Jump to content

SeanMike

Members
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    1,551

  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    6

 Content Type 

Everything posted by SeanMike

  1. SeanMike
    Ha! I wonder if that peanut butter beer is the one that my parents' friends were complaining about this weekend. In past years, I've been known to add a shot of aged rum (El Dorado 12, for instance) to my Pumpking, to very delicious effect. This year I've had the New Belgium and DFH pumpkin beers and liked them both. Less so on the Sam Adams beer, though I will agree with jrichstar above - Sam Adams prevalence has saved me from going straight to Miller Lite a number of times. Though I prefer the Boston Ale over the Boston Lager, and I won't touch the Noble Pils with a ten foot pole.
  2. SeanMike
    I've eaten here a couple of times in the past couple of weeks. Not as often as when I lived in Courthouse, but whatevs. While the pizza is, IMHO, fine - no, it's not OMG fantastic, but it's solid and well-priced in my opinion - what I like a lot of the times when I go there is the enthusiasm and knowledge of the bartenders when it comes to beer. In a lot of bars, you've got one or two "beer guys" and a decent selection but that's it. However, almost all of my bartenders at FireWorks have been enthusiastic and knowledgable. An example: when I was there two visits ago, I wanted to try a specific Terrapin beer simply because of its name. They were out of it, but the bartender suggested another one. I went with it, and as I was about to ask her if she wanted to try it, she asked me if she could have a small taste as she hadn't had it before. We both loved it, and because I shared it with her she took my pizza off the bill. :-) When I went back the last time she pointed out that through tonight, a number of their big bottles are half off. I'm tempted to go back down there...
  3. SeanMike
    Jon Taffer did an AMA. http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1nnxpm/i_am_jon_taffer_host_of_bar_rescue_and/ On Piratez: I did not like those people, candidly. And I did not enjoy one minute that I was there.
  4. SeanMike
    That had been my guess.
  5. SeanMike
    To all my furloughed (and non-furloughed, but non-paid now) friends.
  6. SeanMike
    For the proof - yes, that's what it means. Anything you drink that's not barrel-proof is watered down to some degree. Some people I know love Rick's products. I think he's a great guy, but his whiskys (if I remember correctly, he drops the "e") are distinctive in a way that I don't usually care for.
  7. SeanMike
    I didn't eat there, but my good friend Rachel Sergi is working there now behind the bar, and the drinks were amazing. (She's not managing, just bartending, and seems very happy there.) The food looked quite good, so I'll have to return to annoy her again.
  8. SeanMike
    After taking care of Lord Henrico Stinkerbottom aka Henry, my brother and sister-in-law's puppy, they offered to take me out for dinner. We went to Del Ray Cafe on a rainy Saturday night. We had about a ten to fifteen minute wait, and while they don't have a proper bar per se, we sat at a nice little bench/bar near the window and had a drink. Very quickly though we were seated upstairs. We started with a charcuterie plate and some calamari, while my SIL had the cream of broccoli soup. She loved her soup, and my brother and I really enjoyed both our appetizers - the calamari was perhaps the best I've had in a long time. For main entrees, I had a stuffed pork tenderloin, while my brother had the lobster and my SIL the scallops. We all quite enjoyed our meals - the waiter showed my brother how to get the meat out of the knuckles. My only very slight nit was my pork was kind of dry, but with the cheese and peppers stuffed into it it wasn't bad. We had to try dessert (despite my diagnosis of diabetes earlier in the week). My brother polished off a black and white mousse in no time. I had some mini-beignets that had melted chocolate inside them and an orange cream dipping sauce while my SIL had the chaquettes. They were awesome, we couldn't finish them, and the waiter not only packaged them up for us but also took the time to make sure the dipping sauces got containers, too. My brother and I split a couple of carafes of wine over dinner while my SIL had a mimosa. Still, the bill was quite reasonable in the end of the night, and it was one of the best meals I've had in quite a while. We'll definitely be returning.
  9. SeanMike
    I use it to get a couple of quick possibilities when I'm traveling, then switch over and Google DR.com and the restaurant in general to make my final decision (by which time I'm usually drinking at the bar in the restaurant instead of standing around on the sidewalk, gawping like the tourist I am).
  10. SeanMike
    I still haven't made it out to Seattle, but one of the reasons why I wanted to visit - Vessel - has closed, according to reports.
  11. SeanMike
    I went to Pei Wei once in Sterling, since it's near my office. I didn't care for it at all. I also went to one in Orlando, IIRC, and it was a bit better, but still - wouldn't have been my choice. I'd rather take my chances on just about any random {Hunan|Szechuan|Chinese} {Cafe|Express|King} type place...
  12. SeanMike
    I like that idea. I ended up with some of the New Belgium, Dogfish Head, and Sam Adams pumpkin beers last week through various happenings and whatnot (i.e., thanks to goodeats for the first one, picked up the second one while buying the New Belgium Coconut Curry Hefeweizen at Total Wine, and bought a sampler pack of Sam).
  13. SeanMike
    For them, good. Otherwise, I'd say "large". I used to love O'Sullivan's, but I haven't been able to visit there since they expanded. It's always just too way crowded. (And don't get me wrong - I loved it before, and I'm happy to see them packed and doing well! But it's no longer the place to go for a quiet beer or 8.)
  14. SeanMike
    Interesting tweet earlier today from @ToddKliman, responding to Spike: https://twitter.com/toddkliman/status/377837171631476736
  15. SeanMike
    I see that one all the time, and I never seem to have time to stop there!
  16. SeanMike
    Han Sung Oak was the first place I ever ate Korean food and I remember it fondly. I wish I had gone back there more often.
  17. SeanMike
    Most tequila has been pretty much crap lately anyways.
  18. SeanMike
    Anyways, I think there's a tag issue maybe left in Dean's post? I can't respond to it well.
  19. SeanMike
    A friend of mine was looking to take her husband somewhere with good food and a great bourbon selection in northern Virginia. Unfortunately, I couldn't think of a place that qualified as that. I know places with a "decent" selection... She's taken him also to Bourbon AdMo. We suggested to her also Bourbon Steak and Jack Rose. If someone was looking for bourbon specifically, any other suggestions out there? I really need to go more to places owned by people other than the Brown brothers and Bill Thomas sometimes...
  20. SeanMike

