giant shrimp

Except he notes in his introduction that he was shocked at how far some candidates had slid, which at least raises some questions about the omissions. I know that the last time I visited one of my favorite restaurants in the area, which used to stand as a big Sietsema favorite, it seemed like leftovers night for one of the best consommes you could find anywhere. New restaurants always seem to invite initial enthusiasm on his lists. I would be surprised to see some of these around next October. There's nothing terrible about Chez Billy, for instance, but I don't know why you would favor it over Adour, where one great (or really good) meal costs no more than twice what you would pay for every OK meal in Petworth. I don't really get what is so great about the Jose Andres mini-empire; the renovated Jaleo is a bit too busy for me, as are its souped-up food and bar menus. And as for his favorite restaurant empire, which belongs to Ashok Bajaj, you have to wonder whether Bombay Club has now emerged as a more inviting dining room than Bibiana. I can't answer the question because I have not kept up with either. As usual, despite the personal flukes and even if it isn't entirely comprehensive, I find the Fall Dining Guide an inspiration to get out and try some new things. And I believe that is its purpose -- to rev up interest in the area's dining scene.

Tomato prices have climbed this summer as the season has progressed, and they cost the most now when they seem to be most abundant. Heirloom tomatoes at the market yesterday were going for as high as $4.60 a pound. It pays to shop around. By comparison, at the Penn Center Farmers market last Thursday, the same varieties of tomatoes were going for $3.50 generally, with maybe a couple of stands (Toigo) rising into the $3.50-$4.00 range. Toigo's pears in both locations were a bruising $3.75. Earlier this summer, the Clarendon Whole Foods was selling Toigo peaches for about half of what they were charging at their stands. (This did not seem to be an especially good year for peaches.) If you are just making tomato sauce, it's best to look for seconds, which are bargain priced at well below $2 a pound at Dupont by a few farmers. Toigo has had seconds at Penn Center.

I was apparently eating wheat before the transformation and was just as addicted to it then as I am now. I remember when our third grade class visited the Wonder Bread factory at 641 S Street, NW. The entire block was engulfed in the most intoxicating aroma I had ever encountered. Before departing, we received miniature loaves, which were good but not as memorable as the Hostess cupcake also tucked into the gift bag. Maybe not the best thing for you nutritionally, but Wonder Bread plus sugar and chocolate was about as good as any meal I had ever eaten. The pasta I was served at a young age in Italy was also habit forming, as was the pounded veal. I don't know what the doctor would have to say about adding sugar to the small shot of champagne served to toddlers on special occasions so that they can cultivate a taste for it, or the sips of beer I received from Germans at the age of four. Personally, I think potato chips are worse for your health than wheat, no matter what they have done to the kernels, but there is always at least one bag of Route 11 in the pantry. I am skeptical that you can cure yourself by pursuing immoderate diets. My health is not perfect, but I am not ready to lay the blame on bread (though I continue to be wary of corn syrup, based on what I have read, and avoid most prepared foods at the grocery store).

How do you feel about the stools at El Chucho, or Little Serow? I can tolerate them, but I prefer chairs over stools. The latter suggest short meals or an extended period drifting toward inebriation. It's a different experience toppling from a stool than falling out of a chair. Have been to this place a couple of times, and it is one of the best restaurants in the neighborhood, of which there are a growing number that are worth visiting. The bruschettas have shown off the kitchen best for us so far, with four slices of ciabatta for $10 allowing a nice assortment for two to share. One of the best is the eggplant, but I have no complaints about any of them. The caponata is the highlight of the antipasti plate. Depending upon how you order, you could encounter more bread than you actually have room for. Haven't had totally conistent luck with the entrees, however, and there are not many of them, so you would expect better. The flat iron steak was as well prepared as they were cooking them in San Francisco when they were becoming popular a few years ago, but on our second try even a dog would have had some questions about the cut. Linguini with clams leans to the boring side, nothing especially wrong with it, but I remember how AV used to make funk a virtue in its version of this dish, not that it was outstanding. The Arctic char is better though the saucing can get a little soupy. This looks like a reliable place to try local heirloom tomatoes lately, but we have been gettng more than our fill of them at home. I do like that there are inexpensive grappas on the menu, one infused with fig is a sweet dessert. I have noticed more of this around lately, including at Menolame (where the center of a good pizza can be just as limp as those that raise complaints at 2 Amys). The Plymouth martinis here provide a nice change from those made with the increasingly ubiquitous Hendricks gin (which you can now find at the E Street Theater, as a supplement for an even more complete nap than what David Cronenberg is already providing in his latest arch movie ). We travel out early, or other times when not as many people are around, and have always found chairs here. I think there are almost two dozen chairs inside and there are chairs at tables outside as well. I would ask the servers if I didn't find a comforable place to sit; there is no attitude here, and they aim to please. They seem pretty good at making the most of what is a hole-in-the-wall space.

