Hannah

If its like it is on G St., the head in parking is only allowed until 2PM - special dispensation for the church-going crowd.

The cutoff time for the head-in parking in front of Beck is definitely 2pm - we parked there for brunch a while back and got back to the car at precisely 1:58.

Here's a link to Jamie's Fowl Dinners on BBC4.

Actually, it's Channel 4, who are also producing Hugh's Chicken Run (made by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, the River Cottage Meat Book guy). They're a commercial network, and this is the kind of thing that would make their programming people feel very good about serving the target demographic. How it might play with their advertisers is another matter, especially since it sounds like Jamie didn't fully think that through himself - he's got a million-pound plus contract with Sainsbury's, and they're apparently rather displeased with the program and his subsequent comments.

(There is a BBC4, but it's a fairly recent addition to the Beeb's lineup, all-digital which means a lot of people don't get it, and mostly shows reruns or documentaries, although they've got a good run on Top of the Pops rebroadcasts at the moment. )

I don't see Burros as condescending, though.

You must have missed her previous salvo then.

Good news, St. John's is now on Opentable.

Well, not so sure that is good news for ereidy's friends, but for offal lovers everywhere it sure as hell is.

As much as I adore St John, romantic is not the first description that leaps to mind.

I have friends in London this week (attending a family funeral) and they are in desperate need of a romantic dinner. They're looking for modern english, but not Gordon Ramsay prices.....and a place that will help them forget the reason why they're in London this week. Any suggestions?

thanks!

~erin

The Evening Standard did a writeup of their "top 10 cosy corners" last week, which included Richard Corrigan at Lindsay House in Soho - the reviews in addition to that one are great, the current menu looks good, and while I haven't personally eaten there, I have tried some of Corrigan's recipes and can certainly vouch for them. And, at 56 pounds for the dinner menu it's significantly less expensive than the Ramsay outposts.

Strangely enough, it is in today's food section in our local paper - On Capitol Hill, A Vote for Edibility and the Environment, by Jane Black. The Post manages to cover the story without the usual Burros attitude toward DC - for someone who apparently still lives here, she sure doesn't appear to like us very much.

We've noticed the EU effect on lots of stuff; maybe we should just move to London! She doesn't eat much Indian (one of those with a nameless aversion to it for whatever reason), but this may be a reason to start. But Indian without naan just seems wrong ...

Speaking of breads, I've read that injera is wheatless. At least the real stuff is only made with teff. I recall reading somewhere that most of the local places actually get their injera from a common source? It's worth investigating to find out it it's cut with wheat at all.

London (or the UK in general) is a good place to live if you're celiac - you can get gluten-free bread, crackers, etc. by prescription through the National Health Service for free, all of which is better than the commercially available GF bread products I've tried over here. Worst case, you can eat really well on vacation, since the restaurants seem to be more used to the requests and a lot of them already have the gluten-free stuff listed on their menu.

And dosas and pappadums are a fairly acceptable substitute for naan, at least as a sauce/chutney/ghee vector. Not sure about injera - I know teff's not wheat, but I'm not sure whether it's one of those things that's completely okay, or whether it's on the "genetically similar to wheat/rye and may trigger the immune response so don't eat it" list, like spelt.

It's usually pretty easy to find gluten-free Indian products - the Patak's and Sharwood's products all have very specific gluten content labeling, and a lot of the food's made with rice, lentil or chickpea flours rather than wheat. In general, foods produced in the EU (like these and others) are going to have really obvious labeling as to whether or not they're gluten-free - they've had strong labeling requirements for a while now.

I guess you don't know better. I'm happy for you that you have a lot of places to eat.

Hi and welcome to DR.com, nenadv. Did you read the review these last few comments are referring to? It's not very positive. Perhaps you've eaten at Fiamma recently, and would care to comment on that?

(Thankfully gluten is not one of my many allergens.) Are you aware though that celiac disease can be diagnosed with a blood test? It is one of the few allergens where there is a specific blood test to confirm the diagnosis.

The blood test is also a relatively recent development, so if you haven't been going to a doctor who sees a lot of celiac patients it's worth mentioning (unless of course you have a positive result from the older, far more invasive tests.)

I've never quite understand the difference between the regular and the recently introduced French/European(?)-style, except that the original is white and the other yellow. The ingredient list seems to be quite similar. Some sort of aspirational marketing?

The European style has more of a custard base, hence the color, and really does bear a fairly close resemblance to English rice pudding (Ambrosia, for instance) - the benefit of the Kozy Shack version being that it doesn't come in a can and have a half-life measured in centuries. I don't think it's all that recent an introduction, though - we've been buying it for a few years now.

It sounds similar to British baked beans on toast to me, except I usually think of that as open-faced.

The spouse has a concoction he calls "eggs Boston," which is basically beans on toast with a fried egg, but I'm pretty sure that a) it's not a sandwich per se since you can't pick it up, and b] that Saveur wouldn't be aware of it even if it were.

Oh jeez. TIP v. CTY Ultimate Frisbee game at the next picnic?

