Sthitch

If it is Palena I will not be rushing there to relive some of the great meals that I have had because it would only remind me of how far it has fallen. A once great restaurant that unfortunately took a step too far and suffered for it.

Bollinger VV is still produced from ungrafted pre-phylloxera vines. Granted, it costs more than most people's monthly mortgage payments, but it is some ridiculously tasty juice.

I saw a bottle of Goyard a few years ago at K&L in San Francisco, they still have it in their system, but no inventory.

I take it this has nothing to do with Luna Grill in DuPont and Shirlington?

They just opened a second location in the bowels of Union Station.

Vino 50 Selections handles the wholesale in VA, DC, and Maryland so email andrew@vino50.com to find out who carries it.

That is because you have no in food or the company you chose to dine with. That sauce was one of the best elements of any dish last night and eating the shrimp wrapped in the fried purple basil leaf was sublime. On the other hand the inclusion of salt cod in with the clams was bizarre and salty to the point of unpleasantness it diminished a dish that was otherwise excellent. I do agree the duck pie was delicious, actually I believe that it is the best phyllo centric dish I have ever eaten. I recommend the gin lemonade as a great way to cool down after the trek from the Metro.

There has not been much chatter about Brian McBride's project, I wonder if this is it.

Fearing the legendary wait for wings, I ordered the Mandoo as an appetizer, the wings showed up first (about 5 minutes after ordering). The Mandoo were not bad, but I am not sure that I would order them again. I would have loved WiFi, AT&T had no data coverage inside of the restaurant.

I was always scared away from trying the Annandale Bon Chon by the stories of the woeful service and have not been looking for lunch anywhere near where the newer area locations so today was my first trip to Bon Chon. I have been pining for wings on par with what Christopher Willis was putting out at Posh so I was excited that Bon Chon was opening near by. I would not say that I was disappointed, but I was not wowed either. The skin was perfectly cooked, but I thought that the soy and garlic sauce didn't taste much like either soy or garlic. Also I found that the wings were too meaty, I know that this puts me in a small minority, but I like wings that are large enough that they can be fried until crisp without drying out the meat, but still small enough that with each bite you get meat and skin/sauce. The Bon Chon wings suffered from the second affliction. A good half of the meat on the drumettes was consumed without skin or sauce and it was quite bland on its own. I will give the spicy sauce a try next time, but I am still left craving for the Mad for Chicken wings - I noticed that the website has a place holder for Annandale so there may still be hope. I did not look at the beer list, but I noticed that they had growlers on hand.

Make sure to check the expiration dates.

It appears that it was was because it was adulterated pesticide contamination. http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/importrefusals/ir_detail.cfm?EntryId=101-3246851-3&DocId=1&LineId=1&SfxId=

The Bradlee Safway closes tomorrow. This afternoon it had the feel of a Brezhnev era Soviet grocery store.

