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Spiral Stairs

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  1. Spiral Stairs
    Being in New Delhi, visiting the ITC Maurya Sheraton in which Bukhara is found, walking through the restaurant, but not eating there as a result of circumstances that were largely outside my control but probably could have been overcome: Major, major regret in my life.As long as I am posting: Frankly, I don't know enough about restaurants in other cities to drool over them, except for the really famous ones. (Like, I wouldn't say no to French Laundry or Per Se.) So my list is local: Citronelle; CityZen; Maestro; Minibar (a forthcoming birthday present to me -- yay!).
  2. Spiral Stairs
    Looks like whatever computer Don used to generate his definitive list of great restaurants in Crystal City has made its way to the cake-baking department at Wegman's. Hee hee.
  3. Spiral Stairs
    If restaurants were non-profit institutions (by design rather than unhappy circumstance), then I might agree that it might be "right" to use cash. But as long as they are aiming to earn more money than they are spending, I'll happily use my credit card and let them do the math. (My credit card, by the way, gives me 3% cash back at all restaurants. That's all the incentive I need.)
  4. Spiral Stairs
    Neither I nor the "Search Topic" function can find any mention of brunch at Firefly. Yet that is the meal I expect to have there on Sunday. Any thoughts to share? (I've never been to Firefly at all, and I have gathered that I should make myself engorged with truffle fries, if possible.) (Also, I'm assuming I wouldn't need a reservation for a two-person late brunch ... ?)
  5. Spiral Stairs
    If you've been dying for a place where you can play pool, eat a Frito pie, putt some balls, drink a milkshake, and then top it off by getting blitzed in front of small children, Joe Englert is about to scratch your itch. Says Joe himself (in the comments to the above blog post): I am strongly in favor of each individual item described above. I just don't know if they will all prove to be like peanut butter and chocolate, or like a fish and a bicycle.
  6. Spiral Stairs
    This year's Unhelpful Pronunciation Aid Award goes to the "The List," which indicated in its July 24, 2006 edition that "Central" in the restaurant's name is "pronounced SEN-TRAL." Uh, thanks.
  7. Spiral Stairs
    Let me add this to the well-deserved comments of others: I have participated in a number of online forums concerning a number of topics over the past decade or so. This site is, without doubt, the best-run and most judiciously moderated site of them all. Seriously. Most forums eventually deterioriate under the weight of their own success, devolving into adolescence and inanity. That simply does not happen here. Some of the credit for that goes to the extraordinarily sensible clientele. But most goes to the proprietor. Don, you do a truly remarkable job of keeping the site on a steady course. And it just keeps getting better.
  8. Spiral Stairs
    Search is not working at all for me. When I enter my search terms and proceed, I get the usual message saying it is about to show me my results, or I can click if I don't want to wait. However, regardless of what I do, I am returned to the search page without ever seeing my results. (With the search function inoperable, I can't determine if a new thread would be duplicative! And since I have no short-term memory, I plan to start new threads on Ray's the Steaks, Ray's the Classics, Restaurant Eve, Criticizing Restaurants, and Problems with the New Invision Upgrade.)
  9. Spiral Stairs
    Don't forget that there are numerous threads on this site containing post after post trashing a restaurant. Some of those posts are supported by evidence. Some are not. Yet I rarely (if ever?) have seen any objection to unsupported, often glib, thrashings of restaurants that, to the hivemind, are "bad" restaurants. These negative comments are just as damaging to the livelihoods of those affiliated with "bad" restaurants as to those affiliated with "good" restaurants. An unsupported criticism of a "good" restaurant, however, quickly provokes invocation of the "support your statement!" mantra. It seems to me that there is a whole range of standards applied in this community. Which standard is applied depends both on the content of the comment and the restaurant's reputation among the hiveminded. The even-handed solution is to encourage (because it is not possible to require) that ALL posts be based on evidence and that they are reasonably clear as to what that evidence is. </buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz>
  10. Spiral Stairs
    On the assumption that this string of posts will be moved to the restaurant criticism thread, I'll make one comment. I have never seen a reasoned critique of a restaurant, or its food, or its service, deleted here. That said, I have seen some unreasoned comments remain undeleted (or unflamed). In the spirit of self-examination, it is worth considering whether the deletion (or flaming) trigger is pulled a little more quickly for some places than for others.
  11. Spiral Stairs
    Thanks to this and other upthread confessions, I feel better about the contents of our freezer.Here's a weird thing I do: Eat raw dry pasta straight from the box.
  12. Spiral Stairs
    Oh, wow. For me, it's less about "strange" things, and more about things that are "embarrassing to mention on a website populated by foodies." My embarrassing eating habits are what preclude me from ever referring to myself as a foodie. Foodies, for instance, don't eat Kraft Mac & Cheese for dinner, like we did last night. (Although I did add a very nice hot sauce.) Foodies, for instance, don't have frozen burritos in the freezer. Or Hot Pocket brand pizza rolls. Or ... gadzooks ... Stouffer's escalloped chicken and noodles. I am not a foodie. I am a lowbrow who likes nice restaurants too. [/Confession] [/Reply that veered from topic]
  13. Spiral Stairs
    This sounds like a reason not to eat there.
  14. Spiral Stairs
    Anecdotal evidence: I am batting .750 or .800 with my submitted Kliman questions. (Probably 4 or 5 total submissions, one was not answered.) I bat about .250 with Sietsema.(In case you were wondering, yes, I do base some portion of my paltry self-esteem on my ability to get strangers to answer my questions on-line. You should see me during Gene Wang's Fantasy Football chat.)
