ema

I would like to go to Sichuan Pavilion and if someone misses the tour, then I would like to go to that too.

Thanks

www.bangkokgolden7corners.com
6395 Seven Corners Center
Falls Church, VA 22044

Tom Sietsema did a piece on this small Thai place back in November ( http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/18/AR2010111805045.html ). I am happy to report that the secret menu is secret no more. When we entered the small place this afternoon, we were handed two menus, one Thai and one Laotian. I never had Laotian food before, it was like Thai, but more rustic. Like other southeast Asian cuisine, Laotians make heavy usage of fresh vegetables and herbs as evident by the numbers of salads on the menu. We ordered the Laotian sausage, orm beef, crispy rice salad, and an order of chicken satay for the kiddo. My favorite dish was the crispy rice salad, consisted of herbs (probably cilantro and lime leaves), coconut, onions, scallions, julienne pork skin, ham, peanuts, and crispy rice in a refreshing spicy lime dressing with large lettuce leaves served on the side. You are suppose to eat it like a bulgogi by wrapping the salad inside the lettuce leaves. It was a prefect balance of savory, sour, and spicy, with bites of crispy rice and peanut for textural contrast. The flavor was incredibly complex and words do not do justice in describing this dish.

I made lobster rolls, inspired by the Redhook lobster rolls I had this weekend. It turned out delicious, except I didn'tt have the New England style rolls at home. Final cost came out to be $10 per roll, so I guess the $15 charged by Redhook isn't bad at all.

I second Grover's recommendations. Zaytinya serves small plates, so it will be fun for a group to share. You will need a reservation or go really early in the night since both places will be packed on weekends.

I would like to request the recipe for that beautiful plate of pickled vegetables and Zora's eggplant something. Thanks in advance.

It was a beautiful fall afternoon. Thanks for organizing this wonderful event. I thought I tried a little bit of everything, but it looks like I completely missed the thai curry noodles.

Will be there as soon as my garlic baby tricolor potatoes are done roasting!

I am surprised that nobody has mentioned the pappardelle with wild boar ragu. It was a simple sounding dish that turned out to be my favorite of the evening. The tender pasta carried a perfect amount of savory boar and robust tomato sauce. Strangely, it also invoked a bit of childhood nostalgia of my dad making his famous "Russian" soup. All the pasta were superb including the taglierini, but I didn't enjoy the accompany lobster tail as much as I anticipated. It tasted a little muddy, perhaps due to not being deveined before cooking.

I will be there with +1. Not sure what I will make.

I used http://chezpim.typepad.com/blogs/2007/01/pad_thai_for_be.html for pad thai. I happened to use the tamarind concentrate which turned out great.

I always find the vegetarian entrees taste superior to meat entrees in Indian restaurant. Go to Rasika and get some palak chaat, a couple of vegetarian entrees (only $12 for entree size and $7 for smaller portions), and some garlic naan. Its not very expensive if you only choose vegetarian dishes.

I am disappointed with my recent trips to XO. I gave it three tries in the last couple of months and every time the entrees were overly seasoned, doesn't matter if it was salt and pepper porkchop, seafood fried rice, or black pepper shortribs. All the dishes had either too much salt or too much soy sauce. Nowadays, I usually go to China Garden for my Cantonese fix and I think I am gonna put Mui Kee back into my rotation.

Breeze Bakery Cafe (next to Yechon)

4125 Hummer Rd

Annandale, VA 22003

I am a fan of this new bakery. They sell the same stuff as Shila and Le Matin, but the interior is cleaner and there are plenty of seats for you to sit and relax. The smoothies were overpriced, but the baked goods were reasonable. They also offer lots of samples to try like Shila's down the street. I ended up getting a strawberry roll ($3.50) and a corn flavored roll ($4.50).

For me the real highlights of the meal were the fresh chickpeas (messy, but so hard to stop eating), a plate of wonderful little crabcakes, and the roasted cauliflower with raisins, pine nuts, and capers, a flavor combination I adore. The most eagerly anticipated part of the meal was easily the most disappointing - a lamb shank prepared sous vide before being roasted prior to serving. My dad hit the nail on the head when he described it as "mushy." Flavors were ok, but it was pretty hard not to be distracted by the off-putting texture. A miss.

I find Zaytinya's vegetable mezze to be superior to their meat mezze for the three times that I frequent the place. The best dish I had was probably a peach based salad on the specials menu.

Correct me if I am wrong, but aren't some states require restaurants to card everyone regardless of age? In that case, it takes the guessworks from the restaurant staff, but in most cases, it is still at the restaurant's discretion who to card and who not to card, and some restaurants err on the side of caution since loosing their liquor license can be devastating to the business. When I was working in a restaurant during my undergrad years, the policy was to card anyone who can possibly look like they are under the age of 35. Who look like they are under 35? This can become very subjective, thus giving patrons the idea that some place are more "strict" than others.

How is Chima compares to Fogo and Texas de Brazil in terms of quality? Chima and Texas de Brazil have promotions all the time, but I have never seen Fogo give out any.

I always leave the house without my driver's license if I am not driving. The two times that I got carded was at Masa14 and Zentan. Maybe there is something about 14th St.

