deangold

Please, not till after I get back from my vacation. Jan 27 or after!

Or Bangkok 54/

The Ginger Chicken is indeed hot, but its not off the charts. Having several times finished the ginger chicken, I put it as meduim on my hotness scale, about where I put the H-20 fish at Joe's. For real heat, try the Spicy and Tasty Tofu with pork at Joe's and ask for it "Authenticly hot". If Audrey believes you and really lets you have it fully spiced, you will find it can bring on hallucinations. The Dry Fried Schezuan Beef is almost as hot.

Dino is extending our restaurant week offer thru Thursday January 19. The offer of a free glass of prosecco stands to all DR.com folk too.

Amen to ZH. Not my style at all. I will say it has been over a year since I was in to see your Italians. BUt like I said, the Malts and the california reds are the best in town by far. I dont drink a lot of French stuff so I wouldn't comment on those. What I do love about the store is that all the selections speak of some real passion and opinions on wine, and not just a buy everything or buy highyly rated wines mentality. If I were someone who did shop regularly in a retail environment, I would imagine it would be easy to calibrate my tastes to the tastes of the folk doing the buying there. To parapohrase spencer Tracy speaking of Katherine Hepburn... "There's not a lot there.... but what there is is choice". Ace is small but each section is developped with a lot of thought.

I like San Woo but I think WooMi is much better. We love the KimChee Jigae and other soups like Man Doo Guk. I also love the seasoned tofu appetizer. They make a casserole Mandoo which, if there are 4 or 6 of you would be a great starter. Their $9 all you can eat lunch is a guilty pleasure. I think the Sushi is only so-so.

McArthurs has the widest selection but you have to cut thru a lot of collectors stuff to get to the lesser known gems. Tom H is a font of knowqlege when it comes to Italian wines. Circle is also quite good. Kumar knows his stuff. Very small selection but quite good, especially when it comes to northern reds. Not much excitement when it comes to whites and southern reds. My recollection of Schneiders was that there was very little dross and lots of good stuff for a small selection. On reflection, I would have to toss in Arrow as having a nicely quirky selection but it is a little pricy. WHile Ithere is lots to like at Ace, I dont recall being impressed with their Italian selection (while their Single Malts, Alsatian and odd reds from California get me all hot and bothered).

Were these from the same gentleman

If you reserve early, you can request table 71 or 72 which are upstairs and in the back room, its the quietest spot we have. We ahve opeings till about 6:30 as of last night.

With all the restaurant week excitement, it may be a bit early to think of Valentine's day. We are offering a couple of fixed price options on Tuesday the 14th. One is a 5 course menu with three options each. The other is a "For Adults Only" menu of dishes that wither are reputed to have aphrodisiacal properties, or just seem obscene to us. The options are posted on our website. Unfortunately my web mistress (doesn't that sound like a domanitrix spider?) is too busy to repost my properly proofread V-Day menu so excuse the typo's. The wine pairings will be awesome!

I have only been a couple of times but was always impressed with the Italian selection. Nice effort to support lesser known names. Probably one of my favorite three retail outlets for Italian in the city.

We typically don't reserve for the bar but you could call about a half hour before you want to arrive. If possible, we can hold somehting for you. If you arrive without calling, we do our best to give people who want to dine at the bar priority.

We are participating in RW and have early reservations available thursday to get you to an 8pm show across the street.

Salt! Then I won't mention the Tripe sellers wagons (I know of 4 at least) with the stuffed tripe sandwich, dipped in juice with hot and green salsa and enough salt to supply the Dead Sea all for 4 euro. That would also be off topic too!

Ahhhh 10 more days and then I will have real espresso and real cappuccino in Firenze. You can have your Charbucks all year long.... I will have my Caffe Ricchi on Santo Spirito (No relation to I Ricchi here in DC).

