giant shrimp

except we are talking about two different kinds of writing here; in tom's case it is a chat in which he is typing as fast as he can and doesn't have the luxury of dotting his i's. online mishaps don't bother me; that's the trade off for being able to read and right things that would never make it into print otherwise.

looks like a sentence to me.

hopefully the tuna will be listed on saturday. i have been on a tuna quest lately, and so far in the lead is the yellowtail jaw at sushi ko. it sounds like this could turn neck and neck.

on his maiden show last night: warren brown apparently has a knack for whipping up things that come across on television, judging from the star appearance of his raspberry, chocolate pudding and whipped cream parfait, which connected segments on extreme purveyors of sugar concoctions -- including a dangerous july 4th cannon cake for blasting off starbursts in baltimore, a windows catering preparation of a chocolate "celebrate"-vintage champagne magnum packed in a white chocolate crate and shavings and an establishment in atlantic city where every course nourishes the sweet tooth. how does he do it? to find out, you have to go to the food network, i guess, although there were some helpful hints: stop mixing the cream before it turns to butter, finish it off by whisking by hand and touch the surface of your pudding with cellophane. personally, i have never minded a skin on my puddings, even a thick one, but i can see where that would be a problem in this recipe. and finish it off by piping on ganache. i was happy there were live raspberries on the show, but the red layers looked almost unnatural on our set, raising the quintessential question about television -- is it real enough to eat?

i found tom's chat especially intriguing this week. at one point he refers to a hitchcockian persona, confides that he felt like a thief even though the incident only involved swapped umbrellas, reveals a year-long assignment in germany, lapses into the mother tongue and professes amazement that a belgian chef has been allowed to continue poisoning his patrons with asparagus ice cream. restaurants are frozen in amber, shadows of their former selves and even have secret entrances. he also confides that he is putting on his long johns and likes to start the day with oatmeal with flax and honey, an aside to a thinly veiled lamentation on the state of his health. this busy guy needs to put aside some time for the couch!

and baby pandas.

there used to be a similar bus driver facility at friendship heights now buried under a highrise that is a far uglier building than anything by the bridge. it was a hangout for winos and had a uniquely rank odor from the many things they were spilling in there. i could stand it for about five minutes for warmth if it was cold enough outside and there was a long wait for the next bus. as for mama's, that restaurant was in its prime about 30 years ago, before the renovation, in the days when ted kennedy was a hothead you really didn't want to run into. bacchus marked a more sophisticated departure from the restaurant's home cooking. the food is still decent, i guess, and fairly inexpensive, but the last few times we were there vegetables were being way overcooked. it's always been pretty much meat that's the star, but the vine leaves and cabbage dishes were better before as well. they used to boast about what they hauled in from their garden in virginia, don't know if that is happening anymore. the whole place goes down fairly smoothly, however, with arak, and turkish coffee provides a jolt. i've always been lukewarm about bird nests. their version was pretty fine in its heyday. in the old days, mama used to jabber incessantly on the telephone in the back in what must have been lebanese, lending further authenticity to meals. one time we saw a boisterous denizen of the bar escorted from the premises by two or three waiters. they returned about five minutes later with big smiles on their faces. they had pasted him, we guessed.

they are not cooking bunnies at palena. they are cooking the eatin' kind.

don't eat the mexican jumping beans!

i don't know your itinerary, but you shouldn't drink the water, including ice, and you need to be careful about the street food unless you have built up an immunity to it. the street food in mexico looks great, but it is probably not a good idea to eat it unless you are familiar with the precautions to take, which i'm not. good hotels with tourists most likely will have gringo-safe kitchens. we found some pretty good restaurants in mexico city when we were there a couple of years ago, but they didn't fall into the not to be missed category, except for an offshoot from spain in the zona rosa -- restaurante tezka in the royal hotel). the city's san angel inn is a worthwhile destination as well, the food scene in the markets is pretty wild (at xochimilco, but we just looked at it. a lot of free samples, meats, etc., and on the canals, corn on the cob and beer in festive situations (and wild birds in cages). fonda el refugio, also in the zona rosa, is worth seeking out. we found some reliable restaurant recommendations in the new york times, maybe from mark bittman, i forget, and i might be able to find them. i would make sure to see the museum of archeology and the pyramids, among other sites. mexico city is a great experience, and if it didn't seem to us to be a great food city for visitors, the mexican food there is still far better than anything you will find around here. of course, don't know what's changed since we were there.

thanks for the behind-the-scenes information, which will be good to go on when i am dealing with these situations. with a store that i have found has a fair number of pricing problems, maybe your policy of giving the product away free should be established as the chain's policy, not just at the discretion of individual managers at individual locations. also, i have apparently been talking to the wrong managers, and quite a few of them. it seems like a case of they just can't be bothered, to me. although i have nothing, per se, against keeping the workers happy.

