giant shrimp

what's up with the new packaging for driscoll's raspberries and blackberries on sale usually in the $3-$4 range at whole foods? the 6 oz. plastic containers have two layers of berries, and sometimes those on the bottom become moldy. you used to be able to check them out by looking through the plastic. unfortunately, the container bottoms have become untransparent, obscured by an opaque berry-colored paper liner. if the purpose of the liner is to prevent spoilage, it is not entirely successful. i have discovered moldy berries in a couple of cases. i have discussed this issue with store managers and they don't know what to make of it.

new york baker kierin baldwin's baked from scratch classic apple pie recipe in the feb. 19 sunday new york times magazine produced one of the best apple pies i have eaten in a long, long while. precooking the apple filling -- including a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar -- is one thing that contributes to the stature of this pie. the choice of honeycrisps is another good one. i encountered some moisture problems with the all-purpose pie dough, which is an easier-to-do adaptation from sam sifton, whose article precedes the recipe. (baldwin blind bakes her bottom crusts, weighing them down with goya beans.) i had to add considerably more liquid than specified to make the dough pliable, but i was able to do so without overworking the dough. despite being full from chicken sausage with flash sauerkraut and richly sauced shad and a roll of caper-speckled, mild shad roe -- a dark and accomplished version of this seasonal local dish -- i was tempted to finish a recent meal at mintwood place with a slice of apple pie. then i was reminded that it would be hard to surpass what was waiting back home. (my wife believed she recognized tom sietsema by his voice. i would not know, but whoever it was did get a table that probably usually would be reserved for more than a party of two.)

He must be saving the fifth star for la forchetta. the new mexico ave. location is not a far walk from where i live. I don't know why, but this is where i want to eat tonight. instead, we will have to head off to radius, which is still worth a visit for its specials, and can still make a mean martini when it really tries. i recently had a good pork belly sandwich there and a grilled cheese and tomato soup sounds good. not sure about how i feel about adding any amount of pickled vegetables to risotto, but it survived. radius did stumble over the past year, and its business looks down some, but the cooking is getting back on its feet. i have never tried a pizza from pizzeria autentica, maybe because i suspect it might leave me with something to yelp about. on one of his kitchen nightmares episodes, gordon ramsay forces the larcenous owners of a failing los angeles burger restaurant to confront their yelp critics. i wasn't paying strict attention to the program, but it sounded like the cost of their deficient burgers rose into the $20-$30-plus range. ramsay, who tends to take the higher road in this series on fox, suggests that by listening to what yelp has to say you can turn one of the worst restaurants into one of the best, not that this is something he has had to worry about in his own business.

The alsacian bacon and onion flammekueche could not have been better and was how I remembered central's bacon and onion tart. I tried to catch up with it last saturday after bresson's astounding "pickpocket" at the national gallery -- which unexpectedly turns into a love story -- but at maybe six central's bar area was already uncomfortably close to capacity, with the exception of questionable seats at either end where the counter space was squeezed by water pitchers. A bacon cheeseburger, ordered medium rare, was not how I remember central's stellar version, the crunch forgone and the center tartare, while still a good sandwich. The frise in a salad of perch filet was reminiscent of central, and this small plate, the best dish of the night, was simple and light. At first impression, the cooking here seems less playful, more down-to-earth, but equally assured. The menu may be briefer, but it leaves plenty of terrain to explore -- including seasonal local ingredients as they come and go. Prices are close to central's, which means that if you have lost your job recently you are not going to be able to afford to eat here as frequently as you might like.

There is a really good half bottle ($34) of gruner veltliner worth trying; i should have written it down, but i am sure the restaurant would be happy to tell you. gobelsburger is good, too, and i have seen it recently at tenleytown whole foods; it's also at the cork store, along with a higher-priced reserve version. haven't encountered problematic sweetness in any of these three

i have seen bucks twice and suhi ko once at the height of groupon frenzy and it was not a pretty picture. you definitely are not getting the same level of service -- both places were obviously stretched thin -- and i would expect the food to suffer as well. some restaurants are expert at reducing portion sizes to keep from running out of things on busy nights, and i have seen just how much the size of a hamburger can shrink when the heat is on. you have to weigh the relatively small amound of money you are saving against the potentially big difference the coupons can make in the quality of your dining experience. i have pretty much shunned these coupons when maybe i shouldn't have. i would imagine there are a lot of places you can use them and everything is fine, but i know the peril is out there.

