cheezepowder

I've had an issue twice at the Harris Teeter in Pentagon Row in which there was an advertised special (buy one, get one free), but I was charged for both items. The first time was spaghetti sauce. I didn't feel like standing in the Customer Service line, and I gave them the benefit of the doubt because I bought two different kinds of the same brand so maybe the special didn't apply (although there were "Buy one get one free" signs on multiple varieties on the shelf).

The second time was a Morningstar Farms product, and I bought two of the same product. After being rung up and charged for both, I went to the Customer Service desk. The guy was skeptical, and I walked with him to show him the sign on the shelf. He said ok and told me to take two more for free. So I ended up paying for 2 (and getting 2 free) when I intended only to buy one (and getting 1 free). I haven't gone back to that Harris Teeter since.

And most of all, Senor Frog's at Broadway on the Beach (actually, there is no reason for anyone to go to Broadway at the Beach, except maybe for the Ripley's Aquarium, which was not as good as Baltimore or Charleston, but was ok.) Anyway, at Senor Frog's (I said to my kids, it's basic Mexican, how bad can it be?) you wait outside, because if you waited inside you would NEVER stay for a meal. As you enter, the wait staff is blowing whistles and everyone inthe place jumps on their chair to sing and dance, and then they start dancing around the restaurant. We opt ot sit outside, where we are seranaded by the absolute worst lounge singer I have ever heard - I have heard better things at an elementary school talent show. We wanted to pay him to stop singing, although he was still being somewhat drowned out by the music and what not going on inside. The food, when it finally came, was inedible - we ordered a taco platter, which had ground hamburger (not what was described on the menu) that was of a quality somewhere eblow that of the boxed ElPaso mixes from the grocery store; chorizo that looked like what I feed my dogs, crusty refried beans, and and teeny piece of overcooked lobster; and black bean soup that was tasteless. We ate nothing. As we left, the entertainment inside was calling for all people from Virginia and West Virginia to stand on their chairs for free shots. Waiters walked around literally pouring alcohol direct from bottles into the mouths of parents, grandparents, barely of age young adults, etc. as they sat at their tables with their families. A night to go down in family dining history....

I noticed that Piola (Pizza) is opening in Rosslyn next to Cafe Asia. I'm sure it's just some international corporate mess (their other U.S. locations are in Miami and New York), but has anyone ever been who can tell me something more?

We enjoyed Saravana Palace last night for dinner. It has a casual atmosphere, and there were families with young children/babies. It's all vegetarian, website with menu here. We ordered the assorted appetizer platter -- I liked the samosa and vegetable cutlet the best. I was particularly interested to try an Indo-Chinese dish so I ordered the vegetable manchurian (mixed vegetable fritters in corn flour in spicy manchurian sauce). The deep fried fritters had bits of zucchini, carrot, and possibly other vegetables, and the fritters were lightly crispy on the outside with a mashed potato-like texture on the inside. The sauce had a touch of ginger and generous amounts of chili pepper and chopped onions. I really liked this dish -- I thought the balance of flavors weighed more towards Indian than Chinese. My husband ordered a paneer dish from the Indian portion of the menu that he liked. We also ordered the vegetable biryani which was light on the vegetables and just ok, and the peas paratha (bread). Dinner was inexpensive -- for the appetizer platter, two entrees, biryani, bread, and two soft drinks, the total was a little less than $40 before tip. Service was efficient and friendly. If we lived closer, we'd go back often to try more dishes from the extensive menu.

Nobody "crashed" the doors on Monday - the doors were open and people just walked in and were welcomed. Including tourists walking in off the street who had no idea it had just opened!

The batter burgher is what I want to try! Can someone describe it in more detail? Do you eat it with your hands? Does it come with sauces?

My mom fed us Spam when we were little and didn't know any better, so I actually like Spam. Maria's Bakery in Rockville has a few Spam dishes on their menu. I've had their Spam and fried egg sandwich -- good if you like Spam.

Here is another fabulous single-purpose gadget that I don't think I should live without!

The gadget that I'm always tempted by is the Hot-Diggety Dogger-- you know the bun and weiner cooker that's always in the Skymall catalog on the airplane? Someone tell me if it really works!

We were just at Il Radicchio a few weeks ago. Our meal wasn't bad, and we had no problems with service. For those unfamiliar, they have all you can eat spaghetti with a variety of sauces that you order separately, which is fun if you can't decide on which sauce you want or like multiple sauces to taste (and like spaghetti). If, like my husband, you're fine with just one sauce then you might consider ordering something else (they have a few other pasta dishes, pizza, and meat dishes though I don't know if they're good).

