Escoffier

Yep, that's me...(and that's why the smilie is there... )...

Once you receive the engraved invitation, you'll be more then welcome wearing white tie (as long as you tie it yourself and don't wear one of those ridiculous manufactured things). Dinner jackets after 6:00pm please, and I expect your gentleman's gentleman to come around with your calling card first.

..and they should get the same quality and service of food to match their attire...

You might check the spelling of redeeming as well... . Nope, nothing redeeming in Fairfax, you should probably move to Prince William County, they have a T.G.I. Fridays...

I'd rather swim to Siberia than to go to Maryland, but for this one...we'll go. (Unless you mean the date, in which case, those things have a way of taking care of themselves)

Oh what the hell....after 3 weeks of Italian food, a bit of over the top spicy might just do the trick..put us down as possible-definite maybes...

Hmmm, pesto...we've had some of the best (and definitely freshest) fish ever, we've had great gelato, wonderful wines but I can't recall having pesto yet. We have a bunch of pictures from the restaurants we've eaten in here in Genoa and will be posting them along with the names of the restaurants as soon as we get back to the States. As a small teaser, we had lobster and linguine night before last, sitting in a cafe in the old part of the city. The lobster was perfect, the linguine was excellent and the wines were unbelievable. Last night I had a seafood salad that could have been a meal in itself. (but still can't recall any pesto. I'm going to ask around for you though..oh, and olive oil with white truffles ... perfecto)

and to get this back on topic, the one (and only) time I tried to eat at the 29'er Diner...the cigarette smoke was so thick and prevalent (even on the "non-smoking" side) that I had to leave. Unless they've shot all those people with a cigarette permanently stuck in the corner of their mouth who seem to live at the counter, washed 200 years of nicotine off of every surface within 20 square miles and trashed all the ashtrays, I don't think I'm interested in going....now food in Genoa, Italy, that's a different story and one to come later this week.

To echo a bit of what Grover said; I had the spicy beef soup which I found a bit strange. Rather then shredded beef, there were three or four small pieces of beef cut into roughly 3 inch long strips. While they were tender, the soup didn't really have any overall hint of beef in the broth. Now this could be the difference in cooks between the H-Mart food court and the food court at Super-H. At Super-H the beef is shredded and there seems to be more of it. The broth itself was tasty but not quite as spicy as what I'm used to. There also seemed to be an overabundance of bean sprouts. After looking at the menu, there was nothing on the menu that you can't find at other Korean restaurants so I'm not sure what they were referring to. You can get jjampong at a number of Korean restaurants.

Your people did a great job. Mike did his usual great job with the wines and selected the food for us...some great seafood you have there. Larry was on top of everything and got everything to us with totally perfect timing. Hope your dinner went as well as ours...The oysters and clams were excellent. The octopus with the wagyu pepperoni was just amazing.

You might also consider either Vermilion or Evening Star in Alexandria or Tallula in Arlington. All three have excellent food and should meet your price point.

I really don't understand why you should continue to apologize for Han Gang. There are many (and I emphasize many) excellent Korean restaurants in Annandale. This, at the moment, is not one of them. Maybe one day...maybe not.

I would suggest that you save yourself a great deal of money that could be better spent somewhere else and hie yourself to To Sok Jip where you can eat real Korean food.

I bow to your obviously superior knowledge of Korean cuisine. Obviously you had a different chef then we had. Onion and red peppers (not red pepper) in haemul pajeon (which means SEAFOOD with scallion pancake) is wrong, wrong, wrong. Scallion fills the bill quite nicely (and doesn't make the pajeon soggy. Incidentally, pa means scallion). Haemul means seafood; an ingredient that was woefully lacking in what we ate (and incidentally, I am married to a Korean, I have spent a fair amount of time in Korea, I woefully mispronounce a number of Korean words and I eat Korean food about 3 days out of the week).