At Dino, we are offering the full menu for RW. You can have any dish up to $12.00 for your first course. You can have any dish for your entree and any dessert for your dessert. Rockwelians, Rockweilers and Rockwelders get a welcoming glass ofprosecco on the house. We will have 2 three wine pairings, one for $10 and one for $15. Each will include a choice of white or red for appetizers, a white or red for mains, and a dessert wine.

This space is destined to be a non food use. There is a restriction in Cleveland Park called the business Overlay District which limits the space on Connecticut allowed to be restaurant (or food use in general). The district is already way over that limit so no new spaces may be converted to restaurant space. Apparently the citizen's association in CP has a proposal in front of the planning commision to change the overlay but I am not familiar with the provisions of the proposed changes. Right now the McDonald's space is proposed to be used as a BB&T bank. Even that use will need a variance under the CP business overlay. The old Potomic Video space was supposed to become a sushi bar, but the building owners and/or proposed tennnts ran into business overlay issues and dropped the idea. It is now the cosignment shop.

I had an old college friend from the late 70's try to find me. In the pre Dino days, a Google search on Dean Gold brought up "Dean Martin's Gold Hits", "Jan and Dean's Gold Record", "Torvil and Dean win the Gold Medal", and "Dean (the title and not a person) Gold of such and such College". So he rememberd that we shared many a bottle of Ridge Montebello back in the old days (along with copious amounts of illegal substances- this after all was the late 70's.) So he plugged in Dean Gold and Ridge and got me. We ahve renewed a friendship after 25 years thanks to my love of Ridge wines. It still amazed me that I top Ridge's own website. I also google at the top for Ridge Petite Sirah, Ruby Cabernet and on the first page of Geyserville. Not for Lytton Springs tho... Now I actually have 5 hits on page one (which astounds me to no end) so no one will have to do that type of sleuthing.

According to my agreement with my provider, I can only use the credit card for providing actual goods & services. This leaves openb the question of chargebacks. I would need to send a form and get the customer's signature back to have any leg to stand on. Without a swipe of the card, there is a good chance I will lose any dispute. A chargeback takes me time to process, and asking the 19 people who reserve and show up to fax me an agreement is a lot of work to punish the one who doesn't show up. Not to mention the bad will it may cause those customers who would never dream of no showing. I can just imagine the difficulty of proving that a reservation was not cancelled. The customer, who remember has made a reservation and not shown up for it, will just lie to the cc provider and say "Oh I called and left a message on their phone." There is no way I can prove otherwise. Fighting a chargeback required me digging out the original sales slip. Since this happend usually 30-60 days after the charge is incurred, there is a hassle factor. I guess I would file all this info separately if I was going to actually charge no shows for ease of future reference. Lastly, if I do incur a chargeback, there is a fee associated with the chargeback. The point still remains: it is a sad commentary on today's world that some adults think themselves so self important that they behave in this manner. How a business chses to deal with it aside, it is the no shows who are boors and imposing costs on the rest of you fine folk who keep your word. I am a person who stongly believes in my word. I cannot remember a time where I deliberately did not follow thru on something I have said I would do. If I forget something, I take it on myself to make amends. I don't wait for the world to punish me for my lapse.

