Cooter

We just got a new benriner to replace our old mandoline that was no longer sharp.  The old one had a cool plastic storage box but googling around, I can’t find any advice on how to store a mandoline that doesn’t come with its own box.  More than one article notes benriner staying upon their flimsy cardboard boxes until they fall apart.

Does anyone have any creative storage ideas?

We ordered an oz of royal Ossetra a couple of months ago from www.petrossian.com.  Not cheap, but good stuff and shipping and service was pretty great.

I wanted to close the loop on this, so thanks for the replies!  I actually went ahead and ordered before anyone responded.  We were looking for something bigger than any of the local places, like profish, had so we went with MaineLobsterNow.com. I'm not sure that there is really any difference between the online places, so we went with this place as much because they had free shipping as anything else.  The Giants were plenty big and came completely frozen.  The only issue, was that they did not come bagged, but rather loose in a styrofoam box.  I ended up wrapping as best I could in foil then in a garbage bag since we weren't going to eat them for a few days.  In any case, with an overnight thaw in the fridge, they were pretty great and a nice festive treat for an untraditional new year.

Thinking outside the box for Thanksgiving this year and looking into ordering some big crab legs online.  There are a million places online and wanted to see if anyone had any recommendations.  Thanks!

Just wanted to chime in and say that this place punches well above it's weight.  If you are in Arlington, please think about giving this local favorite some business.  

Moussaka isn't something that I would typically order, but it is really out of this world.  You can get lamb/beef patties about six different ways and they are all great.  Household fave is probably the Beyti Yogurt, where grilled lamb/beef is wrapped in flatbreat and covered in yogurt.  

To close the loop, we ended up at ghibellina.  We were able to book a large private room on the second floor overlooking 14th street with a $2000minimum spend.  Staff was responsive in helping plan and there are set menus with a ton of choices and price points.  If I remember correctly, we were able to select three wines, which would be charged each time a new bottle was opened, and three cocktails which would be charged per drink.

food was great and service, all the way from when we sent our first email to when we closed out was fantastic.  I would strongly recommend.

Does anyone have any advice for making ahead if we are going somewhere for the game?

Thanks, again, guys.  

The wines "survived" freezing and tasted fine for the most part.  A half bottle of 2013 Lynch-Bages which popped its cork was pretty blah, and a 2013 Beaucastel which did not pop the cork lacked any sort of body, but I'm not sure if that's a function of freezing.  Highlights of the rest of what drank last weekend were a 2008 Ridge Monte Bello Chardonnay, which was perfect, and a 2009 Ridge Estate Cab.  A 2013 Pierre Bourée Fils Gevrey-Chambertin was also really good, but had a weird, but not necessarily bad, grapefruit flavor.  We don't drink a lot of old world wines, and especially don't drink very much red burgundy, so maybe that's a normal thing?

We did open a 2014 Monte Bello last night, despite it not appearing to have frozen or have cork damage.  Due to a snafu with our decanter, we drank it over about three hours straight from bottle to glass.   It was pretty great after an hour or two.  The last glass had a fair amount of pretty fine sediment which I'm not sure is from the cold or naturally occurring.  I'm a little worried about these having been damaged, either directly from the cold or from having pushed the cork, so I'm thinking that I will likely drink the Monte Bello that we have left over the next few months.  :-(

Don, thanks for the advice!  You weren't kidding about the "crystalline matter!"  All of the dozen or so wines that we drank this weekend that had popped their corks had significant sediment that looked like sand.

I had one additional question, though.  At least one of the wines that we drank this weekend didn't show any visible signs of the cork popping, but were clearly wet on top, so we are likely to open a few bottles of the young monte bellos to see how they fared.  Do you have any advice on how best to enjoy a red that you weren't planning on drinking for 10-20 years?  For example, is it a good idea to decant it a few hours in advance of drinking?

Thanks!

So, i popped into my basement to do some laundry this morning and noticed what I thought was a leaf on the bottom of my 40 bottle wine fridge.  Upon opening, it turned out that it  was not a leaf, but a small puddle of red wine.  Upon further inspection, it turned out that my wine fridge went haywire and some how tried to turn itself into a freezer.  

So, the (hopefully good news) is that the only really fancy stuff that I have are about 15 bottles of Ridge Monte Bello from between 2008 and 2014.  These appear to have gotten really reallycold, but do not appear to have frozen.  The bad news is that the remaining 20 bottles or so have gotten at least partially frozen, with a number of them partially popping their corks.

So, two questions:

1)  What is the likely damage to the Monte Bellos and the couple of other bottles that didn't freeze?  I wasn't likely to drink the first of these for at least another 10 years, so I assume that this will be at least a bit of a mystery until then.  However, if the effects of the cold will do something to the aging, then I guess that I'll drink them now.

2)  Are the bottles that did actually freeze toast?  Is there any difference if they didn't pop their corks and remained unexposed to outside air?

