Joe H

heading to The Shack tomorrow night!  getting there early to get in for first seating. will report back assuming we get in.

They open @5:00PM.  I would get there at 4:30.  Good luck!

#2 and #10.  http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/14/living/10-best-new-southern-restaurants-eatocracy/  I'll be back in line soon...at both.  Huge publicity:  this is the link on time.com:  http://time.com/3101672/the-souths-best-new-restaurants/  The first link is from CNN.

The Shack has a total of seven tables, mostly two tops.  I may bring a sleeping bag for our next visit.

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Back from another trip to O. C. and, once again, no idea why Don buries this national class Mid Atlantic beach resort in the "Baltimore" thread.  There are more people from the D. C. area there (and Philly and Wilmington) than Baltimore.

Regardless, we went back to Shark on the Harbor in West Ocean and discovered Hooked which has waits which make Rose's look look like prep school to the graduate school 90 minute wait at 9:30 last night at 80th and Coastal Highway..

Hooked is the equal of Black Salt.  It is THAT good.  By Ocean City standards THAT is incredible.  O. C. shouldn't have a restaurant this good.  But it does.

No reservations.

No comment.

But, it has a lot of ambience, white table cloth, soft lighting and is worthy of an anniversary and the drive from D. C.

Shark on the Harbor is a different place before the sun sets.  It has a really talented chef but doesn't have the "feel" (before sunset) of a serious restaurant.  Yet some of what is served is imaginative and excellent.  We loved it and will return-after dark.

Right now, based on a half dozen or so trips in the last year and tens of thousands of calories I would suggest that Hooked is Ocean City's best restaurant.  Captain's Table, Liquid Assets (fantastic setting for a restaurant with tables in the middle of a candle light lit wine shop) and Shark on the Harbor all are seriously worth a visit, too.

We go back to O. C. for New Year's Eve.  We will spend it at Hooked.  Probably much of the evening waiting in line...

We're returning tomorrow night.

This'll be our 5th anniversary celebration with the Chef -- the 1st was 11 years ago at our 2nd Lab.

Hoping for a little Brös....

Roberto's prices at Al Dente  on VA wine are unreal.  Some are lower than the winerie's tasting rooms.  Specifically, 2007 Breaux Nebbiolo which is one of the best wines ever made in VA (and unknown outside of the tasting room at Breaux), 2010 Glen Manor Hodder Hill and 2010 Delaplane Williams Gap.    All three of these are excellent by any standard.

Interesting article, John.  There is a real emerging divide in attitudes towards dining (and, I think, technology) with age, perhaps more so than at any time I can remember.

I haven't been to Grand Rapids in four or five years but I stayed there annually dating back to the early '90's.  Much prefer the JW Marriott over the Amway. Outstanding location downtown which literally backs to the river.  http://www.sanchezbistro.com/%C2'> the San Chez Bistro which is a tapas bar a couple of short blocks away.  I've probably been there a half dozen times and it became something of a routine including the Marriott stay and walking over there for dinner.  Usually I would sit at the bar.

What's important is that this place has a great deal of character with decent to good tapas.  It's not Jaleo but the room feels much more like Spain and much less like Michigan.  Actually, I like Grand Rapids a lot and would look forward to my overnights there.

As for beer, it's my loss, since I drink wine.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHWXAJhmvyU

Robin Williams as Mork meeting the Fonz on Happy Days. This was his first appearance on television and led to Mork and Mindy.

"other side of the park"

First time I've ever heard this expression.  Sorry, but it just really caught my attention.

Different era:  I once cruised 4th street in Modesto then had a "last cigarette ever" on the very real Paradise road where John Milner's car overturned.  Both while listening to Wolfman Jack on KGO.  I drove 400 miles from L. A. to do this and now, twenty six years later feel that it was worth it.  I have a great deal of respect for your love of The Big Chill; I have the same affection for American Graffiti which i have seen more than 30 times.  It is my Friday night date from high school.

Later I found out that American Graffiti wasn't filmed in Modesto, rather north of San Francisco.

The above is a true story including the Wolfman on KGO.  I should add that I had a lot of last cigarettes ever but this was the very real next to the last.  I lit up when my red eye landed at Dulles and felt so guilty that I never had another.

According to the article Sweetgreen (which I love) has something called "fro-yo."

What is fro-yo?