i'm not certain about anything in this matter. it's only what i was told, and i have been told many things over the years since i first encountered this problem. it pertained to fresh fields and bread and circus before they became whole foods. however, if there is a store policy on handling this, i have never seen it, and i saw price discrepancies on one item go on for at least two months this summer. on a pasta mispricing, i suggested to the manager at upper georgetown that they could at least change the shelf price on an item that was ringing up higher when it couldn't be corrected in the computer. she said she couldn't do it without permission from corporate headquarters.

we don't live in the neighborhood like we used to, but the steak ($35 these days) keeps us coming back. it's my wife's favorite, and it really is up there, although i have seen diners hassling servers because they can't eat about a quarter of the giant slab that has been left untrimmed. as everyone knows, this is a prime spot for customers who are bruising for an argument, but that seems to have settled down some. for example, in the my way or the highway days, you couldn't order less than a french press pot of coffee (and it was usually so good that you wouldn't have wanted to after your first sip). today, you are allowed to end your meal with just a cup. the farmer's salad on sunday night was a perfect expression of what's available in between seasons: a few large arugula leaves, bits of walnut and local feta, a small handful of yellow wax beans and jewel-colored tomatoes (i hesitate to call them cherry, though they were) that were perfectly round, some as small as the size of shooters, and best of all pure tomato flavor, in a dressing that was so flavorful i took some bread to it. i could have used some more. portion control is not a strong point here, but in my experience over the years i have found it works both ways: a bit less when the kitchen is afraid of running out and sometimes a whole lot more when business is winding down and there are too many leftovers. my companion almost always goes for the iceberg lettuce with blue cheese dresssing. it does taste good, but i'm not totally in favor of indulging in just about the blandest, though crunchiest of vegetables, just because it's loaded up with cholesterol. my entree was whole fish with california green sauce -- always a moist and fleshy branzino -- that was so welcoming i ate it down to its head and eyeballs. for dessert i was able to order something i hadn't had before from a menu that holds on to its standard fare rather tightly and moves slowly, season by season, through the year. a double-tiered fig cake, thick cream in the center and glazed with lemon on top, a few thirds of the fruit in perfect form, providing creaminess themselves, grades of sweetness throughout, a note of salt, the texture nailed -- this is one dessert that is worth tracking down. desserts are one of the strengths at this restaurant. service, unfortunately, was not on par with the food. the staff is friendly and the vibes are laid back despite the rumors that there is an artistic temperament at the stove, but at the outset we found ourselves in a race for the money and we weren't able to slow it down before heading into the half-way point of the dinner. i believe this was an encounter with a new server who didn't really know what he was doing because no one had bothered to adequately fill him in and there was no one to watch over his shoulder. that's my explanation for ordering, being served drinks, appetizers and entrees well within the 15-minute mark. the food itself was carried by a regular who didn't really make the best of a bad situation by delivering entrees "ready or not" style before the previous course was entirely consumed. all three courses were served "who get's what style." the server was great at repleneshing water, while dropping the ball on most other things. i didn't really mind going to the bar to request glasses of wine and they were brought to the table quickly. i know it helped turn things around when too many tables were going empty, but i have never been sold on this fishing and camping thing. this is a beautiful room, incandescent and glowing with dangling art glass fixtures and huge, brooding blown up photographs, dark walls and corners, a communal table that's out of a movie, and the fishing lures and other crap that were thrown in to bring in the crowds feel extraneous, to say the least. prices were rolled back considerably at the outset of this reconception and have since crept back to where they were, or even higher. if you order full meals, including the steak, you probably won't get out of buck's for less than $160-170. i'm willing to pay the price, but why do i have to get sent to camp. all that comes to mind is poison ivy. i have read that there are plans for pingpong as a concept when they take over the thai room space at the corner. bring it on, i guess.

i don't think it is manufactured any longer, but it is hard to imagine that there is anything out there today like bonomo's turkish taffee. the bars came in chocolate, vanilla, strawberry and banana, and i collected all of them. for a variation, you could freeze them and then smack them in their wrapper flat on the table and they would turn into dozens of pieces and shards. what did they call the giant sugar daddies. when you worked on them long enough, you could start stretching the caramel. and there was a version covered in chocolate. i remember chocolate bubble gum, tiny brightly colored sugar dots on paper that typically would peel off the roll with some of the paper attached, giant charm lollipops, which were as hard as your teeth if you started chewing on them -- a mixed bag. my mother-in-law banned wax lips because they would give you cancer. which in a child's eyes made them all the more desirable. red-tipped candy cigarettes were a bit of a disappointment when you stopped smoking and decided to eat them. licorice pipes were tasty, especially the pink (?) tobacco. few children will have the adult sensation of feeling a crown pulled up by a hard caramel. i try to stay away from these things because i really don't want to become one of my dentist's best friends. and i still remember the television commercial with choo-choo charlie plugging good and plenty. they really don't make them like that anymore.

