KSPS

Help, please. I don't recognize any of those names. Are they vendors at the Falls Church or McLean markets? If so, where does each set up? Thanks.

I believe they're at the Friday farmer's market in McLean. I don't know the name of the vendor, but as you enter the tiny area with the booths, on the left you'll first encounter an ice-cream vendor. At the second booth, I overheard a conversation between a shopper and an employee about the peas for sale. I'm reasonably confident they were discussing both sugar snap and English peas.

I was at the market yesterday for the first time since Thanksgiving and booths were set up in both legs of the "L" -- stretching as far as is typical. However, I felt somewhat unsettled since some vendors were in a different location (i.e. one of the soap vendors had moved closer to the intersection) and two pickle vendors have been added, one at each end of the L. I can't figure which vendors have dropped out. Stachowski, the sausage vendor, was selling duck sausage. They had been promising to bring duck sausage "next week" from late August until I stopped going the last Saturday before Thanksgiving. I hope the sausage is good after that build up! Lettuces and spring onions were glorious. The market was awash in strawberries, the Sweet Charlie variety, and while, the berries had lots of intense flavor, they weren't as sweet as the organic Driscoll-brand strawberries I've been getting at Whole Food lately. No problem. I macerated the berries in a little Grand Marnier and sugar and spooned them over pound cake from Valentine (also at the FC market) for our holiday dessert. Incidentally, my spring onions got used in last night's entree: a lovely warm vinaigrette over grilled salmon. That was the only farmer's market product that went into the recipe since it's still too early for local cherry tomatoes and I don't recall ever seeing celery locally.

Now, if we were reviewing Mike Symon's flagship restaurant, Lola, in Cleveland, I would launch into a rant about the flatware. Imagine flatware that rolls in your hand so that you have to check the tines of the fork to see if they're oriented properly before putting the food in your mouth. But add my vote to the call for new menu covers.

Actually, we chose the Dolcetto ourselves, but our waiter gave it the stamp of approval. It is one of our moderately priced go-to wines, especially when we don't get help. (Gavi being the white go-to equivalent)

Okay. So "the review" is Sietsema's write-up in the new spring guide. All I can say is that the menu I was presented on Sunday, May 8 stated that pizzas would be served whole and ours were. Bottom line: Pizzeria Orso needs to work on training if its servers are slicing into the pie against best practices or without being asked to do so. OR Pizzeria Orso took a look at its quality and decided to stop slicing the pies between the time when Sietsema and I each visited the restaurant.

I'm confused. Who is claiming that the new chef is serving sliced pies? The menu states that the pies will be delivered to the table unsliced -- and finished with olive oil -- unless otherwise requested. And unsliced is exactly what we got Sunday night when my husband and I ate there. If someone else got a sliced pizza, the take-away message is that the server needs more training not that the restaurant has backed away from the right way to deliver the best Neapolitan pie.

I think your comment "...Fiola is.. [about] exploring an imaginative and creative menu ... in a less formal ambience" really captures the essence of the place. I don't believe the branzino was on the regular menu Saturday night. If my memory is correct -- subject to age intensified by food coma -- you must have been served the branzino as part of your tasting menu. I know the daily grilled fish choices were Alaskan salmon and swordfish. As I've written, our waiter indicated that the restaurant was hoping to wait to get into tasting menus until the place was in a more firmly established routine. Thanks! I couldn't remember what the prix fixe for Maestro was when it closed. Saturday night, we ate until we were in a food coma and spent $205 plus tip. (We were only charged for the single dessert we ordered -- not the parade that arrived at our table.) I'm aware that this isn't cheap; it isn't even moderate! However, the quality of Trabacchio's cuisine is big-league and for that places like Citronnelle and Inn at Little Washington are charging considerably more.

In a heartbeat! I think Trabacchio's handling of octopus is amazing. I have no idea how he's getting the meat to be so tender since the octopus he's using are not baby-sized. My husband ordered a half-portion of the entree octopus preparation as his appetizer and I ordered the rigatoni/octopus pasta so we gave the kitchen a real test of their octopus skills. Both were sublime! I'll make one observation: The spaghetti with crab has come under fire for being too oily. There's a fair amount of oil in the octopus preparation, too. I didn't get upset by this; it seemed very Italian to me. Italians value good quality olive oil as an ingredient in its own right. After all, there's a famous pasta preparation Aglio y Olio, in which the pasta is dressed with nothing more than olive oil and garlic. The only thing that surprised me is that there is no bread provided to mop up the lovely flavored oil that pools at the bottom of the bowl. The meal begins with a spiral roll that rivals CityZen's Parker House rolls. In fact, think of the lightness of those Parker House rolls jacked up with cheese added to the batter. Now, you've got a sense of the Fiola signature roll. However, that early roll was the last bread we saw during the meal. I suspect I could have asked for another roll to mop up the oil, but I was already stuffed.