Thanks for any advice.  I suppose that if worst comes to worst, I'm going to be drinking some pretty fancy sangria and mulled wine this weekend.

Hey, everyone.  My wife is turning 40 in August I'm looking for a private or semi-private space for a seated dinner for between 10 and 20 people on a Saturday night, preferably in Virginia or DC.  Would love to keep it under $100 for drinks and food, but have been looking at Jose Andres places and this appears to be around the going rate.  You only turn 40 once, right?

Thanks for the help!

So, what was the lambs head like?  Other than cheek meat, what is there on the head?

8 hours ago, DonRocks said:

One thing that has probably become painfully clear to Uber users: The drivers rely *entirely* on GPS, and if it's wrong, then they're as good as lost.

I'm sorry this happened to you.

On Friday afternoon, our driver took us from 14th and r through DuPont circle to m street and all the way through Georgetown to deliver us to bluemont.  What should have been a 20 minute trip turned into an hour.  Brunch at le diplomate was great, but my morning absinthe left me too confused to speak up.

Well, this is a bummer.

"Minh Vietnamese Restaurant on Wilson Blvd. has Closed" by Adrian Cruz on arlnow.com

Good luck to you, RJ. The burger I had at gypsy soul was probably the best I've ever had. Everything else was good, too, but that burger...

With one pretty significant exception, me, my wife, and our five year old had a pretty good dinner on Wednesday night.

For starters, you'd never know that this place just opened.  The waitstaff was knowledgable about the menu and drink list, bussers kept our waters full and the tables clear, and food was paced pretty well.  Our waitress explained that they are looking to focus on fish and seafood the same way that Kapnos downtown focuses on meat.  This doesn't seem evident in the menu, so it will be interesting to see if they make any changes going forward.  They did tell us that they were out of the scallops, because of weather in Mass, and the whole lamb shoulder.   Both Chefs Paganis and Isabella were in the kitchen while we were there.

I started with a papa-bear cocktail.  Great if you like sweet, which I do. 

On to the food . . . our first dish was the king crab.  I know that this isn't ever cheap, but $25 seemed pricey for one leg and part of a cluster.  In any case, it was cooked fine, although the lemon yogurt served on the side, which was tasty on its own, pretty much overwhelmed the crab.

Next up was a serving of three spreads.  We had the hummus, the melitzanosalata, and the taramasalata.  Of these, the melitzanosalata was the favorite, with lots of fresh veggie flavors.  The taramasalata was great, too, almost like an eggy lox blend?  But, it was too rich to have more than a few bites.

For bigger plates, we got the crispy eggplant, Brussels sprouts, meatballs, and spit roasted lamb.  All were pretty great.  The eggplant came out as inch thick discs with a crispy panko coating and whipped interior.  Texturally, these were perfect, although the honey and orange sauces underneath were a bit too sweet for me.  I can't really remember the specific flavor of the meatballs, but they were fantastic.  They came on a bed of, like, eggplant mousse which was my wife's favortite thing of the night.  Brussels sprouts were also perfectly cooked and the lamb was really good and lamby, too. 

Which brings us to dessert.  We ordered the greek sundae which is described on the menu as like a brownie sundae with baklava instead of a brownie.  I don't know if there was some mistake, but this should have been called a salt sundae.  It literally tasted like someone dumped a shaker of salt on each scoop of ice cream/whipped cream/cherry.  It did have some nice like brandied cherries, but there was no baklava to be found.  Embarrasingly, we finished it since we thought the next bite wouldn't be salty so didn't complain.  The waitress said that one of the items was salted caramel ice cream, so maybe someone screwed up?  In any case, it was probably the worst dessert that I've ever had in a restaurant, but not enough to prevent me from coming back.

As to prices, it ain't cheap, but not out of line for Ballston.  Our total was $140, before tip, for the food, one cocktail, one milk, and three glasses of wine.  I don't think that this is way out of line for the area, comparing favorably to our daughter's favorite restaurant, Mussel Bar, down the street.  We'll definitely return.

Seriously, the burger is one of the best Ive ever eaten. I don't remeber anything about any onions, but it had the beefiest flavor of any burger I've ever eaten. And it's huge.

Went before the Stevie Wonder concert here recently.

...

I'll be back.

Say hi next time!

We also ate here before the DJ Tick Tick Boom show.  We actually had the opposite service issue, with a long wait to take our original order, but no problem getting additional stuff.  We chalked this up to an unexpected rush ahead of Stevie, so wouldn't hold it against them.

The pork and brussels sprouts skewers had some of the best brussels sprouts I've ever eaten.  Everything else was pretty good with the exception of a cabbage dish that featured whole uncut cabbage leaves.  Not an easy thing to eat when you only have chopsticks.

Mixed drinks were on the sweet side, but I enjoy the shochu list is nice and the bartenders are happy to chat about them.

My buddy claims he saw the very pregnant backup singer at the bar before the show, but I'm not sure I believe him.

Are you serious? Someone threw a cigarette and you're bent out of shape and onlookers are in horror? Get a freaking life.