the sign for the $9 a pound regular sized green beans at the dupont market said they were delicious. i can't imagine any green beans being that delicious, and i wonder who would buy them at that price. $1.99 a pound second tomatoes were a good deal, though. and one stand was being extra generous with its celery. nobody around these parts appears to have thai watercress, which can be found in the nibble basket accompanying the small ultra-controlled rounds of delicious food at little serow. anyway, it is especially hot and spicy, and i hope word gets around and a local farmer will look in to cultivating it. (my mother is never going to be able to sit on the bar stools at little serow, which takes restaurants in washington to a different level, but she probably doesn't want to feel like she is wandering through a quentin tarantino movie anyway; in other words, she would not get this place at all. my only criticism is that they should turn down the music and change the selections. for a restaurant that seemed to me at first glance to be absolutely meticulous -- my wife thinks maybe the beautiful dresses the servers were wearing were custom-made -- this is really experimental territory, right up there with the early days of comet ping pong and keeping close company in some ways with ripple and eola. of course, you do have to pay top dollar to enjoy the mood that is being provided.)

Having mistaken it for roger coulon champagne, and it was the sole remaining bottle in roger coulon champagne’s place on the shelf at Cork, I returned a bottle of roger coulon coteaux champenois blanc to the store, complaining that it was flat, only to find out that this was actually still wine from the champagne region. Unaware that anyone deliberately produced flat champagne, I hadn’t realized what the label was telling me. It resembled a bottle of champagne, down to the cork’s foiling, except when unwrapped, the cork was found clamped to the bottle with heavy metal, not wire, and difficult to ply loose. My thought was that someone had tried to save it on the production line and failed. I only had a couple sips of the small amount I had poured into the flute. I hadn’t expected what I found, and the disappointment brought any conversation with this wine to an abrupt halt. I was left with a fleeting impression of its taste, which had some complexity, and nothing muddled about it, with two or three distinct flavors revolving in their own orbits. Its body was thin, almost watery, and lacking the amplification of those flavors had the bubbles been there. It was close to what I would have found had I passed out with a magnum by my bed and woken the next morning to taste the dregs. But I can’t really be sure, and I don’t know if it’s worth spending $40 or whatever it costs to find out more about this strange brew. There didn’t appear to be any in stock a week or so ago when I was back in the store, although I wasn’t hunting for it. there was a $71 bottle of gaston chiquet, don’t recall the vintage, that’s even better than roger coulon champagne. And cork is worth a visit for a lively bottle of schloss gobelsburg gruner veltliner ($19) that’s pretty spectacular. I have consumed enough of it that I am ready to let my secret out.

wow, that's worse than i thought! (actually, prices at the market are easily competitive with whole foods prices, and the quality and variety of the food is vastly superior, even after natural devastation, although i would have liked romanesco to accompany the broccoli and cauliflower. even so, enough fruits and vegetables for about a week's worth of meals for two people rang up at more than $140 at the dupont market. i'm sure there are many good reasons for it, but the prices are really getting up there.)

food prices are really high these days and i am beginning to notice. my first purchase sunday morning: a medium cauliflower, two pounds, and a spear of broccoli with a head as wide as a hand cost $10.

it's tottally near nothing as far as i'm concerned, and even the macarthur boulevard places are a hike through the woods away for me. that's why i go to the thursday farmers market near mcpherson square, usually picking up some macarons and blueberry pound cake. the slices of carrot cake are good as well, though i prefer an entire cake to slices, which is just the opposite of pies. the pie-for-one servings encountered at restaurants are just about never as good as a slice from the real thing -- a whole big pie.

unless i am mistaken, it looks like he left off the chivito, which has been the big draw for this place. what's that about?

tom comes down hard on le zinc: http://www.washingtonpost.com/gog/restaurants/le-zinc,1216058/critic-review.html i have only eaten here once, a month or so ago, and didn't encounter these problems. i also didn't order what he compalins about. i started out with a salad special that was good, and if the ingredients were local I really didn't notice the difference. and then i had duck, but unfortunately don't remember much in detail. as for the roar of the dining room, it was early in the evening, before the rush. i haven't been back since, not because i was unhappy with the meal, but because it is on the expensive side, about as expensive as tabard inn, for example, where i had an even better time for about the same price, including lemon agnolotti that beat and were definitely more substantial than those earning all the praise at graffiato. for the value, i didn't see anything at zinc comparable to the three goat tacos at tabard inn that were almost substantial enough to make a meal of, for $10. off the top of my head, zinc costs as much as palena cafe, ripple and firefly, which i can't afford to get to nearly often enough as it is -- warts and all (there was definitely too much tapioca powder on the plates at ripple the last time i was there, for a rather self-conscious tomato festival that ended up doing a half-hearted job of celebrating the tomato on the plate. it was fine infused with bacon fat, but basil crumbs were not successful, clotting the flavor, and there was more of it, again i am short on details. i don't have a big problem with the serving portions on the regular menu, but since when does an amuse count as a course? i had two free ones in the back room at palena.) my only complaint about zinc is that the menu felt a bit stiff, but the place is still young, so i would expect things to start loosening up.

