pras

Rumor is that Corned Beef King is moving into this spot.  Ha Ku Ba was pretty good.  Miss the salutation "see you tomorrow"!

Imagine this scene:  Syracuse NY, Marshall Street, circa January, 1999, 5 Degrees.  I stumble out of Feagan's at 2 am into the Pita Pit.  Oh the memories.

I ate at Corned Beef King recently and we chatted with the owner.  He has abandoned plans for Rockville Town Center because of the high rent and parking issues.  He is looking into other locations in Gaithersburg.  Stay tuned.

Rumor is where Hakuba was in Kentlands.

I haven't been in a couple of years, but I thought Pasha in the Kentlands was pretty solid.  http://pashaland.com/

So tonight I made my second stop of the year to Joe's.  I noticed that the front house staff was completely different than in the past.  I asked the cashier and the other person behind the counter if they were new owners to which they replied yes.  After a little more prodding, they said that they took over 1/1/15.  they said that they kept the main chef and have brought on two new chefs direct from Chengdu who have advanced "university culinary degrees".  When I asked if they have any changes planned, they said their first priority was to raise the level of the Szechuan cuisine they are putting out.  They plan to make some small menu changes, but nothing drastic and nothing too quickly.  The only new changes are two special sizzling rice dishes that they are very proud of (listed on paper behind the counter).  I certainly cannot wait to see how this progresses.  Stay tuned ....

I don't know if it is a new, new ownership group but someone bought it out of bankruptcy a year or two ago and re-opened several locations.  I know for certain that the Shady Grove location that was re-opened has already closed.

Since I don't eat beef, pho is lost on me. Chicken pho is not exciting at all (to me), I've tried 75, Pho-viet, and several other places. I'd rather have ramen.

I don't know where you live, but Pho and Grill, with two locations (Gaithersburg and Olney) have a vegetarian bowl (confirmed that they use vegetable broth) that my wife loves.  You should check it out.  Regular Pho is near the top of my list as well.

Smashburger will be closing in Bethesda.

Lasted a bit more than a year.  I wonder how long it will last at Montgomery Mall.

In my opinion, the bread is actually most important as showcased by Wegmans subs (the sub by which I judge all others).  The folklore goes (highly debated) that Wegman watched people lineup at DiBella's Sub Shop and couldn't understand why.  He tried a sub and saw what it was all about.  Wegmans went on to purchase DiBella's solely for their bread recipe.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/capitalbusiness/some-fast-casual-restaurants-see-fast-closures-as-competition-increases/2015/01/09/8e4f8ade-9506-11e4-927a-4fa2638cd1b0_story.html?hpid=z4

Some more information in Washingtonian.

Across the street from my parents place. Great news! Really enjoy the original on 14th. Should be the best restaurant on the Bethesda Ave side of town, if they can keep the quality controlled.

Certainly an upgrade over Vapiano!

"Mike Isabella to Open Greek Restaurant in Bethesda" by Steve Hull on bethesdamagazine.com

*We did not specifically ask for flounder but it came with three pieces of belly and about 18 pieces of fillet. Both were a hit.  pras, I'm curious if you were asked about the flounder before hand as I did not see it differentiated on the different sashimi choices. Unfortunately we only got two pieces of escolar. With the exception of the tuna, the fish was all of high quality, cut thicker than you would find in a Japanese restaurant.  

*The waitresses were very attentive and concerned that we enjoyed our meal.  Every waitress in the place checked in on us at least twice, including bringing us over business cards and takeout menus.  When they weren't checking in they were watching to see if we actually ate everything, which we did.  I think they enjoyed watching us enjoy their food.  One waitress even took a few moments to try to teach us how to say the name of the restaurant, a feat we did not achieve.

*The only language barrier was when one of the waitresses couldn't come up with the word belly when describing the flounder.  I pointed to mine and said the word, she confirmed, and we all had a nice little laugh.

*Go

On the menu, in the Sashimi section there are three groups (as I remember).  The first is fish and seafood, the second is just fish and the third also fish.  The waitress explained that the difference between the two "fish" choices" is that one is with live flounder and the second with other flounder (not from their tank).  She tried to push us towards the non live (probably because it is tough and not typically enjoyed by Americans).  I enjoyed the live flounder, but the others in the group found it too tough.

Can you give a description of the seafood choices?  Pretty sure I have eaten abalone in the past (sashimi), sea cucumber in a Chinese hot pot, but never sea squirt.  I am interested in your take on flavor, texture, etc.

We also found that the service was very attentive and they were very intent on making sure we enjoyed everything.  This is more of a "special" evening for us, so I don't know how often we will be back, but we will certainly be back.

