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While I'm very much of the "matters matter" AND "it depends" schools of thought, worth pointing out that just like we customers/diners choose how to treat each other and whether and how to use technology when out, so can those who own and operate the restaurants in which we dine.

Ever see a "cell free zone" sign in a place and then realized you had no signal? Maybe you wrote that off to thick walls or distance from a cell tower given your table was next to the coatroom? Sometimes, it's something else

if that's the case, it's actually illegal unless the federal government is the one doing it, and even then it's only legal in certain circumstances.

I do not have a huge sweet tooth but once a week I like to have an apple fritter with my morning coffee. I like the kind that have lots of crispy nodules. (There is another kind whose focus seems to be more on the apple filling - Dunkin Donuts seems to have these more often, if they have an apple fritter.) Starbucks has apple fritters but they aren't as crispy as I'd like them.

The one place I've been able to consistently find the kind I like are at Greenberry's Coffee & Tea Co in Rosslyn. Does anyone know of another spot? I live in Rosslyn and work in Bethesda, so pretty much any location is great! (A search turns up some spots that look like they served something similar for dessert, but I'm looking more for cafes/coffeeshops with apple fritters).

shoppers food warehouse actually does a really good and consistent apple fritter. Actually most of their donuts are decent for what they are.

What am I missing?

http://shop.ebay.com/dchelpsjapannow/m.html?_trksid=p4340.l2562

We tried that today on your recommendation. I wasn't blown away by it, and preferred the current noodle dish on the "specials" menu (lower right side). But it was pretty good and I've certainly never had anything like that before, anywhere.

If you get the egg where it still has a soft yolk it makes all the difference. I get it maybe 1/2 of the time, but when I do, it's great.

weekly lunch stop. the exploding egg special is one of the best things I've ever eaten.

Can you explain? There's no bigger detractor of Yelp than I am, but I don't see anything blatantly wrong here. What am I missing?

one negative one that's displayed. 6 positive and 1 negative that are "filtered"

Has anyone been to "Too" lately? Am too tired to browse and sort through for the sit-down posts but would like to know their experience. TIA.

i was there a couple of weeks ago. way easier to deal with than regular hellburger. Burger was the same as I had at the original but way less stress about where to sit and a much calmer area. because it had been a while I got a regular hellburger but my wife got the turkey burger and she loved it.

really great peaches and cream and blueberry lavender popsicles today at the shop.

they've pull out of the burke famers market. From what we were told the fairfax county health department hassled them for not having their products individually wrapped up. Since they couldn't do that, they pulled out of the market rather than face a fine.

I was thinking Sausage and Shrimp. Thanks for the advice!

sausage flavor would overpower the shrimp. Shrimp, crab, oyster would be traditional. Make a stock from the shrimp peels and you'd have a great gumbo.

I've always bought sausage - Andouille or other - at Eastern Market. Metro-accessible!

Only kind of a tangent - the last homemade gumbo I had knocked my socks off. Andouille/duck (although the chef, who is a legitimate Cajun who grew up in Louisiana eating the stuff regularly, swore that Andouille in gumbo is the exception not the rule, and "any kind of spicy sausage" is what you need).

Anyway, I think the key was using the rendered duck fat for the roux. This was hands down the most amazing gumbo I've ever eaten - and I lived in NOLA for six years.

this is pretty much dead on. you need a smoked sausage. Andouille isn't generally used in Acadiana, I can't speak for NOLA though. I bring my smoked sausage back in a cooler when visiting family so I can't really give you any tips on where to get it here.

Take your time with the roux. It will easily take 40-50 mins of constant stirring. You'll want to use something wooden and flat if you can, to scrape the bottom of the pot so it all cooks the same.

What kind of gumbo are you planning on making? Chicken and sausage?

They're really good and have a rotating selection of flavors. The Dairy Godmother in Del Ray has something similar now too.

Went twice this past weekend. had hot chocolate with peppers, watermelon, rose and creamy mint. All very good and very similar to what's being offered at the Dairy Godmother.

Had a great breakfast at the Pancake Pantry. I've never had buckwheat pancakes like that. I don't think there was any wheat in them. They were very dark and served with honey instead of syrup.

Went to a great meat and 3 called southern bred in east nashville. amazingly tender chicken fried steak, great mashed potatoes, new orleans corn pudding and fried green tomatoes.

Do they have bingsu out of curiosity?

yup

Tasting menu with non-alcoholic beverage pairings? RJ, you have a reservation! Tomorrow okay?

In all seriousness, big thanks from us non-drinkers. And, I guess, from Muslims, Mormons, etc. I'm so happy a chef has decided to do this!

this strongly seconded.

Did I libel someone? This amply illustrates the difference between DR and CH. If you questioned me on CH, you'd get banned. Here I am offered an opportunity to respond to your baseless insinuation.

Did you cast dispersions on a restaurant that you haven't been to? If your beef is people being able to challenge each other, then fair enough and I'd agree with that. If it's that people here are above talking shit for the sake of it, then that's not the case.

I think the DC Chowhound board is particularly bad. I've used Chowhound for research purposes in other cities and countries and got some pretty good feedback. Maybe my personal knowledge of the DC restaurants makes it much easier to detect the B.S.. Some posters seem hellbent on libeling restaurants they haven't even been to. Example

yeah that never happens here

If anyone goes to Nashville next, could they please report back on Las Paletas? (Review & commentary here.) Sounds great (craving Paletas after browsing through Merry Mary's Saveur article on Mango Chile Paletas).