Let Yelp be your dining guide. This insight on Izakaya Seki that looks like it has been up since the end of July: "This is the first place in DC that I've seen bukkake on the menu. That's pretty unique, if nothing else. (Although at just $12 for a whole bowl of it I think those Japanese fanatics have been overpaying all those years.)" Sounds unappetizing, at least in a restaurant setting, but for this alone, it is awarded four stars.

This is a good place to go with a large group, and I would expect it to be diverting enough for small children. The food isn't bad, but it wilts a bit in the spotlight, with some quirky touches that I guess harken to the farcical side of British culture. Bread is sweet and doughy. A jar of shepherd's pie is pretty good, especially the dab of mashed potatoes, I am told, but a visible accumulation of unappetizing lamb grease has been allowed tio settle to the bottom. The romesco sauce for the calamari is alright, but disappointing on two counts: the batter is underdone and the squid themselves are just on the verge of rubbery. A bison burger is an ok choice, but it comes annointed with odd bacon bits bound with brown sugar that are reminiscent of candied walnuts. Our server discusses these when taking the order and says they can be scraped off. When white cheddar and real bacon are added to the burger, the cost rises to $18.75, which seems maybe out of whack with the cost of better burgers around town. The supreme Palena burger these days goes for $14, although this place throws in the fries (at least, I believe I had them) while Frank Ruta charges $8 for a larger portion of them. (And I realize I am comparing beef to buffalo.) Children will like this place just for the chocolte fudge sundae, but adults may notice that there is more cream andf less ice cream than there should be. The dessert is pretty standard, but is topped with an odd pretzel-shaped rice crispie treat. The prices here appear low, but can add up fast if you aren't paying attention. A regular-sized Hendricks Martini is $13; I know some other places that are more generous with the size of their martinis, and for less. (And other places where they are $16 and about the same size.) Some of the entrees top $30, a cost that made me hesitant to order them. My sense is that this restaurant has more work to do if it wants to stay in business.

service is not stuffy, about the same as the cafe, with maybe a bit closer attention to the table. the real difference is the food, and both menus work. we decide based on what's listed on each.

A chicon au gratin of ham-wrapped Belgian endive smothered with baked Gruyere and bechamel really hit the spot on an unusually raw evening tucked into a relentless march of hot and humid summer days. This dish is largely about the sauce, when you are in the mood for something gooey and not especially subtle. Even so, it's not as heavy as you might expect, leaving room for a moules burger. Mashed mussels cohere into a nice patty that moistens the bun. It's not messy but is perhaps too easy to wolf down, one of my favorite recent burgers. It's almost up there with the hamburger at Mintwood Place, which has come into its own since the restaurant opened and demonstrates the differences in cooking styles between these two kitchens with a sandwich that is so packed it's hard to avoid smearing it onto your face and hands. (El Voila's medium-rare onglet was at the correct temperature, impeccable.) There have also been peach Melbas to compare between the two restaurants. Et Voila's version with ice cream and a simple vanilla syrup is on the reticent side and the peaches were a bit lacking in flavor and sweetness. Mintwood, on the other hand, included berries and cake (if I recall correctly) and was easily enough to sate two healthy appetites even at the end of a light meal, which is not what you get here. This may be the height of the peach season, but it's a tricky business getting the ripeness that shows them at their best. I have a problem sometimes just keeping them from exploding in the bag in the short trip from the farmer's market to home. (Fiola recently solved the peach problem by deconstructing its Melba, concentrating the flavor in a sorbet, and leaving only a small residual slice of peach as a reference point.) Et Voila's dame blanche falls into the common chocolate fudge sundae family, but the chocolate sauce is extraordinarily good with vanilla ice cream. An Alsacian grappa (Massenez gewurztraminer) is a good excuse to linger at your table until the next D bus back to town is due. (They run about every 30 minutes in off-peak hours but seem reliable.) The marc is only $12 a glass but almost as good and just as fortifying as the $18 Poli pinot noir that is hard to resist at Fiola.

