sheldman

For a birthday we ordered pickup from Thip Khao yesterday.   $40 per person for 3 non dessert courses, with one meat and one vegan option per course.  You have to make the same choice for each person in the party, along with same spice level, but I imagine you could work around that by making multiple separate orders.  Also cocktails for 4, etc.  it was incredibly good and extremely generous portions that will make more than two full meals.  (I have no reason to think that was a fluke for our order).  Check it out.  

As of tonight (I think) Tail Up Goat is doing take-out. Ordering link here. We ordered a couple days ago and picked up tonight and were very very pleased. They have 3-course meals (with very good clear instructions about any little bit of cooking or plating required to make them wonderful) and other awesome stuff including ALCOHOL thank god.  The pick up system is good and safe and you get to say hi to Jill through your mask and hers. Delicious stuff, and if places like this have been important in your life as they have in mine, we should do what we can to increase the likelihood that they will continue to exist in whatever form the future makes possible.

Never met the guy but loved his presence here.  💓  Don, you have made a good subculture.

I ate the Happy Gyro tonight. OMG it is so good. Komi trying to channel Superiority Burger and I love it. The gyro is by far the best of the sandwiches, though others are good too.  Get all available vegetable sides. Let's hope that I was not a vector to them and they were not a vector to me

If you search my history here you will see that I love Tail Up Goat and the people who work there.  That is my bias.  So, first visit to Revelers Hour and it is unsurprising that I love it but let me perhaps give a little more information than that.

Somewhat bigger and more boisterous in vibe than T-U-G.  But it still has the same sort of warm vibe, not really "rustic" but somehow very home-y feeling.  Like maybe a nice orange-y glowing aura in an aura sense rather than a literal sense.

It is different from T-U-G (at least so far) in the absence of bread course and the absence of large fish or meat entrees. There are several pasta dishes, of which we ate three and all were mind bogglingly good. (the one with smoked collards and red peas, described in an earlier post, was especially amazing to me). 

If you ever want to take someone for a drink and hope to smooch them, go sit at the bar early and have wine by the glass and order the nuts (with rosemary etc) and the potato chips with a potato-based dip (i know, it sounds paradoxical, but believe me).

T-U-G and now Revelers Hour are the only restaurants I have ever been to that make such a point of being vegetarian-welcoming that they hand-prepare menus which note the dishes that are veg or can be made so with identified tweaks.  I think that is lovely.

1 hour ago, DaRiv18 said:

Securities fraud allegations. Awful. 

Also, depending on the precise number of involved employees, a possible violation of the federal WARN Act for not giving employees advance notice of closing. Corporate values yay!

I ate at Urban Hot Pot last night. I am not here to tell you that it is the quintessence of the world's best hot pot. I am not your go-to expert on that. But damn what a good experience on a jolly brain-dead evening with someone you like.  $25 all-you-can-eat, in sleek modernistic clean bright space. Get a booth around the conveyor belt.  Order your broth of choice and get it going on your little glass stovetop.  Conveyor belt brings this and that.  Use the attached iPad to order other stuff too.  Go to the sauce and condiment bar to get things on top (sesame dressing, peanut dressing, cilantro, peppers, etc etc etc.).  Stuff yourself silly on meats (incl. stomach and intestines if you are into that), seafoods, tofu, vegetables, in your hot pot.  Spice up your broth how you like it.  Eat too many noodles.  Things that you order on the iPad come within minutes.  Eat and eat and eat and eat.  Pro tip: order more napkins through the iPad too.  Again you may say that I am a rube but what fun and quite good.

23 hours ago, meatwad said:

This is a marketing company. They don’t make their (delicious) ice cream.

Can you please cite a source for this assertion?  Thanks.

34 minutes ago, astrid said:

Why Is My Vegan Entree as Expensive as the Meat?

