Sthitch

I think that I saw a dish at Seki that had it - it is what they use to ferment rice for sake.

Yes, the dumplings were the biggest let down of the meal, and made worse by having to wait so long for them (they were the last dish that arrived and did so after we had finished everything else). Not only do I prefer the way the lamb is cooked at Hunan Gate as opposed to HKP, but I also liked the balance of cumin to other flavors. This dish was really made by the addition of slightly cooked sweet onions, the slightly firm texture played off the meat, and the sweet balanced the heat. This was a great discovery because I may be spending quite a bit of August working across the street from the restaurant, and while there are plenty of restaurants in Ballston the picking for a decent and affordable lunch is sparse.

I cannot say enough good things about DVM's. To me my dogs are my very ill-behaved, yet incredibly lovable children. Like children they manage to hurt themselves in ever more creative ways or develop strange ailments (most likely caused by eating something elicit), but there is always a DVM that can figure out what is wrong without the patient telling them. In the last two years I have lost two very special dogs, one way too young to lung cancer and the other to a confluence of mega-esophagus and IBD and if it were not for the compassion of our vet I am not sure how we could have gotten through either of them. You are doing the Lord's work, thank you.

I generally go to the Penn Quarter branch of Rasika for lunch and grab it at the bar. The service is always fantastic and my latest visit was no exception. Surprisingly what was disappointing this time was the food. We started with the Palak Chaat, a dish that generally ranks along with Marcel's Boudin Blanc and Tom Power's bisques as the best dishes in the city, and it did not disappoint. A bargain? No, but even at $9 a bowl, I cannot help but going back for more. Unfortunately our other two dishes were not nearly as good. The Seekh Kabob disappointed in both flavor and texture. The only flavor that stuck with me was the spice in the meat and in the mint chutney. Both the meat and the chutney had a very similar heat profile, but were otherwise flavorless. The texture of the meat was of over-processed meatloaf. For $8 I could have done much better at any number of kabob shops in the suburbs. The Malai Shrimp Curry was a bowl of,turmeric laced bowl of coconut milk that was supposed to complement four farmed shrimp. In reality it only complemented the always well executed naan. My last few visits to Rasika has shown a steady drop in the quality of the food, not a dramatic shift, but defiantly downward. I hope that they can "right the ship" because when they are on they can put out some of the best tasting dishes in the city, but when they are off they are just a high priced curry house (with insanely good fried spinach).

I think that this is indeed news, but unless/until there is a conviction it deserves a passing mention in the police report not in the rather voyeuristic way that the Washingtonian presents it. My biggest issues with these types of stories is that if the accused ends up being cleared that gets just a passing mention but the initial story remains and does so without the context of the whole story. Don: I am rather perplexed by the last sentence.

The only agendas I harbor are for the elimination of the two greatest scourges on civilization since the Black Death, flip flops and auto-tune. This is at least the second post in a week where you have displayed quite a bit of bile towards him and demanded that he leave the city. Plus you have accused him of committing “MURDER” and taking a “kill shot”. There are plenty examples of restaurants that he has given great reviews to that failed, and those that he has given poor reviews to that have prospered or at least did not suffer from his attempted “murder” of them. As far as getting all of the facts, maybe you should have posted a link to the second tweet to make your case – personally I was using the evidence you provided and neither follow his tweets nor have any inclination to do so, but I have to wonder why you do follow him given that he causes you so much angst.

I am not sure how you can be sure that this is foreshadowing an upcoming review. Are you positive that he reviews every place where he dines? I highly doubt that is true. Plus you do not know the reasons behind the tweet, his prediction could be related to any number of factors that taken alone might spell doom for the restaurant but not for his review – such as the wrong location, food that is a little too avant-garde, prices that are out of whack, he dislikes the material used in the curtains, and so forth. Then again you could be correct, but it just really seems that this is just an excuse to vent your obvious hatred for Sietsema.