The spaghetti noodles themselves are nothing special and seemed similar to the spaghetti you boil up at home. The spaghetti comes in a large bowl for the table to share with some residual water at the bottom of the bowl which can interfere with the sauce adhering to the spaghetti. So you end up with more of a sauce plus spaghetti dish rather than a dish where the sauce and spaghetti become one. Hence if you just want one sauce, you might want to order something else unless you're a sauce on the side kind of person. I ordered 2 sauces: 1) a gravy boat of carbonara with pancetta which was super creamy, rich, and so bad for you, with chewy bits of pancetta, and 2) a bowl of marinara with clams in the shell. I really liked the carbonara, and I liked being able to switch back and forth with the tomato sauce to cut the richness. The execution though is a little messy. You pile some spaghetti on your plate, add the sauce, and eat. If you have multiple sauces you have a mess on your plate. Asking for more plates might help, I had kind of a pink sauce towards the end.

FYI, according to Willow's menu last night (and at the bottom of our check), Willow is extending RW to Friday, Aug. 25.

Willow's RW menu offered a good number of choices, and we enjoyed our meals. I liked our server who was attentive and somewhat formal in manner. There were 4? (can't quite recall) appetizers (including corn chowder and tomato salad), 4 entrees (trout with crab imperial, barley risotto with beats, some sort of beef steak, and lemon fried chicken), and 3 desserts (banana split, flourless chocolate cake, and a peach tart? crisp?). The corn chowder was very good - it was filled with lots of corn and chunks of potato in a creamy soup. The lemon fried chicken had a definite lemon flavor which made it interesting, though I don't think it made the chicken better -- I'm fine with my fried chicken plain. The breading was very crispy and tasty, and the dark meat chicken I ate was moist. There were two good sized pieces of chicken, (the white meat one I took home with me), very creamy mashed potatoes, greens, and a dipping sauce that was kind of like a lemony hollandaise that I didn't really like. The banana split was a half banana, split, with mini scoops of ice cream, whipped cream and strawberry. I keep thinking that I should eat more sundaes (I always just order a scoop of ice cream on a sugar cone) so I was happy to have a banana split. The table next to us ordered off the regular menu, and the one closest to me ordered the scallops (not on the RW week menu). I had to sneak a peek of how many scallops she got (see Willow thread.) She got 4.

We had a good experience tonight at Restaurant Nora for Restaurant Week. The service was attentive and friendly, the portion sizes looked normal-sized (as in, not reduced for RW), and given Restaurant Nora’s usual prices of upper $20/lower $30 for entrees, the RW price for three courses was significantly less than the typical price. With wine and coffee, though, our total with tax, pre-tip, was about $100.

For the RW menu, Nora's offered a choice of two appetizers (mixed green salad with Asian pear, pecans, and camembert with balsamic vinaigrette or vichychoise with shrimp), a choice of four entrees (Amish chicken curry with basmati rice; mushroom, corn and vegetable risotto; salmon; and beef), and a choice of two desserts (dark chocolate mousse and plum blackberry crisp with vanilla ice cream). The RW appetizers and entrees were different from the items listed on the “regular” menu, but based on my prior visits and browsing of Nora’s online menu, I would say at least some of the appetizers/entrees were representative of dishes that Nora’s has offered in the past, if not very similar. For instance, I know they often offer a risotto dish.

I had the mixed green salad, chicken curry, and plum blackberry crisp. I wasn’t sure that I would like the chicken curry because we go to Indian restaurants quite a bit, and I was skeptical that the chicken curry at Restaurant Nora could be as good. I ordered it anyway, though, because I just had beef the last two nights, I wasn’t in the mood for salmon, and the +1 was ordering the risotto. Surprisingly, I really liked the chicken curry, which was bite-sized pieces of dark and white meat chicken and cashews in a flavorful, very slightly spicy curry sauce. I had the plum blackberry crisp for dessert, which came in a round shallow dish with oatmeal “crisp” pieces scattered on top and a scoop of vanilla ice cream in the middle. The dessert was good, but I like the crisp part better than fruit so would have enjoyed a higher crisp to fruit ratio. I was too full to eat much of the dessert anyway (I’ll confess I actually had a salty oat cookie at Teaism right before dinner .

