Michael Landrum

Raisa, you did nothing wrong. You just didn't have a 750 degree cooking surface at home. That's what does it. One way to get the restaurant effect at home is to use a Lodge cast iron large skillet pre-heated as hot as your range and smoke alarm will allow. Use a fine ground sea salt and a smidge of fine ground pepper to season (there's physics and chemistry involved here) and use as little canola or peanut oil as possible. Once you put the scallops in the pan, DO NOT MOVE THEM, that way they will crust. If the pan is hot enough, the scallops firm and fresh enough, and you are patient enough, even at home you should be able to get the right crust-to-doneness effect going on with enough practice. You can also use a bit of flour. Home cooks should never sell themselves short, it is usually merely a matter of equipment and ingredients.

Yeah right. Try meat foam with aerosol cheese, tomato and pickle essences, lettuce gelee and bun powder. Time to get hip people.

Yeah, right. More likely he's at the bar at Citronelle.

I never realized how much I look like Star Jones before. Why didn't any one tell me? Why?

What did you have before dinner?

Fortunately, I do not consider Ray's The Steaks, or myself, to be a part of the same industry or even in the same business as any other restaurant in the DC area. Nor does anyone else--not my clientele and not the public at large. So the reputation of DC restaurants and restaurateurs is safe from me and not likely to be damaged by anything I might have to say. As far as La La Land is concerned, we in this area, being so immersed in it, so much a part of it--so many power-disfigured Gollums slitheringly lusting after their Precioussss, so many Michael Jacksons-in-Red-Ties-and-Guccis staring in the empty mirror of enabled ego indulgence, so many suburban Warriors high on sucking the crack pipe of SUV exhaust--lose sight of what a distorted, twisted, corrupt, grotesque betrayal of decency and trust Washington represents to the rest of the country, and truly is. DC already is a La La Land, just a sick version of it. No, I can not tell you where that "area" is, but my guess is that it is as far from the priviledge troughs of Georgetown, Capitol Hill, K Street or Penn Quarter as possible.

I will go on record to say that no one works harder to offer gracious, generous genuine, giving hospitality. I will also say, with no shame, reservation or compunction, that I do everything possible to alienate assholes from ever coming into my restaurant. I work too hard and life is too short to deal with assholes--and there are oh so many of them out there--or to allow them to abuse my staff. Usually, the only people who have a problem with that are the assholes and I really don't care. The fact that they have computers and that Tom prints their idiocies also does not concern me. Have ketchup with your steak, your sauce on the side of your well-done filet, take all the pictures you want--I don't care. I'll serve whatever you want however you want, but I don't serve assholes.

Readers of today's chat will understand why as soon as my lease is up in Arlington I will be closing up shop and moving to an area where 1) people's jobs are not more important than their family, 2) people are not defined by their own sense of self-importance and 3) the assholes do not outnumber the decent people by a factor of 10-to-1. By the way, I have lost the reservation sheet for March 1, so anyone who does not call to confirm will not have a table. Don't bother coming in that night anyway since everyone who does will be personally treated like shit by me, the "operator." I'll be making a night of it.

Has got to be Ray's The Steaks. All the wine I can drink, plus...I'm wearing a hanger steak right now. Someone please come by tomorrow around 10 and knock on the window to wake me up so I can start getting ready again.

One wonders how long it will take for "LIMA-been" to become a synonym for passe, outdated or unfashionable.

5, 4, 3, 2, 1...

Pfft.

Or Aleksandar Hemon.

Guajillo is a very small restaurant, too, and dealing with unexpected influxes of guests--whether the restaurant is full or not--can be very disruptive and harmful to service and may force unwanted managerial difficulties upon them. They are not set up as a cash and carry bar, unlike Cafe Asia and Rhodeside Grill, and have their own pace and rhythm and staffing limitations. It's sort of the same reason that I don't do to go or patio service--the revenue is immaterial next to the harm it would to to my service and my operation. Also, pride. Every one has a right to be proud of what they do. Guajillo is a successful restaurant in its own right and they deserve to be proud of that. Being considered or treated as the lounge of a neighboring restaurant can certainly diminish that, maybe unfairly. Even though your point is valid, logical and well-made, and has much to agree with, we don't always react logically in such personally demanding and vested endeavors as running a restaurant.

Agreed. Guajillo can be a very fine restaurant in its own right, and more than deserves to stand on its own. At times they can be offended, and rightfully so, by the sense that they are used as our lounge even though many of the people who do so are their regulars as well whose enjoyment of Guajillo predates Ray's even being open. Their bar is worthy of a visit, many visits really, for some damn fine Tequilas and Margaritas, good food to match tasty beverages, and good people.