    MSG

    SeanMike posted a topic in News and Media

    I found this article about MSG on Buzzfeed to be pretty darn interesting - especially for the history and current status of it, but also for the debunking of a number of the myths about it. http://www.buzzfeed.com/johnmahoney/the-notorious-msgs-unlikely-formula-for-success
  21. SeanMike
    And if you've ever had to organize dinner for a large group of people, you'll see the same thing. I had a bunch of friends coming in from around the country. I was excited to have them try to something new - or at least local - and I kept getting "Why can't we go to Chili's?" and other such questions. It took me taking the menu from Old Ebbitt and showing them that they'd be paying the same price there as a chain to get them to go. Everybody had fun. Still, it took arm-twisting to get it to happen.
  22. SeanMike
    Peter Shankman predicts Yelp will be out of business in 24 months, and puts $5000 down on it. https://www.facebook.com/PeterShankman/posts/10151581535461674
  23. SeanMike
    That has been driving me up the wall since I first saw it. In fact, I was tempted to reply to bettyjoan saying "are you sure it wasn't that y'all were the only ones ordering it" but fortunately for me, I double-checked that. I like to drink all over the menu, so that's kind of bad for me, but I can dedicate myself to one beer if I must...
  24. SeanMike
    Well to be honest, I might be over-exaggerating a bit, but whatevs.
  25. SeanMike
    A nitpick: If you say wine is "quite often" 50% of the final bill, I'd assume that a reviewer that got everything right got at least 50% right, not "at most". That's also the assumption that a) everyone drinks wine with their meals, b ) they drink enough to make it 50% of their meal, and c) that their enjoyment of wine is at a level where a poor wine list will give them a bad experience, yet they don't know enough to find something of value on it or to avoid it completely. In other words, that they just pick whatever is suggested and then say "oh god, this sucks". Obviously, I'm going off of anecdotal evidence here, since that's all I have - I'm not a wine guy. It's rare that I'm at meals where everyone or even most people drink wine, and at that, even rarer that it hits 50%. Past there, even amongst the "wine people" I'm with, in all my experience, I've only ever heard one complaint about the wine at any restaurant, and that was due to vintage on a very specific wine - and really not that the wine was bad, just that it wasn't as good as the previous year's vintage. Contrast that to food and service portions of reviews, which everyone hits at every single meal they have at a restaurant. Unless you're going to (say) a wine bar, that's why you're going to a restaurant, right? Food? And the service to bring it to you? Don't get me wrong - I love seeing reviews of which restaurants have good wine or other beverage programs, which ones are overrated or overpriced, etc. But I trust specialty publications and reviewers for that - I'll take (say) Derek Brown's take on a bar versus Tom Sietsma's, or Don's take on wine versus Tim/Tom/Todd. If the 3 Ts were writing for a specific food magazine (for instance), not general publications, I'd expect more time dedicated to the beverage side (or, preferably, a separate reviewer who handles that part) but I think it's something you cannot expect in a "general" publication, especially given these budget times.
×
×
  • Create New...