I'm spectacularly bad at it, but wouldn't want to let down the side.

Does this place also carry black pudding or white pudding? I've been looking for a local source for those items. Or if this place doesn't sell them, anyone know of somewhere that does?

They generally stock a couple of different kinds of black pudding and at least one of white pudding, as well as Galtee bacon, pork pies, sausage rolls, and the rest of your British or Irish meat-product-of-indeterminate-origin needs.

Oh, and if you're still expecting to find them in Chantilly, you'll have to keep driving for a bit - they've moved a few miles further out Rt. 50, to Aldie.

Incidentally, the same group also distills "Absente" - might that more closely resemble an early pastis?

The Virginia ABC nearest us (Sterling-haven't seen it at any others) has been stocking Absente for a while, and it's pretty good - nice enough to drink straight, and mixes very well, which is essential for the Corpse Reviver #2. They also include a drip spoon with each bottle, which is a nice touch - we've given a couple of bottles as gifts because of it.

Interesting list no major surprises.

http://www.washingtonian.com/articles/restaurants/6014.html

Because, just like when someone posted about it last week, it's still last year's list - the 2008 list is on newsstands but not yet on their website.

Christmas breakfast:

Benton's ham, biscuits, and gravy

Christmas dinner:

Roast heritage turkey with cornbread dressing

Parsnip and carrot mash

Pommes dauphinoise

Haricots verts with sauteed shallots

Mince pies

Christmas pudding

(eta: mincemeat acquired, almond/cream cheese pastry will be started shortly)

Kazakh brandy. Way better than you'd think.

No, it's in Reston, the atrium inside of Meadowlark Gardens park. Really a very attractive setting; the food all hinges on the caterer.

It's absolutely lovely. Except it's in Vienna, not Reston.

I've switched over to Firefox for the time being and am no longer getting the messages from my virus scanner, so the bug seems to be targeting IE specifically.

Whatever it is, it seems to happen just as the site address resolves, before the browser starts loading any images or text. Both our home PCs have flagged the virus, so there's clearly something going on. If you're using a PC, particularly if you're browsing the site with Internet Explorer, and you haven't gotten any similar messages from your virus scanner, please update your virus signatures immediately and run a full system scan. The virus in question, VBS/Psyme or Downloader.Psyme, is considered to be a fairly low threat, but it's not something you want hanging around on your machine either since it opens a back door to future potential nastiness. There are files you can search for to find out if your machine has been hit - details can be found at http://vil.nai.com/vil/Content/v_100749.htm(McAfee's Threat Center listing) or http://www.symantec.com/security_response/...-99&tabid=1 (Symantec's Security Response listing). Mac users should be safe on this one since it won't execute on OS X.

Yea, good call on the Lagunitas, it comes east, but only sporadically. I have also sporadically recommended the Bavik and the Efes as international pils, but the earlier caveat about not knowing what they really taste like applies.

The Bavik's lovely on draft - nice flavor and body, and not dead hoppy like the Hopfenkonig (although with a name like "King of Hops", you'd kind of expect it to be on the hoppy side). The Blusser at Central isn't bad either, although it doesn't have as much character as the Bavik.

Clearly CAB isn't the only program that's "meaningful in the market," given the market penetration of the others. In fact, the new Wildfire restaurant in Tyson's makes a point of emphasizing that their beef comes from the Stock Yards certification program, not through CAB. Given that it's printed on the menu, the carryout containers, and even the bags they put the carryout containers in, obviously they feel it's meaningful enough to make a big deal of.

First, the fact that there are other Angus programs is not germane to the discussion. We all know we have been talking about the CAB program from the get-go, and that's as it should be since it is the only one that is meaningful in the market--the rest really aren't on the radar screen.

Not true at all - you can go to multiple supermarkets and restaurants in the DC metro area and see evidence of a number of the programs on the USDA list that aren't CAB - Sysco, Stock Yards, Tyson's, Swift, and Cargill for a start. That means there's very real potential for consumer confusion since the standards of all of those programs are different.

As an aside, I don't see what the NBQA has to do with this discussion. It relates to all beef, and we are talking about a comparatively small subset of that set, so statistics coming from it really don't help us much in getting where we want to go.

If you take a look at the CAB producer site, www.cabpartners.com, you'll see exactly how seriously the CAB folks themselves take the NBQA data - it's all over the site and they refer to it constantly.

And I must add I really don't understand your vendetta against Angus beef being sold under the CAB program.

Just as I don't understand the "Angus is the be-all and end-all of beef" argument. We'll just have to agree to disagree.

Hannah,

I'm staying out of this, because I know relatively nothing about it, but I think when johnb said "meet all the criteria," he meant "meet all ten of the criteria." Just looking at the pure math, it seems to me that this criterion alone eliminates 77% of candidates, independently of how many carcasses qualify for the other nine. Carrion...

I did say that one actually makes a difference. But if you notice, it's the only one of those criteria that's anywhere near as selective as the marketing materials are trying to make it sound like they're being.