another small complaint about an indispensable (to me, especially heading into root vegetable season) grocery store: friday night at the p street whole foods, 12 ounces of allegro french roast beans, on sale for $8.99, down from $9.99, ring up at the cash register as guess what. i stop the cashier, we go through the checking the shelf price routine to make sure my price is right, and this time the checker tells her to sell it to me for $6.99 -- an arbitrary amount and i probably could get a better deal by pulling a scene at the manager's desk but decide to take it. and i learned something. this is not a scam, and the price will be adjusted by a woman who visits the store every couple of weeks just for that purpose. actually, it's not what i'm paying that really bothers me when things ring up wrong. i often pay more for coffee, especially if it has something clever like a skeleton celebrating the brew on the package ($10.99 these post-sale days). i don't fully understand the problem. it is deep rooted. but apparently i care about the store getting the prices right considerably more than the store does. (wrong coffee prices don't seem to happen at the "upper georgetown" store, because coffee is not one of its strong points. you go to that store for cheese and beer. the chain seems smart enough to carve out different niches for various locations, i guess to keep the customers circulating.)

drawing distinctions with etete, the vegetable combination at a recent dinner at sodere was a bit perkier than at its practically-next-door neighbor, and even the lettuce and tomato salad started making sense, spiked with specks of hot green pepper. zelbo gomen with shiro (collard greens cooked with yellow pea flour) was unavailable; the dollop of greens in the combo suggested that we were missing out on something special. a combination of doro wot (a chicken that has escaped, leaving its leg and an egg behind), beef wat and alecha fitfit (lamb bone) provides berbere and two other intriguing and rich sauces that are essential to these dishes. the presentation is a satisfying study in meat, rendering three unique mixtures of flavor and texture. with delicious, greyish injera in hand we made fairly fast work of the stews, picking off the bones like hyenas. one of my only complaints about this cuisine is that it is too fast too eat and you are full before you know it. spiciness lurks in the food at sodere, smoldering faintly when it appears, rather than burning. there were no appetizers on the menu, and there really is no need for them. bigger than etete, though still not capable of seating a crowd, sodere is layed out in a similar gun-shot configuration of window tables up front, seating running up the sides, a bar and then the kitchen. it has more television sets, and the sounds of at least two of them were blaring along with ethiopian music, a cacophony that miraculously rolls over the conversation without drowning it out. if avocado green is your color, you've hit the jackpot, and the lighting is turned up almost high enough to start bouncing off the walls. the service is endearing, with the opportunity to linger, but it's the food here that puts everybody on the same wavelength. based on just single visits, i would say that things are pretty much ready to go in this kitchen, compared to etete, where what exactly is going on back there, hard labor and more, is a bit of a mystery. etete is darker, its food and ambiance capable of transporting you to an even stranger place.

i ate the tang, but it was not as good as the fizzy citric powders and sugar blocks i bought as a young child from a corner candy store in frankfurt. i don't remember their names, but one had a happy sun on the wrapper. i liked these so much that i shared them with my pet frogs, but decided it was probably not good for them when they turned strange colors. timtims (gummy bears) were five for a penny, or a pfennig apiece, the exchange rate in those days. i still like them, now not as much as then, and children can associate with them (and other candy) in a way that most (normal) adults cannot, even if they try. sensens (?), little black breath mints, seemed almost as adult to me as smoking. picked growing wild, there was nothing more delicious than a bowl of red currants with cream and sugar. as an adult, they taste infinitely better in my memory. i never acquired a taste for the big snails leaving their slime trails all over the place. the germans would eat them right out of their shells, and at one spot on a trail through the woods someone had gotten sick on them. children walking alone through the woods were warned that they risked having their heads cut off.

sometimes you have to compromise. it bother me that i can't try out the tripe at an ethiopian restaurant without possibly ruining the meal, but i have learned to live with it. an aversion to eggs, on the other hand, isn't so easy. we are still working that one out, after more than 30 years. one of our nieces, 18 years old, recently got under our skin when she informed me at a restaurant that there were only three vegetables she could eat. one of them was carrots. i don't remember the other two. they weren't lettuce and potatoes, which she apparently doesn't consider vegetables, because i have seen her eat those. absolutely no tomatoes, however. anyway, i told her rather sternly that she would find it impossible to get through her adult life without expanding her tastes, and i would agree that she is ruining her chances for a good marriage if she doesn't start approaching her meals with a more open mind.

in the doctorow line, they said that giada was even more beautiful, and smaller than she looks on television. my wife was pissed when she found out she had missed one of her all-time food channel favorites because we were waiting forever in the tom wolfe line to get a signature on bonfire of the vanities. tom takes about as long signing one book as he does tying his bowtie, so about a hundred feet away was as close as we finally got.