I think this is the fifth time I’ve been to Restaurant Nora in the last ten years. It’s always been fine, but the flavors never made a strong impression on me. The +1 likes the organic emphasis of the restaurant, though, so we’ve gone back on occasions when there wasn’t another restaurant on my list of places to try. Although I think the chicken curry has been my favorite of the dishes I've had there, I would order something else next time. Chicken curry is something I can get at an Indian restaurant (though albeit, likely not all organic) so I’d want to order a dish that’s a bit more different.

Are there any vegetarian main dishes? (I assume the mac and cheese is a side dish).

From Tom's chat:

Washington, D.C.: Hi Tom,

Is it standard practice for restaurants to re-use the bread in the bread baskets that go out to the tables? In other words, if they bus a table and there are 3 pieces of bread left in the basket, they then put this bread in a new basket and take it out to a new table? I find this kind of gross, and have witnessed a local restaurant doing this. We haven't been back there since.

Tom Sietsema: I have never seen a restaurant re-use bread in the manner you detail, but it wouldn't surprise me if leftover bread made it back to diners in the form of say, croutons or bread pudding.

Do any restaurant insiders care to enlighten us on the subject?

Re-using bread (Chef): For another table, no. Dries out and made into croutons, bread crumbs, bread pudding, etc......all of the time.

Tom Sietsema: Thanks, chef!

It reminds me of when we were eating dinner at a restaurant in Paris. I pulled off a piece of roll and, for some reason, I put the roll back in the basket rather than on my bread plate. When the server was clearing our table, I noticed that he took our bread basket and dumped the leftover rolls in a big bin where another server then came and filled up his bread basket. I felt guilty for having put the roll back in the basket, but I had no idea it was going to be reused.

went here last night with my family and while the food was quite good, the service was anything but....

the servers were M.I.A. most of the night- though they were friendly the few times we did see them. water glasses went unfilled through almost all of dinner. they served my mother soup without a spoon and we waited at least ten minutes before we could find someone to get her a spoon, soup getting cold in the process.

More details here at the sixth question down and here.

I want the Corn Zipper.

Your go now. Keep it real, though. No wine pods.

I made blackberry muffins with blackberries from the farmers market using this Williams Sonoma recipe. They have a strong lemon flavor from the zest and a crunchy lemony sugar top.

We finally cut into the watermelon that I bought last Saturday from Musachio Farm at the Arlington Courthouse farmer's market. It's deep red inside and very sweet and juicy. It's one of those large, seeded, oblong, old-fashioned looking watermelons. I'm not a fan of the seedless round kind that the grocery stores are carrying.

This is along the lines of this thread, but it's a Wash Post article so I guess it goes under Media and News? Anyway, today's Wash Post has an article about Clarendon and David and Rebecca Tax

"Entrepreneurs Who Changed Clarendon Find It Has Changed Too Much"

I would love any recommendations to help make my honeymoon a relaxing, foodie vacation. I've got until next June to plan it, and we are trying to avoid Europe and are currently thinking of Belize or Costa Rica, but would welcome any other suggestions. Thanks!

I am hoping to go here very soon. One of the folks in attendance is a vegetarian, do you all think this will pose a problem? Is it something we should call ahead about?

If we do the tasting menu like I think we'd all ideally like to try, can they make vegematic options for the one in our party, or will we just have to a la carte it?

TIA

I haven't been to Butterfield 9 for Restaurant Week, but passing along this info: They are having a Pre-restaurant week dinner special from August 7th – August 13th and "double restaurant week" for lunch and dinner from August 14th – August 27th. They've posted the menus on their website.

Today's handy tip: When it's warm and humid but you've turned off the air conditioning for the day because darn it, you really wanted some fresh air in the house after all this rotten weather... well, that's not a good time to pipe buttercream. In fact, it's a lousy time to even make buttercream. Sigh. I should have made a glazed pound cake instead.

To use up some buttermilk and fresh peaches, I also made peach crumb cake (chopped up peach bits scattered on the cake batter before putting on the crumb topping).

I arrived late to the Farmer's Market yesterday and saw Chef surrounded by his adoring fans...anyone ask him anything about Eammon's or what's new at Eve?

Have they posted where in Falls Church they are moving?

They have paper slips on the counter with their new info -- they're moving to 112 North West Street, and they'll have a parking lot. The note also says they'll have a greater assortment of pastries, desserts and coffees. The person I ordered ice cream from said that their lease is up July 31 but they might move before then.