Got two dishes for carryout today.  Cold dried shredded tofu w/ dried bamboo shoots (spicy) and Chengdu Chicken.  Both were really good, the appetizer was a nice level of heat, slightly numbing.  The chicken was a really great dish, with tons of spice (dried red peppers and sliced green spicy peppers), and lots of szechuan peppercorns.  My mouth was on fire, but it was also numb, so all in all a great mix.

Is there anything for my vegetarian wife to eat?

Bob's (and I think A&J) only take cash, so please keep that in mind.

I picked up food there last Wednesday and it was full.  The food was enjoyable.  I tend to like Joe's better, although it seems that Joe's has been receiving mixed reviews lately.

This is in the former location of Annadale Seafood, located at 7123 Columbia Pike in Annandale, which is where I have one of my favorite Korean food experiences ever.  Tonight, wanted to re-live that memory and headed back.  It is now called Janguh Si Kwanguh Dong.  It doesn't look like anything on the interior was changed, perhaps it is a bit cleaner, but still much the same.  They have upgraded the menu and there are better descriptions and more English.  I wait staff spoke better English also, and were able to better describe the differences in the sashimi platters.  Basically, there are about 4 varieties, all available in a large, medium, or small.  The varieties loosely are: fish only, fish only but including a flounder that was live in the tank, fish and seafood (all the fish, but including abalone, sea cucumber, and sea squirt), and fish including the live flounder and the seafood.  We were debating the seafood vs. the fish only.  While I would have liked to try the seafood, the rest of my party is not as adventurous.   We opted for the fish only.  The waitress suggested that we not get the live flounder, but we didn't listen and opted for the live flounder.

The initial dishes included a pumpkin porage which was very tasty, a tempura style california roll, salad, spicy tuna roll, edamame, squid tempura, some other type of sushi style roll, corn with cheese (my wife and mom's favorite), sauteed mushrooms, some sort of smoky rice, scrambled eggs (my daughter went crazy on this and ate the whole portion), a whole fried tilapia (I may have left out one or two).  Next came the sashimi, which included salmon, tuna, white tuna, yellowtail, and a bunch of flounder (fillet, and a belly cut-more to follow on this later).  All of the fish was very tasty.  They gave us a little separated dish with sesame oul with salt and nori, and told us to each this with the white tuna.  It made it very tasty.  The flounder was very tough in the Korean style, with the belly being even more tough.  My dad did not like the flounder because he thought it was too tough (the waitress tried to warn us, I still liked it).

Once the sashimi was done, they brought us each a bowl of miso, again my daughter loved this (we also got her an order of shrimp tempura, which was shared and everyone really enjoyed it)(our daughter was a real trooper and really enjoyed the meal).  After the miso, there was some nappa kimchi, radish kimche, some soy sprouts, and potato salad.  This was followed by a flounder bone stew.  This was actually the highlight of the meal for me (the rest of my family was rightfully stuffed).  The soup had some flounder bones, nappa, sprouts, onion, tofu, and a spicy broth.  The broth was the star!  Meal was finished with Korean yogurt shakes.  Total meal, $110 for 4, plus $11 for the shrimp tempura.  All in all a great meal.  Although my memory is a bit hazy from the last time we were here, I think there was more offering in the dishes before the sashimi, but it was still a great meal and I will come back again.

Flying Dog Brewery to open a new "farmhouse" brewery in Lucketts to focus on barrel aged beers:

http://dc.eater.com/2014/12/19/7422195/flying-dog-will-open-a-farm-brewery-in-lucketts

Panda carryout menu attached.  Note:  this is not as complete as the sit down menu.

panda menu _20141222083629.pdf

Not sure if it is as difficult to come across as it has been in the past, but I was able to get 3-Stars Pandemic Porter at Costco in DC today.  Also not sure how much a bomber usually goes for, but it was $7.99.

Today was my first meet-up so I was supposed to write this up, but thanks to the others because everything pretty much became a mashup in my mind.  I had a great time and look forward to more meet-ups hopefully in the near future.  My favorite was certainly the green beans.  Although the meat in the firey pot was nondescript as dean mentioned, I really enjoyed the vegetables and the "soup" (this is very similar to one of my go to dishes at Joe's, but at Joe's it is tofu in place of the meat).  The tendon and tripe was also very nice, numbing and spicy.  Based upon the abundance of good Chinese in Rockville, I am not sure when I will be back to Panda again, but it was still very good.

Just stopped by and got a hot baguette.  Very good.  Will definitely be back!

The odd thing about that is it appears that they divided up the 100 by the number of people testing, so each those ratings comes from one tester each.  That makes some of the results bizarre (e.g., one tuna sandwich ranked among the highest and another, which had the same ingredients except for lettuce, ranked among the lowest).  Maybe they explained the process in detail somewhere and I missed it, but it looked to be pretty lacking in rigor.

It was amusing that the tuna was in both the best and worst sections.  Bottom line with that place is that there truly is something for everyone with 100 choices being present.