Anna Phor

Hula Girl truck is okay, but didn't knock my socks off. I was hoping to be able to recommend it to my coworkers, but if you aren't nostalgic for HI food, I don't think it has the same appeal. TastyKabob, however, I am in complete accord, is consistently the best truck I've tried. I also want to give a shout-out to La Ficelle, which serves super-fresh sandwiches on skinny baguettes.

So is the 1 hour earlier a 7pm admission (and ideally, is this info in writing anywhere before I shell out an extra $100 for the tix and book the babysitter)? Any leads welcome!!

What's the difference between the regular ticket and the VIP ticket? Does the VIP ticket get you early admission? What time?

So my experience with bahn mi ranges from the sublime Ba Le that I mentioned upthread to a very dodgy experience with some mystery meat near the Oakland convention center. I can't claim to have ever been to Vietnam or to have eaten these sandwiches there. This turns out to be a reasonable sandwich option for the neighborhood, but I wouldn't travel to get there. There was quite a line at noon today when I arrived, but the service moved quickly and I wasn't waiting for long. I had the bonmi chicken sandwich option. The pickles and cilantro filling gave a nice crunch and herbal/vinegar taste that's really the heart of this kind of sandwich. The meat was slightly chewier than I would have liked and an odd color, but the flavor was good. The bread did not yield, as dcist put it, "a crackly crisp crust"--not in the slightest. It was fresh and suited the sandwich, but was nothing to write home about. The menu additionally includes a Vietnamese iced coffee option, which I was tempted to try, but would have been my 4th cup of the day, so I passed; and little "bonmi bars" which looked like some sort of tiny sweet granola bar concoction.

Shoot, if I'd have noticed this thread update before lunch, I could have given you a review already. This is just a couple blocks from my office, and I miss the bahn mi sandwich places I used to go to in Hawai'i. (Tell the truth, I've been kind of stalking them to see when they'll open.) But sous vide, huh. Well, I guess we'll see. But if they have the kind of toasty banana tapioca pudding that I used to get at Ba Le, I'll be a happy camper.

I have looked through the other thread on gluten-free shopping/cooking, but wondering if anyone can help me with some specific suggestions for an upcoming event. It will be a toddler birthday party to accommodate about 20 people, one of whom does not eat gluten (an adult, so happily she is able to resist eating snacks that others have dropped on the floor, unlike some of the other guests). I'm looking for suggestions for items which are: 1. gluten free 2. finger foods 3. reasonably kid friendly (for kids with fairly broad palates but e.g. no whole peanuts for kids this young) 4. easy to prepare ahead of time The kids range from 1-3 years old. Suggestions welcome!

I am very fond of this recipe for a Breton Apple Pie, published in the Washington Post a few years back. Aside: I just checked the OED for the etymology of "butter": Old English butere weak feminine (in compounds buttor- ); < Latin butyrum , < Greek βούτυρον . So Old Frisian butera , botera , Middle Dutch bōter(e , botre , Dutch boter , Middle Low German botter , late Old High German (10th or 11th cents.) butera , Middle High German, modern German butter , all from Latin. The Greek is usually supposed to be < βοῦς ox or cow + τυρός cheese, but is perhaps of Scythian or other barbarous origin. I don't know what happened in Spain/Portugal that made them lose their historic butter-word, although food words can drift easily if the food gets the wrong class connotation (witness English "beef" instead of "cow").

I live just a hop skip and a jump from here, and it is indeed very nice to have at hand. I generally stop by in the evening on the way home from work. The honey ricotta cake is divine, as are the doughnuts (I liked the lemon-flavored the best). Around 6pm you will find a variety of loaves, priced around $6 (good bread. but $6 for a loaf of bread? Hello, Marie Antoinette.) They also offer cold roasted chicken, and I've seen sliced frittata on display as well.

Not sure if either would meet your needs but I know both Poste and Firefly have private rooms.

Corn is here! (I always want to add to the market posts a single line exuberantly declaring the latest sightings. "Blueberries!" I would say, or "Asparagus!" But that never seems quite informative enough. So let me take this opportunity to revive the summer thread. Corn! Peaches! Nectarines!!!!

I've waited tables in an non-tip economy (in Australia, in fact!). I made $12/hour in the mid nineties, which at the time was the minimum legal wage you could pay someone for that work. (Incidentally, that was EXACTLY the same amount of money I made at my first job in the US a year later. For that money in the US, I was teaching kids in college.) In my experience in both tip and non-tip economies, the level of service doesn't really change much whether or not there is tipping. Whether or not you are good at your job and nice to people is much more dependent on personality--there are good and bad servers on both sides of this coin (no pun intended). What you DON'T get in non-tip economies is precisely the relationship Waitman described above where you foster a relationship with a bartender at your regular. But changing from a tip to a non-tip economy would be a big cultural shift. When I first came to the US, I found tipping very difficult. I fundamentally didn't get how the interpersonal interaction was supposed to go. I am not the boss of this person, but I am expected to pay them. Do I hand the money over? Do I leave the money on the table? (If you did that where I'm from, it wouldn't be there by the time the waiter came by to clear up.) So I imagine there would be similar cultural shifts going the other way--and Choirgirl, I'd love to hear more about your experiences in Australia--especially how much of the difference you think is attributable to non-tipping, and how much just to cultural difference.

