Spiral Stairs

You've probably got the correct diagnosis. It was bubbling. In fact, there was a point at which I had inadvertently let it rise to a virtual boil. (I hate to lift the lid to check too often, you know?) Next time, the oven it is.

I have now braised short ribs twice, both times using this recipe. I used boneless short ribs the first time, and it turned out well. (Maybe not quite fork-tender, but tender enough for my novice-level expectations.) Last night, I made it with bone-in short ribs. We found the result way too gristle-y. I noted that after the bones fell out (or were nudged out by me), the inside of the rib, which formerly touched the bone, was basically a layer of connective tissue. I know that short ribs are heavy on such stuff, and that's why we braise them. But this stuff was nowhere near tender. Some ribs were better than others. For the two ribs that were on my plate, I left half uneaten. So did I get bad short ribs? (Got them at Shoppers Food.) Or does the recipe call for an insufficient braising time (about 2.5 hours, on the stovetop)? Or did I mess up somewhere along the way?

I, my wife, and my then-two-month-old Charlie had a blast at the last picnic, but it looks unlikely we will make this one. Which is too bad, because now-nine-month-old Charlie really wanted to organize a Formula Taste-Off. Can his formula of choice -- Nestle Good Start -- hold off gourmet, boutique-made soy-based contenders? And can it hold its own against the large production goliaths of the formula world, Enfamil and Similac? I guess we'll never know.

I'm drooling. Tell me, what is the lounge like, table and chair-wise? Is it like the R. Eve bar? (I.e., a bar, and some loungy upholstered chairs and coffee tables.) Or are there regular table/chair combinations available? Also, do you have to wear a jacket in the lounge? My skin reacts very badly to jackets. I break out in urges to leave.

If I'm ever invited to a dinner party at any of your houses, I'm bringing beer.

The fact that many of the unusually knowledgeable people on this site appear not to have been aware of how Henckels divvies up its products is strong evidence that confusion probably reigns over the rest of the population. (Indeed, on more than one occasion I have run across someone who boasts of his or her new Henckels, and then shows it to me. I don't have the heart to tell them that the knife they bought is not the knife they think they bought.) On the other hand, no one who buys a C-Class Mercedes believes that he or she has purchased an S-Class.

I was taught to count the little men in the Henckels logo. Two men = Good, German-made knife. One man = Knife may be more useful as a club. P.S.: Incidentally, for myself, I put a ton of knives in my hand and found the Henckels Four Star line to be the most comfortable. I bought an 8" chef's knife and a paring knife from that line, and love them both. Due to a Keystone Kops-like Christmas gift-buying debacle, I also have an 8" Wusthof now too. I haven't used it yet; I'll be interested to compare. P.P.S.: I found the lack of a bolster on the Globals intolerable. I hold my chef's knife by the bolster all the time. I really wanted to like the Global, because ... well ... because it's bad-ass looking. But I didn't like it much at all. (Also didn't like the feel of the metal handle.) P.P.P.S.: For anyone who runs across a cheap santoku by Chicago Cutlery, don't buy it! It won't cut butter. Which is too bad, since I hear they make some good steak knives.

According the DCist article, the "Enomatic" will dispense wine through the use of prepaid cards and pushbuttons. Does anyone know how that will work? It sounds weird. Does that mean customers will handle wine dispensation on their own, using their prepaid cards at a centralized machine? Or does each table get its own dispensation system? If so, who will be responsible for peeling me off the floor after I have been completely unable to contain the same impulses that overcome me at buffets?

My wife, bless her soul, has given me a one-year membership in Anchor O'Reilly's Chip of the Month Club for my birthday. Six different chips per month for a year, in reasonably big bags (4 to 8 ounces). The makers are mostly regional, some locally familiar, others not. In about a year, I should be fully transformed into a potato chip.

Sidamo (H St. NE between 4th & 5th) isn't terribly far. I haven't been there, and it's more of a coffee shop than a restaurant, but it appears that they do serve breakfast.

Wiedmaier will be the "special guest host" of Todd Kliman's Washingtonian chat next Tuesday, per today's chat.

As I remarked here, I have heard good things about South Mountain Creamery (but have not tried it).

We're doing the Jug Bay CSA. We've never done one before, but we're hoping this will cause us to eat more ... what do they call those things ... vejetubbles? We're getting the full-on treatment: weekly eggs and fresh flowers too.