The trenne dish has been modified.The octopus pasta is now prepared with rigatoni and a probably Marzano tomatoes. I described the dish upthread.

I don't know if your friends are still looking, but they ought to check out the wonderfully named store "Classic Cigars and British Goodies" in the Clarendon section of Arlington.

When all else fails, head to the dictionary! Smart: (definition 11) dashingly or impressively neat and trim in appearance. Now, I can tell you what that means to me. For a man, that means a silk shirt or a broadcloth/Oxford cloth shirt with nicely pressed slacks. For a woman, that might mean slacks and a tailored silk blouse or an unstructured jacket and slacks. I haven't got a clue how you would dress for a show at the 9:30 Club. I know how my husband and I dressed to attend both the Bruce Springsteen and Bon Jovi concerts at the Verizon Center in the recent past and we were more casual than we dressed for Fiola.

Thanks! Truth in advertising: I'm old enough to be your mother and, if you're in your twenties, I might be old enough to be your grand-mother. I don't think anything qualifies as romantic unless you can talk to your significant other in a private voice. That won't happen at Fiola. The closest you might come to a romantic experience is to snag one of the tables for two at the end of the banquettes. The padded bench wraps around so you have the option of sitting across from your companion or next to him/her. Sitting next to your special someone would be a cozier situation, but, by my standards Fiola is a lively place with sublime food. Younger generations may come to a different conclusion. Here's a report on the men's outfits Saturday night: Half the men were wearing open collar woven shirts and the other half were wearing a sports jacket with an open collar woven shirt. (I only saw one young man wearing a collar-less tee shirt under a blazer.) Sam Donaldson was dining there on Saturday night, and he was the only gentleman in the room wearing a suit and tie. Even the other men in his party weren't wearing ties.

Holding the Westover FM on Sunday would go a long way to taking care of the competition problem. For example, I recommend at least one good quality bakery since good quality breads have a very short shelf life. Sure a shopper might buy a loaf on Saturday and wrap it in plastic, but that shopper has just killed the wonderful crust that made the loaf so appealing in the first place. If you can identify new vendors whose products aren't available at other nearby markets that would be another way to deal with competition. For example, the Evarona Dairy makes amazing sheep's milk cheese, but they can't get into the Falls Church FM because Falls Church already has "enough" cheese vendors. Talk about fuzzy thinking. All the FC cheese vendors carry essentially the same cow's milk varieties, especially mozzarella. And, as much as I enjoy good mozz in a Caprese salad, I'd welcome easy access to great sheep's milk cheese like Pecorino and Machengo in the Westover area. I can't be alone in thinking that sheep's milk cheeses are very different from cow's milk cheeses.. Are there any local growers who grow Asian fruits (e.g. Dragon fruit) or vegetables (e.g. Chinese spinach)? If so, including a vendor who sells exotic fruits or vegetables would be another way to differentiate this new market. I hope these ideas are useful. Good luck with your project!

