TheMoonwalker

It's not bad, but I prefer the old Duk Wo. The option to buy "small" and "medium" portions just gives you the false perception that you're saving money when in reality you're just paying more than you normally would for smaller portions of food. The interior of the place is so drab and feels like a jail that just happens to be decorated a little bit.

Still with you on this one: It took forever and was really bad. I'm pretty sure they took the roasted duck from the front of the restaurant and placed it in the oven on broil. Parts of the skin were soft, parts were crispy. Some of my duck was overcooked, and some of it was cold. Just don't order it.

My take: I wouldn't bother coming back for the food. Nor the beer. But I would come back for some great service from our bartender, Tony! The Brisket Sandwich looked like it was going to be dry but to my pleasure was not. It was pretty decent. I subbed my fries with some very large and very good onion rings. Some sauces that came with it were: BBQ: Really more like BBQ sauce with curry powder Ketchup: It's reminds me more of the "Tomato Sauce" I received in Australia with an unusual after taste. I prefer my Heinz. Spicy Chipotle: Really just Ranch sauce with some chipotle mixed in. Steak Sauce: Au Jus The Brisket Sandwich itself is kind of bland and Antonio and I determined that it needed some cole slaw on it to give it some greater depth in flavor and texture. Hopefully they modify the menu offering to include it. Tony was awesome in allowing us to sample the beers. The Altbier was their best. It wasn't similar to any of the Altbiers I had in Dusseldorf, but it stood on its own as a flavorful yet light, crisp and refreshing beer. The wheat beer was way too sharp in odor and flavor for me. And their scotch beer tasted more like dessert wine. From the inside this place looks exactly like Gordon Biersch, and I think I'd prefer going there instead of Mad Fox.

Please don't ever go here (again). Excerpt from my review: I ordered the "Red Hot Pepper Chicken Noodles" which were absolutely horrible. The noodles were nothing half worth remembering and the entire dish reeked and tasted completely like Fish Sauce. I have never sent a dish back anywhere before, but just one bite into the noodles, and I had to. I asked my buddy how his Beef and Broccoli was since that's the only thing he'll try at any Asian restaurant just to be safe. He gave it the thumbs up so I ordered it. When that came out I was once again extremely disappointed. The "Jasmine" rice that came with it was actually Minute Rice!! The beef came in a variety of oddly large slices and the problem of the sauce applied to this dish as well. It took a minute for me to realize that the "light garlic wine sauce" was pretty much just SOY SAUCE. I tried a few bites of my friends custom bowl with the sweet and sour sauce and that, too, was a let down. Big Bowl can't even get their signature dish right. The ambiance is the only thing this place has going for it. But that's very quickly overshadowed by the quality of their food. I would not recommend taking anybody here for any reason.

Potbelly. Seriously.

Good riddance. Terrible and expensive food. Expensive beer. Failed tourist trap?

I'd definitely go back to Cafe Atlantico over and over.

Onion rings, Cajun fries, Cajun rice - all AWESOME! And is it just me, or were the biscuits fluffier, butterier, and overall just better in the 80s?

I love the reply to that guy on Yelp. That guy sucks SOOOOOOOOOOOO bad. His reviews are short and extremely unhelpful, just like I and many others have told him on the Talk threads: http://www.yelp.com/topic/arlington-to-all-you-restaurant-owners-contacting-me-after-the-fact (I am Steve L if you're wondering) Edit, sorry to go off-topic :-) The FAQ on www.pupatella.com is helpful :-)

I hear he's not a businessman and does it for the love of food. If that's what it takes to have amazing food, I'd much rather have someone who loves their art so much that they will not compromise and instead, others as passionate about his food take the reigns and volunteer to keep the operation and love of Thai cuisine going.