Incredible post (s).  Thank you for taking the time and sharing.

There are generational differences in expectations of what might see, feel and taste in a restaurant.  For everyone that wants to introduce a new app to, say, expedite an ordering system or control waitstaff I'll guard my 100+ year old crusty black cast iron skillet a little bit tighter.

I remember when McDonald's changed from freshly sliced potatoes to frozen french fries in '66 or '67.  About the same time they went to frozen beef and a "mix" for their "shakes" which had more chemicals than milk and syrup.  Today a lot of people reading this will say McDonald's has good french fries.

Point is that there was change.  The corporation said it was for the better.  My stomach said it was for the worst.  Dick's in Spokane, WA has the original McDonald's hamburgers and french fries with lines 40-50 deep at lunch time while the McDonald's down the street has counters you can walk up to.

Now we have apps and the imminent disappearance of waitstaff.  Rather, servers and an attempt to control anyone who might want to talk to a customer.

Exactly the kind of restaurant that should be selling frozen potatoes and other dishes whose ingredients I can't spell.

With the US dollar @ $1.06 to buy one Swiss Franc this is now one of the most expensive countries on earth. For perspective in the early 1980's I started in my industry representing a company out of Montreaux-the US dollar was $2.80 to the Swiss Franc. Not an exaggeration. A real number.

What is the per diem by the way? A hotel dinner will not be cheap...

The US dollar is now .89 to the Swiss Franc.  Literally one third of what it was when I started in my industry.  I must add that Switzerland is not doing a lot of manufacturing today for sale in the U. S.

i miss santa fe cafe.....

What is/was Santa Fe cafe?  Cafe Pasqual?

Midtown Kabob is owned by the same people who own the kabobery (sp?) in the large shopping center on Elden street in Herndon (diagonally across from Mom's).

That place cracks me up! You'll have fun. We were in SB, SLO, and Pismo Beach recently, posts are at the end of the CA Central Coast thread (linked from the CA temp master thread) and in the SB thread. I'd recommend ice cream at McConnell's and the Blue Owl for sandwiches (lunch or late night) in SB and ice cream sandwiches at Batch, Santa Maria Tri-Tip somewhere, and the Thursday Night Farmer's Market (if you happen to be there) in SLO. There's also a walking wine trail in downtown SB from tasting room to tasting room. The baby might be a little young for it, but this park near Pismo Beach is a great place to walk on the cliffs for a moment, take some pics of the kiddo, and take a car break: Dinosaur Caves Park.

Also not to miss on the drive is the elephant seal rookery right off the 1 here. Those guys are humongous, smelly, and hilarious.

Didn't know about the Santa Barbara Urban Wine Trail (great name).  Thanks for mentioning it.  We're going to be in SB in early November and will definitely go for a walk.

I am becoming a little less enamored with the Fairfax Wegman's.  I still think Wegman's in general has a better selection and quality of many things, but the Fairfax store has made changes I really dislike.

1. The hot bar- they have greatly expanded the hot bar, which we used to like to on occasion eat at before shopping, but now it is much more general purpose, feed lot food, and less thought and care.  You used to be able to get some interesting Chinese and Indian options, many of these have been taken away for taco bars and the like.

2. The seafood sit down counter is now located in a much busier spot, the service isn't nearly as nice and if you order sushi there it comes in the plastic trays.  This used to be a fun experience- no more.

3. Now that the wine has been moved upstairs everything seems so crowded and you feel overwhelmed by people.  They need to move something downstairs.

4. They no longer have a nice loose leaf tea area, they still have the tea, but it's lacking the pleasing set up as before.

5. They are sometimes missing innocuos items- like brillo pads or napa cabbage.

Overall it just seems more like a rat race getting through it than it used to be, anyone else notice this?  I might have to check out the Dulles or Sterling Wegman's to see if it is a bit better.

I believe this is the single highest grossing grocery store in the U. S. whether part of a chain or individually owned.  It feels like it.

We live equidistant from Fairfax and Sterling and I rarely go to Fairfax.  it is far too congested whether in the parking garage which fronts it or the store itself which could use another 25,000 square feet of retail area.  it is cramped.

The wine shop is awful.  There is no character, no ambience.  Just a "vanilla" area that makes me long for Total.  Actually, I find it quite remarkable that they could destroy a "department" so efficiently.  I cannot believe they are selling anywhere near as much wine as they used to.  What was once an inviting shop is now a typical grocery store wine area.

