deangold

We are a definite maybe. Possibly.

Make the check payable to the Dean and Kay but a farm in Le Marche fund!

Alas Capogiro seems to be in vast decline. We ahve stopped buying from them as their product was melting like crazy and inconsistent. Selling to Whole foods and the massive growth that can spur often kills a small producer like Capogiro. We are in the process of switching product.

Dino has a private dining room with doors that close. The doors are french doors with windows. We ahve several seating configurations: One table that can seat up to 14 or 16, or two tables that can handle 20.

We will begin serving lunch This Friday. Lunch will be offered Friday and Saturday from 12:00 till 3pm. Brunch will be offered Sundays from 11am till 3pm. We have our New Years Menu's completed. We will open at 5pm and have 2 seatings. Last reservation will be at 10pm. On the early seating, you have your choice of 3 courses plus dessert for $55 per person or 6 courses plus dessert for $75. The late seating will be 7 courses for $85. Wine flights will be available as well as our full list. Menu to be uip on the website shortly. We will also be open on Christmas Eve and ahve some traditional specials as well. Hours Christmas Eve are from 4:30 pm until last seating at 9pm. Last add, we have recieved a major shipment of cheeses from Italy: Castelmagno (raw milk mixed milk cheese) Monte Veronese (Raw milk cows cheese) Formaggio di Fossa (Impossibly strong and funky cheese from Forli, romagna made from raw cow and sheep milk aged in a tufa ditch till it ferments!) Erborinati (Raw milk cave aged blue) Ragusana (Caciocavallo type raw cow's milk cheese with an amazing gruyere like flavor) Ubraico all'Amarone (Cow and sheep milk cheese aged in Amarone pressings). Torte Mascarpone with figs from Peck in Milan

We will be putting out our New Year eve menu shortly (Chef wasout last week with a health issue so we are a little behind). We are planning to have Prix Fixe. The blowout menu will be 7 courses for $80 or so per person (with a few upcharge items and a few al la carte additions available) If you are finished by 9pm, there will be a 4 course menu for $50 per person. We will have wine flights to match the dinners available as well. Seating will be available from 5pm until 10:00 pm. You can reserve any time from 5pm up to 7pm for the early seating. The late seating is available for reservations made from 7:30 until 10pm. Hi With the menu finalized now, we are offering the following... If you reserve from 5pm until 7pm 4 courses $60.00 or 7 courses $75.00 A 7 wine tasting flight is available for $40 or $85. If you reserve from 7:30 till 10:00 pm: 7 Courses $85 A 7 wine tasting flight is available for $40 or $85. The $50 4 course was a typo! Mea Culpa

We have finished our lunch of defrosted chili and a bottle of 1981 Iron Horse Cabernet. In about 30 minutes we are putting our 18# bird in the oven for just the two of us. Thisnking about what to drink with it later.... maybe a 1978 Mayacamas cab. None of my Brunellos are really ready to drink and Barolo is just to big for a turkey dinner, even a 1989 where my collection of Piemonte starts.

Lunch will begin Friday December 2 at noon. We will serve lunch Friday and Saturdays, with a Sunday brunch on Sundays starting at 11am. We will close at 3pm and reopen each day at 5. The menu should be up on our web site next week sometime. We still have openings for our wine dinner next week featuring Inama, Nicolis (Soave, Valpolicella and Amarone). 5 course meal featuring stuffed veal breast, brodetto and a wonderful cheese plate. Call or PM me for more info.

Our final 2 meals in NYC: Yeah at 65 Bayard in CHinatown. 2 orders of shanghai soup dumplings, one ordered after the other because one order wasn't enough. A triple cold plate: smoked pork (dense meat with little smoke flavor but quite rich and meaty), 8 presciuos jewels (a bunch of chopped ingredients like shiitake, squash, peanuts all cooked and marinated in a spicy soy based sauce) and mock duck which was bean curd skin stuffed with mushrooms. all for $20.00. Fantastic! The Steakhouse at Fairway Market (74th and Broadway)- roast clams in a white broth, garlicky and good. A huge protion of skirt steak char broiled rare served with incredible French fries and roasted cherry tomatoes, pan fried trout with capers, 3 glasses of wine all for under $80! Always good, especially before an opera or other performance at Lincoln Center.

Forgot about very civilized drinks at Gramercy Tavern. Had a well made martini and Kay and our third had very good glasses of wine. VERY expensive but great bar nuts!