Billings it was very much on the run, after driving just about as fast as our rental car would go to make up for time lost in the mountains, but a meal at walkers american grill was unexpectedly good. a week of decent, but unexciting meals at the lodge at yellowstone lake, as well as hiking on trails where the grizzlies came out to try for bison in the early mornings and late afternoons, might have been working to the restaurant's advantqge. this was several years ago, so things may have run downhill, but i do remember it was the best meal we had had in a while. i also remember that the airport going home was so slow they took the precaution of frisking my wife.

I assume that the Norcia (pronounced nor-shuh) isn’t a best seller at 2 Amys, but it’s emerged as a favorite when I’m in the mood for meat, which I don’t eat that often during the week, usually only at restaurants. The salami is salty as it emerges from a cover of tomato sauce and mozzarella, sweetened by grilled pepper, a pleasantly chewy counterpart to the soft toppings. There was nothing remotely soupy going on the last time I had this. You could actually eat a slice holding it, with only the very tip of the center crust tonguing down. The other day you were also able to celebrate pork with pancetta-wrapped spring onions, about the length of sparklers, almost thick and brown as cigars, five to an order and also easy to handle. Between the pizza and these there is obviously way too much salt for one meal. I felt like i wanted, or needed, a fried egg, but this is a consoling way of eating the thick scallion from its bulb up to the singed end of its leaf, the crisp bacony coat tending to overpower the filling, just as you might expect, once you stop paying strict attention to what you are eating, which does happen before you’ve finished, even when two people are sharing the plate.

i just saw this administrative announcement thread, and would like to clear up one thing: i don't doubt that people had a good meal at local 16 on tuesday, and the photos provided a good reference for me. also, it is possible that some of the food in addition to the pizza was available on the menu. looking closely at the website, i may have read over it. however, my problem is that the tuesday dinner suggests an entirely different restaurant from the one i encountered on the weekend, including the menu. i myself would like to have an explanation for why the talent didn't appear to be in the kitchen. we really felt like someone had pulled something over on us, and in this case it would be the owner of the restaurant. but i don't know the story or the extent to which this was intentional. and for all i know, two hours after we left, almost miraculously, they could have been producing spectacular food, in which case maybe they should put a sign at the door -- "the pizza man is in." i have always thought that things tend to balance themselves out well in the restaurant threads, and they provide a more accurate picture of what is going on than a static review, even if it is based on a number of meals over several weeks. (for example, there is one short, negative comment on ripple that stands out and makes you wonder. It is followed by other points of view, and it encourages you to check out the food for yourself and see if you agree.) i am not sure an ombudsman is needed, although the case of local 16 does raise questions. It is a serious matter if members of the board are being duped into attending special meals that are nothing like what the restaurant actually delivers so that they can rave about them afterwards and lure clueless individuals like myself into wasting their time and money. If that is what actually happened, that is a bad precedent for this board. In reality, I suspect that the explanation is not that clear-cut. Maybe the restaurant is excited about the new direction it is taking, and wants to show itself off, even though it is not yet ready to consistently accomplish what it would like. There are people who visit this board all the time who actually do know what is going on behind the scenes. I don't know if they want to divulge it, but it would make for interesting reading. i was not imaging things in what i wrote about local 16, but that doesn't make it the last word on the place, even from me.