Had brunch with the family at MR this weekend--an early mother's day brunch as I will be travelling for work next Sunday. The brunch is a $16 prix fixe with a choice of 3 appetizers & 3(?) mains. Choose from a fruit cup, yogurt parfait or salad, then a main of the MR eggs benedict, eggs frites, I had the yogurt parfait, which was a creamy and not-too tangy yogurt topped with a thin smear of jam and a crunchy nut/granola topping. Spouse had the fruit cup. The eggs frites consisted of three poached eggs topped with the MR sauce, accompanied by fries. Although each part of this dish was perfectly well executed, as whole, there's something missing--not in taste or texture, but in .. I dunno, eatability, to coin a term? It's too hard to get all the eggy goodness soaked up with the fries, and so there is a whole lot of egg and sauce left on the plate at the end, which doesn't readily soak into bread as it is not a water liquid. I think it maybe needs some bread under the eggs to soak up the juices throughout the meal? (But maybe this is just me. I have the same problem with the classic eggs benedict with ham. I always have to flip the ham so the egg is underneath. If you cut through the egg/ham/muffin combo without this adjustment, then the egg yolk squirts off the muffin and the muffin does not serve its intended purpose of soaking up the egg.) Mr. Phor had the eggs benedict with steak (the MR website is not coming up for me right now so I can't go check the name of this dish). This is composed of bread topped with the steak chopped with portobello mushrooms--a steak hash, if you will--and finished with a poached egg. The few bites I had of this were delicious and I would get this for myself if we went back. He also had a very well balanced bloody mary.

Friends and I dined at the cafe several weeks ago, and although the food was uniformly good, I found portion size on the cafe menu to be unpredictable. My companions had the burger and the meatballs with polenta, both of which were satisfyingly meal sized. I ordered the cod cakes, and left hungry--these were most definitely an appetizer-sized portion. Had I known, I would have supplemented with side dishes, but we were dining with a child and so didn't want to prolong our meal by ordering after the rest of the table had finished eating.

I loved the change--I got there about 9.30, and (i) lines were short and (ii) I wasn't continually having to avoid getting pushed by other shoppers. Since I go to market either with a stroller or a toddler on my back, this was a much much more relaxed experience for me. There was no screaming and I didn't forget anything. My neighbor, whose schedule is much more like Waitman's and who arrived at 11am, said it wasn't noticeably less busy that usual.

Stopped in here last night also, and at just after 6, it was about half full. By the time we left about an hour later, there were folks sitting at the bar waiting for tables. As patrons of the former Yannis, it was fun to see what they had done with the space. The outdoor space is a lovely spot to sit and eat in more benign weather and I'm looking forward to this place as a brunch spot in summer. There are clearly a few first week kinks to work out, but despite that, everything went smoothly for our meal, and the staff seemed very on top of checking that everything was going right. Our plates were cleared before the seconds tray came around, but we received new sets once the seconds-server realized that we hadn't been served. The bread, as others have noted, was lovely, and I'm giving points for the butter, too. I'm not a big steak eater, but I liked this (which I realize is fairly unhelpful for connoisseurs of steak, but I yam what I yam.) The sauce on my first round was a tad salty but was much more balanced when we got the seconds round. We took our young toddler and sat by the kitchen, which was a hit with him. The restaurant is equipped with high chairs and is welcoming to kids, and the noise level is "buzzy" enough that we felt comfortable taking a little kid there. I didn't notice whether there were changing tables in the bathroom or not. We'll definitely be going back, since this is a neighborhood joint for us, and a great addition to the CP strip!

Thanks--we heard it live on the radio. (We were not on it. But we can say we were THERE.)

I just air-pop in a regular saucepan with a lid. I do small batches and I shake it around a lot after it has started popping so that the early poppers do not burn on the bottom of the pan. If you do not put a lid or cover on the pan, they will pop right out and go whizzing all over your kitchen!

My son and I were interviewed in line at Tree & Leaf by the NPR correspondent! If anyone catches the spot, I'd love to get the link to it.

