weezy

Simply to ensure it does not continue un-reported in the Dining Guide, prior to a dance class last night, I had dinner at the bar at Nick's nightclub on Pickett Street. On tap, Shiner Bock ($2.50, i guess the HH price) and Bud. Several other offerings in bottles. Looking at the bottom shelf, they must sell a helluva lotta cheap flavored vodka. Probably 30 half-gallon bottles of the swill were lined up in all their various flavors. It makes me think there must be a whole lot of 16-17 year olds masquerading on fake IDs in there on the weekends. The barman said most of it got mixed into pineapple juice things. <shudder> Menu is pub grub with a Tex-Mex slant. I decided to try the BBQ quesadilla. The runner who brought it out claimed to have smoked it himself. He did not menion if he was smoking anthing else. It came with bagged tortilla chips, some sour cream and salsa. The salsa was very pureed in texture and tasted mostly of lime juice. The beef was tender and chunky, the sauce a sweet smoky tomato-based thing, but the overwhelming taste was that of pickled jalapenos. After a couple of bites, that was the only flavor I could discern. I didn't come across any chunks of the jalapeno, so someone must have thought it a good idea to dump the juice into the vat of BBQ meat. No cheese and the sour cream did nothing to improve things. I've got 7 more weeks of this class. It's supposed to be 1/2 price burgers on Wednesdays -- none of the fancy ones, just reg. hamburgers & cheeseburgers, so I may try one of those next week. Verdict: If you want really sweet cheap drinks and to ogle underage wannabe cowgirls, this may be the perfect spot. Otherwise, just be glad I'm taking one for the team.

Maybe Vit Goel / Lighthouse for tofu stew?

Congrats to Pizzaman on his new venture

kaffir lime so there's a steady source of leaves!

a Russian beef broth & ham soup with onions, chopped dill pickles, pickle juice, capers and more fresh dill in it. Solanika, I think it's called? Strange, but good.

What I saw was very definitely being smoked, not grilled. I expect that whatever was in the smoker would have at least several hours in the smoke (since I passed by at ~ 8:00 a.m.) and would then be transferred into the kitchen to be finished,sliced, plated, etc.

Back here for lunch today. This time, a catfish bahn mi with jalapenos added. A very tasty sandwich, although the jalapenos were in a clump instead of evenly distributed. Bread was good and crunchy but not overly so, more mayo than my doc would recommend but seemed about right to me! The fish was mild and cooked well, a bit of char on one edge of it, and a good balance of flavors overall. A 9" sandwich for $6, added an iced lotus tea for another buck, so an exceptional deal for $7 plus tax & tip. The "cash only" sign is gone at the front door and there are stickers for Visa MC and I think Diners, maybe Amex, but I don't know if those are new or left over from the Pita House days.

I pass by Mango Mike's driving to work in the mornings, and this a.m. they had a big smoker working out in the side parking lot. Don't know what was inside, but there's something BBQ on the menu today

Doesn't everything taste better with that?

For me, it's more like fuck the Old Year, bring on the New! 2011 wasn't my worst year, but there's certainly plenty of room for improvement in 2012

oven roasted duck breast with dijon mustard and herbs, baked a sweet potato with, then while the breast was resting, I sliced the sweet potato and fried it up in the rendered duck fat. Dessert -- the remaining fried sweet potatoes.

In January, all gardners are landscape architects of amazing abilites. By August, their true colors have emerged. My true color this year was brown.

I had a lot of good food this year, but no fine dining. I think my favorite bites in 2011 have been quail appetizer at Four Sisters, the ginger tea at the bakery beside Yechon (name slips my mind right now...Breeze?), a little Chinese carry-out on LRT, Hunan Kitchen, that makes crispy shredded beef as good as the Schezuan beef proper used to be at Peking Gourmet Pupatella (#1 overall) and Cafe Piazzolo (#1 on my route home) and some wine braised short ribs I made many months ago

Agreed that if those are my choices, undersalted is better because I can adjust that to taste. I find Hank's to be a bit undersalted to my palate but I like that it allows for the briny flavors of the seafood to come through and I can make a decision then whether to add salt or not.

Well, in keeping with Rocks' desire to revisit some of the older threads, it turns out that I lunched today at the Mt. Vernon Inn with my bookclub. The service was good -- especially considering that it turns out that it was our waitress' first day working there. Her only bumble was that she served all the glasses to the left of the plate instead of the right, so a very easily remedied thing. The food was.....hmmm, what's the word I'm looking for?.......... meh. Probably the two best things at our table were the cornbread muffins, which were truly cornbread, neither sweet nor cakey, and the chestnut-peanut soup. The soup was quite tasty but served in a big mug and is really too rich and filling for such a large serving as an appetizer. Everything else on the menu was fancy fonts describing very pedestrian choices delivered by men in knickers: turkey pot pie, ham sandwich with chips, etc. My group had a good time because we enjoy each other's company, but very little was said about the food we were eating -- a lot of talk about food we should try at other places.