I also love the posts about "All California wine is overpriced crap" and Argentinian wine can be found at 8-10 a borttle retail that will be better than a 25 to 30 Californian wine etc etc etc. All Californian wine is overpriced crap? Not if you like the terroir of a particular growing region or the flavor profiles unique to Californian wine. If ALL California is overpriced crap, then it must follow that other wine growing regions can replicate the flavors and terroir of California wine. This is absurd in the extreme. Santa Cruz Mountains grown cab tasted distinctly different than cabernet grown anyhere else in the world. While it is possible for a winemaker to cover up this flavor by using technology, oak etc, if I want that flavor, I must go to a wine that, at a minimum, started out with Santa Cruz grapes. Only I can then determine if the price quality relationship makes it worth it. What wines are we talking about? Grace family vineyards? Yes overpriced crap. Bryant? Yes Overpriced crap. Opus? Yes, overpriced crap. In my opinion. But I have actually tasted these wines as well as searched out smaller, less well know producers and california classic producers as well. I have probably tasted cabernet from over 500 producers from California. I do not like oak dominated wines. I do not like over extracted wines. These are my opinions. If I am looking for a great Cabernet from California, my list starts with Ridge Montebello, Laurel Glen, Mayacamas, Ahlgren, Iron Horse, Judd's Hill, Miner. Rarely do these wines show up on the top of the Wine Spectator ratings, but they are what I LIKE! For me, they are a great bargain. I have never had an argentinian wine that measuyres up to this list on a dollar for dollar basis. Hell, Laurel Glen makes wines from Argentina and I prefer his California stuff on a dollar for dollar basis. Others don't and good for them. There are no absolutes in winemaking. It all boils down to what you like and what you have experienced. There is no absolute measure of a wines quality. Its all a matter of fit. When someone asks me for a wine recommendation, I always ask them "What do you usually drink?" Then, taking that into account, I try to steer them to something they may have never tried before. If they say "I love merlot", I will guide them to another grape that has similar textural and sensual characteristics as typical merlot- unagressive tannins, lots of fruit, maybe some spice, suppleness. They might get a recomendation of Pignolo, Lagrein, Refosco, or maybe a merlot from Friuli. It all depends on how I feel. I am neither pro- or anti-merlot. But I do want to stretch the experiences of my customers, not just give them the same old same old. Ohh well, enough of my rant.

I partially disagree with this one. I have experienced many a bottle where the cork had an odd or off smell but the wine is perfectly fine. I have also taken back corked wine where the cork had a normal smell. There is, however, a positive correlation between bad smelling cork and bad smelling wine. I don't think there is a right or wrong on smelling the cork, but the final proof is only in the glass.

Uhhhh.... sure!

Lastnight we had 20 dipwads who couldn't be bothered with calling in and cancelling. The real issue is that there were 20 other people who would have loved to sit in those chairs and stuff themselves with good food and wine. I am glad these people are so self important that they can treat the lowly people who are trying to give them a good time as not worthy of their meerest efforts at common courtesy! Hey Don... How about a private topic for restaurants to post no shows with names and phone numbers?

On its own, a little rough and sharp. We had it with the foie gras crostini as well as a baccala crostini. The richness of the foie and the salty sharpness of tthe baccala brought out different aspects of the wine but both dishes took away the sharpness. With the foie, it was softer with more of a muscatty overtone. With the bacala, it was all spice and a little buttery/yeasty. All in all, Gravner remains one of my true wine heros. His wines stand apart!

2003 Primitivo di Salento "Sharazad" Milleuna (almost Amarone-like: rich, spicy, luscious, thick) 2003 Rosso di Montalcino Collimattoni (Incredibly huge rosso, late harvest overtones, lush, spicy, full) 2003 Barbera d'Alba Hillberg 2004 Gewurztraminer "Nussbaumer" Cantina di Tramin, Alto Adige 2000 Gravner Ribolla Gialla 2002 "Primofiore" Quintarelli (Valpolicella blend) 1999 Brunello di Montalcino Poggio di Sotto (plummy, spicy, rich, very smooth, in the bloom of youth, one of the 3 best 99 Brunello I have tasted) 1997 Barolo "Ginnestra" Paolo Conterno (huge, coffe and spice nose, violets, roses, ripe purple and black fruit, early mature) 1999 Amarone "Pergole Vece" Le Salette (smooth, rich, huge, spicy, lush) Note, we were pouring 2 wine flights so we had an incredible array of wines open last night) Dinner: Crostini of cured Foie Gras, house cured duck breast, foie gras with blackberry sauce, lobster & guanciale pasta, rib eye with erborinati (cave aged blue) . Johnny outdid himself! Thanks to those here and all our friends and customers who made 2005 such an exciting year. We hope you have a great, happy and healthy 2006!