For the suggestions, I owe some reviews! We did indeed make it to the Cochon Butcher, and had some very nice ribs, a hearty mac n cheese and a couple of fresh and tasty lunch sandwiches. It's a very pleasant room--light and airy with scrubbed pine boards. The dessert menu looked tempting but alas, dining with a toddler often necessiates a quick exit. I mentioned Mulate's, which bills itself as "the original Cajun." It's a big barn of a place with checkered tablecloths and a dance floor at one end, and it seemed to serve a convention crowd around lunchtime. We tried the muffaletta and a couple of po' boys on our return visits. Since I've never had a muffaletta before, I can't speak to its authenticity, but I thought it was a tasty sandwich. For the discerning younger set, we recommend the catfish nuggets from the kids menu. I also tried the alligator po' boy; a new-to-me meat which I found chewier and a little fattier than the chicken it is often compared to, and entirely pleasant to eat in a sandwich. An evening in the French quarter began with a ride on the Algiers ferry, and continued with a walk through the quarter browsing menus. We settled on Pierre Maspero's. After this meal I began to realize that in fact all the food in New Orleans is good. I had a deliciously rich pasta with a crawfish cream sauce, my husband had the etouffe, and the small fry devoured half my pasta plus a serving of "pistolettes"--small french bread rolls with a creamy seafood stuffing. We followed up with beignets and cafe au lait at Cafe du Monde, and then a stroll down Bourbon Street with hurricanes from Pat O'Briens.* I really needed to have done this 15 years ago, though--the whole experience is a little surreal with a sleeping baby strapped to your back. The next night I was dining with a business colleague, who turned up her nose at Mothers ("I want to go somewhere that I can sit down and be waited on"--fair enough). We ended up at a joint called House of Blues in the French Quarter, which was definitely the least good meal I had in the town. The highlight of the whole trip, however, was an excursion uptown to the Saltwater Grill. We were picked up by my husband's great-uncle-once-removed-by-something or other, whose son runs the place. It was packed wall to wall and I think there were maybe six patrons under sixty. A ten piece jazz band was rollicking through the standards (and Uncle B. sat in for a few)--this was a real neighborhood place and I'm so happy I got to hang out with these folks. The oyster soup was a standout, as was the lobster and spinach boat. A catfish platter hit the spot, and although the bananas foster were not being flambe-ed tableside on that particular night, they were still a charming and authentic way to end the meal. *The tacky tourist pilgrimage was entirely warranted by the fact that the child's paternal grandfather was in fact born in a room over this bar.

Dammit! You had my hopes up!

While I adore Cacao and shop there regularly just to ensure that they stay in business (our little strip in Cleveland Park has lost a few businesses in the last couple of years), I'd recommend their ciabatta over their baguettes. The ciabatta seems to be much more consistent in quality. Their patisserie selection, however, has never had any misses for me.

I'm attending a convention at the convention center and staying at one of the nearby hotels. Me, husband, toddler. Any recommendations for lunch or dinner? We had lunch yesterday at Mulate's which had the right blend of casual atmosphere and good food; we could do a bit more upscale for early dinner, but not super-formal.

Is Potenza close enough?

Just back from a two week stay in Fremantle, the port town west of Perth in Western Australia. Fremantle was historically a working class port town that got a facelift in the late eighties when it hosted the America's Cup yacht race, and is today a charming blend of the old Italian and Greek communities who moved there after the second world war, the hippies and artists who have lived there since ever I can remember, and the retirees and well-heeled younger folks who have moved into apartments converted from warehouses. Running down the main drag on on south terrace between the Fremantle Markets and Market Street is the cappuccino strip, which is the heart and soul of the town. Any one of the dozen or so coffee houses here is an ideal place to stop for a couple of hours and nurse an espresso and a slice of cake, sit outside at one of the pavement tables, and watch the world go by. Gino's Cafe has been there since 1983--before the America's Cup--which makes it fairly long-standing in Freo at least. There's lots of good food in Fremantle, but it's not a fine-dining location, and some of what makes the food great is the location as much as what is on the plate. At Little Creatures brewpub, you can sit out under the stars next to the boardwalk and nosh on a variety of tapas-style dishes; highlights on our two visits included the harrisa and lamb pizza and the panzanella salad, as well as the french fries. Clancy's Fish Pub produced a beautifully done plate of fried calamari and chips (fries)--think an upscale fish fry with calamari and a side of fresh slaw. The backyard of the pub spills over directly into a public park which made it a great early dining spot to take the kids and let them blow off steam while we caught up with old friends. Located just back from the water's edge behind the sand dunes, the South Beach cafe serves up unpretentious breakfast and lunch plates to beachgoers in an outdoor gazebo setting. Because it's Fremantle, they do a decent espresso, and because it's Australia, you can pair it with an Aussie meat pie. Another outdoor favorite is the Carriage Coffee Shop, at the Esplanade park (just over the railway line from the Bon Scott statue). They serve up an unexpectedly juicy tasty burger as well as various sandwiches and other lunch foods on a small shaded deck inside the park proper.

Luigi's? Would they eat pasta?