Waitman

Maybe Mark Slater will fill in the details, but there was a champagne cuvee that runs maybe 500 cases and combined the toasty flavor of a well-aged vintage champagne with the sparkle of something just out of the caves. Veuve something (not Cliquot). A couple bottle of Savennieres, but not just any Savennieres, but an area with its own appellation. It was the color of honey and just as the honeusuckle nose came up through the glass, the tart granite-and-chalk-anchored chenin blanc flavor came through and if it had't been so delicate my face might have melted with joy. A Latricieres Chambertin, 2002, that made me remember why Burgundy is important. A Condrieu that tasted of flowers and young love, ordered by accident -- we just wanted a glass, but the bottle was undeniable. And then some Banyuls with the chocolate. And somebody else paid! You can spend a boatload of money on mediocre wine, even if you have some clue what you're doing. That's why, whatever the wine markup is at Citronelle, it is worth it -- I don't think I've ever had so extraordinary a run of wines in a single evening, and Slater's palate and dedication to his list and his customers are the reason.

I like shad roe and I like that its appearance means that winter is almost over. It's pretty simple to cook at home, just sautee it in some butter and serve with bacon or pancetta. Don't overcook it, the texture degrades. Some more ideas here, plus a link to a still-viable Kliman article on the stuff from last year.

I have seen them at Great Wall on Gallows road near rte 50 and the Beltway. They didn't look too fresh, but I'd guess that if you hot them on the right day you might get what you need.

Cholesteral fest: Puree of mushroom soup Onglet w/shallot sauce Frites galore Something green Epoisse, Pyrannees Raw Sheep's Milk Tomme (I was staring absently at the cheese counter at the Glover Park WF when the the cheese lady said, "you know, not everything we have is on display." The Tomme was excellent. The Epoisse, far too ripe for the timid, had apparently been hidden away until a customer with the proper deranged gleam in their eye approached the counter. It was pornographic, oozing unctuously across the plate and filling the room with a lusty, unforgettable aroma. It wasn't better than sex...it was almost exactly the same. And it may be even better now, for having sat out overnight and smeared across a stale baguette as I type). Chocolate Mousse

Screw the Ipod. Look at every consumer product on the market: floor mops, belour seat covers, toothepaste, SUV's, whatever. Improvements in the product creates demand for that product. You've noticed that, right? I always advocate that chefs have their marketing people crunch the numbers before offering a new menu item. There's no place for risk or daring in the world of cuisine! And, though our aithor wasn't impressed, I will point out that these daring and innovative chefs do offer significat vegetarian fare. I wonder if there's a correlation? How would you know? Outside of a few elite corners -- Komi, Eve et al, there doesn't seem to be much out there. Have you done a survey? "but I can empathize with restaurateurs who may not want to take the risk of pioneering a new attitude toward vegetarian offerings." Like El Bulli, Minibar and other dead restaurants of the ancient past. So, your argument is that a) No matter how good vegetarian cooking is there is no more demand; Vegetarian cooking is alread very good and widely available anyway and c) "I'm not going to try it, you try it." "I'm not going to try it, you try it" "I know, let's get Chef Mikey to try it! He'll cook anything." BTW -- I think that this is less about the top tier of places than the mass of otherwise "good" restaurants. A few people are working hard on this, but it has yet to trickle down, IMHO.

[Picking your post out of several, not to pick on you but as emblematic.] Demand and supply have an interactive relationship. The fact that there is currently no demand is significant, but not the end of the story. There was no demand for Ipods, say, until the Ipod was invented. And once the Ipod was invented, demand appeared. Perhaps more to the point, once people had bought an Ipod, they invented a better one, and people discovered that they wanted that one. If Apple hadn't built a better Ipod, they's be a half-billion dollars poorer. Vegetarian cooking exists, it has a limited market. There is more supply and more demand than ther was a decade ago. But if they build better vegetarian dishes, it's arguable that people will beat a more frequented path to their door. Better quality supply builds greater demand which, in turn, creates better supply. I don't have a functioning crystal ball (I thought the 'Skins would make it to the NFC Championship) but I'd bet that if there were more creative and better executed vegetarian dishes out there, more people would eat them. I would. If every calculation is based on existing parameters, there will be no significant progress, we'll get a better Walkman, or Discman, but we won't get the Ipod. Capitalist economics rewards those who take risks. Who do we like here on this board? Chefs that do new and different things. To be frank, I could care less about Ruta's burger and dog. But I've had wild stuff at his joint that I would never have thought of -- that you could poll a thousand people on Connecticut Avenue and barely a handful would say "damn, bacon and foan sounds like what I want for dinner tonight." Bring that creativity and talent to non-meat cooking, I think people will show up to eat it. If youcook it, they will come.

