ghostrider

Fortnum & Mason pulled out of the US retail market years ago, of course. It's a bit bizarre that, according to the list of Worldwide Stockists on their website, you can buy their wares off the shelf in Moscow but not in the US. They have good teas, but in the years since they left the US I've discovered many from other vendors that I like much better. Life goes on & sometimes things even improve.

Yep, the makers of Peeps missed a good bet there.

Nice poetic musings. Having spent 3 months doing that stuff on a web forum that has rotating admins, I can relate. You're right, we don't often stop to think that you're doing this by yourself, all the time. That's pretty amazing. Thank you. Don't burn out!

Right, that was the impression I'd gotten. The website talks about the Garden Cafe, which had reverted to normal American fare. Perhaps they'd over-ordered the cured meats & cheeses for Chef Andres and were fobbing them off on the Cascade crowd, which would explain the mixture of Spanish & more generic Mediterranean foods (I forgot to mention the 3-bean salad). Anyway, the preparation was excellent, the olive oil (hopefully Spanish) was wonderfully fragrant, & we were lucky to have been there at the right time.

We're just back from 4 lovely days in DC. Although we had a good dinner at Potenza, described elsewhere, I have to say that my most enjoyable meal came at the Cascade Cafe yesterday, on the lower level of the National gallery between the East & West buildings. I've done a search & don't see the place mentioned, so it gets its own thread. It's a cafeteria, as you probably know, with a good selection of decent food. What's special right now is the section where you can put together a plate of Spanish foods - serrano ham, chorizo, a medium sharp cheese, lightly sauteed broccoli rabe in olive oil, saffron barley salad & (not sure how this is Spanish but it was good) cherry tomatoes with mozz & fresh basil. Every item was totally fresh & full of flavor. At around $8 - you pay by weight, 60 cents per ounce - this was a steal. This combination really tickled my taste buds & eased my sadness at the end of our trip. It'll be a nice memory to carry me through until we return.

Four of us dined at Potenza earlier this week. We were staying out at National Harbor & didn't expect to get into DC for dinner at all, but a friend of ours picked Potenza out of guidebook & said "Let's go!" (Got to love the $30 taxi ride each way but that's a separate issue. ) Overall, food was good & certainly reasonably priced for the quality. The bottomless $3 carafe of sparkling water for the table seemed a bargain. A bread basket & a plate of oil with garlic & hot peppers came out promptly. Very good. Our friend was eager to try the cheeses & house-made salumi, so that was our shared starter. Unfortunately they were out of the Salami Finocchiona, so we got only their hot sopressata, which certainly held its own next to the prosciutto di Parma & speck. Accompanied by more of Potenza's excellent breads, this was a treat, though it also showed our table to be so small that the earlier bread & oil had to be removed. Two of us had spinach pappardelle with veal ragu, a special that night. The house-made pasta was superb, the ragu was peppery & quite good. It was too heavy for me after the cheese & salumi, though; I found myself wishing I'd ordered something lighter. So it goes. Our friend's wife had the pork Milanese, which she loved; my wife had the manicotti, which she also raved about. I had the chocolate hazelnut gelato while our friends had coffee. I thought it was a complete misfire, full of powdery chocolate which overwhelmed the texture. It had no discernible hazelnut flavor, let alone any hazelnuts. Here's an oddity: we were so engrossed in the conversation & the food we got, it wasn't until we were back at our hotel that I realized that the Insalate Rucola e Portobello we'd ordered never showed up. We didn't see our friends again for the rest of our stay so I never got to ask them if it appeared on the bill. I'd return if I were craving this sort of food in DC. I'd also keep a closer eye on things.

Fun but silly. By changing my cookbook answer, I went from Classic & Comforting to International & Adventurous. I guess there's a fine line there.

I love Brussels sprouts but am really atavistic with them - simmer gently till mushy, approx. 17 minutes. Serve whole, slice in half on the plate & plop way too much butter on each piece. Some consider this overcooking. For some reason it always cracks me up when I buy frozen sprouts (outside the local season, of course) & the fine print on the bag says "Product of Belgium."

I've no idea about the quality of the bar food, but if you feel like strolling over as far as 5th Ave., you'll find some of the best beer in that area at The Ginger Man (11 E 36th St).

I would think another essential quality would be an innate ability to be civil to bloomin' idiots.