So we go off to Han Gang on Mother's day, walk through the door and are immediately seated. Reasonably quick comes our server asking if we'd like bori-cha. Good start, unfortunately, that was the high spot of the whole dinner. We order haemul pajeon (our benchmark dish). Out come 9 pieces of pajeon arranged on a platter. From the appearance, it's not a complete pajeon but we'll eat it anyway. First impression, it's crunchy! What is with crunchy? Next impression, someone in the kitchen doesn't know what haemul means...(p.s.: it means seafood). Skimpy is being overly generous. A couple of pieces of octopus, (I had one, it was okay), no shrimp to speak of, a bit of squid. Conclusion: To Sok Jip wins this one, hands down. Next up, the panchan. Of the eight dishes of panchan, one was spicy, one was tasty, six were bland to blander to blanderest. The kimchi passed it's sell-by date by about ten days. Sour, sour, sour. Tasting more of vinegar then kimchi. The one panchan that was tasty was dried cod. Nicely done, flaky and tasty. Panchan? Kudos to Gamasot. Next up, a spicy seafood stew. Well it lived up to the spicy part and it did have some seafood. It had clams, it had sea squirts (extremely bitter and overly chewy), two lobster tail pieces, and for some reason bok-choy. Not Napa cabbage which is what you'd expect in a Korean dish but bok-choy. Oh, there were also two complete shrimp. I wonder if there would be three shrimp if there were three of us dining. Next the dish Tom S. raved about...the abalone. I have to admit the abalone was well prepared but again, bok-choy. I guess Super H was out of Napa cabbage. The abalone was extremely mild (almost to the point of not being there at all. Could it have been canned?) and a bit salty, but the mushrooms in the dish made up for it. I ended up eating about ten mushrooms to ever piece of abalone. The entire dinner excluding tip came to just over $75. For that price, we could have eaten at To Sok Jip three times and had money left over. All in all, not very exciting, not very enticing. If this restaurant is aiming for the Woo Lae Oak audience, they need to step up a lot. Personally, I feel they fall between Yaechon and To Sok Jip with Woo Lae Oak pricing. We're going to try this one more time and go for the simpler dishes on the menu. We'll do Galbi. That's a dish that's almost impossible to mess up. I'm hoping for better results.

I will be in Italy during the first half of June and probably won't return until June 18th. There's a chance that Grover might also be in Italy during the same period.

We were going out of town on Thursday so what better place to eat dinner Wednesday night but Dino. We took a friend who had never been there. Other than that he kept saying how good the food was, it was just the usual great time. I'm still trying to find a enoteca somewhere in the area that is as good as Dino...I'll be in Italy the rest of the month and restaurants there are going to have to do some work to keep me from comparing them to Dean's great cooking.

OMG!!!! the last thing you want to do with fugu...a very delicate white-fleshed fish...ARGGGGHHHHHHHHHH!!!! You eat it sashimi, maybe a little sushi, the last flakes of fleshy goodness on rice and then the soup is made from the left-over parts....heavenly!!

I hope it is half as good as the fugu we had in Seoul (even if lunch for 2 was as bit over $200)

At one time Yamazato on North Beauregard in Alexandria did but I don't think they do anymore.

We've had two Farmer's Table dinners at Evening Star, both which have been extremely successful and well received. It helps if you make all the food arrangements with the Chef first and set a fixed price per person. Do a search for Evening Star and read about the previous two dinners and perhaps the next one won't be a disappointment. (Welcome to DR)

You had exactly that, you had spicy beef soup (Yukaejang), another of my favorites. A lot of Korean soups are either flavored with red chili powder or kimchi (which also has red chili powder...detect a trend here?)

I have just one thing to say...pork and duck fat...if you don't know what this is, ask Dean. Three of us spent a wonderful 3 hours on Friday night enjoying Dino and Dean's great food.

Great stuff! A spicy with red chili powder fish soup. A second cousin to Haemul or seafood stew. Maeuntang is generally one type of fish (pollack or croaker or cod, usually) and every part of the fish is cooked with cabbage and scallions. Haemul is a mixture of (again usually) squid, octopus, scallops, shrimp and any other fish pieces that might be hanging around. Instead of cabbage and scallions, it has noodles, some onion, miscellaneous green thingies (I've been unable to identify the specific greenery and Grover won't tell me what it is). The prize in Haemul is the head-on shrimp which I always save until last. Both Maeuntang and Haemul get their spicy kick from red chili pepper powder.

Not only is that a beautiful main dining room but the staff is amazingly adept at anticipating what you need and getting it to you with a minimum of fuss and bother. We took 2 other couples to dinner there last week and everyone left extremely happy with the food and the service.