😯

From the linked article: "Personally, I go to restaurants primarily for the hospitality and secondarily for the actual food." I am kind of the opposite  

I ate at Elle for the first time last night, and (1) it was very nice though loud and (2) it made me realize why I go out so rarely in DC these days. Eating light and vegetarian, two drinks each, $75 per person with tip. I wish I understood the economics of running such a restaurant better. I am not saying that it was yielding enormous profits for anyone. I have no idea. Maybe all employees are very well paid, which would be good. Maybe good bok choy costs more than I imagine. Maybe rent/mortgage is bizarrely high even in Mt. Pleasant. I suppose that maybe I am saying I don't want to pay double for good food, for the opportunity to sit for an hour and a half and have people fold my napkin and refill my water glass. I wish we had restaurants like Superiority Burger here in DC.

Yeah it is a harsh concept that is the law in (I believe) most states. (See that definitive source, wikipedia). We are wild about long-term incarceration in this country.

Thank you for doing this chat. Two questions, if you have the time:

1) I assume you have been eating widely in "great" restaurants for years. How would you describe the change(s) you have seen over the decades?

2) What do you do, to find very promising places to eat at, when you are traveling to a city without a Michelin guide?

Small nonstick pan.  2 or 3 eggs and about a half tablespoon butter, plus salt & pepper.  low heat.  no whisk.  break up eggs and stir and then constantly fiddle and scrape and stir and worry them with small spatula until they are right to your preferred level of wetness or dryness.  haven't measured the time but should take at least 3 minutes and perhaps more.

Yes, reopened and delicious and friendly as ever.

On 5/12/2018 at 9:34 AM, Sthitch said:

I also had a Racky (their version of a Ricky) which was quite disappointing.  The drink suffered from an absence of acid* and was overwhelmed by the taste of elder flowers.

*Because they only use local ingredients they have shunned the use of citrus, a concept I could appreciate if the wine list were not made up primarily of bottles from Europe. 

We went to the bar here last night and found it utterly bizarre. As suggested above, the insistence on local is non-uniform and therefore arbitrary: "yuzu oil" in one thing, but no tequila because it's not locally sourced. Could not find a drink that did not sound, from menu description, over-complex and over-sweet. Sorghum is a clever notion; but a whisky cocktail with sorghum etc etc would have been awesome if poured over hot oatmeal but otherwise blech. The building is cool, though, and everyone was nice! Order liquor neat and enjoy the experience.

9 hours ago, Ferris Bueller said:

Has the Parkland momentum slowed...not really hearing anything about the movement which was well-publicized for months.

Some of the leaders among the Parkland kids are on a cross-country organizing and voter registration tour now. They are not the story du jour any longer, but are doing the hard work of political organizing, and (I think) are doing a great job of crossing all sorts of subcultural boundaries. A twitter link here to a story from today. The kids these days, they are alright.

18 minutes ago, DonRocks said:

Can anyone find this article on Washington Post Express? They changed their URLs, apparently.

Probably this?

A new entry into the very very good ice cream category - Mt. Desert Island Ice Cream in Mount Pleasant (3110 Mt. Pleasant, NW DC). There are two stores in Maine (the Obamas went to one a few years ago, they say), and this store here just opened up. $10/pint, and of course you can get cones etc. I bought two pints - (1) Kulfi, (2) "Bay of Figs" (figs in fig ice cream) - both were astoundingly good. Tried a thai spicy (peanut and a good bit of cayenne, etc.) and a buttermint (like those funny little mints in old fashioned restaurants) and both were great. Flavors are relatively innovative but not willfully ridiculous. After I went and ate and loved, I realized that the local partners are friends of friends of mine; but I swear I loved the ice cream before I knew that.  Check it out.

55 minutes ago, sheldman said:

Don't want to get too off-topic but I listened to that first one and found it infuriating because Gladwell ends up making these bold pronouncements about human nature (like "how we remember stories about ourselves is not a reflection of our character at all")

Have now listened to the second and it is that pronouncement that I paraphrased above - which is not supported by ANY evidence cited - which is Gladwell's big ultimate point. Brian Williams (correctly, is my hunch) ends up in the second episode explaining this memory incorrectness on his part by attributing it in part to his own ego, self-aggrandizement - and it is important to Gladwell (for some unexplained reason) just to declare that this is ridiculous self-flagellation. So yes, it is probably true that Brian Williams wasn't lying: he had actually and subjectively fooled himself into believing that he was at the center of an awesome story that made him look cool. But I was struck by how the bold pronouncement that stuck out to me in the first episode - as being gratuitous and unsupported - ends up being the gratuitous and unsupported point of the second episode.