Fairfax does carry a number of items which the other Wegman's do not.  There is a better cheese shop, several specialty soups in season, even the odd white truffle.

Still, the only time I go there is when it is raining heavily and I'll park in their garage.

I must add a comment about Neal Wavra and his participation in this.  My wife and I were viistors five times at the Ashby Inn, four when Tarver King was the chef and one when the chef de cuisine from the Inn at Little Washington took his place.  We passionately loved the Ashby Inn favoriing because of these men two birthdays and one anniversary.  I must also add from more than twenty years of heavy European travel, over time, I have eaten at more than 40 two Michelin star restaurants and 12 three stars-all over time.

Neal Wavra is as fine, as friendly and welcoming, as knowledgeable and reassuring as anyone that I met in any restaurant anywhere in Europe.  From Katherine Constant at Violon d'Ingres (the benchmark) to Schwarzwaldstube and Bareiss to Gagnaire and Ducasse to El Raco De Can Fabes to Le Calandre and Dal Pescatore and on and on and on.  Neal Wavra is the equal of anyone.  An absolute welcoming ambassador who presents a lifetime experience perhaps better than anyone on earth.

Then I could talk about his incredible knowledge as a world class sommelier (trained in Walla Walla),his successful operation of the Ashby Inn;  I can imagine "marrying" Neal with the proper chef for what would be a world class nightly adventure in Washington.  I deeply hope that someone considers this.  It is a direction that will greatly benefit the city and our perception around the country..

What are the dumps of today?  When I wrote about Anita's above it was because, in the '70's, it was worth the drive from Silver Spring.  The alternative was Spoeedy Gonzalez on N. Hudson street in Arlington which was an old frame house a block or so from Red Top cab but had seriously good basic Tex Mex.  Anita's in Vienna was similarly excellent and also had great character.

My comment about character is the most important one:  Anita's really WAS a fast food walk up stand in the '60's.  She really did drive a cadillac with steer horns on its hood.  She really had two top tables in the parking lot (with the line for the car wash snaking nearby) and, after a couple of years, erected a canvas awning over them.  She parked her Rolls Royce within five feet of one of these tables.  Over time she and her husband opened another Anita's on route 29 in Fairfax (next to another car wash) and near Old Town Herndon.  To this day I think I've been to each one time.  Perhaps the same food but it never tasted as good as it did in the remodelled Donut Dinette in Vienna.

Character.

When you walked into a room in Speedy Gonzalez the floor creaked.  Loudly.  It felt like with each step a different board would break underneath your feet.    For all of the world this was a frame house in a border town with a wire fence and Mexico outside the back door.

It had character.

Where do I go for character today?

What I've never understood is why wineries with long lists don't simply raise the prices of their wines to maximize revenue - at some point, the list would dwindle down to zero people, and would contain only people willing to pay the most money.

I was on Leonetti's mailing list dating back into the '90's.  I remember when their merlot was $30-35 or so for a bottle.  Today they are more expensive, 85-90 for merlot.  Reserve is $140-150 and I no longer buy their wine.  I was loyal for 15-20 years or so but their prices outgrew me.  Perhaps interestingly tonight I opened a bottle of their '05 merlot.  It was absolutely delicious.  Worth every penny of the $45 or so I paid for it.  $85 or 90? No.  If I ever make it onto Cayuse's list I can buy Bionic Frog for that.  Or Reynvaan Stonessence which is a superb syrah.

There are limits to what a bottle is worth.

Big celebration in Germany

I have never heard "When the saints go marching home" sung in German before.

Interesting comment about the influence of one player on a game in basketball vs. "soccer."  I'm not so sure that I agree unless we're talking about a situation with a Wilt Chamberlain or Jabbar and the opposing team at least a half foot shorter.  Robben/Messi/Ronaldo and a few others consistently demand two or more players on them.  Of course one player out of five is not like one player out of eleven.  Still, I think of Bayern when both Ribery and Robben were healthy, Real with both Bale and Ronaldo and the upcoming season (after the end of October when the Italian gourmet is able to play again) where Barca will feature three of the best attacking players in the world.