Congrats on your opening! I'm just giong to copy and paste my 4-star Yelp review to the end of this message. If you guys get some time, I'd love to talk to you about your journey from cart to restaurant! I'm so excited that these guys opened up a restaurant. I had been wanting to try their cart forever but was also drawn away because of the long wait. I got there around 11:30 today to avoid the lunch rush and I'm very glad I did - the one rush followed right behind us and then faded (so I'd suggest coming in at 11:30 or 12:30 while the store is still relatively new and unknown. Between the 5 of us, we had: 1 pizza with mushrooms, onions, sausage 1 pizza with mozzarella, spinach, pepperoni 1 deep fried calzone with mozzarella, basil, grilled sausage 1 deep fried calzone with gouda, basil, ham 1 sandwich with salmon and other stuff (that they ended up turning into a pizza because they said the bread was too doughy?) 1 arancino 5 free scoops of gelato thanks to the advertised special on Yelp! :-) I'll admit that I'm not a fan of Neopolitan pizza, but I can certainly appreciate their work. The freshness of the ingredients really shines through in their pizzas, and it's especially apparent in the mushrooms, sausage, and onions As for the calzones, I've never had ham on anything that I've particularly enjoyed until today. The ham in their deep fried calzones was especially tender and flavorful! The arancino is extremely rich and filling. You might be able to eat one of these and be completely satisfied since it feels like you're eating a heart attack. Definitely get this one to share if you're going to do it! I'm no expert on gelato, but one of the girls at lunch said it was great stuff, and I'd have to agree. The hazelnut is pretty awesome, but it dominates the palate so much I could barely taste any of my friends' scoops. I was okay with that though. However, there were some issues which I will attribute to their recent opening: - I know they just got a new awesome oven from Naples, so maybe they're not too used to it and dealing with a big lunch rush at the same time: the tops of the pizza were perfectly done, but the bottoms were still kinda flimsy a times so that your pizza would be pretty floppy when you tried to pick it up. Maybe this is also due to how fresh the ingredients were, as fresh ingredients do tend to contain more water. - And maybe this is just because of the Neopolitan style, but I was a little disappointed in the calzones we tried. It was too doughy. (And the dough itself is interesting, it smells and tastes like a chinese donut.) And as we were sharing all our spoils among 5 people, we tried to cut the calzones into pieces for everyone. As soon as we did this, the watery sauce began leaking out of the calzone making everything soggy. I've never seen the innards of a calzone so watery. - The watery sauce from the calzone caused a problem with the plates on which your eat-in orders are served. It's just a piece of cardboard the size of the pizzas they sell. Since this was a completely flat piece of small cardboard, it really caused a mess. - The order/pickup system is a bit confusing. At first, they called out an order number which I guess must have been on the receipt? After that, they just started calling out what the order was. It would help if this was more standardized/apparent - Table cleanup was almost straight forward: there's a trashcan at the front of the restaurant by the door, but we had no idea what to do with our silverware! We ended up putting all of our utensils in a water cup and that became the receptacle for utensils for us and the rest of the restaurant. There seems to be a good amount of seating here. A table for 6 and a table for 8 in the back, a few 2-top tables, and a bunch of bar-level seating. I'll be back to check out the sandwiches - those always looked so good to me. Congrats to these guys for going from cart to restaurant!

They were at Ballston again today, so I gave them a second shot. My first experience with their Righteous Roast Pork sandwich was beyond disappointing. It lacked any flavor and was very meager on meat and veggies. Today my friend and I had the Macho Meatball and the Che Che Che Chicken. They were miles better than the Righteous Roast Pork. The Macho Meatball had a large pork taste without being overwhelming, probably due to its sweetness. The chicken wasn't very impressive, but it wasn't flavorless like the Righteous Roast Pork. I have to say though, for $5.50 this is a very disappointing sandwich. Eden Center is 10 minutes down the road. You can get a better sandwich with more fillings for half the cost. Rebel Hero's bread is more like sub bread and where it wasn't overgrilled and crunchy, it was really spongy.

Oh man those pictures do look awesome. I'm glad everyone had an awesome time and I'm sad I couldn't make it due to sickness and basketball playoffs :-(

Having been a PQ resident and watching all the buzz drum up and die down, I've got little faith in Wagamama opening in Penn Quarter. http://pqliving.com/?s=wagamama&x=0&y=0

I've only been to the Ballston location once. The pulled pork sandwich was extremely moist, but also extremely tasteless. I tried adding some of their BBQ sauce to it, but it was just an unhelpful self-served soup. The fries were overly salty for my taste as well as limp. The mac n cheese was also very unspectacular in any kind of regard. The decor is very fun and lively though, and the food comes out so quickly.