The linked article says that 83% of the brands are "premium-priced" -- which is defined as more than $5.50 per bottle. Wow. I'm a cheapskate who rarely spends more than $15 for a bottle of wine. But that is one mighty low threshold for "premium." That said, I must say I find it hard to believe that every maker makes uniform garbage. I've even had some wines from some of those makers that I liked. (I won't enumerate them, for fear of further proving my cavemanliness.) Yes, they are grocery-store wines. Guess what? That's where I buy most of my wine. For many reasons, one of whom is eight months old, I rarely find the time to make separate trips to the wine shop. Instead, I pick up a bottle or two at whatever grocery store I'm at. So sue me.

In my eternal quest to find easy, no-muss solutions to my ever-present anxiety when shopping for wine, I ran across a recently released list of the "Top 30 Table Wine Brand Performers." (copied below). Now, I'm just a caveman when it comes to wine, but I detect a lot of marketing-speak in this release, and it does not appear that the world's foremost oenophiles convened to generate this list of the "most influential" brands. However, is there anything to be gleaned from it? Does anyone who is not just a wine caveman believe that there is any correlation between placement on this list and the general quality of a brand's wine?

I'm sure they are referring to the wussy "cups" that no one really drinks. Sort of like: 1. "Serving" size. By the official definition, a Ray's cowboy cut is more than nine servings of meat. 2. "Sleeping through the night." By the official definition, a baby sleeps through the night if said baby sleeps for FIVE consecutive hours. I don't know about you, but I don't think a baby who sleeps from 8PM to 1AM has "slept through the night." But I digress...

[For the record, it's not THIS weekend. It's April 14th. I have it on good authority that the weather will be perfect.]

How's this for an old bump? I figure my question would eventually get merged in with this, so I might as well save Don the trouble. I need to figure out a good place in downtown Bethesda to deposit my mom, wife, and 8-month old baby for a couple hours on a forthcoming Saturday morning. The situation is this: My mom is visiting on the same weekend as the first meeting of a class I'm taking at the Writer's Center. Rather than leave the family behind, I thought they could come up with me to Bethesda and entertain themselves from 10:00 to 12:30. Any good, casual breakfast or brunch place for such a motley trio in the walkable (and stroller-able) environs of downtown Bethesda on Saturday morning? Or at least coffee/pastries? Bonus points for any other suggestions on how they might entertain themselves.

Moof eet to zee off-topic forum. Oh, vait...

I, naturally, assumed he was talking about something else entirely.

Personally, Hersch, I think you have nothing to apologize for. It is okay to like or respect a particular thing without liking the name that someone has attached to it. (And I don't think you expressed an opinion either way on this particular thing.) Why should a place's name be off-limits? Is decor off-limits too? Is location off-limits? Service? Are we out of bounds in commenting on anything other than food? Sure, you used strong language, but ... ahem ... opinions on this board are often stated strongly, and yours was not atypically strident. Anyway, I don't think you deserve the response you got, and I think the apology should be flowing in the other direction.

I rarely order chicken at restaurants whose food I respect. It feels like walking into a Porsche dealership and walking out with a Toyota. So when we were at Eamonn's on Friday, I left the chicken-ordering to my wife. (I had the grouper, which was really good. It's been too long since my last meal there, but I recall being more bowled over by the cod. I can't enumerate the distinctions though.) My wife's "chicken bites" were large and numerous, so I helped myself to some. Holy crap. It's virtual sacrilege to me, but I just may get them on every future visit. I had no idea chicken "nuggets" could be so moist and flavorful. And the order was so large, leftovers became a weekend lunch. (For me, not my wife. You snooze, you lose.)

There seems to be a separate "Q&A" article posted, in addition to the chog. See here. Perhaps you were looking at that? I don't think that message about the travel problems was posted for most of today's expected Chog-time. Or, I was too stupid to notice it despite multiple reloadings. (How did I turn into such a loser?)

The several Kansas City ex-pats among us will be pleased to see that two of the five nominees for Best Chef, Midwest, are KC-based. (Colby Garrelts, Bluestem; and Celina Tio, American Restaurant.) (And none from St. Louis. Muhahahaha!)

Exactly. Under most circumstances, it's too long for me as well. By that, I mean I don't like it, not that I fault the restaurant for it. Instead, I fault the patrons and hurl profanities at them until they can't bear it any longer and vacate their tables. Or, more often, I just try to avoid dining at places and times that put me at risk of such a wait. My dad's in town next week and has already requested an RTS trip. (I told him about RTC, but he was clear: "I want to go to the steak one.") P.S.: Are the colons in Landrum's signature above official additions to (or longstanding but unknown to me parts of) the restaurants' names? Because they might subtly alter my inflection when saying them out loud.