I must add this:  FWIW I have no interest in soccer in America.  I've been fortunate to experience a number of European stadiums in my travel and it is just a different game, a different experience in Europe.  Several years ago I saw Bayern play Dortmund in Dortmund's stadium-it was incredible.  I think of the old RFK where the steel and concrete stands would seemingly rock with the passion of fans.  Dortmund was the same and then some.

This is a poor analogy but somehow it seems to fit:  in 1965 I saw DeMatha beat Power and Alcindor at Cole Field House with 12,500 others.  The woman next to me was eight or nine months pregnant (no, I had never met her before!).  Three, four times in the second half she exclaimed "I'm going to have my baby...right now!"  She was serious.  I think she actually wanted to say almost a half century later that she gave birth during DeMatha winning that game!

But she was passionate.  Extraordinarily passionate.

In Dortmund and a number of other places there could be a lot of babies born in the stands during a good game.

I have been on the waiting list for the mailing list at Cayuse since the spring of '09.  I was told today that I "am close...very close."  I'm just curious how long people may have waited on a waiting list to make a winery's mailing list.

My luck is that the first vintage I can buy will be a bad one....

Bayern Munich, on paper, would beat the German team.  Remember Arjen Robben and Franck Ribery play for Bayern.  That's seven Bayern players plus two of the best offensive players in the world. Ribery was third in the voting for best player in Europe last year (behind Messi and Ronaldo) and Robben won the bronze medal as the third best player at the WC behind Messi and Mueller.  A lot of people thought that Messi should not have won.  I am biased but I believe that Robben is the most exciting player in the world when he has the ball.  Shaqiri (Switzerland) and Alaba are both very young and talented and arguably the rock of Bayern's defense a year ago was Javi Martinez, a E 37 million transfer who, I think, remarkably does not start for Spain.

The one player that Bayern need-and they failed to get him two years ago-is Marco Reus who extended at Dortmund.

On paper, I believe that both Barca and Real would beat Spain (maybe Athletico Madrid who won the CL this year too).  Several English clubs could beat their National team.

Totally agree with Daniel about the CL.  Fantastic futbal/fussbal/soccer.

The top European clubs pick off the best players in the world.  Consider Real adding Ronaldo and Gareth Bale, Barca adding Messi, Neymar and now Suarez.  Bayern noted above adding Robben and Ribery.

According to Forbes six of the top sixteen highest paid athletes in all sports play for European "soccer" clubs.

When Gotze came on in the 98th minute seven of the German players were from Bayern and had played together much of the season.  Hummels grew up in the Bayern organization and represents one of Munich's greatest losses along with Kroos who is leaving for Real.  Prior to Gotze coming on, Klose was Bayern's striker for several years.  Podolski before him.  At any time from 7 to 9 of the eleven German players have played or play for the same German team in the last several years.

Several Bundesliga clubs (Bayern, Dortmund, Schalke) have excellent youth programs where students live full time from a very young age.  Many of the Bayern players came through this.  Fussball is every bit of the obsession in Germany as it is in Brazil, Argentina or anywhere else.  Here are the television ratings for yesterday's game in Germany:  86.3% of all televisions turned on in Germany were tuned to the game-the highest tv broadcast in history. 34.65 million Germans (out of about 81 million total) watched the game.  Germany has the highest % of attendance of all soccer clubs in the world (i.e. Bayern Munich have sold out every single seat of their now 71,000 seat stadium since it opened in 2005).

I watched ESPN last Wednesday when Germany played Brazil and they did a short feature showing traffic on a major downtown road in Rio which was gridlocked several days earlier.  Thirty minutes before the game started there was only the odd car to be found.

My wife and I were in Munich when Bayern played Dortmund a couple of years ago in the Spring-the game was at Dortmund.  We watched the first half in a Marriott ballroom with a 1,000 or so passionate Germans (many of whom had their whole family there!) and left at halftime to return to our hotel next to the Haufbahnhof.  The ride was about four or five miles through downtown Munich traffic.

There was none. I believe I saw a total of four or five cars during the entire ride.

Verizon carries TyC Sports in its Spanish language package which we subscribe to.  This is Argentina's national sports channel similar to, say, ESPN in the U. S.  Incredible the wall to wall coverage they are still giving their team who just met with Cristina Fernandez the Argentinian president.

I believe D. C. had the highest TV ratings overall of anywhere in America for the World Cup.