I think I saw a "cash only" sign on the front door still.

In newer news in Old Town, on Cameron Street just west of N. Royal, is a new-ish Vietnamese restaurant, Caphe Bahn Mi. Spotted it last week on my way back to the office from lunch, so made a point to go there today and try it out. There is seating for about 25 or so people, very simple decor and pleasant inside. Two young women were running the place, the one with the lighter hair was doing the cooking and the darker haired one took care of the FOH work. The menu has about five items under each category, and they are typically a pork , a chicken, a lemongrass, a garlic beef, and a shrimp or tofu prep. Most of the folks in the restaurant were having pho, but I knew with my time constraints today and the blouse I was wearing, pho was much too dangerous to eat (unless I went to the hair salon next door and got a big plastic cape to wear). Bahn mi are $5-$6, salads run $7-$10, entrees $8-10, pho is $8+ extras. I ended up getting the pork vermicelli with vegan imperial roll ($9) and a ginger soda ($3). The roll was very good -- rolled in cornmeal before frying for some added texture, but soooo hot when first served that unfortunately I had to spit the first bite out into a napkin before I burned my mouth. Note to self: imperial roll is best saved for the latter half of the meal! Once I tried it at edible temperature, I liked the texture, it wasn't greasy, it was very crisp and the filling was tasty and good texture, although it was a bit one-note, taste wise. Still, except for the too-hot bite, I made sure I finished it. It arrived with the entree on a long oval plate with a dipping pool at one end with the typical sweet-sour sauce, and the meat plated on top of the vermicelli on one-half of the plate with julienned carrots and cukes served on lettuce. No basil to be seen. Fish sauce and sriacha at the table. The pork was very flavorful and cooked until still a bit pale pink in the very center (I thought it perfect; my Mom would have sent it back b/c it retained a little pinkness and she is old school about overcooking pork). Noodles were fine as well. Overall, the cooking was done well, the veg was fresh, and I thought the pork had a nice grilled flavor. I'll definitely be back to try the pho.

Well, it's swiss chard, a Yukon gold potato, perhaps cabbage or maybe chinese celery, and beast braised in red wine with mushrooms...or maybe a borsht-style sauce?, oh, and some sour cream on the side.

Is this Fear Factor a la Rocks?

Came here for brunch for our office's holiday party today. There's an all-you-can eat buffet of salads, a few sushi offerings, breakfast meats, pate, salmon and a few other choices, plus a AYCE dessert table, in addition to which you order a cooked-to-order entree from a selection of about 9 different offerings, with AYCD champagne and OJ. Across the board, our group mostly loved it -- the main complaint was one gal who doesn't know cuts of meat at all and expects all steaks to taste like ribeye, cut like filet mignon, and look like a 1.5" thick NY strip. She ordered steak & eggs (which I did also), which came with a 6 oz sirloin and ordered it medium-well - and then complained that it was tough (insert eyeroll here). Of the entrees, the crabcakes benedict looked the best, but the cod on cannelini with chorizo cream was a close second. All the varieties of eggs ordered at the table were done perfectly -- the poached eggs and my over-medium eggs all had a thick, unctuous but still liquid yolk, and the scrambled eggs were soft, creamy and a little fluffy. The buffett bar's offerings included a very nice pate, lightly grilled tomato-mozz "sandwiches" with a balsamic drizzle, a selection of olives and cheeses, along with good quality link sausage, potatoes gratin, bacon, london broil with horseradish, shrimp, crab claws, etc. On the dessert bar, my favorite was a Bailey's irish cream chocolate mousse, and they had cheesecake, pumpkin creme brulee, bread pudding, a flourless chocolate cake with peppermint icing, eclairs, layer cake, and several others. It's pricey at $55 pp, but for big appetites and big champagne drinkers, it's reasonable. And if you use valet, they validate parking

Turn left at the next traffic light, and there's a cut-through in that shopping center between the Marshall's and Qdoba that will take you to Payne Street without risking your life getting across Rte. 7

I've been to the Fern Street location 2-3 times in the past several months. I like it -- crust is flavorful, toppings are good. It's between work and home, and it's the best pizza I've found en route.

Yes, I am. Cleared my cache and left off the "www" et voila, I'm in at work.

Any thoughts about the sort of cuisine you want? And are you MD, VA or DC? In Virginia, Falls Church/Annandale areas, good Egyptian/middle eastern from Jerusalem (they do deliver), and Ind-Aroma for Indian catering (I think they deliver).

I haven't been able to access the site during the day while I'm at work. I use IE at the office -- maybe I need to clear my cache & history. At any rate, I'm not able to access during the day and just checking to make sure the site hasn't been under construction during those hours (and looking at the time of posts, obviously not, so it's a problem at my end). In the immortal words of Rosanne Rosanadanna, "never mind."