To that I would answer that vegetarians as a consumer group, are a narrow category but that vegetarian cooking need not be. There is no reason that a mixed-use restaurant couldn't have relatively broad offering of vegetable dishes without sacrificing their commitment to flesh. I'm sure a gastreauxpod lover like yourself remembers when it was damn hard to get a decent selection of fish on restaurant menus. But demand crept up, and more chefs learned to cook fish well, and suppliers improved and the whole cycle bumped up until, at a lot of places, there are as many or more good fish options as beef or veal -- something unheard of 20 years ago. No one thinks of "fish" as a "narrow category." Why shouldn't the same cycle begin with vegetable cooking? If chefs stop treating it as an afterthought or something they "have" to offer -- which many still do -- thier offerings will expand an improve. Demand will climb as vegetarians eat out more and omnivores order incrementally more such dishes. With practice and by stealing ideas from one another, the level of cooking will rise and so on. And vegatable cooking will no longer be a niche art, but just another skill that chefs master and make available to their grateful clientel. Not saying it would happen overnight. But if you think of vegetable cooking as relatively unexplored territory rather than as a ghetto for a few pallid cranks, you can see some good opportunity.

Because I think Cathal et al are better chefs.

Me, bait someone? I am but a simple would-be gourmand, hardley the master baiter you seem to think I am. I'd say that he that his bit of overstatement at the beginning of the article (dealing and caffeine-derived, perhaps) gave it a more negative feel than it really was. He did have a couple of kudos. But, I'd say that, generally, the vegetarian offerings in this town are pretty limited, far more so than decent, creative omnivore cooking. I had both the veg and the meat tasting menu at the Oval Room and I thought the veg was pretty good. But I didn't think it was quite as good as the meat. And while the carnivore menu was very innovative, some of the veg stuff was pretty common: a squash soup and a muchroom raviolo. (Though you should give it a shot, Bob). So, I beg to disagree. But, at least we're talking food, not personality types. (how do vegetarians skew on Meyers-Briggs?)

True enough --as I said earlier. But far more ink has been spilled (how archaic a phrase!), however, over his "attitude" than his actual main points. He has an "entitlement mentality," "he made his own bed," he's "submissive," he didn't "say anything at the time," he has the wrong "personality type," his grasp of Constitutional Law is weak etc. Surprisingly little talk about the food. Far be it from me to defend anyone who thinks tofu is an edible product, and whose only contact with beef is --as Heather suggests -- goring the occasional sacred cow, but methinks many more arrows have been aimed at the messenger than the message. Maybe because it's an easier target. Maybe because he's right. It's all very DC.

Is this the place to talk about Velveeta/Chili's Taco Sauce nachos, preferably eaten in front of a Redskins Game, Sopranos re-run or classic movie video? Also, a bacon-cheese omelette pommes persilladier (Frenchified hash browns, with garlic and parsley) and maybe an expensive hand-buffed lettuce on the side for and to assuage the guilt.

No, really? Nope. The conclusion is that the state of vegetarian cuisine is lousy. That's the article you want to write, or wanted him to write. Again, the premise wasn't "how to get the best food," it was "the current state of vegetarian cooking." Poisoning the well. Points off.

Apparently you missed the point of the article, which was not to prove that you can build a special relationship with one restaurant over a period of time, or that you can get better food if you take a binding-arbitration approch to making a reservation ("the chef offers the frisee and egg salad without the bacon but with the trumpet mushrooms and a duck egg, the risotto, and dessert of choice" "my client is pleased with the salad and excited about the duck egg, but feels the risotto is tired, and suggests in return a phyllo-based entree" "the chef will take that under advisement and his representative will contact you in the morning"). The point was to see what a plain old vegetarian gets when he walks in off the street. It is a report, an analysis, an overview, a look at "what is" right now, not a dream of "what might be." Of all complaints about the article, I can't recall anyone saying "you're wrong, vegetarian options are plentiful and delicious." Any rejoinder other than that is a de facto acceptance of the author's central premise.

here, Not just the newsletters. We have a poster for a release called "Grenache Village" featuring Steadman drawing of "a Basque on his ass [donky] riding through a neigborhood in which a Spanish Village is surrounded by skyscrapers, and a poem called "Howlbarino." "I saw the best palates of my generation deranged by short-chain tannins, recoiling embittered in astringent rictus..." and on for another 40 verses or so "who were compelled to re- schedule their appontments with the laguid Dr. Sax "who welcomed the atterissages of extraterrestrial objects with sauce eyes" True believers should consider signing up for the Distinctive Esoteric Wine Network here. Sublime and ridiculous stuff "not available in stores" delivered every other month. Even if you don't like the wine, the labels are cool as hell.

Chicken for me. Egg for my ovo-lacto amigo. How odd to read a DonRockwell post defending chefs who don't take risks.

One could say that what's not fair is criticizing an article before having read it. I don't think there's any denying that he's done just that.

Will Tom Sietsema next have to offer equal time?

