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Bart

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Everything posted by Bart

  1. Back in the office in Crystal City for the first time today and I was saddened and shocked to see that that location of Jaleo has permanently closed. 😭
  2. The orchid exhibit is great, but definitely go in the day time. I went at 6pm a couple weeks ago (post sunset) and it was very dark in there. Too dark!!! The viewing of the orchids really suffered without all the natural light coming through the roof.
  3. It doesn't bother me that restaurants have this option for people who want it, but for me, I'll take an inside seat until I don't need to rely on outdoor heating.
  4. Here's what Tom wrote in the intro of his chat last week: TRANSITIONING: Chef Jon Krinn, whose pivots at Clarity in Vienna gave hope to his peers throughout the pandemic and who kept fans entertained and well-fed for the past two years, announces that he left his popular restaurant Dec. 31.In a text, he wrote me, “Clarity was an amazing and educating endeavor. Now I am pursuing some opportunities that will fit my lifestyle moving forward. My first priorities are ramping up mine and my wife’s worldwide Culinary and Yoga Retreats, cooking tasting menu dinners at guests’ homes, launching my new strategic business consulting company, and creating structured lease and ownership situations for local culinary talent that truly advance their future in a positive way. I also could be back in brick and mortar in a way, shape and form in time.” Clarity opened in 2015. The kitchen is now in the hands of Nick Palermo, Krinn’s former chef de cuisine. I'm ready for some worldwide culinary and yoga retreats!!!
  5. I was cleaning up some stuff recently and found this menu from Roberto's 4. This happened to be the last day/night of the 2013 government shutdown, and I had to go back to work the next day ;-( I'm still amazed by the number of courses.
  6. I came here last week for the first time and would like to come back and try more. As was noted above, they have a large menu and with a party of two, you don't get to try much of it. We started with a cold eggplant dish and warm squash dish. The eggplant (Ajapsandali - $10 - roasted eggplant, cubanelle peppers, green beans, onion, tomato, fennel, fresh herbs) dish was very good but perhaps not the best choice on a cold night. I'm a sucker for eggplant, and always looking for new ways to cook it, so I have no regrets! The squash was warm but boring (Gogra - $15 - roasted delicata jester squash, walnut sauce 'bazhe,' pomegranate molasses, toasted pumpkin seeds) It was just chunks of roasted squash, which was pretty bland and unseasoned, with some other stuff strewn around. The "other stuff" was much better than the squash itself. Next was the signature Khachapuri, the Ajaruli ($17 - boat-shaped cheese bread, organic egg). This was wonderful. Warm and gooey, and the egg/cheese mixture was mixed tableside. This was a perfect dish for a cold night. Hearty and filling. We finished with an order of their very LARGE soup dumplings. We didn't realize how big they were when we ordered so we opted for six instead of three, thinking they were the size of a typical soup dumpling. They were not. These things were at least twice and probably three times the size of a normal xiao long bao! The dish is called Khinkali Qvelit (3/$12 or 6/$22 soup dumplings - filling of cheese & fresh mint). I'm also a sucker for dumplings so I loved these but they were so big, it was hard to get the "soup" out of them without spilling it all over the plate or picking them up and trying to suck out the liquid. They were far too big to pop into your mouth in one bite and they weren't served in those "dumpling spoons" which would have contained the liquid. We ended up taking 4 of them home because we were pretty full at that point, and it was much easier to get the liquid out at home because I could pick them up, bite into a corner to create a hole and suck out the liquid like a barbarian!
  7. Damn, this is a bummer. They are permanently closing on Jan 23. https://dc.eater.com/2022/1/14/22883600/washington-dc-thamee-closing
  8. I took my kids here last week and we had an amazing meal and destroyed the menu! And even with a major amount of over ordering, there were plenty of dishes we would have loved too try. We started with: Golden Fried Pockets (little dumpling type things that looked like a little sack of coins tied at the top). Tasty and unique. Chicken Tapioca Dumplings - Always get this. Weird and wonderful and unique. Pineapple Chicken Bites - Same filling as the Tapioca dumplings, but still very tasty and the sweetness of the pineapple was a nice contrast. Great presentation too. Coconut Soup with Chicken - my daughter ordered this because she was freezing and we all shared it. Very good and hit the spot. Crispy Lotus Root and Grilled Shrimp Salad - fantastic. Another weird and wonderful and unique dish. I don't think I'll be go here again and NOT order this!! Thai-Style Deep-Fried Chicken Wings - the kiddos wanted this and it was fine, but not interesting or unique. I wouldn't order this again. Small Cucumber Salad - I ordered this thinking it would be similar to the spicy cucumber salad at A&J, and this was more of pickled version with small slices of onion. There was nothing wrong with the dish but it wasn't that interesting and I wouldn't order it again. For the mains we ordered: Stir-Fried Glass Noodles with Chicken and Shrimp - really good. A favorite of the group Chicken Red Curry with Chayote - tasty but not as special as some of the other dishes Stir Fried Rice with Garlic Shrimp - very tasty, but more of a standard type dish than some of the others. My kids are incapable of not ordering a fried rice dish and this fit the bill Spicy Chicken in Banana Leaf - we ordered this on the recommendation of the server, and for the presentation/banana leaf. This a nice dish, but probably suffered from the fact that we were beyond stuffed at this point. It wasn't as interesting or (good) weird like some of the others, aside from the presentation, but it was a fine dish. All of that food was $140 before tip which seemed like a bargain compared to some other meals we've had, but then again none of us ordered alcohol and I just had one order of tea. It's amazing the cost savings when you're not drinking! Here are photos of the Golden Fried Pockets and the Pineapple Chicken Bites.