I've loved cooking as long as I can remember. Some of my most pleasurable moments as a kid were when my mon & dad would go out for an evening that involved dinner & I was left alone with some hamburger, taters & onions. Burgers & hashed browns, fried up in the ever-present bacon fat, yum. My folks recognized early on that I knew how to handle things in the kitchen & trusted me to operate the gas stove without burning myself or setting the place on fire. I didn't cook much in college, though occasionally, on the cook's night off at the frat house, I would take over the kitchen & whip up some fried chicken for a few friends. In grad school I had an electric hot plate & my Boy Scout mess kit, & made a lot of rudimentary dinners with that setup. My sophistication & skills increased dramatically after I moved to New York, as one might expect. I branched out into Indian & Chinese cooking & became rather good at both. Now that I'm a geezer, I've moved back to a simpler approach & rarely cook such exotic things any more, but still enjoy preparing simple meals centered on fresh produce from the greenmarkets. There's just something inherently satisfying about selectng & preparing your own food. I dig the shopping as much as the cooking. The process of turning good ingredients into a properly cooked meal that highlights the flavors of whatever you're working with - I can't quite put my finger on why, but the enjoyment never fades.

Getting this sense of deja vu here. I'm another JBS person. Never got a taste for StL style pizza. When we're in town we always hit Il Vicino in Clayton for some real pies - thin crusts, wood-fired oven, quality ingredients, always a treat.

I've had Badoit in the red plastic bottles ("intensement petillante" as the website puts it, as opposed to the lighter variety in the green bottle) at Bistrot du Coin. It was quite good. I need a greater acquaintance to determine whether it's a fave. I too am fond of Gerolsteiner. I remember Ferrarelle & the Swiss Valser as being my all-time favorites but it's been a long time since I've had either.

I rarely drink coffee but I drink a lot of tea. No one has raised the bar nationwide for tea brewing yet, it's mostly still bags & hot-to-boiling water, delivered in a variety of configurations, wherever you go. At Starbucks, I know that I will at least get a decent cup - Tazo, not Tetley's or something equally bland - that the water will be boiling hot, & that they will pour the water onto the teabag, not simply hand me a cup of lukewarm water & a bag. That's something even if it's not ideal. I've found a very few places that do it better, & many more that do it much worse. For a reliable cup when I'm out & about, I'm generally happy to spot a Starbucks. (Their banana-walnut bread, to me, also makes a fine late-afternoon snack to go with that cup.)

Fascinating. Our local Afghan place where I live here in Jersey is also combined with a pizza joint. To enter the restaurant, you walk into what looks like a standard Jersey pizza operation & slip through a beaded curtain to your left. It's very unobtrusive from the street, you pretty much have to know it's there. No stone oven here, just a standard pizza oven which the Afghan guy uses to good advantage to bake Afghan breads & those turnovers. Makes me wonder how common this sort of combined operation is. (What am I doing here? Planning a trip, looking for possible dinner spots in Alexandria.)

Solid. Second best advice may be to hit one of the vaporetto routes that goes back & forth across the Giudecca canal & eventually approaches a stop near the Doges' Palace, & to time that so that you're approaching Venice near sunset. The colors in the sky can make that a magical little trip.

As if by magic, the Dreamfields pasta appeared on my Stop & Shop's shelves last night. It wasn't there 2 weeks ago. Bought a box, going to try it tonight.

I left my wonderful reference list, with the Griffin Market info & lots of other stuff, on my kitchen table. Never got over to Georgetown anyway. I did find the secret Safeway. You're right, kinda crappy, but I was still glad to be able to get fresh apples & oranges. (Arrived too late for Dupont Circle mkt, alas alas.) Coincidentally I did get up Cleveland Park way & looked into Vace. Lovely place, similar to the Italian deli in Montclair NJ where I work right now. Wound up buying train food at Union Station again. The Greek place still isn't too bad - not the greatest Greek food by any means, but decent. They had better tomatoes than my deli! I had no complaints.