I am in the process of making habitual, almost weekly trips here. It is an intertesting part of town, about an hour and a half or so walk from where I live. Last time I overshot it by wandering on trails through Rock Creek that ended behind Carter Barron, but encountered five deer fording the stream along the way. I agree on the Harrar, though have no notes. The Yirgacheffe Kochere is also worth the trip, and I still have much more to work through. As a destimation, however, on my last visit I was happy not to have to stay any longer than it took to make my purchase. The place was sweltering, reminiscent of summer in Washington decades ago when fans were far more common than air conditioning in homes. You have to build up to this kind of heat, and the way the weather has been I am not sure I can get more than halfway there.

I've only eaten here once, fairly recently, and did not experience too much salt and sugar. Even my sweetbreads were not overly salty and I would gladly return for the crispy rockfish on corn. Also, the Salisbury steak's gravy was not too sweet. Just for the banana sponge cake, one of the best desserts I have had lately, you would think Tom could have added a star. The service, on the other hand, is still a bit rough, with attempted plate snatching and servers playfully grabbing their co-workers' asses, that sort of thing.

We were out of town when the closing happened, but I am surprised that nobody seemed to notice that most of the specials evaporated from the menu for the last month or so. Ther website, which was always on its toes, was not updated since the spring. Business moved steadily downward. I don't know why, though if you went for the best things on the menu, the prices were not bargain basement, if that's what the neighborhood was looking for. The place could be half empty on a Saturday night. The last time we were there, Nicole was gone and Todd was spraying down tables. He said there was no pasta because of a family emergency, which sounded better than our freshly hired server's explanation that they had run out. Yes, two or three weeks ago, I told him. I don't know what was going on in the kitchen, but fried onion rings were an embarrassment, disintegrating in grease, three for $6. The meal was saved by a pork belly sandwich. We used to go here instead of Palena Cafe to save money, that's how good the food could be, and they served a mean martini, one of the best in town. A five or 10 minute walk over to 14th Street will get you to the Pinch, where they have stiff drinks and overly generous hamburgers. Up on their wall is a photographic print of a mother nursing, which I suppose is their stand on the issue of mothers breast feeding at restaurants, or bars. This is obviously not the same kind of place as Radius, just a somewhat sketchy alternative for anyone interested. We will miss Radius, but I can't believe that Todd's cooking won't eventually be popping up somewhere else.

I am surprised nobody has mentioned Little Serow (maybe they have and I scanned down the list too quickly). It's a lot of work delivering so many courses to the table. The servers pace it just right and they know what goes into each dish. They are equally adept in their tasting notes for the wine list and at introducing you to the ice wines, concoctions that go well with the food but that I probably would not have bothered to explore otherwise. They are also friendly without carrying things too far. I would say the service here is as expert as at Komi, which is another thing that makes this restaurant a bargain. At both places I feel like I am living briefly in a glamorous movie, and that is something you can't get from 3D. I agree with those above who have cited the Oval Room for its exemplary service, but things can be taken too far when they remember the last time you were in, and it was a few years ago (they are wrong), and they know what you like to drink. They remember you at Little Serow, too, even how many times you have visited, but they don't rely on Open Table to read your mind. (At least I believe that is the source of the information at the Oval Room). Also, the dining room looks a little tattered these days. A little patching up would do. The food is still as good as ever here, so they don't need the major renovation Jaleo resorted to -- or a sprinkling of pork informed by acorns and morels in cocktails -- in order to signal that the kitchen has improved and divert faithful diners from memories of earlier times when the dishes were even better.