  9. Yep, thanks for that Eric. I knew all of that except the take-out only part. I learned it the hard way last friday when I was in the area and tried to stop by for lunch. 😕
  10. I went here on Sunday night for the first time and liked it, but I'm not sure I ordered the "right" things. Part of that was due to my lack of research up front and part was due to staffing shortages and inexperienced servers. And maybe my expectations were too high. I keep waiting for the mind and pallet blowing experience of my first visit to the now defunct Bangkok Golden* in Baileys Crossroads, but nothing has lived up. Not sure if it's my faulty memory or that I have a lot more experience with that cuisine so it's no longer surprising and unique. (* Padeak is there now https://www.padaekdc.com/ ) We started with SEEN HANG - sun dried beef, Sriracha sauce 9 - This was thin strips of beef, maybe pinky finger sized with a sweet hot dipping sauce. It was a good dish but not as exciting as I hoped. We wanted to get one of the salads and our server had good things to say about all of them so we went with the signature salad: LIT SIGNATURE SALAD - papaya, green bean, Lao eggplant, tomato, rice noodle, pork loaf, beansprout, pork rind 12. (LIT stand for Laos In Town) This was listed as "PHET", which I didn't notice or realize that it meant "spicy" (I'm used to looking for the little pepper icons). Anyhow, this dish was hot, and I mean HOT!!!!! I'm generally impervious to heat/spice in dishes and always ask for things to be "Thai hot" or whatever, but this dish was insanely hot! I could see it being an evening-ending dish for some people!! I'm tempted to go back and reorder it just to see if someone when a little nuts with the heat in the kitchen that night or if this is the normal level of heat from the dish. For the main we split the SUKI glass noodle, shrimp, crispy squid, Napa cabbage, Asian watercress, cilantro, chili sesame sauce 18. This was a very good and tasty dish, but the squid was huge and if you didn't know better, you'd think they were large onion rings! It wasn't bad, it just looked "weird". But again, that may be due to my lack of familiarity. But this was the best and most interesting dish of the night. I'd like to go back and explore more of the menu. Does anyone remember the name of the place that was here before? I have a memory of higher end burger/pizza place with the name of the chef in the title. Something like: CMB - Charles Murray Burgers
  11. Thanks for the info. I ate and their now-closed location on Rt. 1 in Alexandria hundreds of times over the years. I hope they can pull this off or find another location.
  12. I ate here for the first time last night, after original destination, La Puerta Verde, was inexplicably closed. (their website is still up but they have some info about Cinco de Mayo on it!) Anyhow, we arrived a little before seven without a reservation and were able to score the last two seats at the bar. Also inexplicably the counter seats right in front of the kitchen were sad, but they were not seating anyone there. probably about eight or 10 seats that were left open all night. we took the bartenders advice on the Collard Greens, and the Skate, and my companion wanted to get the Bobo chicken because she’s had it before and loved it. The Collard Greens were very good but nowhere close to being vegetarian. The menu lists bacon, but they tasted more meaty than just that. The Skate was excellent. You had to debone it yourself, but it was very easy to do. The chicken was kind of cool because they left the feet on the legs but the meat was a little dry aka definitely not moist and juicy. This was the big fail of the night. The place was packed the entire time we were there, and by the time we left they were people OK waiting to grab bar seats or waiting for tables to clear.
  13. Just to be clear, the music wasn't super loud or horribly intrusive. It was easy to have a conversation in normal tones of voice. From reading Tom's chat, it seems like plenty of places are much louder, making conversation difficult. That wasn't the case here, but the music seemed out of place to little old me.