Though both are sound strategies for the casual diner, neither makes sense for the article. Since the piece is on the generally sucky quality of standard vegetarian offerings, not the specific performance of one restaurant, there isn't, for the purposes of that article, any purpose in chatting up the chef or manager either before or after. Getting special treatment doesn't allow one to discern the day-in, day-out level of vegetarian cooking; complaining afterward doesn't make retroactively make the meal un-sucky. While I maintain a reasonable, if not Smith-like faith in the restaurant market, I also think a shot across the bow in a major glossy publication is not a bad way to get restaurants' attention. Businesses big and small tend to coast on "what works" rather than going to the trouble of changing their act. Letting them know that there may be a new market waiting to be sated might help a few places avoid the fate of WT Grants, AT&T and GM....or the Jockey Club or Trader Vic's or La Colline.

I'd give him credit for a relatively good sample size of local restaurants of quality. But, since I misunderstood the orriginal statement way back when, I'll just slink away quietly.

Having spent a great deal of time in statistics class, 5% is a fine sample size (national polls, of course, use much smaller percentages). Having spent a great deal of time on this board, I suspect very few of us have been to more than 5% of the region's restaurants, but many of us have a reasonably good grasp of what's out there on that sample size.

I'll quibble with "most of the time", at least here and on eGullet, as forums like these draw a higher class of ranter. But I agree that there are regularly details missing, from malice and ignorance, and that chefs don't and shouldn't spend a great deal of time on line. But I do think that, on the balance, these forums do far more good for than harm to deserving restaurants.

If you are likening me to Ayn Rand, sir (madam?) I shall see you at dawn! If you are likening me to Adam Smith, (after Gastreaux stops laughing), I will merely point out that it was in recent memory that Thai, Ethiopian, Sushi, salumi platters, mini-burgers, "Upscale Chains" and delivery pizzas were relatively rare in this burg, now it is difficult to swing a dead cat without whacking one of these establishments upside their metaphorical heads. I do agree with you in that I enjoy a good rant, which I thought this one was. In addition, picking out a single line and running with it is a habit that Washingtonians acquire as easily as Londoners learn to carry an umbrella, but an unlikeable one and unfair. Besides, the right to dine is indeed an unaliable one -- part of "pursuit of happiness."

A common feature of discussions of vegetarians in restaurants is that they depart the realm of business and cooking for the land of "ought." That it is good business to cater to vegetarians is, to an extent, for the market to decide. There is already movement towards greater variety and and quality in acarnivorous cooking, we'll see how far it goes. If there really is more pent-up veggo-demand, someone will figure how to tap it. If there's more smoke than fire on this particular grill, then choices will remain limited. We'll see. That vegetarian cooking is often unimaginitive and trite is virtually inarguable, though that is a failing that extends into the realm of omnivority. My next article is titled "My Friend the Tuna Carpaccio." Again, if people demand creative vegetarian cooking (by ordering it, not by writing about it) chefs will get the message soon enough. But, the argument that restaurants "ought" to serve vegetarian food is prima facie absurd -- any more than they "ought" to have any other category of cooking on the menu: vegan, Tandoori, Atkins "sanwiches" or raw food...whatever. And while I dislike chefs who are so convinced of their own genius that they refuse to change a sauce stroke of their edible masterpieces, asking for a special order in the middle of busy service is a asking a good deal. I read the article more as a frustrated rant (and also to get ideas for when my friend Beth comes over; her article: "My Friend Charles and His Goddam Portabellos") more than a cry of entitlement, and enjoyed it. But the fact is, most vegetarians have chosen to become vegetarians. If that limits their dining, it's not our problem. That being said, I would like to see more and better vegetarian offerings, on general principal, and I think a little more attention from a few more chefs could start a virtuous (though, let us not get into a discussion of whether or not vegeterians are more virtuous) circle: better vegetables, more demand, more attention, better vegetables....

I'd argue that there are no good arguments against forums like this (or like this). It's unimaginable that a good chef/restauranteur/bartender doesn't have a better chance of making a go of a good, different and unusual place with on-line forums out there than they would in a world dominated by one or two reviewers and marketing budgets. I'm happy to see chefs/owners/managers take issue with or explain complaints posted on line; I think they are being utterly intellectually dishonest when they launch into their "hiding behind anonymity" rap, and will remain so until a chef gets on and posts "you can't trust that rave about my place, they guy/gal is completely unknown to you." Elias' point is well taken to. It's hardly as if chefs don't have their defenders on line. There is often a circling of the wagons when favored restaurants are attacked. Balance the number of "I came twice just making my reservation" posts against the "I'd rather gouge my eyes out than eat there again" posts, and you'll get a good idea of on-line the reality. Anyone who can't stand the heat....

We're just waiting to see if even actual Russkies believe that there's Russian food worth crossing the river for. They already bring beets and mushrooms to the Dupont market and I can only generate so much enthusiasm for preserved fish. (Ducks)