After dining at Fiola last night with my husband, I thought I'd make my first post. The restaurant is a sort of hybrid. The prices for some sublime dishes are lower than their counterparts at other restaurants, but the prices are definitely not low. The decor is contemporary high end, but uses very few sound-absorbing materials so the sound level is quite raucous. If we have one quibble about the place, it is that the portions are too large! A half portion of pasta is large enough to be a full portion, especially if you expect to order multiple courses. Commenting about portion size to our waiter, he said the place wanted to be perceived as a value restaurant. I'd say the value lies in the superb ingredients and their deft preparation; I'd rather have slightly smaller portions and not walk out of the restaurant feeling quite as stuffed as we felt. (Disclaimer: There was a special circumstance to our full tummies, that I'll explain shortly) Obviously, we could have ordered fewer courses, but after missing Fabio's cooking since he shuttered Maestro, we ordered the way we would typically order a meal in Italy. Here are the details: My DH began the meal with a half portion of the octopus and asparagus entree. Fabulous! The octopus was tender and the asparagus retained their crispness (which is not typcial of asparagus preparation in Rome). Both these ingredients were brought together in a delicious spiced tomato sauce. I ordered vitello tonnato. The paper-thin, tender slices of veal had a lovely flavor on their own, but were enhanced by the silken and delicious tonnato sauce. I liked the crunch of the salad in the center, but I wonder if the "apple" of the online menu has, in fact, become a mixture of jimica and apple. Pasta course: My DH had the pappardelle with braised oxtail. (The online menu lists paccheri but pappardelle was subbed last night.) Robust flavor and really excellent if you like that sort of sauce. I'm not a fan of the texture of meat braised that way, but my husband is, and he declared this to be one of the best he's ever eaten. The pasta with octopus and cherry tomatoes last night morphed into rigatoni with a tomato sauce more likely made up of Marzano tomatoes. At any rate, the tomatoes were simmer retaining only a few chunks rather than a quick saute to retain their shape. Interestingly, Fabio sauced both pasta dishes in the American rather than the Italian mode. That is, he used lots and lots of the sauce on the pasta, treating quite lovely pasta simply as a vehicle for conveying the sauce. With sauces this delicious and packed with goodies, this isn't really a complaint, just an observation that the chef has chosen to modify authenticity to meet customer expectations. Meat course: My DH ordered the gargantuan mushroom-stuffed veal chop, and he was very happy. (At $30 this is $9 less than the veal chop at Osteria Assaggi, a competent and pleasant-enough suburban Italian restaurant, but one that is hardly a peer for Fiola.) I had a taste of the veal and the meat was moist and flavorful. I ordered the grilled swordfish. Unfortunately, my fish was overcooked by two or three minutes. The star of my meal was the mixed vegetable stew, called a "scafata" on the web site. I loved the contrast of the bitter greens with the sweetness of the tomatoes and the distinctive taste of the fresh artichoke hearts. (I knew they were fresh because some of the pieces included a bit of the stem, and that unique shape signaled fresh-trimmed artichokes to me.) I enjoyed the fish considerably more when I topped each piece with a bit of the scafata. Frankly, this overcooking was the only misstep we observed from a kitchen going through its first official Saturday night at prime time. I left over some of the fish, but did not bring it home. I noticed our neighbors took an upscale doggie bag home with them, and I noticed one or two other parties holding doggie bags as we waited for our car to arrive from valet parking. (That's a large number of doggie bags among relatively few customers which suggests that others think the portions are excessive.) Dessert: At the end of the work week, I don't know how the subject came up at work, but my husband mentioned to one of his employees that we'd be dining at Fiola. Turns out this employee is a friend of the pastry chef. She got in touch with him prior to our dinner. and the results were equally delicious and insane. We were absolutely stuffed, but we felt we had to order one dessert. We ordered the lightest dessert on the menu: the lychee panna cotta with blood orange. Our waiter set the dessert down between the two of us. Then, runners, each carrying a tray laden with more desserts arrived at our table; the pastry chef had sent out one of each of his desserts! We then proceeded to sample one or two forkfuls of each of the desserts! Simply stated these were the best desserts we've had at any Italian restaurant in the US or in Italy. The wine list is loaded with very reasonably priced bottles from every region of Italy. We ordered a bottle of Dolcetto d'Alba (Piemonte) a very pleasant, drinkable wine for $48. Random thoughts: A meal at Fiola is not a destination meal in the same sense that a meal at Maestro used to be. There are no special-purpose plates or utensils for various dishes. (I remember a gizmo from Maestro that consisted of an individual container for sauce that was suspeded as if in a swing over an warming flame. I can't remember what the sauce was for other than a meat course, but I sure remember that contraption!) Fiola is a destination meal in the sense that Trabocchi is an awesome talent and he's bringing that skill to everything coming out of his kitchen including the most rustic and mundane dishes. The restaurant isn't quite offering a tasting menu yet. The disclainer is that our waiter told us that a couple of groups of six-eight guests asked for a tasting menu meal and Trabocchi didn't want to disappoint them. The expectation is that Fiola will eventually add a tasting menu. The menu leans more to tradition than modern Italian cuisine, but that may be something to look for as the restaurant continues. Certainly, small details like lychee and crisp asparagus show a willingness to break with tradition already. I was amazed by degree of professionalism both the kitchen and the service staff were already demonstrating. The hostesses could not have been more warm and welcoming. Washington is lucky to have Fabio back!