The hanger steak was very good, but I think that I might be over hanger steak at the moment – not sure why, I like the first and second bite, but after that I am just done. But those sweetbreads, I would go back just to have another order. The only other offal they have on the menu is a beef heart appetizer; I would love it if they had a grilled beef (or veal) liver as well. Be warned if you try to order one of the South American beers on the menu you will likely be out of luck. It took me 4 tries before I finally found one that they had in stock.

Didn't we eat hot pot there? I just remember it was a weird space.

It was not the cleanup that took so long, it was fighting with the county to make sure that they put safeguards in place to make sure that it never happens again. According to an Arlington Now article (which I really have no energy to even look for at the moment) the biggest issue was that the county only cleaned one of its main drains annually and this was what got clogged. They are now cleaning it quarterly. From that article it was clear that H/T was ready to just walk away from the site if the county did not cooperate.Edited to add that it was actually several articles at Arlington Now that explained the whole goat rodeo (just search on Harris Teeter at arlnow.com and you will find the articles)

What would call the awards? The Donnies or maybe the Rockies.

Other than one or two painfully slow cashiers, I have never had an issue with the service there, some of the cashiers can even be friendly (being an admitted misanthrope I do not care for this but my wife enjoys it).

We would bypass that and head over to the one on Duke Street because the Bradlee Giant was amongst the worst grocery stores that I have ever visited, it will not be missed - the nearby Safeway is only marginally better and that will soon close for a much needed renovation. I have been to the one in Vienna and liked it, but not enough to make a trip just to shop there. I am really looking forward to another option in the neighborhood.

Every time the smell of Beefeater hits my nose my jaw clinches up - memories of a horrible night of about 8 too many G&T's almost 30 years ago. I love gin, I just cannot get past the memory that the smell evokes. It and Sapphire (really, why not just order vodka) are the only two gins I will not allow in my house.

According to their Facebook page:

I have to disagree, from the get go I found the crust at Pete's to be more akin to cardboard than pizza dough (up thread I wrote as much). I had hoped that it was because the slices were reheated, but when I went back and had a full pie it was even worse. I look at Pete's and Taylor as the descendants of Armand's. When Armand's came to DC there were no Chicago deep dish pizza joints, but there were enough people from Chicago living in the area that pined it that Armand's had no problem attracting customers and expanding. So what Armand's did all those years ago for Chicago style pizza Pete's is doing for apizza and Taylor's is doing for hoagies. The problem is that Armand's never did make a very good deep dish pie and expansion just made it worse - I see a strong parallel in Pete's and Taylor. I don't mean to say that the intention of the people that started Pete's and Taylor was to make subpar food, actually I do believe that they really wanted to bring a taste of home to DC, but once they had this built in audience they exploited it (see Taylor's sneaking way of changing bread - and the sad excuse for a cheesesteak I had at Taylor Charles last week).

Next visit to the 'Burgh you might want to hit Spoon - not sure how the food is, but you will see a familiar face pouring you wine.

I am willing to bet that there will be no impact as I suspect that there is a very small intertwining of his readers and the people that La Tagliatella are targeting as customers. I believe that they are targeting people like Yelp user Danielle G. and those types of moronic reviews will have more impact on driving people to the restaurant than Sietsema's has on driving them away (fewer and smaller words versus thoughtful long form prose).

After reading that, I am not sure what justified the half star he gave it - he has given zero in the past and the one I remember was for Taverna Cretekou and I do not recall that being nearly as bad as this review.

I know that I have seen it, may be at a small wine shop, but try the importer: http://www.bwi-imports.com/where-to-buy.html

I bought a bottle in DC, either Ace or Macarthur. I would consider a generic citrus to mean lemon.

If you go to the Bargello you can see the two remaining competition panels for the commission of the doors. Ghibreti's winning example sits right next to Filippo Brunelleschi's entry. I would have hated to have had to judge the two, both are spectacular, but I believe that the judges made the right decision since the consolation prize for Brunelleschi was the commission to design the dome for the Duomo.