I went to XO last night. We had some pretty ordinary won ton soup and XO noodles which were rice noodles with a little curry powder and some ordinary seafood. Our last dish was ham and seafood dumplings: 5 soup dumplings with a sweetish broth made even sweeter by a soy based dipping sauce. They were superb. They came in a little bit of outstanding chicken soup. If all the meal was like this one dish, we would be back. However I would go back to Yeah on Bayard. Also on this trip, we ate at Barbuto (Washington & 12 in the meatpacking district). Save your mony- we spent $170 for three and nothing rose above ordinary. The service was borderline at best. I had braised Korobota Pork ribs, very tasty. But the preparation was sweet enough for dessert. Kay had a lamb pasta that was OK and our third has some sauteed fish. Our starters were no btter. I could't eat most of my salumi plate, we had a clam plate for the table that tasted only of chorizo, our third had a soup that was the dish of th night. Kay's started was roasted caulifower which was billed as with anchovy but was a little leathery and distinctly lacking in anchovy flavor. Wine list weak with pricing at 4 times wholesale or more. RIPOFF! Good olives though! Fresco by Scotto (37 E 52) was a huge lunch with a wine importer... great food if not particularly Tuscan as billed. We ahd some really decadent potatoe and zucchini chips doused in melted cheese. Next up was an eggplant parmigiano, heavy, dese and flavorful. Split 4 ways it was huge. My entree was a seafood salad. We drank a Negramaro from Puglia soon to make its debut on the Dino Wine Book (about December 5 or so. The lunch was $380 but I am sure the wine was $150 or more. Last night we had a lovely cheese plate at 'inotecca (Rivington & Ludlow) accompanied by a glass of Santa Chiara from Paolo Bea, Refosco Dorigo (seemed to have been aged in barrique) and something funky from Lazio. Good snack and great scene. TOday its off to the Met to see the Fra Angelico and the Van Gogh exhibits. Probably off to Chinatown again and then to shop a little at Century 21.

Off topic but that spae was almost home to Dino. The building has real issues and it may be a while before anything winds up open there.

Last night I had some bean soup and grilled shrimp. After I had some Torte Mascarpone con Fichi by Peck. If Don thinks La Tur is decadent (I recall something about "tasting like a virgins thighs", this cheese puts the La Tur to shame. Think former Virgin who hgas grown up and gained some experience.

Hey... Nicole took her clothes off at Dino on Tuesday. Well it was in the bathroom and after the location folk rented the space for her to use as a green room! I htink my head waiter still has the cappuccino cup that touched her lips! I personally liked her stunt double better!

I second Sergio's. Hollywood East isn't far either. Half Moon BBQ is good and a little loud but cheap. Matamoros on University by Georgia is good. Outstanding Papusas, great Caldo de Res, incredible fresh corn tamales. Full Key on University for noodles and good stirfry's and hot pots. WooMi in Wheaton is the best Korean I know of outside of Annandale but I don't think romantic dancing smlling of smoke and garlic is a perfect fit. But if you don't care... great BBQ. From lingering over your dinner till 9 I infer that you will e getting there by 7pm or so. Traffic in SS iss horrible so I would not look too easily at distant locations.

On the cheap front, I love Gan Mee Oak on 32 street (by 5th I think) in Seoul Alley. Incredible Seoul Long Tang- beef shin soup. You get a bowl for $7.00 with the best Kim Chee and pickled turnip I've ever had. You add salt and green onion to the broth and dip some Kim Chee into it to add heat. Its so good! In Chian Town, on Bayard is Yeah Shanghai which has superb small dishes and Shanghai soup dumplings. Put a dumpling in the spoon and then nibble the end of the dumpling. Now you can suck out the rich soup and then eat the dumpling. Lupa is great but very rich. I love 'inoteca on Rivington and Orchard for cured meats, snacks and great wine. Esca is also very good for fish. Blue Ribbon Bakery is great for modern French Bistro foods. Nice wine list. Its on Bedford by Carmine.