just a few days after what sounds and appears to be a great meal, i have to ask if these guys have already left. the meal i had raises the question of why a restaurant this dismal would draw attention to itself by hiring these people in the first place. with the exception of the pizzas, what you were served on tuesday isn't even on the menu, and if there were any specials i sure didn't hear about them. a special blueberry lemonade cocktail ($10) tastes more like water than anything else; i guess blueberry vodka, the alcoholic ingredient, doesn't have much flavor, and you wonder where the lemon went. the several plump blueberries in the drink were good, but they might just as well have been served on a plate or in a bowl because they are not integral to this concoction, except in a misleadingly visual way. a better alternative is the hendrix martini ($12), which is pretty much what it's supposed to be. deviled eggs ($3) taste ok, look a bit sloppy, and there is some tuna swimming around in there somewhere, who knows what for. three halves sit on a nice bed of clean, beautiful arugula, that is undressed and left entirely to its own devices. i really felt like i was grazing when eating this one leaf at a time, an unexpecged bonus, and ironic because they were the best thing all night, but again, extraneous. french fries ($5) are nondescript, except they come with a special house-made ketchup. there is some good tomato flavor in this, but another ingredient which might have been identified if there were more people at the table, muddies it up. the server was no help. it's a secret recipe, apparently, and she isn't even allowed to know what is in it. next time, if there is a next time, i will skip the shrimp croquettes ($7), which contain a hot mousse of sorts, with some evidence of shrimp. i would put these up there with poi in the all texture (wallpaper paste) and no flavor department, but they were greaseless. the biggest disappointment of the night, however, was the pizza, the aden ($12). i have to say that the pizza was a shockingly wan version of what has been posted above. the crust was sturdy -- on the flavorless side, which seems to be the theme of this place -- chewy and not bad, some char on the underside but none on top. the entire pie could have benefitted from some more time in the oven. mozzarella was unevenly distributed, and it did a poor job of holding things together. the few bits of pinkish sausage had the annoying habit of rolling off. onions were soft, and that's all you could say about them. ditto the peppers. the kitchen was stingy with the fennel, for which one should be grateful, because these were just about the most offensive morsels i have ever encountered on a pizza. they tasted not just salty, but brined, and although their flavor was just about entirely wrung out, and they were only the size of toe nails, they obliviated anything that night have been good around them. this reastaurant offered some reasonably accomplished food in its early days, but obviously things have changed. the people who work here all seem nice, but totally ruderless, inhabitants of their own little village. even if the food had been good, i would have had some concerns about the service. everything is delivered to the table as fast as possible, the crew sort of wanders all over the place except in your direction when you need them. water glasses don't get filled easily, and when they do you might start realizing that your glass smells fishy. it didn't seem like anyone on the floor had received the training they deserve. it's only one visit, i know, but this place was sad and in need of serious rejuvenation. reading some of the encomiums above, i have to wonder if this isn't a hoax.

is it possible some restaurants are running without enough dishes? i have occasionally been left with that impression.

In Tom Sietsema’s First Bite column this morning on Station 4 by the Waterfront metro, there’s more than one thing that makes the restaurant website’s description of chef Orlando Amaro’s credentials a “tantalizing morsel”: "In 2009, Amaro worked under the direction of Chef Ferran Adria at El Bulli in Girona, Spain." It’s about a 28-mile drive from Girona to the site of El Bulli in Roses.

i'm not sure i like these coupons. the only one i ever purchased expired before i had a chance to use it (my bad). but i am blaming coupons for the onslaught on sushi ko on an early tuesday evening, unless there is something else to explain why a small crowd was spilling out onto the street and the only room for dining inside was on someone's lap (like the establishment next door), with a two hour wait for a table and the chefs up front cutting like mad. we ended up at ris, the second night there within a few weeks, and we still didn't find our way, wandering through an expensive menu, to anything to get excited about. vichyssoise was about as creamy as soup can get, without much flavor. a cheesburger ($11) was good, a flattened ball, about medium rare on one half as requested and well done on the other, the meat crumbly, cheddar scant, served with a few thin slices of nice pickles and a sweet sauce on the side, along with fries ($6) that had would have been better had they not travelled through a salt storm in the kitchen. the fries in a steak frites didn't have this problem, and the meat was a better cut than you normally would expect to see with this dish. it was really good, but you pay for what you get ($35). from the earlier meal, what i most remember about a turbot entree was its underseasoning. the fish itself was expertly cooked, saving the flesh from the custard it seemed to want to turn into. this was followed by a small, strawberry shortcake that was inventive -- with a few smears of strawberry ice cream and a few good strawberries up against angel food cake -- but still ended up being run of the mill. hendricks martins here are $14.50, and not consistently served cold. with a reservation and a half empty dining room on a sunday night we were relegated to the far back of the restaurant., where nobody else was sitting for most of the meal. on a tuesday night, with the dining room two-thirds full, walk-ins are eventually seated in a lonely lounge area upfront by the lonely bar. i know the chef here really knows how to cook, but i started to wonder if maybe the high-end real estate in which the restaurant is located isn't the best place for this talent.

