Sthitch

Reading the last string of comments makes me wonder why it is so rare for service personal in restaurants to proactively engage a manager on the part of the customer. I have never worked in a restaurant so I certainly do not understand the working dynamics of a dining room, but I know that when there is a problem and a manager comes over to my table without be asked for it really smoothes things over rather quickly.

A tale of two dinners: At a dinner at Tosca my mother had to send her steak back for being undercooked (it was bleu and she wanted medium), right after the steak was returned the manager came over and to find out what the problem was and offered to have the other dishes taken back to the kitchen to be kept warm while it was refired. While we did not take him up on the offer it was a kind gesture. On the flip side, at Clyde's Mark Center I had to send back a piece of prime rib four times because it was cold and never once was a manager made aware of the situation. In this case he might have been able to ensure that cold meat was not sent out of the kitchen or that they had not decided to grill the piece to ensure it was warm, instead I have sworn off that location (and Clyde's for anything other than wings and oysters).

Is it usual to have such a poor working relationship between restaurant management and workers that they are afraid to interact with them on the customer's behalf?

Joe,

I have not been, but I hope this turns out better than your much anticipated Wegman's Thanksgiving dinner.

[Yes. You can attack the writing (*), but not the man. Stop, please.]

I just figured I would ask before I actually commented...

I know that he is a member here, so is making comments concerning his douchebaggery and evidently small penis size count as a personal attack?

Testing at the farm has found no evidence of the pathogen.

I love bean sprouts, not raw, but cooked - mung are fine, but I prefer soy.

Are we going to have a restaurant/dining problem? I knew August was the big month for euro vacations, but I somehow assumed that that didn't necessarily apply to the hospitality industry.

Yes, most of the country shuts down during August and you will have the honor of getting up close and personal with the many unwashed Germans that flock to the city during that month. One suggestion would be that if you are renting an apartment to use the bounty that you can find at the various markets to make your own dinners (apartments are far more affordable than hotels and I find they give an added amount of flexibility when it comes to dining).

Otherwise, I will give you an update in a little more than 3 weeks when I get back.

The Arlington location is now an independent shop called Bean Good and is being billed as a coffee pub.

I have gotten great deals at both the Fortessa Outlet and the Alexandria Crate and Barrel Outlet.

China Garden in Rosslyn would be my recommendation. They do not open until 11:00, but should be fine after 1:00.

I rarely eat lobster - too rubbery and either fishy or bland.

That is the perfect description of overcooked and/or old lobster. A lively lobster cooked just to the point where the meat starts to turn opaque produces meat that is sweet and tender (but it appears you now know that).

The Kremlinologist (or should I say Landrumologists) at Arlnow has been tracking construction of a new restaurant on Wilson Blvd and they are full of speculation. I guess I will have to watch the Ray's Hell Burger twitter feed to find out more (like just how delicious those Z Burgers are).

Same with roller coasters. Are there some that you actually have a bad time on? Even the really bad ones still make you think you're going to die on them. That's fun too. (And yes Joe, I do mean the ones you sell...)

Ride Cedar Point's Mean Streak and see if this statement still holds true, it is without a doubt the single worst roller coaster you will ever ride (and when you do bring a bottle of your favorite headache medicine, you will need it).

As far as dirty tanks go, I don't think it's fair to link Freddy's with the Chinatown dives and their nasty (sometimes dead) tilapia floating in cloudy water, so I'll go ahead and split this off into its own topic.

I am not the one that moved the original post to Freddy's, if you remember it was originally a response to the comment in the Shake Shack thread about the lobster truck... My only point was more of a general comment about live tanks not always being better than frozen.

Not a chef's table, but I think that Corduroy would be a nice place for such an event. Another option would be Marcel's.