  15. Spiral Stairs
    Safeway's enforced brand of courtesy is not just false, it's brainless. My last name is somewhat easy to mispronounce. Safeway cashiers regularly look at the receipt and say, "Thank you, Mr. ... [awkward attempt]?" (The question mark indicates a lilt in the cashier's tone that asks whether he or she has pronounced my name correctly.) It just irks me that, thanks to some memorandum circulated to store managers nationally by a Vice President in Charge of Satisfying Customer Experiences, I have to listen to the same line over and over again from people who really couldn't care less what the answer is.(As an aside, I have a similar beef with Petsmart. They appear to have received a similar memo, which requires them to ask me what kind of dog I have and how old he is when I buy dog food, even if he is not with me. I am sick of telling them this information.) And the thing about asking whether I need help with my loaf of bread, come on. That's just silly. Despite my earlier rant, the employees there do have brains, and it would not be unreasonable to entrust them with the discretion to decide which customers should be offered help. Ultimately, I agree that false courtesy is preferable to genuine rudeness. However, for me, indifference layeth between the two, and it is preferable to false courtesy.
  16. Spiral Stairs
    There's some interesting stuff to think about in terms of effect of Jenkins Row and HT on the neighborhood. To wit: La Lomita; the decrepit storefrontage on Penn Ave; the crazy-scary Chinese place at 13th & Penn; "24 Food Shop" that is open nowhere near 24 hours a day; the new coffee shop next to Pacific Cafe that is, apparently, called Pacific Cafe but is not affiliated in any way with the pre-existing Pacific Cafe; Trusty's; and, last but not least, Potomac Gardens.About Safeway though, let me lodge this objection: About a year or so ago, the cashiers inexplicably began looking at my last name on my receipt (printed there thanks to my "club card"), and saying "Thank you, Mr. Stairs." They also now -- always -- ask if I need help carrying my groceries to my car. I am an able-bodied 34 year-old male who is usually buying three or four items in a single plastic bag, mind you. (And I walk home, but they wouldn't know that.) I believe these new practices were directives from a corporate headmaster, perhaps in direct response to the impending presence of Harris Teeter. "Hmm. We need to show everyone that we have the best customer service in town. Let's compel our underpaid drones to pretend that they care. The customers will never notice the ruse and instead assume that each cashier has taken it upon himself or herself to make such friendly statements and offer such courteous service. Muhahahaha."
  17. Spiral Stairs
    Thank you. I agree entirely. (Except that I actually have set foot in an Olive Garden. More than once.) I was going to post something about the tendency of exclusionary communities to reject efforts to make them more inclusive and instead to deride such efforts as "selling out," or "profit-motivated," or "soulless," or "disingenuous," or "inauthentic," but then I chickened out. (Oops! I did it!)
  18. Spiral Stairs
    The Capitol Hill HT, on the other hand, is being received with unanimous enthusiasm, as far as I can tell. There may be some unease about the massive condo development on top of it (Jenkins Row), but everyone is eager for an alternative to the utter disaster that is the Capitol Hill Safeway. I am also very curious about what dining and retail will be going in on the ground floor of the building. The Jenkins Row website is mum, but suggests great things. I predict a Starbucks, a "pan-Asian" noodle joint with Ikea-style furniture, and a Maggie Moo's.
  19. Spiral Stairs
    This is fun.His use of "Big Deal Restaurant," in caps, suggests to me that he is talking about a place more widely known and loved than CK or Komi. They are Big Deals for foodies, but not so much for the rest of the population. I also thought 1789 at first. But then I looked and found that 1789 is owned by the Clyde's Group. It sounds like Tom is talking about a place with an individual owner. My current guess, subject to revision or retraction at any time, is Kinkead's (what with it being in Tom's "Old Reliables" Dining Guide section and being something of an institution in DC). Guess number two: Palena (what with all the relocation rumors). Guess number three: Inn at Little Washington (what with all the ownership shenanigans that I didn't really follow because I don't expect ever to eat there).
  20. Spiral Stairs
    But you do have some experience feeding a cat to a dog? Disgusting.
  21. Spiral Stairs
    Sayeth Kliman in today's chat: "Kansas City, believe it or not, is one of the best cities to eat out in in the country right now. It ain't just barbecue and great steaks -- not that there's anything wrong with that." I submitted a request for further explanation, but it was ignored. My father recently had a tasting menu at Bluestem (using a gift certificate I gave him and his wife for Christmas), and he loved it. When asked what he ate, he could not remember a thing. He is not a foodie, but he does love to eat.
  22. Spiral Stairs
    Great job, indeed. Now having heard Don's voice, though, I find it hard to imagine it saying "Oooh, oooh, yeah, yeah baby, turn over, oooh yeah."
  23. Spiral Stairs
    My wife and I celebrated our third anniversary at RTC on Saturday (at the opposite end of the restaurant, it appears, from Joncephine, and seven years after we got our bar results). No need to recount all the gorily delicious details. Suffice it to say that my wife now proclaims it her favorite restaurant in the DC area, and I am happy to have found ground common to both her desire for traditional, "comfort" foods, and my desire to be a little more adventurous. On the way out, Michael mocked me for not dressing up for an anniversary dinner. I told him that my v-neck sweater and tee-shirt was pretty dressed up for me. I was too flummoxed to give the appropriate response, which would involve the phrase "glass houses."
  24. Spiral Stairs
    My wife and I were very satisfied with our one (take-out) meal at Oohhs and Aahhs. However, the cornbread was weirdly, and unpleasantly, sweet. It was also weirdly, and unpleasantly, not free.
  25. Spiral Stairs
    As famously proved by Ruth Reichl. (Surprisingly hard to find a good link for that story!)
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