Being a new restaurant I would give service lapses a pass (there were a few, but nothing that was too offensive, but there is no excuse for poorly prepared food and for the most part that is exactly what we received. I would not call the cooking that we experienced at Casa Luca last night to be a complete disaster, but it was close to it. We started with two of the bites, the Heirloom Tomato & Stracciatella and the “Cazzimperio.” The tomato was my favorite dish of the evening, but with the quality of products that they use it is hard to screw up a dish like this. The “Cazzimperio” was not nearly as successful. It came with a single cured anchovy sitting upon a bowl of raw vegetables and what was supposed to be an anchovy salsa verde. The salsa verde tasted like a nut free pesto with no hint of the advertised anchovy. These were followed up by the pasta dishes. The Scrippelle ‘Mbusse was certainly an interesting dish. While I enjoyed the first few bites and loved the texture of the crepe, I cannot see myself ordering this again. There was lemon zest and a smoky tasting pecorino hiding in the crepes that played well together, however when you also got a bite of the smoked ricotta the balance was lost and the dish tasted like an old ashtray smells. I was also a bit disappointed in the broth, for all the work that Joe describes it was remarkably devoid of flavor. The pasta in the Campanelle was perfectly prepared, but it otherwise fell flat. When I think of a funghetto I think of eggplant and tomatoes and that is exactly what the pasta was dressed with though a little too sweet for my taste and completely lacking the promised spiciness. I am not sure where the “Shellfish Brodetto” was hiding, but aside from two shrimp there was no sign of any shellfish. The two large head-on shrimp that I mentioned were interesting and I must commend the kitchen on achieving an interesting texture that would be repeated again in our final dish. I have cooked quite a bit of shrimp in my life and I have never figured out how to make edges of them develop the texture of wet bread. This brings us to our final dish of the evening, the Adriatic Style Mixed Grill of Fish & Shellfish. I would like to say something positive about this dish, umm… hmm… it looked nice, sorry that is all I have. The first two bites were the best; they were the grilled squid that had the texture and flavor of a well worn rubber band and an inoffensive mussel. Then came the clams. Oh dear lord, what did they do to these clams. It was as if they had died some days ago choking on a mouthful of sand. Two more of the shrimp complete with the aforementioned inventive cooking method. Both the monkfish and the scallops were so undercooked that the centers were still raw – there is a reason why you have never seen monkfish tail sashimi. The final piece of seafood was a perfectly cooked piece of branzino that was done in by a strong fishy taste. The night was saved by a decent bottle of Falanghina and an affable waiter that was the spitting image of Australian wine guru David Forziati. I will give them another chance, but when I do I will give the seafood a wide berth.

The only place that I have seen it cheaper is at Mitsuwa in NJ, but I have not really looked all that hard for a cheaper source.

I always get mine from Yakami Orchards via Amazon. http://www.amazon.com/Yakami-Orchard-Pure-Japanese-Juice/dp/B002ACC8II/ref=sr_1_1?s=grocery&ie=UTF8&qid=1373317790&sr=1-1&keywords=yuzu+juice Unless the bastard squirrels eat them all by fall I should have some in my backyard.

Dave, The Rieslings are all quite good, but I think that the wine that is the most fun is the "Good Karma" - well worth the $12 we picked it up for. One of the things that I really like about the Finger Lakes is that most of the winemakers realize that the climate that they have is attuned to Germany/Alsace and are keep true to that region. On our last trip there were several wine makers playing with Blaufränkisch, but I do not think that anyone did it as well as Red Tail did. While I think that the rose is slightly overpriced it is still a good fun wine that would be even better for $5 less (but there are few wines that would not improve with a lower sticker price ***cough <Virginia> cough*** If you go to one place to taste wine while you are in the Finger Lake region I would recommend Heart and Hand.

Well if you find one I would like to know about it. In my experience Heart and Hand is the only winery worth visiting on Cayuga.Between Cayuga and Seneca is Wagner - nice people making mediorce wines, I would not bother to return. If on the way to Heart and Hand you are thinking of stopping to get something to eat in the idyllic setting of Aurora (Also known as The Wonderful World of Pleasant Rowland), the only place that I could find that served anything decent was Dories.

For me the biggest is something that I am guilty of using in spoken dialogue and that is the use of the weaselly-ass phrase "I don't disagree".

Why? Not why did you order them (a simple well made hushpuppies are one of my favorite things on the planet), I want to know why the menu writer at Vermillion needed to preface hushpuppie with cornmeal - is there another kind of hushpuppie that I have been missing out on for all of these years?

Louis Lassen Charles Feltman Gennaro Lombardi Fannie Farmer

I made pesto out of the ones I picked up today. I used hazelnuts instead of pine nuts and it worked very well.

What kind of tonic? I have had it with Q, Fever Tree, and Fentimans - that is the order of preference for me, the Fentimans and the Malacca are just too medicinal together. Good luck on your day, here is to a happy ending

I think that you could say the same thing about the Americanized part of the menu at HKP or even the westernized portion of the Thai Golden menu. I can remember going into the Chinese restaurant near where I grew up and saw a Chinese family eating dishes that I could not match to anything on the menu. I am happy to see that there are now Chinese restaurants that are either offering a non-ized menu and offering it up in English. I just wish that my old stand-by did the same - they actually did pretty good Americanized Chinese - sadly they have long since closed.

Penn Yan Red Tail Ridge also puts out some damn fine wine.