Last week I saw on the new Gilt Taste site an article about “cured” asparagus. The author recommended sprinkling the asparagus with a 50/50 mix of sugar and salt and letting them cure for 15 minutes. I figured I would give it a try, however, my cooking method was a bit different. First I started with thick asparagus from the market, and peeled each of them. I tossed the stalks in a cook amount of the sugar/salt mixture to ensure decent coating, after about 15 minutes there was a nice amount of juice in the casserole that I was using to cure the stalks. I did not daintily wipe off each stalk, but instead rinsed them, then placed on a sheet pan, added a drizzle of olive oil and roasted at 350 for about 15 minutes.

Not drying them before putting them in the oven allowed them to gently steam, and the flavor was concentrated but with a nice hint of sweetness, a definite hit amongst the crowd I was cooking for. I am curious to see how well this works without peeling the stalks before curing.

I've never before seen a tuna tank. Can you really not tell the difference between fresh and frozen seafood?

My point is that frozen is not always inferior, it really depends on a number of factors. There are times when professional deep freezing is preferred over fresh, take for example salmon that is going to be being eaten raw, can you really tell me you want to eat the live parasites that are likely to inhabit the flesh? Is a dirty tank (visit almost any Chinese restaurant serving live seafood to see what I mean) preferable to properly cooked and then frozen?

... oh, wait a minute, it's the deep-frozen aspect of things that you must like. Never mind.

A bit off topic for this thread, but I must ask if you think that it would be better for them to competently cook freshly caught lobsters then deep frozen, or transport them in wet newspapers to be dropped into a sewage filled lobster tank where the crustaceans slowly starve and suffer from oxygen depletion amongst their clawed peers? Deep freezing seafood generally does not degrade its quality the same way as it does to say beef. Plus, I have never noticed you complain about eating previously frozen fatty tuna which is what you get at every sushi shop.

Japanese-style vending machines in food deserts that supply hormone-free milk and inexpensive bags of fresh carrots.

Screw the rabbit food, I want the true Japanese innovation, a beer vending machine, installed in my neighborhood.

I just got back from Australia a few weeks ago. We do not want to abolish tipping, trust me.

There is no tipping in Japan and without exception I have found the service there to be exemplary.

Theo Rutherford is heading to Fiola (I believe he starts this week) from Ripple to become Wine Director. Cleveland Park's loss is certainly Fiola's gain, congrats to Theo.

I was having dinner last week with one of the wholesalers that sells to Fiola, he told me that the original wine director was fired just before the restaurant opened. He was not sure why, but mentioned that the original guy made some really screwy buying decisions - like ordering 6 bottles of a wine he intended to serve by the glass.

I believe that area is actually Shaw. Here is a handy map of the neighborhoods.

And for the record, I would really like a Swampoodle listing...

Our Recorded Sound and Web Services folks are justifiably very proud of this launch; the interactive Book of Opera is especially impressive. Yay, team.

This is a wonderful, I do wish that some of the songs were available fully remastered (along with the original), I know I am asking for way too much, but a perfect example of this is the difference between an unremastered version of Jelly Roll Morton's "The Crave" and a remastered version.

Apparently Tim Carman thinks like Waitman, but I don't buy mediawhore = big fish. Yes Spike is recognizable but so what? The country is full of D-list celebrities who want to hang on to their 15 minutes of fame, Spike is just one among many. Spike panders to the media, the media gives him coverage, and voila, he's a big fish. That makes the media the determining factor of who's a big fish? So actual talent means nothing? Let that be a lesson to our children....mediawhoring makes you a big fish.

The problem I have with the whole Spike kerfuffle is not what he said or what he thinks of DC, but how obsessed a large portion of society has become with celebrityhood. Not that this is new, there was a reason why even during the depths of the Depression that the biggest stars drove bespoke Dusenbergs and Cords; however, it has risen to an obscene level in our current society as evident by the amount of time dedicated to hanging on every word of someone that owns hamburger shop.

This Spike person seems to be riding the wave of his appearance on one of the modern bloodless gladiatorial shows that pit competitors against one another in unrealistic contests to be judged with the modern Pollice Verso by those seated above them. Unlike the former days of actual blood sports even the losers attain a fawning cult following.