A huge pan of mussels mariniere + frites + a glass of house wine=$15 during happy hour.

It was just as good as Beck, but without the hassles of DC traffic.

According to Tim Carman, someone was unhappy with how the Mussel Bar staff handled a ID situation, and has started a smear campaign against it. They may have been old enough to drink, but certainly not mature enough to do so.

I don't think their business will be effected at all, if anything, Anna's complaints will serve as a warning to people who plan to go to the Mussel Bar to double check that they have their ID. My husband and I are both in our early 30s. He looks older than me and we rarely get carded in restaurants. Different restaurants differ on their policy, probably due to differences in location (near college campus or in an area with more incidents of people being busted for serving alcohol to minors, etc). On the other hand, I certainly don't expect getting admonished for taking sips of my husband's drink. It never happened to me before, but I suppose it is possible that some restaurants are more strict than others when it comes to alcohol policy.

So...I have a question. Are the pickles and olives served in Estadio, house made or can I purchase them at a gourmet store somewhere? They had a distinct savory taste that I didn't expect pickles can have. Maybe its my pregnant woman sense of taste, but I can just drink that pickle juice. I enjoyed the other dishes too and watch tapas being made in the open kitchen was thoroughly entertaining.

I grabbed a bite to eat at the bar. The price was very reasonable and I am still drooling, thinking about the crabcake sliders this morning. Sweet, perfectly seasoned jumbo lumps with so little fillers that it was having trouble staying in cake form. Our server was friendly, but he must be new since he would stand in front of the monitor and not sure which button to push.

http://www.theoceanaire.com/menus/DC/DC_BarD_Menu.pdf

It's entirely up to the establishment I believe. The most sophisticated system for tracking Groupon's I have witnessed has been a sheet with all of the individual coupon codes printed out that are crossed out when they are redeemed.

I was wondering about this too. On my living social account, I can mark coupons as used, but it doesn't seem like the system know if a particular coupon has been redeemed.

Greetings; log time lurker, but I only spend two months a year near DC...

I just had a long engagement in LA end and I am craving Din Tai Fung big time. Due to time constraints, I'll be confined to the greater Northern Virginia region for the next few days. Any recs for a decent dumpling in the area? Thanks in advance.

I don't think there is any decent xlb in the DMV area and certainly not something close to the quality of Ding Tai Feng. I recently had Joe's Shanghai when I visited NYC and even those xlb didn't taste authentic since they used chicken gelatin broth rather than pork gelatin broth. The only way to satisfy my craving while living in VA is to get the Wei Chuan brand xlb from Asian store (its the one that said Nan Xiang pork http://www.weichuanusa.com/a_product_new.htm ) and gently steam it in a bamboo steamer over wet paper towel or cabbage leaves. Dip them in some black vinegar and shredded ginger concoction and they are the best frozen xlb I have ever had, not saying much, but I have to make do with whatever is available.

Restaurateurs absolutely have to consider the area they are in and the clientele they are catering to. This is why you rarely ever see authentic ethic food or restaurants charging $30 per entree in most small towns. I have been to Orso one time and the overall atmosphere didn't really scream to me that they are trying to cater to families with small kids type. I am one of those people who thought the price at Orso was quite steep, but this is their choice. Why not charge $15 or more for a pizza if they have no problem filling out the dining room? On the other hand, if business tappers off beyond the initial opening buzz, then they might want to consider making some changes. In the end, only time will tell whether the people of Falls Church are ready to invest in a $15 pizza.

Here's an idea: If the cost thing is bothering you, why not think about it as going out for a great meal, instead of going out for pizza? What difference does it really make as long as the food is excellent? If a meal is expertly prepared and made with fine ingredients it will be a pleasure to eat. What it actually consists of is almost secondary if it's terrific.

It's very hard for two people to have an outstanding dining experience anywhere in this area, regardless of cuisine, for less than $75. But this can be done easily at Orso. So just relax and enjoy your food.

I agree with the first point, but pizza is comfort food, and people still have problem paying extra for something they consider as easy to make (regardless the fact that it actually takes work to master something simple). Its kind of like me refuse to pay more than $10 for noodles and dumplings because in the back of my mind, this is cheap comfort food for me, something I ate for breakfast almost every day when I was a kid. The latter is somewhat true in DC, but not in Falls Church. Hong Kong Palace, Mui Kee, XO, Present, Rabeing, any number of places in Eden Center, and many I didn't mention where you can have an excellent meal for less than $75.

I ordered the spicy pork, seafood pancake, and the galbi tang with cabbage here. I thought all three dishes were only average. While the pancake had very little binder, it also had very few chunks of octopus, which is my favorite part of seafood pancake since octopus stands up to the griddle so well. The cabbage kimchi was excellent and very spicy, but the radish kimchi was too sour for me. The more problematic aspect of Gom Ba Woo is its location, which is basically in the same parking lot as To Sok Jip, another tiny restaurant that in my opinion serves the best none BBQ Korean home cooking in Annandale along with a most impressive spread of banchan. If I am in that parking lot, I tend to choose To Sok Jip over the other places. The service was very frindly, and we got many refills on the chilled boricha. The space was old and worn, but still very charming. It felt like a tea house with lots of natural wood, foliage, and cooling bamboo blinds.