Eastern European cooking seemed a natural follow-up to a film by Czech avant-garde animator Jan Svankmajer at the National Gallery last month, so we boarded a 70 bus to the fairly new Bistro Bohem. The small and inviting restaurant is located a block away from the gloriously revived Howard Theater and is an encouraging addition to Le Droit Park, which is looking particularly good these days, not counting the incongruously monolithic Howard University Hospital looming over its shoulders. (In pre-gentrification days, when these streets could turn unexpectedly mean, the proximity of the hospital was a good thing for stalwart neighborhood residents who had just been bludgeoned.) We had read enthusiastic things about Bistro Bohem in the newspaper and had heard similar praise from friends, so what unfolded was a bit of a disappointment. I won't blame it on Svankmajer. Although food plays more than a bit part in his movies, it is a source of mayhem, as it was in what we had just seen -- "Little Otik" -- where babies being fished out of briny water are delectably pink and you can see why customers are lined up for them. Savory soups and stews are brought to the table throughout the dark proceedings, and they appear fortifying, though unfortunately not enough to sate the enormous appetite of a rapidly flourishing tree-stump baby who has been brought to life by a hopelessly barren couple. Finally confined to the basement of the disconcerted parents' apartment house after devouring the mailman and a social worker, the temptation of a courtyard patch of cabbages is Otik's downfall, an ending out of the folktale on which this is based, a chronicle of an insatiable appetite running roughshod over the countryside. If I lived in its neck of the woods, I would visit Bistro Bohem often for its drinks and beers, but I would tend to stay away from the food unless I was famished. Sharing appetizers and small and large plates, we felt a bit like Otik, devouring our food but never finding anything that was truly satisfying. Garlic soup was mostly all salt, though the interplay of garlic and toasted bread revealed an intriguing affinity in flavor. Flecky in texture, melted Gruyere provided a reminder that this was a poor man's version of French onion soup. Pierogi with a potato and cheese filling were light and supple, steering things in a happier direction, except that there was some undercooked flour in the bechamel-based sauce on which they rested. Home-made potato chips were ridiculously bad, dripping in oil, some half crisp, others totally soggy, a few with raw centers. And a potato pancake was gummy, covered in a dark gloppy sauce, along with small orange knots of hard chicken. The menu advises that the kitchen is small. Clearly it was wrestling with the food the night we visited. Maybe it was just our dumb luck that the wrong person was cooking. Why go to Prague for food, when you can go to Paris? Bistro Bohem raised but did not answer that question for us.

The samosas are served with the usual mint and tamarind sauces -- but somewhat thinner, more down-to-earth versions, maybe even exotic. The pastries themselves are high hats, the filling really a mash. An aachar of potato sitting in a fiery oil also comes with them, providing the spark that makes them worth ordering. There is also something primitive about the Samaya Baji, which I have read is regarded as a ritual food in the Newari culture, even though there are aspects of it that make it seem more suitable for the lunch pail. As far as I know, this was my first encounter with beaten rice. Served here, what resemble coconut flakes but are actually parboiled grains of rice that are smashed and dried are not as tough as fish scales or as soft and dusty as oatmeal, and it is difficult to understand why they would be a popular staple in any part of the world. We were told that the rice is easy to transport in areas that are often remote and where there is often not much variety in in the available ingredients. In any event, it is impossible to reconstitute them into a more pliant texture even by stirring them into the other ingredients on the plate, which are dry, including a deep-fried boiled egg devoid of one drop of moisture. And the meat served with this was not just arid. It was tough as jerky, and not thin. Despite all this, the dish is engaging, delicious and fun to eat. Other than the aachars, it was the best thing we had all night. In the Himalayan kothey, the momoes -- stuffed with ground chicken -- are steamed and then pan fried. The first one is good but filling, and your enthusiasm for them doesn't last long. The problem is -- and I didn't take a head count -- there are probably 10 or more of them on the plate, a case of wearing out your welcome through too much generosity. The Khasi ko Masu had a deeply delicious brown curry gravy, but the knuckly pieces of goat clearly required more stewing. This animal derived too much of its sustenacne from tin cans, although a few tender morsels had fallen from the bone and pointed to how much better this might have been if given more time. We ordered a tomato-based aachar to go with it, which was more reserved than its predecessor, but also a small highlight of the night. Garlic naan comes in a basket, creased in half, in spots brown as a pancake, glistening with what might be olive oil mistaken for butter. The bread is thin, crisp. The portion was more than ample, and we ate almost all of it. Attached to our receipt was a coupon for $7 off a dinner of at least $45 before the end of the month. I don't really need that inducement to return. I am told this is the only Nepali restaurant in the city. Although the introduction wasn't entirely satisfactory, this place has whetted my appetite for more examples of this intriguing cuisine.

I guess a better way of phrasing it is that Heritage provided a source of the cooking for the other two, and there are similarities in their cooking now.