i lost it again tonight at the whole foods, this time in georgetown, over an item ringing up higher at the register than the price on the shelf. if anybody is interested, here is the scam. this was going on throughout the summer at both georgetown and p street, it seemed to stop at both, but it has arisen again: most of the rusticella d'abbruzo dried pasta sells for $4.99 for a 17.5 ounce package (gnocchi is higher). however, there will be one that sells for less. tonight it was penne rigate for $4.49, earlier in the summer the price difference was more in the buyer's favor, $1.00 or so, for various pastas. why is pennne regate 40 cents cheaper than the penne, because it's in a bag and not a box? or, i thought this brand of pasta was too expensive, but maybe i'll try it at the lower prirce. okay, i'll definitely get the cheaper one, i can live with the grooves. except that when you go to the register it rings up at the same price as the rest. as a variation on a theme, tonight it rang up at $4.89. send out search party from the register to confirm wrong price, etc., etc. this time, however, the cashier suggested i talk to the manager before she completed the sale. manager: more double checking and profuse apologies. i explained to him that this has been going on for a while. he promises that he will get to the bottom of this and find out what happened. i tell him i already know what happened: the wrong amount was entered into the computer. i have been told this many times before, so i know what i am talking about. i also wished him luck in succeeding where so many other managers have failed before. then he confides to me that when something like this happens, everyone who works in the store is ashamed. and a final promise: the next time i'm in the store, the penne regate will ring up at $4.49. however, i know from experience that this isn't true: it will ring up at $4.99, but the price on the shelf may, or may not, have been changed. what can i do? i tell him i am not coming back to find out. we both know, i suspect, that the exchange has not been entirely honest on either side. somehow, they know that i will return.

we had a good meal at plouf about a year ago: good mussels, good flatiron steak, wine, etc. it's in an alley with a couple of other restaurants that try to lure you in. outdoor seating, but we prefer it inside with the swordfish. this is not one of the very best restaurants in the city, but we enjoyed it as much as the slanted door (a totally different scene, not modern). it is off bush, a couple of blocks down from the gate to chinatown on the left heading down into the financial district, an easy walk from union square.

one morning, i opened the door to the small room where candy was stored and hundreds, if not thousands, of small mothish flies came streaming out into the theatre lobby. they had made their way out of chocolate candy bars with nuts, a rite of spring, i guess. i still don't know much about what kind of life cycle we are talking about. we used to do a brisk business in cellophane-wrapped organic muffins, until a week or two when business slowed down, and the muffins started growing moldy beards.

the virginia site is far more extensive than what is carried in the post, and includes information on all of the inspections, not just the relative few that are closed. also, as is being pointed out here, there are a lot of things involved that you would never even think about if you weren't in the business. i'm assuming that dc doesn't have anything like this. in addition to the regulations themselves, you also have to wonder about the competency of some of the inspectors, although i have no expertise to judge either on the virginia site. for example: many years ago, i had a run in with an inspector at a small theatre on connecticut avenue i was managing who took off a lot of points because we were storing popcorn bags in a crawlspace on shelves that were only x-inches off the floor, a violation, but failed to recognize the exposed sprayed-on asbestos in the area that had always bugged me but i never complained about, just making sure not to brush into it. (some amazing things can happen at a movie theatre concession stand, such as what happens when the candy bars start hatching, but that is another story.)

we were at the cafe on tuesday night and the place seemed on the deserted side, leaving at about 8:30, and even the back seemed quiet. i noticed two large parties heading there, and not much more. which got me wondering if maybe business is slowing down in the dc area. dino's looked like it had empty tables as well, though i am not sure, because the entire restaurant looks so orange tomato from the street. our son said the hot dog was the best he has ever had, and loves the pickling here, and also made it most of the way through a burger and fries, but, as an ex-bartender, denounced the mojito. i traded him for a great sidecar and found his potion acceptable, though not for quaffing, a bit too syrupy (creme de methe?) for the real thing. the martinis here provide outstanding fortification. a glass of pinot d'alsace went well with japanese sea bass accompanied by red pepper. the salad was excellent, with the best-tasting beets i have had in some time. no room for dessert, which was a crying shame. and there were way too many items on the menu we had to leave until next time.

googling for information on [restaurant X], i stumbled upon the virginia department of health restaurant inspection web site: http://www.healthspace.ca/vdh/ for a person who doesn't have to worry about responsibility for meeting various health requirements in the kitchen, bathrooms, etc., casually clicking on some of the restaurant inspections posted on this site (i started with arlington) provides an interesting perspective on local industry regulation, going far beyond what you might want to know about the cleanliness of a particular establishment. i think this is good inside information for consumers, even if it is unfair to draw conclusions from it. to satisfy my morbid curiosity, i was wondering if similar information is available for the district.