  14. I popped into this place the other night mostly to warm up a bit before the walk back to the Metro. It's in the space where Mike Isabela's Requin used to be and when I entered, I didn't even know what type of cuisine they served. Turns out this is the second version of this restaurant with the first being in NYC. The bartender said they've been open for about 7 weeks. My initial intent was to just get a glass of wine and leave, but the menu looked interesting so I ordered a couple items. I ordered the KIBBEH NAYE BEIRUTIYYEH, steak tartare, onion, mint, jalapeno, $20 and the BEEF FRIED KIBBEH, spiced beef, pine nuts, onion, yogurt, $18. The Kibbeh Naye was very good and was much better than what they are currently serving at Zaytinya. For some reason I keep ordering it there even though I haven't been happy with it since Mike Isabella was there. It came out shaped/molded into a bar and the bartender suggested I make little divots in the top surface and fill them with olive oil. I did this and it was a good method. (The bartender actually told me to make "little rivets in the top", but I'm pretty sure he meant divots.! 😉 ) See the pic below. I think the dish could have used a little more "dipping implements" as I ran out of the onion slices pretty quickly, but it was also served with hot pita bread "balloons", similar to how the bread is served at Zaytinya. The Beef Fried Kibbeh was also good, but two out of the four were very undercooked. One was straight up cold in the middle, the next was cool in the middle, but the other two were cooked all the way though. I probably should have said something or set it back, but I didn't feel like dealing with any of that. The fully cooked ones were very good, but they had seemed to have fewer pine nuts as "stuffing" in the middle than my Aunts would make, so that's the standard I was measuring them against! I'm looking forward to going back and having a full meal with more people at the table so I can sample more items.
  15. The birthday dinner was a great success. A very expensive success, but a success nonetheless. We did the DC Specialty Omakase for $190 for six courses, including dessert. Their Signature Omakase is $140 for six courses, with the only difference being higher end ingredients (waygu, toro) swapped out (swapped in?) on the more expensive version. At first I thought six courses seemed a little light, but it ended up being the perfect amount of food, although I could have used maybe one more bite! ;-). Some courses were a single bite, some had three bites of the same item, and some had three bites of different items. The only thing I didn't love was the dessert. It was fine, but it didn't live up to the meal before it. We had no real issues with the staff or service other than them asking how each course was when I had a mouthful. It seemed to happen on every course too! They presented each course and described the dish, but I sort of felt that they were just reciting a script rather than really knowing the intricate details. But in all honesty, at those prices, I was expecting impeccable service to match. (I know there's a labor shortage but plenty of places still have amazing service, see Kinship) The biggest difference from Sushi Taro (where we went last year) was in the vibe of the place. Sushi Taro is much more serene and sublime and to me, a more authentic and pleasant experience. At Nobu it was a bit more of a party scene with dance music with a heavy bass pumping through the place and lots of young people decked out to the nines.
  16. Don - How do we log in with email addresses? Do we need to log out first, and then enter the email address instead of the current username? I'm concerned that once I log out, I won't be able to get back in!!! 😉
  17. Just a note to say that the Queen's English version of shu mai are pretty big. At least, two or three and maybe even four times the size of the typical version you get at a dim sum place (at least that's my memory of the dish). Each one was like eating a large meatball in terms of the size and weight of the things. Not sure if that makes the $26 price tag more palatable (pun!), but this is a bigger than normal dumpling. Here's a photo, but you can't really judge the size of them without a frame of reference.
  18. Not sure what to make of this article as the details are cryptic, but when they reopen it will be smaller (26 seats, down from 42) and cheaper!! When does that happen!?!? Then again, I didn't realize their pre-pandemic price had ballooned to $325. https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2021/11/15/pineapple-and-pearls-relaunch-aaron-silverman/ After reading it, my first thought was the thread about Eleven Madison Park going vegetarian and possibly regretting it, or at least having a goldmine if they kept it how it was.
  19. Thanks Don!! It really sucks that your pain flare happened but you seemed to make the best of it. I think I mentioned this book to you years ago but there was just an article about it in the NYT: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/09/well/mind/john-sarno-chronic-pain-relief.html Maybe it will bring you some relief 🙏 If anyone can't get past the NYT paywall, the book in question is: Healing Back Pain, by John Sarno https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/healing-back-pain-the-mind-body-connection-by-john-e-sarno/254231/item/4273658/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMItOa-pd6d9AIVFa7ICh30_An9EAQYASABEgLuBfD_BwE#idiq=4273658&edition=5660547
  20. Thanks fellas! Eric - we did Sushi Taro last year, although they weren't offering the omakase menu then. It's $250 at Sushi Taro and between $140 (Signature Omakase) and $190 (DC Specialty Omakase), so maybe I'll do what she wants and same some money. 🤣 And possibly related to the lack of traffic in this thread and lack of general chatter about this place, I was talking to someone with lots of high end restaurant experience all over the place, not just DC, and told her that my daughter wanted to go here for her birthday, and her immediate response was, "There's a Nobu in DC?" Thanks Don! Did you order off the menu or do one of the omakase options? If it's the former, were there dishes that I should order if we go here? Full disclosure: I don't know anything about Nobu other than the name, so I have no idea if they have a signature dish like the Palak Chaat at Raskia.
  21. Has anyone been here in the last four years? Have feelings changed or stayed the same? My sushi loving daughter wants to go here for her birthday and I’m not sure if I should just say yes, or try to steer her to a better, and more local place.
  22. Anyone been here recently or have any intel? I'm going tomorrow night and the food in this thread (from 5 and 6 years ago!) looks much more interesting than the current menu.
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