Edited for taste and privacy

And I can say that anyone resting on laurels never earned them. No Apollo, maybe a preening thief in stolen Hermes--at best. Once caught, my Daphne stays mine: All but the Nymph that should redress his wrong, Attend his passion and approve his song. Like Phoebus thus, acquiring unsought praise, He caught at love and filled his arms with bays. --Waller (Waller's other great poem, by the way, in case anyone's wondering what happened to the real me, is about a guy who desports himself wearing a girdle on his head--written in 1645!! "Ode to a Girdle"--"That which her slender waist confined/Shall now my joyful temples bind!")

Warning!! Disturbingly Sentimental and Truthful Post to Follow On Tuesday, September 11, 2001 I took a Red Line Train part of the way to 1725 Wilson Boulevard to a meeting that never took place. On Saturday, September 15, 2001 I saw 1725 Wilson Boulevard for the first time. On Monday, October 15, 2001 I gave my possibly future landlord a non-refundable $50,000 check, each dollar represented by a corresponding reactively protectively thickened skin layer on my kneecaps. On Thursday, November, 15 2001 I took possesion of the keys to 1725 Wilson Boulevard. On Wednesday, December 12, 2001 I began demolition. I could afford a plumber, an electrician, a painter, an exhaust hood, a grill, a range, and a single double-door refrigerator, and tongs. On an impossibly memory-lost day in either February or March, 2002, Ray's The Steaks served its first meal--a steak sandwich (yes, that is correct)--not necessarily to the public, though. On Sunday, October 6, 2002--some six months later--Ray's The Steaks became a Seven-Day-A-Week Restaurant (from six days a week, Monday through Saturday) in a desperate bid to stay afloat. The kitchen was me and a dishwasher to help, Monday through Saturday. Sundays I washed the dishes too. We did 35 covers that first Sunday (at that point we averaged 40 covers a night weeknights and 55 covers weekends) and I left two racks of glasses and one flat of silver for the dishwasher the next day. I left at 4 AM, too tired to even dream about the nanoLAB. On Sunday, June 29, 2003--nearly a full year and a half after opening, The Washington Post published its review of Ray's The Steaks, instituting a reign of incorrect-capitalization terror that plagues me to this day. On Tuesday, March 9, 2004, Mr. Chris Sadler begins a Ray's The Steaks thread on egullet.com, a fact unbeknownst to me as I did not have internet connection until June 2004. Also posting that day was Mr. John Wabeck, whose support was as close to love as any man has a right to feel--or at least that is how it felt at the time. On Monday May 31, 2004, after twenty months of seven-days-a-week, Ray's The Steaks became a Six-Day-A-Week Restaurant (Tuesday through Sunday), so I could spend Mondays with a girlfriend who, wisely but with some small regret, dumped me four bravely and gruelingly endured Mondays later. On Saturday, January 22, 2005 my dishwasher-cum-trusted assistant grilled his first shift at Ray's The Steaks. On Wednesday, February 15, 2006, I am planning my first putative trip further than a 45-minute drive from 1725 Wilson Boulevard, since well before this saga started, but am not really sure where to go or if I will actually be able to. Why indeed, Don, why indeed? Do you really think it's about cooking or showing up for work?

I think that no stronger proof of Don's argument exists than this. When a chef is present in his proudly eponymous restaurant, the mind reels at the greatness possible.

Next on Oprah..."A Million Little Cupcakes..."

Isn't that what the tree is for?

Even more so since it is not what I will be doing with seafood, but rather what magic Chef Michael Hartzer will be creating. The core values and principles, the tools and support, and encouragement and guidance, and some creative collaboration and inspiration will be coming from me, but I cede to a talent far greater than mine in Silver Spring. For those not familiar with Michael's work, read DR's Citronelle past postings or just ask Mark how lucky I am to be able to work with Michael.

What can I say, Don, you tickle me pink.

I would not get your hopes up yet...There may be some surprise 89th minute conceptual shifts, involving delay-causing custom hand-tooled Tuscan waterptoof leather, that can not be discussed here since any talk would fall victim to Don's newly-installed IAMLIT System (Integrated Anti-Michael Landrum Insta-delete Targeting System).

For some reason, I always enjoy the cakes and pastries and desserts at Firefly more than at any place. Not an argument about what's best, just what I find to be the most enjoyable and satisfying for their deliciousness and goodness. Never been dissapointed. Never a miss.