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Gadarene

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Everything posted by Gadarene

  1. Gadarene
    Unpopular opinion: people on this board venerate Frank Ruta too much. And it probably speaks to the overall paucity, relatively speaking, of high-quality food in this town, especially (but not exclusively) for a reasonable cost.
  2. Gadarene
    The breakfast here is actually pretty good. It's become a staple of my early morning flights out of DCA. The harissa is pretty awesome.
  3. Gadarene
    Weird.
  4. Gadarene
    I've found High West Double Rye to be a really good value for a sipper. And, of course, you really can't beat Old Overholt for cocktails, at least cost-wise.
  5. Gadarene
    I want to reiterate my strong recommendation of Radio. Really, really good food in a warm and friendly environment, and significantly cheaper than most of the other set menus in town. Also, I want to put in a vote for a juice pairing at one of your meals. I got the juice pairing at Noma, and by the end of the meal, everyone else at the communal table wished they had done the same thing. Just interesting, unique, and delicious concoctions. (I also got the juice pairing at Geranium, which was similarly delicious, so this isn't just a Noma-specific recommendation.) And yeah, at the places I dined, you could definitely order wine by the glass if you were uninterested in the pairing.
  6. Gadarene
    I have so so so so so many Portland recommendations, but I will limit myself to a handful right now: Farm Spirit is doing some pretty astonishing things with Northwestern ingredients. It's a vegan tasting menu and, despite being omnivorous, I had so much fun the first time I went in early March that I'm going again with my family in late April. The beverage program is absolutely top-notch as well, focused on natural wines (as well as beers, ciders, and non-alcoholic choices) and offering some really, really interesting stuff. One piece of advice, though, is to order your beverages a la carte rather than doing one of the flights -- unless they've adjusted the pricing, the flights were not good value (as in, you could order full pours of every one of the flight wines a la carte for just a little bit more cost than the half-pours you got in the flight). Chiang Mai is the tiny, warm Thai place clearly located in what used to be the living room of a cute one-bedroom house and turning out an extensive menu of flavor bomb dishes that you won't find very many places (the larb muang made with blood is earthy and herby and awesome) that you never knew you needed in your life. A perfect antidote/counterpoint to the Pok Pok empire. This is maybe my favorite place in Portland, which is saying a lot, because Portland has Nong's. The Rum Club is the platonic ideal of a neighborhood craft cocktail bar. Friendly, warm, comfortable, with fricking ridiculous and inventive and deceptively simple drinks (the finish of the Rum Club Old Fashioned goes on and on in about seven different directions), all reasonably priced, PLUS they have a little kitchen in the back that offers a well-curated menu of anything from bites to a meal, like the rockin' pozole I had here a year ago. (Current food menu and current drink menu.) Go to the Rum Club and you'll understand a little of what I mean when I lament at the quality of neighborhood bars in DC. Tanuki is a one-woman labor of love that is an experience like no other. Armed with a hotplate, a prickly attitude, restrictive hours (Thursdays through Saturdays if you're lucky, dinner only), a wide variety of sake, and an abundance of cheesy japanese horror films constantly playing in the dimly-lit room, the chef puts together dirt-cheap ($30 will get you more food than you can probably eat) omakase menus of Korean and Japanese bar bites in what looks like a dive bar, complete with old-school pinball machines. The food is good -- sometimes very good. But the ambience is something else. Also, in a town awash with awesome beverage choices, I recommend swinging by the tasting room of Teutonic Wine Company. Extremely friendly people and extremely cool wine that you're not going to find in very many places (I think they only distribute in Portland and to a small list of restaurants elsewhere; I first had a glass of their wine in Parachute in Chicago). I recommend a glass of the Deep Probe if they have it. I've got more recommendations, but that'll do for now.
  7. Gadarene
    I keep forgetting about this place now that only the Mt Vernon Square location is open; I need to go back!
  8. Gadarene
    With those prices, I will not be going there.