What Mark said. Notwithstanding the fact that this isn't exactly the crime of the century, what exactly do you want "management" to do about this?

To answer your specific question, is this one of the times that management wants to know, the answer is an unequivocal no.

Wait...there's a donkey shit course on the menu? That you suck? I don't want to tell you how to do your job, chef, but you might want to think about stopping at 23 courses.

It could be the combination of just having read The Road and working 44 hours in a vineyard this week but I'm pretty sure people are responsible for their own actions. If you're the host and you know it's 100 degrees and you know it could be dangerous for those in your party to be in the heat you make plans for shelter--you don't rely on a restaurant to take pity and open early. The perfect compromise would have been if the host/ess came out and explained the policy while giving the group some water and directing them to shelter--"play some pool with the hobos at Bedrock," for instance.

This could lead to a rant about how the hospitality industry shouldn't be beholden to constantly being nice to people but I'll leave that for another time...

"No lists of things to be done. The day providential to itself. The hour. There is no later. This is later. All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one's heart have a common provenance in pain. Their birth in grief and ashes.

Jesus Christ, the boy said, it's just 15 minutes.

Listen to me, he said, when your dreams are of some world that never was or some world that never will be, and you're happy again, then you'll have given up. Do you understand? And you can't give up, I won't let you.

If you're so hungry, replied the boy, just go grab a jumbo slice. Quit being so dramatic.

Just remember that the things you put into your head are there forever, he said. You might want to think about that.

You forget some things, don't you?

Yes. You forget what you want to remember and you remember what you want to forget.

No, I mean you forgot that our reservation was at 5:30, not 5:15.”

Regarding your comment about me saying it has "no redeeming culinary value" - would you mind me asking you: If this does, what doesn't? McDonald's has tasty french fries. So what? The milkshakes at Good Stuff Eatery taste no better than a Snickers bar, and you can get that in the checkout line at any 7-11 in the United States (along with your taquito).

I guess that's I just have a fundamental disagreement as to what it means to have "no redeeming culinary value." Looking at your examples, both McDonald's french fries and snickers bars have significant culinary value both because they are awesome, ubiquitous (some would argue this is bad; I disagree), and the gold standard for what they are. I think that when you call something "martian pig slop from hell," it should be something especially terrible, like a 7-11 tauito, but that's just my opinion.

You've just explained it, right?

There should be no mention of Good Stuff Eatery on this website, and Pete Wells shouldn't have mentioned Guy's American Kitchen and Bar. These establishments should fly under the radar of any scrutiny, and their public relations campaigns should be allowed to run unchecked.

I should also go ahead and disallow all negative mentions of Five Guys which, up until now, has been okay for people (including me) to criticize - maybe because it's grown beyond a certain point. Thanks, and I'll be sure to try that Blazin' Barn Burger.

With all due respect, I think that you are being disingeniuos. I'm not sure how my post gets interpreted as suggesting that negative mentions be disallowed. It just seems that "no redeeming culinary value" is a pretty high (low?) bar to reach and I'm not clear on how Good Stuff gets there when it's milkshakes, at least, are pretty awesome and it's at least trying to do something different. I get what you're saying about the pr campaigns, in this post and elsewhere, even if I disagree, but this seems to be a separate question. It's really not clear to me if you mean that burger and fries joints generally should not be discussed on this site (with the exception of hell burger or something) or if there is something special about Good Stuff and the food it turns out.

For what it's worth, I've eaten at Good Stuff exactly two times, so I have no dog in this fight. The rist was after it opened on the hill and the Blazin' Barn burger was awesome, the milkshake was awesome, and the fries were not good. The second was a few months ago when I was stuck in Crystal City. While not as bad as Ladi described, the toppings were far from fresh and flavorful on the Blazin' Barn, but the shake was still awesome and the fries were better.

On the other hand, Mr. Mendelsohn is known for a small chain of quick-serve hamburger restaurants that serve food which is simply awful. There is not one good thing that I can say about Good Stuff Eatery, yet, he's opened three locations, has a "Good Stuff Cookbook," and is opening an online store selling T-shirts and other sundries. None of this matters, however; what matters is that his food, if I may borrow a line from a review I wrote about Rosa Mexicano years ago, is Martian Pig Slop From Hell. There is no redeeming culinary value in any of his restaurants. None. This does not mean he can't cook, this does not mean he isn't a wonderful human being, and this does not mean "I have it in for him." It means his restaurants suck, period.

Can you explain this? Good Stuff is a burgers and fries joint; what, exactly, does it need to do to offer "redeeming culinary value?" IMHO, the milkshakes are great and the Blazin' Barn Burger, which has bahn mi influenced toppings, is pretty tasty and something that's culinarily creative even if you don't find it succesful.

Honestly, I can't reconcile the hate for Good Stuff and Mendohlson's other places when Roberto Donna gets second, third, and fourth chances after literally stealing money from the pockets of the posters on this board.