Back in DC the first part of this week for the annual convention at the Reagan Hilton. Again a big thanks to your fair city for being so lovely, inviting & inspiring. I walked myself into near oblivion; with that weather & golden sunshine, how could anyone do otherwise? Didn't set foot in a museum, it was just too fine being out of doors. Sunday night, another couple who are longtime friends of ours developed an obsession for trying Bistrot du Coin, so back we went. It was totally packed when we got there, somewhere around 8:00, but they said 5-minute wait at the door & they were spot on with that estimate, as they were with everything else all night. The place cleared out pretty well as we dined & we could pretty much speak at normal volumes by the end of the meal. Service was terrific, food was wonderful. The simple mesclun salad was the best dressed I've had in months; the diced shallots were a nice touch. Roast chicken & frites couldn't have been better. The berry-&-ice-cream dessert was an ideal cap to the meal. From start to finish, it was just the sort of experience that you'd want from a reliable neighborhood bistro; it left all of us in a great mood. Sadly, next year's convention has been scheduled for the Gaylord Center somewhere down river in MD. They run a shuttle bus to the local Metro stop; bus service ceases at 7:00 pm. I think that's going to suck big time. The Hilton clearly has its problems but you can't beat that location.

Interesting (to me) that this topic should come up just now. I've recently been branded type 2 diabetic & am just getting into the whole grain pastas, since carbs from flour-based pastas & bread (& from white rice & rice noodles) have always been more of an issue for me than sugary-type things. I've got my Glycemic Index chart & am watching what I cook & eat even more carefully than before. Anyway, I had my first shot at whole wheat pasta with the Nature's Promise brand & thought it was pretty yucky - the mealy texture referenced above was not entirely overcome by my homemade marinara. The good news is that we were down in DC earlier this week (that's good for a whole lotta reasons beyond pasta, I really enjoy your town) & had dinner at the house of some friends. They were making spaghetti & were kind enough to get some whole grain stuff to accommodate me. It was Hodgson Mill Organic Whole Wheat Pasta With Flaxseed, which I expected to be even worse than 100% whole wheat pasta, but it proved to be surprisingly good; I thought the texture was significantly better than the Nature's Promise & it didn't have as strong a wheaty taste. I was impressed; I'm going to have to grab some to try with my own recipes. Not a whole grain product per se, but Dreamfields Pasta has been recommended by other friends for its low glycemic index rating. I'm a little skeptical of their references to their "patent pending formula" as the source of all the wonders of this stuff, but I'll probably give it a try too when I find some.

Thanks to everyone! Don't know how I managed to miss that Safeway last year but I will certainly look for it. Convenience is big. Griffin Market may be the answer to "Where can I get decent takeaway food for the train trip back to Jersey now that the food situation at Union Station sounds even worse than it was a year ago?" A great tip.

I'm just a tourist, with our annual trip to DC coming up next week, wondering where folks who live in the Dupont Circle area buy their groceries & specialty foods & whatnot. My wife has an annual convention at the Reagan Hilton. I tagged along for the first time last year & thoroughly enjoyed the trip. However, apart from the Dupont Farmers' Market, I never found a grocer or a specialty food shop. I tromped around the area quite a bit but turned up nothing. Of course you always have the thought that if you'd just walked around one more corner, you'd have found that magical shop that sells truffle-stuffed tortellini to take away. So this year I'm seeking advice in advance from anyone who may know the neighborhood. Thanks!

Oh boy. This all sounds encouraging. We're gonna have to get a traveling dinner there next month. As I recall it wasn't too easy last year, especially with the mice running around. I think I wound up with some sort of falafel salad thing that was OK.

Hmm, that same intestinal bug must have been going around Maine at the same time, no doubt imported by some of you DC tourists. I'm a big fan of the BROAT diet in those circumstances - Bananas / Rice / Oatmeal / Apple Juice / Toast. THough I often skip the last two because thay're so boring. Hmm, I think that really means I'm a fan of the BRO diet. Chicken soup is good when I have a cold, but I don't find it appealing when a stomach bug is in play.

Wow. My kind of thread. Armand, will you be offering unwaxed extra-fine floss? Because that's the only kind I will tolerate. Yes I am a floss snob. On a more serious note, why has extra-fine floss become increasingly more difficult to find? It's gotten to the point in the last year where I have to mail-order the stuff over the Internet. This, I am not making up. I am a fanatical flosser because I am ultra-sensitive about food between my teeth - it just bothers the hell out of me - & toothpicks simply won't do the job with the structure of my teeth. However, as with sex, I never do it in public; if I can't wait till I get home, I'll do it in the restroom. (OK the men's room is still semi-public, but I'm not gonna go into a stall to floss.)