They're really good and have a rotating selection of flavors. The Dairy Godmother in Del Ray has something similar now too.

Hot Breads has continued to expand their Indian food selection to the point that it's now solidly more interesting than the western-style cakes and breads on offer. In particular, there's now a choice of seven kinds of chaat, four varieties of kati rolls, and a brief Indo-Chinese menu...and almost everything is under $5. They also offer an assortment of popular standards - several biriyanis, butter chicken, and mutter paneer.

What elevates this place above hole-in-the-wall status for me is that the spice levels are pretty strong, more akin to what I taste at the homes of Indian friends than at most Indian restaurants. It's a family-owned place, and that probably gives them the freedom to keep it authentic. The samosas were pleasantly non-greasy, and the filling had a steady undercurrent of chilies. Curry puffs were still absurdly puffy - basically a tall apple turnover with a filling substitution - and again relatively strongly spiced.

If you need a quick and cheap bite in the Kentlands area, this one is worth checking out. Hidden in the Lowe's complex, around the corner and past the Elizabeth Arden Red Door Salon.

there are ones in chantilly, herndon and alexandria as well.

What are you a shareholder? $15 is a lot of money for a snack-size pie, unless its served by topless virgin classics majors who did their year abroad and dusted with strategic metals from Uzbekistan. Is $15 too much? I can't say. I can say that knee-jerk rejection of price concerns by (people who may not be but are acting like) affluent jerks is counterproductive.

I'm pleased that price means nothing to you. It's a great country.

I'm heartened by your faith that restaurant owners are merely concerned with serving their customers the best possible ingredients and not with maximizing profit. There's too much cynicism these days.

And I'm impressed by your knowledge of local restaurant chain menus. You must live a gastronomic life.

But I continue to be mystified by the vilification of some poor schmuck who just wants to take his best girl out for a bit off pizza on a Tuesday night without jeapardizing his ability to pay the electric bill. For most of us, cost is always a concern.

you completely missed the point and rather than addressing my question you go off on an unrelated tangent. Now if you want to talk about perceived value and cost, we certainly can, but that'd kind of mean you'd have to cause you to get off your high horse and actually talk about it rather than just spit out snarky bullshit. I'd just really like to know why a $15 pizza is so over priced and why you think it is? From where I sit, $15 for an entree in this area isn't that much and don't really understand why just because we're talking about pizza it's something that only the richest amongst us can afford.

Really? You think people don't think a $15 sandwich or salad is outrageous (or that any pizza isn't comfort food?)?

On the arbitrary note, Pete's, something of a benchmark for "too expensive" pizza in the region, gets $23 for a pie with two toppings, but it's three times as big. I think that a $15 personal pizza deserves a little extra scrutiny for price and value.

So, what do we thing the marginal cost of two ounces of pepperoni and three ounces of cheese when you go upscale v. Cisco? And the food cost percentage for Orso versus Vace?

Hey, may well be worth every penny. But when pizza and a couple of beers for two start pushing past the $50 mark, there's a new paradigm in town and it's reasonable to question it it.

The whole "he's a genius and superior ingredients are expensive" meme doesn't always work out well for the dining public.

I haven't seen anyone on this site talk about the prices of salads at rustico, any of NRG for that matter or GAR. In fact I can't think of any places in that general price range with entree salads under $14-15. I don't see people complaining about the prices of the sandwiches at central. So what makes pizza so different? How do you determine the value of a meal? What makes that pizza not worth $15?

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.

the problem here is painting all pizza with the same brush. The pizza I had at Orso wasn't comfort food at all. I wouldn't put it on the same level as take out pizza or even what someone could make at home. Why do people think that $15 for pizza is outrageous but $15 for a salad or a sandwich or xyz isn't? I just don't understand why because it's pizza there is somehow automatically an arbitrary value assigned to it.

I eat here fairly regularly, and recently brought a genu-ine Japanese person to ask for us, and we still couldn't get anything off the secret menu! She isn't very aggressive, though, and we were able to get lots of nice things off the regular menu. Maybe next time we need a Japanese food-loving alpha male.

they've translated a lot of it. the last page of the menu has a lot of things and there's now an entire separate menu for the set dinners that has been translated as well, you just have to ask for it.

the thing I've always liked about ray's is that it strives to serve as many people as possible and to do that it means that they need to be as efficient and turn as many tables over as possible. While I can understand not wanting to be rushed out the door before you're finished eating, you can't offer first come first serve seating in half the restaurant and have people linger, it just doesn't work. I've never been there any time after 5 where there wasn't a wait and a long line of people waiting for tables. I've been one of those people and I'm always really happy when I finally get my table.

Far be it for me to say anything, but why would you go to a Korean restaurant and expect Mexican based foods to be good, much less extraordinary? Fusion restaurants generally mean nothing is done well. If you've ever had sushi in a Thai restaurant or kimchi made in China or tacos from a Korean restaurant, you know what I mean. If I want tacos, I can think of at least two restaurants that make tacos. True, they don't have kimchi but from the looks of the pictures above, neither do those. I rarely go to Mexican restaurants and expect good galbi or mool-pajun. The next thing you know, McDonald's will have haggis on the menu and Burger King will be selling kosher pastrami sandwiches (and those will suck too)

because kogi's tacos are actually really tasty and it would have been nice if someone here made something similar? http://kogibbq.com/