It is also still on the menu at the Heritage in Glover Park, where it used to be outstanding though I can't really say anything about how it is today because I followed that restaurant's crew up the street to Masala Art in Tenleytown and have only eaten there once in the past year -- noticing that the bartending was off, interesting new additions were on the menu and the execution of old favorites was less assured than previously. Before we defected, they were occasionally serving a momo special that was much better than the much acclaimed dumplings I encountered in the neighboring Chinese restaurant. Rara gosht was one of the best things Heritage ever cooked, in our opinion, and we missed it at Masala Art, until we discovered that it actually does appear there as an appetizer -- the Nukt kabab on Khastha roti. We've ordered it twice, for the topping, so can't weigh in on the crispness of the bread, but I definitely know it is soft. These three restaurants are all related, and I know Passage to India is a good reason why we should be traveling to Bethesda more often.

Safari trophies from Africa, is what I recall, from wildebeests on up. I probably didn't take a hard look at them but I believe they were everywhere on the walls. L'Escargot must have been the name of the French restaurant. It was toward the end of the block, though my mind does not place it in the exact location of Ardeo. Also, I don't remember waiters on roller skates. There was skating at a restaurant on the Safeway side of Wisconsin Ave. somewhere before R Street. I never went. I guess I was too young to be able to afford eating there, but not too young to catch Brigitte Bardot at the Calvert, which today is a parking lot?

We bailed from the old Roma, quickly, because someone in our party was disturbed by the abundance of dead wildlife. "My boyfriend is feeling ill," was the excuse offered. Down the block, entering a departed French restaurant (I don't remember the name) we turned around at the door because a patron who was leaving seemed to have just discovered that he was bleeding profusely, we assumed from a recent incision that had reopened. There was a trail of blood behind him. He was with his wife, and it looked like everything was eventually going to be OK, but it clouded our mood. We fairly recently left a restaurant in Staunton after looking around at a crowded and lively dining room and noticing too much glop on the plates. However, if a server had contacted us within the five minutes we were at the table we most likely would have remained, for better or worse. I probably have told the story of Geppetto's on P Street before. We left there after my wife sent back her veal dish because it wasn't what she had ordered, and then several minutes later the server returned with the same plate and plunked it in front of her, yelling that it was the only veal on the menu. It wasn't. The manager came over and you knew she just wanted to get rid of us. We got the drift, by which time the waitress was in tears, asking us to stay because she was having a bad day. It was too much to bear. We should have walked out early on during our last visit to Blue Ridge. It would have put an end to an increasingly hostile experience and pre-empted an unfriendly email from the owner, which I answered in detail but never received a response.

Not sure what night you are celebrating your anniversary, but the Oval Room as of right now has availability this Friday and Saturday.

Does anyone know why the back dining room is closed until the end of the month? (And why they have stopped updating their website?)

Last week in the Thursday design section inserted into The Washington Post I read a column by a property owner who harvested small dandelion leaves from his lawn to serve as a salad and wrote that by picking them while still tender he avoided their bitterness. Then I read a spinach recipe -- I forget where, maybe in the Times -- where you were instructed what to do to avoid the natural bitterness of spinach. While there must be some truth in them, both of these observations belie my own experience. The spinach sold the last two weekends in April at Gardener's Gourmet -- across from the stands of Toigo and Heinz Tomet -- was wonderfully sweet. When unexpected things happen to familiar vegetables, I never know whether to attribute it to the variety or the weather, or a combination of the two. Following a recipe for health from The New York Times I incorporated the expemplary spinach into a pie, the equivalent of a lighter-than-Julia Child quiche, and it was delicious. I probably did cheat by exceeding the recommended amount of gruyere, but not by much, and there is still a substantial amount of egg in the crust and filling, so I'm not sure what the cholesterol police would have to say about this if you prepared this dish week after week. But even when the spinach isn't running sweet, I don't associate it much with what's bitter. As for dandelions, I have seen them at the market, but have been nibbling on the leaves since March along the three sections of the Billy Goat trail now that I have lost my job and don't seem to be able to find another or anything better to do with my time than wander along the river and leave my cares behind. Freshly picked dandelion leaves from along the Potomac and the canal are incomparable, succulent and tender in the early spring. But I have found them invariably bitter, even if sublimely so. That's one reason I savor them one at a time. I also move away from the towpath to gather them. Dogs are the reason for that.

