Hannah

Following on from this, the Telegraph has a nice piece on Harviestoun's various beers and some of the things they might be considering doing down the road.

They still pour a mean pint; the food is just less whelming than it was back when they opened.

Now, now. We may have a new stadium and all, but the team ain't quite there yet; no need to lose sleep or dinner over it.

Wow, it took three whole years for people to bust out the bad Unix puns.

(Hums "Schadenfreude") I believe those fine puppety folks from Avenue Q summed this one up pretty well. "Happiness at the misfortune of others? That is German!"

Piffle. Ballpark food is part of the experience and always has been. "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" was written a hundred years ago, and guess what? It talks about going to the ballpark and getting food. There have been many, many articles over the years devoted to which ballparks have the best food. Maybe it's because the pacing of the game lends itself to relaxing and having a bite. Maybe it's some sort of strange carryover from cricket, where they're just as food-obsessed if not more - heck, they stop the matches for tea and dinner. At any rate, if you choose not to go to the games, or not to eat while you're there, feel free not to do so.

Unfortunately, at least where we were (section 419) the Nats Dogs stands had NO @#$%^ CHILI for the half smokes (which we were told by the concessions staff was because the delivery truck couldn't get past the increased security). On the other hand, it only took about 5 minutes in line to get said chili-free half-smoke.

Stopped in last night before the Raveonettes show. The rabbit was by far the best dish of the night - confit of rabbit, loin, and a rack of tiny rabbit chops, in a sauce of apple juice and rabbit stock. The flatiron steak was also cooked just right, and the brussels sprouts that come with the steak are excellent - I generally don't care for them, but these were lovely and tender and didn't have any sign of that horrible bitter taste. Also had a fine Sazerac - first one I've had using real absinthe instead of one of the various substitutes, and the real stuff does make a difference.

As is the presentation - check out the photo gallery. Architectural asparagus!

Back to the restaurant we're actually talking about, which is Saigon Pho Style. We were in on Thursday evening, and while they're still super busy, the food is excellent. We had the Saigon Creped Happy Pancake as well, which is fantastic - even with all the fillings, the crepe on the bottom manages to stay impressively crispy. Although we'd wanted to try the pan-fried noodle cake, they'd run out, so we got an order of grilled beef with vermicelli, and an order of caramel prawns. Both were excellent - heck, even the vermicelli tasted good. I've never run across any that wasn't just a tasteless sauce vector, but theirs was good enough to eat on its own. Honestly, I don't care whether their pho's any good or not - the rest of the food is more than good enough to warrant regular visits.

Well, according to Fishbowl, it's going to be Marco Pierre White shouting at people, which is far, far more intimidating. Ramsay plays hard on TV; Marco once made Ramsay cry.

I've had pretty good luck ordering cheese from Di Bruno Bros. in Philadelphia - while I haven't ordered meat from them, they appear to have a pretty good selection, and there are lots of gift basket-type options that include either meat, cheese, or both.There's also Salumi in Seattle - what they have for sale at any given time is kind of variable, which is why you have to email with what you want and let them tell you if they have it or not, but it's all very, very good.

Indeed. But it lacks that lovely bug spray/horse piss aftertaste, which is what makes it a palatable alternative.

Inasmuch as it's not French (it's Belgian), because it's still a halfway decent cold wet beer, and it ain't Budweiser.

I tend not to go for the tasting menu most places, simply because I'd rather be able to order something other than what the spouse has (that way we both get to try both things), but there's no reason to be offended that the option is available - I think the story could have done without the heaping helping of "how dare they!"

Benton's has finally cleared their shipping backlog, and we have one fabulous-smelling house.

The cheese ones are pretty fantastic as well - don't know if they've made it over yet, but they were made with actual cheddar, instead of "cheez," and tasted like it.

Presumably these idiots thought they could get away with it because they were producing ground beef for institutional use, and hamburger hides a multitude of sins - the carcasses that won't grade high enough for boxed beef because they're too dark from pre-slaughter stress, or too skinny, or show obvious bruising, are still considered to be okay for ground beef use. A packing plant that's producing boxed beef for primal cuts/steaks rather than primarily ground beef has an economic incentive to treat the cattle well, because it affects their bottom line - cattle that have been significantly mistreated simply won't pass the carcass grading. The real expert in this area is Temple Grandin, and her estimate is that 10 to 15 percent of facilities are trying to fool the inspectors or mistreat animals. While that's a disturbingly high percentage, it still isn't a majority, and I can guarantee you that the majority of beef producers are just as disgusted and horrified by this incident as the rest of the country. Again, the best thing you can do is reinforce to the industry how important this is by voting with your wallet - buy from small producers and look for programs like Certified Humane.

You'll be fine at either drinks-wise. PDT's biggest problem is that it's newish, popular, and tiny, and you have to reserve for specific times, which doesn't allow you a lot of leeway to linger at dinner if you want. It does have the advantage of one of the coolest entrances ever, through a phone booth in an otherwise unremarkable-looking hot dog joint. And the mad scientists behind the bar are currently serving an old-fashioned made with Benton's bacon-infused Elijah Craig bourbon, which I have been looking forward to for MONTHS. (We'll be up there this weekend as well.)

The moment a diner sent back an £18,000 bottle of wine - for being 'fake' London restaurant patrons clearly have far more money than sense - either this sort of thing happens far more rarely over here, or it just doesn't get publicized when it does. This particular incident has all sorts of interesting wrinkles, though - there's apparently no way to tell for sure if a pre-1964 bottle of Pétrus is or isn't a fake. And after all the hoohah over whether it was or it wasn't, turns out the bottle was corked anyway.

Yes. They have the same horrible squidgy insides and the same level of internal grease in a slightly different form factor.

Unless you're a lot younger than you look, I don't think there's a big generation gap. Maybe your school cafeteria was a lot better than mine.

Eeeeewwww. Why would you waste perfectly good truffles on something as vile as a tater tot, short of some bizarre hallucinogen- or alcohol-induced "seemed-like-a-good-idea-at-the-time" late night cooking experiment?

Oh good, I'm not the only person who was traumatized by school cafeteria tater tots. I was starting to wonder.

Had this on draft at Brasserie Beck over the weekend. If the bottled version holds up, it's excellent; had a nice full caramel malt flavor and wasn't overhopped. Heh. Had some of this as well - it's a sneaky one.