tomatoes and corn are a great combination, and they are making the most of it here. slices of early girls on the pizza with pesto and house-made mozzarella are a happy find, juicy enough, maybe not quite as salty as they could be, on a crust that would have been sturdy enough to support them even if they were as thick as those my eighth grade best friend's mother used to cut onto her heavily topped pizzas, which i considered the best i had ever eaten. the summer risotto is good, too, with cherry tomatoes smothered by the rice, leaving them almost on their own to prove their merits. a tomato and grilled cheese sandwich has also popped up on the menu, something i would like to try. the only big miss this spring and summer was the cold cucumber soup, and that's because the cucumbers were sweet as sugar. i hadn't realized cucumbers could hold that much sweetness until i ran into the problem myself when throwing together a salad from local ingredients. i don't know if it was the growing conditions or the variety, and i guess i should ask a farmer to find out. it's been hot in radius lately, reminding me of the days when we relied more on fans than air conditioning, and i'm not sure if i could stand working in the kitchen under these conditions, although i suppose you can physically get used to it.

if i hadn't been on such a short leash, i would have spent considerably more time working through his favorites. there are so many restaurants in chinatown that i have always been skiddish about popping into them randomly. and many of the best of the obscure seem to be here one year and gone the next or experience major turnover in their kitchens. Z&Y (655 Jackson) turned out some of the best szechuan cooking i have found in some time. a short list in chinese of appetizers and entrees is under the glass on eash table, and the servers are happy to translate it from top to bottom, even smiling when frog gets a reaction from the squeamish. we ordered fried shrimp in egg batter, but it came with a surprise -- sweet fried morsels that after a bite or two were identifiable as corn. there's enough corn to last a long time if you are eating the kernels individually with your chopsticks, so eventually i started shoveling them from the plate as i held it up to my mouth. this was a really good dish, a good combination, not oily, but crisp and popping, the shrimp delicious. a bowl of tan tan (dan dan) noodles was also good, not as fiery as their pool of chili oil suggested and not much meat around, but mostly about the long satisfying strands of soft, chewy, slurpy noodles. even the egg rolls were worth ordering (not my idea), cut diagonally, and packed well with mostly vegetables. there was a 15 minute or so wait on a weekday evening; an altar and a long-nippled buddah provide some diversion at the head of this small but bustling restaurant. if i lived in san francisco, i am sure i would have plenty more to say about this place and the many others like it scattered across the city. washington, within city bounds at least, pales by comparison. i was also disappointed that i couldn't find the time for the new addition to quince and a hamburger for lunch at zuni cafe. i also would have loved to numb my mouth at mission chinese (2234 mission) inside lung shan, but they were just returning from a vacation back home on my day of departure.

On the way to the cork wine store where we were picking up some triple zero, among other bottles, decided it was a good time to see what’s going on at hank’s oyster bar these days, since they had just opened for the evening and there were plenty of empty tables inside, which’s doesn’t always seem to be the case. This place has always been about raw oysters ($2 a pop), we ordered two each of six and there were discernible differences among them, in flavor, size and even some texture – good enough to make a walrus and a carpenter out of ourselves. While I was happy to have tried one, I wouldn’t make a habit of olde salts, raised in a bay near Chincoteague, that are almost twice as salty as your typical Chesapeake oyster, having grown up fast on the seawater. There was nothing squishy or watery about this oyster, it was the salt I couldn’t get through, the ocean assuming its identity, numbing me from a true taste. If they had been handing out beauty prizes on this platter, and oysters do have a definite allure, I am afraid that the olde salt was lacking in the grace that would have won others on the plate the crown. If I could do it all over again, I would apply some of hank’s outstanding, double-horseradish cocktail sauce, just for the chance to have some. This is a fine condiment and it is best eaten here with a shrimp as your utensil. Considering the delicacy of oysters, even the odd horsey specimens that do pop up in local waters, I usually even avoid the mignonette sauce. A few squeezes of lemon is enough. Sweet and plump, small and juicy, the blue pool, plucked from the shores of Washington by hama hama, all around came closest to the way I like my oysters. The old plantation, named for the creek in which it is raised near Cape Charles on the Eastern Shore, is as pure an oyster as I can remember from these parts, soft and clean. Your first impression is one of reticence, but as it warms in your mouth, you catch the roundness of the mild flavor and the salt. If it weren’t as small as it is, the Olympia oyster, also from Washington, might come off as a little loud. It’s packed with flavor and complexities that aren’t easy to work out. For a perfect evening at hank’s, we should have ordered another round, making tasting notes and comparing them, and then maybe taken a stab at a third round, seeing how far we could go before we started losing interest in the oysters, feeling they had nothing more to say that night. This can be accompanied by several rounds of warm troeg’s sunshine pilsner on draft to wash your oysters down with a splash of bitterness. I can remember when Jamie leeds was a rising star, but you don’t hear as much about what she is cooking these days. Well fried Ipswich clams ($26) are hit and miss, bursting with juice when they are good and tough with chewy necks when they are not. A mountain of decent fries with not too much old bay and a celery seed-accented slaw assure that you won’t go home hungry, even though there is still no dessert after all these years, just the generous chunks of hard dark chocolate that I am never able, or willing, to finish off. A new York strip steak ($25) isn’t awful, but it’s hardly up to the standards of 15ria in its prime and contains more gristle than you would want to chew on. Sides of onion rings and mac and cheese are failures, the former pale and undercooked, the latter pale and not cooked long enough as well, with discordant sour and bitter undertones in the cheese. There’s something to be said for a restaurant that leaves its front door open at the end of a hot day, and they might as well because there is a fairly steady stream of servers coming and going from the many customers who are able to comfortably brave the high temperature to dine alfresco. You can feel the cold conditioned air moving out and the warm air drawn in. You are inside but there is the intrusion of the outdoors. You aren’t wilting, but it feels more like summer here than most places you go to eat.