I have only visited this place once, on the Christmas after it opened here. I am willing to return, but someone will need to give me a good reason first. The zucchini -- in a greasy mound of sticks -- was the most unpleasant version of this usually reliable vegetable i have ever encountered. We had something else, I don't remember what it was, that pretty much killed off the usually enormous appetites at our table, which was maybe half a shame because the bucket of pasta that came to us last didn't seem half-bad but went mostly uneaten. We just weren't up for it, so decided to take it home. We were unable to take it home, however, because the clean-up crew mistakenly threw it in the trash. After going back to the kitchen, and I guess attempting unsuccessfullly to recover it from the trash, our waiter apologized profusely, but with the smarmy attitude that Tom Sietsema seemed to be complaining about at Citronelle a couple of years ago. End of story: we will never know what the pasta might have coagulated into.

The thing is you could have ordered an entirely different meal last night and still had one of the best dinners of the year. The asparagus salad is one of the most satisfying around, with the spears -- a vibrant Merrie Melodies green -- meticulously shaved up to their tips, elevated by a pillow of well-seasoned, silken burrata and rounded out by baby lettuce dressed with a few shocks of anchovy saltiness. Soft-shelled crab sprinkled with hazlenuts and a few fava beans also shows off the kitchen well. The meats are primarily what's missing on Sunday -- such as the great, walloped-flat Wiener schnitzel I encountered here the week before last. This classic dish shouldn't really work; it sounds like a prescription for pounding juicy veal into cardboard, but the frying and the breading turn it into something immensely satisfying, especially when there is a giant-yolked hen's egg beside it. If you are going to Palena on Sunday night to satisfy your jones for the Palena burger or the half chicken then you are definitely in for a disappointment. While I like both of those dishes, which put the cafe on the map in the first place, and I do order them, and I actually wish I was eating them now, it's easy to be distracted by other items on the menu. It's also worth remembering that there are a few things that pop up on Sunday night, such as the pizzas, which are medium-sized, cut into four pieces and enough for two if you are exploring other parts of the menu, which you should. There are also slices of rustic cake, larger portions for a lower price than available other nights. It would be hard to equal the assortment of smaller desserts available every other night, such as a plate of perfect small red strawberries sparkling like gems in a spring blizzard of cream and meringue. Even so, a chocolate meringue cake -- and I believe there has been lemon -- is on the unusual side, with the egg white adding some chewiness. I like the rhubarb cake too, though maybe it's too dry and its rhubarb flavor is elusive. However, the torte is served with a dollop of cream at least as good as the cream at Buck's just up the road to smooth over any slight imperfections.

i have had good meals at buck's countless times, but haven't been there in a good while. the last couple of times we tried to pop in following readings at politics and prose, the place was slammed with what we assumed were last-minute groupon customers. i probably would not have wanted to eat there anyway on an unexpectedly crowded night. during the greenwood days, portions could shrink dramatically when ingredients were running out, and that appeared to be the case in the post-greenwood days as well. i particularly remember a diner at a neighboring table complaining to her friend about her mini-burger, and it was small. in my experience, and i suppose we are big eaters, $65 seems closer to what it would cost one person to eat here, not two. when we had our son with us a few weeks ago, i chose comet in order to avoid the additional expense, where we start with the chicken wings. (both restaurants are staffed by an engaging cast of characters that, along with the decor, makes them unique.) i remember buck's at its best in the spring, putting to good use the local vegetables as they were coming in, so around now is probably an appropriate time to make a reacquaintance.

It is almost invariably sweltering there in the summer, which is my main complaint about this place, and we go for the beers on tap, two of them local. for a while, the restaurant started looking down to us, and now it is looking up again. however, there are still inconsistencies, beginning with the spring pizza. one week it restored our faith in the pizzas at radius, the next week was greasy on an underdeveloped crust. also, the toppings on the special pizzas, at least, often tend to be too rich. fortunately, there are always good things to be found on the rest of the menu, starting with the risotto, the latest version strewn with apple matchsticks and displaying some asian leanings (as does the pea soup, with a soy broth). the pork belly sandwich is a satisfying alternative to pizza as well, and you can add ravioli, salads and mussels to the list. grilled cheese and tomato bisque was on the menu briefly, simple and transporting, though i haven't seen it lately. new things pop up, or favorites reappear every so often, which keeps the menu from going stale. some time ago, radius lost its best bartender, who was able to shake a stellar dry hendricks martini. these days, that drink can be hit or miss, although it is still decent, overly wet, on a less inspired night. anyway, overall i would recommend radius and its enlightened kitchen. it has an allure that brings us back often, even though, and i don't know why, it doesn't always seem to have its act together and can be found missing the constant vigilance it sometimes may need.