Or maybe I just hate podcasts

2 hours ago, dcs said:

Listen to Season 3, Episode 3 (A Polite Word for Liar (Memory Part 1)) 

Don't want to get too off-topic but I listened to that first one and found it infuriating because Gladwell ends up making these bold pronouncements about human nature (like "how we remember stories about ourselves is not a reflection of our character at all") based on a story that didn't really justify any such thing - for one thing, it was not at all clear to me, from any evidence given, that Weitz was ever actually promoting a version of the story that was inconsistent with Adler's. But Gladwell does love bold pronouncements.

2 hours ago, dcandohio said:

Krauthammer

I didn’t Agree with his views, but he was civil and smart and a gentleman. 

I disagreed with him about practically everything but this makes me think well of him.

The more I have thought about this, the more I believe that the "no" campaign was misleading astroturf by corporate interests, aided by some successful employees who have learned to navigate the current system well and who feared what their bosses might do to them in a new system, all targeted at the worst impulses of prosperous pseudo-liberal DC.

We were all led to understand, for one thing, that it was "about" restaurants and bars when - as far as I can understand by some digging - it actually goes broader than that. (Think of nail salons, valet parkers, etc., and wonder whether employees in those industries are being treated as fairly as you hope that your favorite bartender or waiter in a fancy restaurant is being treated.) We were all led to understand that it would somehow lead to a decrease in compensation for those bar and restaurant employees who have been clearing a good compensation package through tips - when there is no reason for anybody without advanced econ training and lots of data to make any such assumption. (There is no inherent reason why now-tipped employees, individually or collectively, would be willing to do the same work for lesser compensation; it would be up to employees and employers to work within the new laws to reach a new equilibrium.)

Part of me thinks that perhaps the unspoken thing is that the current system gives employers in tipped industries some hidden tax subsidy that is not available to other industries, like they don't have to pay full employer FICA on tips or something?

Mainly, it shows that so many of us lucky west-of-rock-creek (white) people are fearful of changing the arbitrary systems that we have grown up with, especially when Rick Berman tells us that it might cost us a few dollars.

1 minute ago, zgast said:

Caveat: I have no dog in this fight and am watching bemused from across the state line.

That being said, I tend to focus on the substance of the policy rather than the actors on one side or another.

I think that, although it is a very imperfect way of making political decisions, "who's behind this" is often the best realistic way of making decisions that many of us have.

I don't know the first damn thing about the economics of running a restaurant, whether it be IHOP or Ruth's Chris or Tail Up Goat or icky dirty no-name place.  I don't know the first damn thing about how many restaurant customers will actually drive to VA or MD instead of DC to save a few bucks. I am tempted to think that I know those things; but when I pretend, I am only rationalizing my gut hunches about which side of the issue feels right to me. And I'm pretty good at this sort of policy stuff compared to the average voter, I think.

So, when I realize that IHOP and Ruth's Chris and the like have more at stake in this than anyone else - to try to block it here in DC not only for the sake of their operations in DC, but so that it does not spread - and when I see that they or someone have hired Rick f'in Berman and others - that tells me more than anything else. 

My impulse has been on the "no" side since I started hearing about this, because I trusted the few owners of great small places whom I know who were publicly asking for "no" votes.

I am disappointed that both sides' rhetoric has been simplistic and over-the-top. Neither side wants to start with basic simple points - that tipped workers *are* guaranteed the same minimum hourly rate as anyone else under the current system, and that any mom-n-pop could go to a "no tipping" model without raising net cost to customer. What we are arguing about, I think, are (a) worries about the irrational reactions of customers to a no-tipping-but-higher-menu-price model and (b) probably some other behind-closed-doors stuff that neither side wants to talk about.

But at this point I am an inch away from voting "yes" because the "no" side is in bed with Rick Berman (the worst corporate astroturf scumbag in the country) and other folks whom I consider terrible.

I guess the take-away for me is that management is management, even when it is people whom I know and like - and even if they are not ill-motivated, they are cautious in favor of their own interests in navigating the existing system as they know it.

By the way, thanks to all for responses to my original question.  Matters got taken out of my hands and we went to Ris.  It was ok.