over the past year i have had some good meals here, usually on sunday nights. however, my last visit, a couple of months ago, also a sunday night, was one of the worst meals i have had anywhere lately. i don't know who was in the kitchen, but tuna ordered rarish was refrigerator cold even beyond its center even after it had been sittiing in front of us for the 15 minutes or more it took the server to get back to the table. when it did return, it was cooked medium and came with a message equivalent to you don't know how tuna should be cooked so this is what you get. a risotto was not well cooked and didn't seem well conceived either, though i don't remember the ingredients. a bottle of wine was not brought to the table until at least halfway through the meal, and when the half-full bottle was returned in a plastic bag to take home it was placed by the server on the floor. obviously an off night, but for a relatively small restaurant, it made me wonder.

how about a slow cooked hen egg with small clams and hacked sardines for excitement ($11)? the egg was slow cooked, turning out somewhere between coddled and soft boiled, with lots of white and yolk left to flow. the ingredients were arranged in a bowl, so the symmetry doesn't last long. off the top of my head, i just don't associate runny eggs with fish, and the combination here was successful, with delicious flavors and some heat, and maybe a little too much salt. a hunk of king makerel ($22) was also good, in an anchovy sauce with brownish beans lurking below and bok choy on top, again served in a white bowl, decorated with dark smears, and there's not a lot else you can do to decorate with these ingredients working with a convex surface. this fish has some muddy and oily connotations, which are dealt with ably to turn out somewhat murky meat with some rareness at its core, not the place to find pink but what is there, sort of gray, tastes good. Quail agnolotti ($17) seemed to be up there with the clams and eggs, but i was only able to snatch one off someone else's plate. the kithcen's mission appears to be to play up flavors that push slightly into unfamiliar territory, and those here were intriguing. A butterscotch pudding with toffee crumble ($7) had not set, but i ate it anyway. i could have chugged it, but used a spoon. (despite his refined taste, giant shrimp will happily eat just about anything.) lavender panna cotta ($8), the one taste I had, was expertly prepared, a little out there in a playground of ingredients that included, i believe, candied cilantro. I always watch out for hard sugar in my desserts because it's not good for dental work. i remember hard candy from new heights, so it's no surprise to see it cropping up here, though a little softer. walking the distance from the packed bar to the dining room in the back, this feels like one of the longest, slimmest restaurants in the city. the banquettes are the stand out decor-wise, with patches of brightly colored cloth in patterns and juxtapositions reminiscent of what dutch designer hella jongerius puts together. the geometric red walls behind the banquettes i'm not as sure about. the surface looks hard yet porous, not so polished and not ready to stand up to wear and tear. this place really packs them in and i'm not sure what kinds of demands the bar places on the kitchen. it seems a challenging environment to me, though obviously not totally overwhelming, for fixing attention on the food, which was creative and ambitiious, and at this early stage in need of some small refinements. the prices may seem on the low side, lower than new heights (and i guess they are) but they add up quickly to about what you would pay at palena cafe or two other places on this block. a full dinner for two, including two bracing martinis and two glasses of wine, tax and tip puts you in the $160 range.