Hannah

Leftover breakfast goodies from Balthazar. Mmm, raisin walnut bread.

It's called beer. The entire menu of your average chippie (not that Eamonn's is average, but the menu's pretty representative) is aimed what you'd want once the pub's closed, you've had a few pints, and you're hungry.

Indeed. It's much harder to make a cake out of meat, and there are very few things that meat does not make better. Ergo, pie > cake.

Their current product is pretty tasty even without the wormwood, so this bodes well.

The Wegman's dry aged beef clearly isn't hung as long as the beef at Fair Lakes (I don't remember the exact number, but it wasn't much longer than 21 days.) Having had both, I didn't notice a big difference in the quality of the meat except in the length of aging. But yeah, I wouldn't write off dry aging without cooking and seasoning a dry- and wet-aged steak side by side.

The Reston Whole Foods now has Moorenko's as well. The Rice Pudding flavor is kind of interesting - unlike their other flavors, it doesn't come across as super-creamy. Basically it's frozen rice pudding - very good frozen rice pudding, to be sure, but not really ice cream as such.

DiBruno's in Philly sent out an email on Friday saying that they now carry it.

To be fair, the entire purchase price of each of these "economic monstrosities" is being donated to the Help a London Child charity appeal. Even if they don't sell a lot of burgers, it's a pretty freakin' brilliant PR move judging from the amount of worldwide media coverage they've already gotten from it.

Yep. Published reports of his whereabouts seem to prompt a more-or-less immediate move.

This is not the first time they've recommended Freixenet. I was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt up until the first time they did it, but that tore it. I wouldn't clean my catbox with the stuff.It's also pretty clear that the only reason they mention the Henriot (which is gorgeous) is because they got invited to the schmoozefest tasting. Feh.

We were given some *ahem* local product from home that had been cask-aged, and it's significantly better than a lot of commercial whiskeys. It's easy to see how Jack Daniel made the leap from a still up on the ridge to commercial distiller when you taste something like that.

There's a fairly involved thread on eGullet's Spirits & Cocktails forum about Campari's transition from carmine/cochineal to artificial color - according to the vast majority of people who've tried both, the manufacturer appears to have sacrificed taste in favor of cost savings or caving to the vegetarian lobby. Carmine color was not and is not banned. As far as Angostura, the label says "Colorant Caramel E150a" - that's standard burnt sugar/corn syrup caramel color, no bugs.

Johnson's Charcoal Beef House closed May 15th, soon to be replaced by yet another cookie-cutter Chevy Chase Bank. Feh.Red Fox Inn's current building has been in use as a tavern since 1830, but there's been a tavern on that site since 1728 or so. National Register of Historic Places confirms the dates.

Last time we were in London, they'd put out these big plastic standup urinals on the street corners in Soho, supposedly to keep people from weeing on the walls and damaging the historic brickwork. These were literally right out on the edge of the sidewalk, though. Not only would you be facing the other occupants/patrons, you'd be right out there on the corner in front of a good few thousand of your closest friends.

Apparently: It also pops up in Ulysses, but as far as that being understandable, well, that's a tossup.

As an aside, if you can find a cattle farm that has a wooded area with a patch of perilla/shiso, they will be more than happy for you to help them get rid of it - while it's harmless to humans, it's pretty bad for cattle if they get into it.

Got takeout last week, and certainly didn't notice any dropoff in quality or reduction in the number of people in the restaurant. Any place can have an off night.

You'll be more than fine at Rasika - it's a more modern take on Indian, but then so is Indique.

Heh - it exists, and it's called Weetabix. Also conveniently available at both Safeway and Harris Teeter.

Some of them don't have much more flavor than scallions, true. The good ones, though, have a much stronger/sharper flavor, to the point of being a little hot, and they're the ones that are worth seeking out. The best ones I've had so far this year were at Bar Pilar a couple of weeks ago - might be worth finding out where they're getting theirs.

The one in Herndon, which may or may not still be open (it's been a while since we were by there) is okay, but the food was kind of creepily perfect. You know how you'll occasionally catch a glimpse into the kitchen of IHOP, Denny's, etc. and see the pictures of each dish posted next to the pass to show how each dish is supposed to look when it goes out? Well, all the food at First Watch looks exactly like one of those pictures; like each plate has been carefully arranged by a food stylist before it's carried out to your table. If I hadn't been able to see that there were actual people in the kitchen, I would have been worried that there was a giant replicator in back - push a button, get your perfectly formed Syntho-omelet and Tea, Earl Grey, Hot. The food was fine, but honestly, I'd rather go someplace like Virginia Kitchen where the waitresses are a little cranky and the eggs come from an actual egg, get bashed around on the griddle for a while, and come out looking different every time, rather than First Watch where someone's clearly been instructed to use the Perfect Eggotronic 9000.

Er, there's been one in the middle of Dulles Town Center's food snort since it opened. Sorry.

As with most of these things that get passed around the interwebs, the vast majority of it is complete bumf. A point-by-point rundown of the full thing is available at snopes.com, but here are the highlights for the food bits: Pease porridge: Another source, the very well researched about.com medieval history site, points out that people living at subsistence level back then would hardly have 9 days worth of leftovers lying around in the first place, and even if they did wouldn't be adding fresh food to something that old and potentially nasty.Bacon: Tomatoes: Bread (the one they actually got right, ish): Wakes:

Yup. Kartoffelsalat is everywhere in far northern Germany (Schleswig-Holstein/Mecklenburg-Vorpommern), although as I recall they tended to use a little less actual bacon in it - bacon fat/flavor, yes, but fewer actual chunks - than you'd see in a German potato salad over here. Of course, they made up for that by putting extra bonus meat in just about everything else.

Sonoma has a small but pithy selection of beers on tap (the Brooklyn Pennant '55 is a particular standout at the moment), so it's puzzling that Mendocino doesn't offer an equally good selection, even if it's bottle-only.