  9. Gadarene
    I'll go sometime from work. That area is a lunch/dinner wasteland. (Blah blah BLT Steak, Bombay Club, Oval Room blah blah.)
  10. Gadarene
    Kushi had a lot of tasty and interesting skewers at first (cartilage and hearts and so forth) but after a short time, they stripped down their menu drastically to only the most standard things, which was a real disappointment.
  11. Gadarene
    I always enjoyed them. I'll miss it.
  12. Gadarene
    The still-unexplored reason is pretty easy, in my opinion: there's not a ton of foot traffic on that block during the day (as is the case in many blocks in the concrete canyons in that area of downtown), and even less foot traffic at night. Result: few spontaneous customers, not much buzz, and thus it doesn't/didn't stick in many people's minds, even if they work in that area, as a go-to lunch/dinner option. Is the izakaya that replaced it still there? I work a few blocks away and love izakayas, and yet it's never on my radar.
  13. Gadarene
    It is indeed. It doesn't have much flavor on its own, though, at least in this dish.
  14. Gadarene
    It's soft, not chewy. They do it almost like a tuna carpaccio, spread out thinly on the plate. (Disclaimer: the last time I had this dish here was over a month ago, so they may have changed the presentation since then.) The texture is complemented nicely by the bits of puffed tendon in the dish.
  15. Gadarene
    Also, having read through the previous posts in this thread: sitting at the bar >>>> sitting at a table. (A luxury, of course, of having a party of two at the maximum.)
  16. Gadarene
    The beef heart tartare here is mmmmm. All hail a place doing interesting things.
  17. Gadarene
    This might be my favorite restaurant in DC, in terms of overall comfort to value to deliciousness to interesting bar program. The marinara pizza is ridiculously good, once supplemented with olive oil and red pepper, and a steal at $13. And the puntarelle salad. Oh my. Every time I come here I wonder why I don't come sooner and thank God that it's not more crowded.
  18. Gadarene
    The carrot and pineapple cake that is currently on the dessert menu is one of the best desserts -- nay, the best dishes -- in this town in recent memory. Run, don't walk.
  19. Gadarene
    We ate here yesterday for the first time and enjoyed it. The bun bo hue soup had nice flavor and generous helpings of beef, and the quail appetizer was quite tasty (although I'm not sure why they give you a salt-pepper condiment for it, since the sticky sauce it's slathered with is plenty flavorful on its own). My girlfriend had one of the vermicelli bowls and was pleased that the noodles were well-cooked, rather than slightly soft as is often the case. The place also has an interesting menu that warrants repeat visits to try different things; it's good to see some stuff -- even standard stuff, like broken rice with porkchops -- that you more commonly see at Eden Center rather than within the district. As someone without a car, I appreciate that.
  20. Gadarene
    I was at La Jambe recently and the (excellent) bartender was really great about letting everyone know that Happy Hour was about to end and giving people one last chance to order at the Happy Hour price. And the bar itself was very good about printing out a separate small menu which made it clear which items were part of Happy Hour and at what price, which -- as genericeric notes above -- many places inexplicably do not, even otherwise great places (looking at you, Johnny's Half Shell!).
  21. Gadarene
    ...In DC. I was in Austin last weekend and saw literally dozens and dozens of bars that seemed to fit the bill. Many other cities, too (there's one on every corner in Portland, and they serve great food, too! plus you get bearded millennials sitting next to also-bearded old guys who've occupied those same seats since 1962). DC is somewhat exceptionally an utter wasteland for neighborhood bars. But yeah, I spent a couple of hours at Kingfisher after a birthday dinner at B Too in December, and it was pretty good.
  22. Gadarene
    Far enough about mimicking your order, Don, but it wasn't the atmosphere that drove the detailed criticisms in the below posts.
  23. Gadarene
    The contrast between the (several) good and (several) bad reviews in this thread is really striking to me. Not knowing which experience I'd have myself, I'm not inclined to go.
  24. Gadarene
    Blossoms are essential for any good restaurant, I agree...especially in the springtime.
  25. Gadarene
    Suna was amazing.
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