But your choices are affected in a way that hasn't been spoken about up till now. The market place is not necessarliy speaking. The playing field is so tilted to big business in ways we do not see. Lets look at Kimpton. This is a chain. A small one to be sure but one that may be coming close to the tipping point of not being bale to be quirky any longer. Where is the unfair advantage? The issue is that Kimpton survives on tax credits and preferential treatment for rehabbing their buildings. They are basically assured a return on their money when the begin the project. How is this money guaranteed? By us the tax payers. By tax deferments etc that I, as a business owner who does not own my own building, cannot get. The field ain't level. They are way ahead by the time they open the doors. Example #2 is Johnny Rockets. A long while back, they had basically 6 different versions of their floorplans and 6 only. There were certain parameters that could be changed but if your box didn't fit one of these plans, you couldn't get JR as a tennant. Why? Because these plans would pass building code and health code. These plans were so tight that they could wait out a location or they could pass the most stringent building department and they know that. That is such an advantage. They can offer more for a site than I can if I have to go to get an architech to draw up a first set of plans when they just pull oput a set from off the shelf. But lets look at the codes. Why do we need to have 3/4 of the health codes we need? I don't know. It sure aint for health reasons. I mean plastic cutting boards are not safer, in fact they are much more dangerous when they become scored. But we have to have them at many times the cost of wood. There are all sorts of examples like this that I could name. The field is again tilted towards the chains who have access to the capitol market and to tax breaks that small business don't have. Lets also look at municipal financing. Silver spring is a great example. Look at the Down Town Silver development and it is mainly chains. The developpers wouldn't start the project without Whole Foods on board. Yes they put in a Strohsniders but with just Stroniders and no Whole Foods, there would have been no development. Yes they are now putting in some smaller restaurants but they first went and got Red Lobster etc because they needed to be sure they would get paid. Downtown SIlver Spring was a sone deal, and a profitable one based on the chains and the huge tax breaks they negotiated from the Co of Mo. When we opened P Street, (remember I was at Whole Foods in a senior management when we developed them both) there were tax breaks involved but the property was held by a small company who developped it without the city putting it together. The result is that P street is all independents (except for Whole Foods) and Silver Spring is chain central.

Revised. We are still working out the menu but as should have a new date shortly.

We have a private dining room that can hold 20. You can be as rowdey as you like!

Probably the closest I would go for a basic meal is Marty's on 8th Street. I don't think Sonoma opens early enough for you toget to your show easily but I don't know.

Cleto Chiarli Lambrusco Di Grasparossa is pretty fine stuff to go with a little prosicutto or braised duck leg...

Did I mention the $500 per printing fee for downloading the recipe?

While the whole mixture might improve the mood of the chef, pick one for your deglazing. If you don't drink, use water or stock even!

In my love hate realtionship with my former employers (I love that they gave me enough stock to create a restaurant off the proceeds, I hate the mediocrity that dominates their stores and product selection etc), I must say that a WFM Turkey is worth every dollar it costs, jsut as a free bird from Giant is over priced! The WFM bird is lean without any chemicals or additives. It cook in about 10 miutes a pound to a mouthwatering perfection. The gravy will taste of gravy and not of the salt brine all too many birds are soaked in before bing frozen months before the big day. DO not follow the WFM instructions--- start the bird breast down for 20 minutes at 425 on a rack. Flip the bird breast up and roast for another 30 minutes. Turn the over down to 325 and roast until your bird has cooked a total of 10 minutes to the pound. Test for doneness in the thigh with an instant read thermomiter. If its 140 its done to medium. If you are a germ freak, take the thigh to 150, but you will have burnt thighs and dry breasts... not a pretty sight! Let the bird rest for 20-30 minutes while you make the gravy. Pour the drippings into a large bowl. Deglaze te pan with water, red wine, bourbon, armagnac, cognac, etc. Scrape every bit of dripping and crusty parts into the bowl. Thhey are flavorful and necessary to a good gravy. Defat as you see fit. Make a roux of flour and butter and strain the hot drippings into the roux, stirring till smooth. Simmer 20 minutes. You can strain now. You can also add a load of sauteed mushrooms and or giblets as well. I usually take the neck and make a stock the night before and add that too. By the way, you can add herbs to the gravy but I rub my bird with loads of herbs, garlic and olive oil before roasting it. I rum the mix inside and out and under the skin. This flavors the resultant dripping well enough for a tasty gravy. I just adust with S&P.

We are having quite a week.... I was talking to a table and they seemed really nice and enthusiastic being in the restaurant. I went away think "Nice, maybe they will be regulars...." Apparently after I left, they made some comments... "What's up with that guy with his skeim of fat hanging down from his pants?" This comment was loud enough to be heard by my chef (about 8 feet away) and their waiter who was at the next table. His comment to them was that "its not cool to talk about anyone at the restaurant like that". They went balistic saying that they thought he was spying on them etc. It devolved from there. So folks, if you don't want someone to hear your comments, don't make them. If someone at another table can hear you, or someone 6 feet away or more, you don't have any expectation of privacy. Unfortunately the waiter didn't let me in on the situation until the end of their meal, when there was really nothing I could do. I would have loved to go to them right after the comment and say, "Excuse me, I understand you have a personal question for me?" If these folk had spoken about any of my staff like that, they would have been immediately asked to leave!