedge fund managers and international tax cheats that centers on an utterly banal Koons dancer (it's going to be in the courtyard, I suppose) doesn't help. 

4 hours ago, dcs said:

Has a Start-Up Found the Secret to Farming the Elusive Truffle?  By Jim Robbins, NOV. 24, 2016, on nytimes.com.

The one thing missing from this article was an opinion by a reliable source rgarding the actual merits of the truffles being produced.  I have tried summer truffles, burgundy truffles and a couple other discount varieties and have never found them remotely comparable to good Perigord or Italian white truffles.  Lame truffles are lame truffles and (IMHO) not worth the effort no matter how much cheaper they are than than the good stuff from France and Italy.

46 minutes ago, DaveO said:

Currently you can find 2 reviews in google reviews  

Maybe the first one is a fake reviewer.  maybe not.  Maybe the 2nd one also.  Maybe not.

In that I've been doing "local search optimizing" for years about 2 years ago I did a very large scale analysis of restaurant reviews in this area and elsewhere focusing on volume and comparing volumes of yelp, FB, and google reviews.   Some parts of the country are in areas where yelp had focused.  Some weren't.

In this area, which is one where there has been yelp focus (thus a higher volume of reviews) there are about 3-7 times the number of yelp reviews per restaurant as google reviews (typically)   Also typically fb volume of reviews are fewer than yelp but remarkably higher than google reviews.

(I think those ratio's remain pretty true today).   (I also doubt a "quality difference" between yelp/google/or fb reviewers let alone tripadvisor or OT reviewers)

Married couple.  Or, two people whose last names start with "O" and who sepnd time in Wexler, PA and who coincidentally ate at the same restaurant last night.  She gave Jerry's Subs four stars, so there's your benchmark for her reviews (his only other review was a 5-star Chiropracter). 

This why I only trust DonRockwell.com for my on-line reviews!

I note that there are tables for tonight and I don't feel like cooking....hmmmm.

On 11/3/2016 at 8:06 AM, DonRocks said:

But not quite as insulting as assuming the puppeteers are Caucasoid.

This entire conversation has become a bit much - I don't want to play hatchet man, but from this point forward, please use your noodles before dishing out the pasta.

Fair enough. Caucasoid deleted.

[Thanks, Charles - knowing you, I know it was well-meaning. Knowing me, you should know I would take any possible opportunity to harangue you. :)]

12 hours ago, Bart said:

Yep, nailed it!

The legend has it that Robert Johnson made a deal with the devil at the crossroads to become a master of the blues. I wonder if Kawame knowingly or unknowingly made his own deal with the devil:  "You get to be the executive chef of a cutting edge, high end restaurant, and in return we get to curate the clientele and boast about super chilled glasses and offer a no cancellation, no refund even-if-you-die-before-your-meal policy",

Who knows?

Unrelated to all of the previous discussion, I find it amazing that we're 6 pages into this topic and the restaurant has only been open for 1 day and there are no reviews yet.  That has to be a DR.com record.

I'd suggest -- delicately -- that suggesting that a chef-owner, and especially an African-American chef-owner, is merely the figurehead for nefarious plutocratic puppeteers is at least as insulting to said chef as simply calling him arrogant. At least give the guy credit for fronting his own band.  

Just wanted to add that, while the guy rubs me the wrong way, I'd be just as happy to see him succeed and, if my financial situation weren't tied to the political situation, I'd be happy to take one for the team and try the place out.  Hell, I ate at 11 Madison Park this year, so this would only be my second most expensive restaurant of 2016. 

27 minutes ago, TheGut said:

Convivial uses the same method to chill their cocktail glasses.  It is a current trend.  Nothing out of the ordinary.

It's pretentious no matter who does it.   And, based on my entire history of bar hopping, decidedly out of the ordinary, at least for the moment. 

[To be clear, there are few industries on earth more pretentious than the "craft" section of the bar industry right now, so Kwame may just be keeping up with the Joneses here.] 

From Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Starts about half way down the page that begins: "this is Doctor Gonzo in 850...."

On 9/12/2016 at 7:23 PM, DaveO said:

Don't Bogard that joint my friend, pass it over to me

I wonder how many (hundreds of) times I said that????

Dirk Bogarding a cig. 

7 minutes ago, dz50 said:

A restaurant can't be both Bib Gourmand and starred in the same year, but there have been restaurants that have been Bib Gourmand that have become starred in subsequent years.

This is a change, then, because in past years I've noticed and even patronized a couple of 2-fers.  They were not common, but you'd come across one on occasion and they always caught my eye ("wow, this must be a great deal!") 

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a Bib Gourmand cannot be awarded to a restaurant that gets a Michelin Star, and is supposed to be the "cheap eats" places - $40 for 2 courses and either a dessert or a glass of wine.

Unless they have changed, this is untrue.  I've been to a couple of Bib Gourmand/1-star restaurants over the years.

Any list of restaurants meeting certain qualifications will have some "errors," but Michelin has come through for me: I've found the Bib Gourmand list to be extremely reliable when travelling in strange cities.  

Heh.  I ate at the third best restaurant in the world, and the best in the Western Hemisphere (that snowstorm cost me a pretty penny).  Ain't I cool?  

Call me a cynic, bit I think that Francescana gets a bump from that Chef's Table series on Netflix.