That is the first thing that jumped right out at me. As an aside the Christmas before last I ordered some Stichelton from Zingerman's to have Christmas morning. My mother-in-law decided that she wanted to have a blind tasting against regular Stilton to see if we could tell the difference. My wife's aunt brought the Stilton (I believe it was from either 24th Street Cheese or Cheese Plus in San Francisco). Because the cheese came from different size wheels I had my wife crumble them and place them in marked bowls (she noted which went into which bowl and tucked the note away). I portioned the cheese onto 6 identical plates using a ring mold to make each look consistent. Each plate was marked with a number on the bottom - one cheese went on the even numbers, the other on the odd. Finally when I was done my mother-in-law came in and moved the plates around into a different order and her sister then labeled each with a letter and brought them to the table. For scoring we each picked our three favorite, and then tried to guess which plates belonged together. The results: it was pretty much a tie, each received two first place votes and the Stilton had two more over-all votes. None of us could put all three plates together. While we all agreed we liked the idea of the Stichelton being made in the traditional manner, it did not justify the premium that it cost, so we are going to stick with the less expensive (though not cheap) Stilton.

I felt that way when I had to suffer through a performance by Lang Lang, it was not hard to see why some refer to him as Bang Bang.

Generally my first meal when arriving in Japan is at a small neighborhood izakaya. These intimate temples to drinking (mostly sake and beer) and serving food that is conducive to drinking and socializing are the perfect cure for the cobwebs of the flight and interminable train ride from Narita. Seeing too many Kushi’s of the world bastardizing the word “izakaya” I feared that Seki was going to do the same. Having Cizuka on the site helped to mollify those fears. So last night we finally made the trek to U St (by the way Don, it is more on the corner of V and 12th than V and 11th). Arriving a little before 6 I had no problem securing two seats at the bar. Waiting for my dining companion to arrive I ordered a very enjoyable Hitachino White Ale, pricy yes, but quite refreshing. I was debating whether to stick with beer or move onto sake, what I liked about Seki’s beverage list is that they have taken the time to explain the various types of sushi, shochu, and even the beers. This goes beyond just tasting notes that you might find on a wine list and actually details on what makes a sake a Daiginjo as opposed to just a Ginjo – this is a very helpful inclusionary addition that I have never seen any other Japanese restaurants take the time to do. Reading through the beverage list helped to pass the countless hours waiting for my dining companion to finally show up (he almost always has to wait for me, but I was hungry so the 10 minutes that I had to wait seemed like hours). We started by ordering 7 dishes, the Tako Wasabi, Saba, beef tongue, uni, ankimo, grilled fish cheeks, and shrimp/fish tempura (the last two were off of the specials list). The first dish to arrive was the Tako Wasabi. I searched through the thread and was surprised that no one had commented on this dish yet. This was the perfect start to the meal, the sweet heat of the wasabi opened up the senses and the contrasting viscous and chewy textures of the chopped raw octopus added a wonderful complexity to this dish. This acted as a wonderful amuse to the rest of our meal. The next dish to arrive was the Uni Starter. We sat pondering the best way to eat the dish so that we could take advantage of the raw quail egg in the bottom. At a loss for ideas we asked the waitress (not sure her name, but hard to miss the full sleeves of tattoos, more on her later) for some ideas. She said that she usually stirs up the yolk and adds a little soy sauce to it to use as a dip for the uni. We dumped out the uni onto another plate and did as she suggested. It was indeed a great idea, the uni was impeccably fresh with an almost candy like sweetness. In retrospect, I wish that they had served the yolk in a bowl on the side. While eating the uni, the House-Made Shime Saba and Ankimo showed up. Tardy Dining Companion (aka Eric) expected the saba to be a little closer to ceviche instead of cooking and overpowering the fish, instead the vinegar cure in the saba removed the oiliness that you expect from mackerel. What was left was a fresh tasting mackerel devoid of its usual gamey fishiness. The Ankimo was as I expected a piece of the foie gras of the sea. The vinaigrette was a brilliant match the bite of the yuzu acting as a foil to the fat of the liver, and the miso adding a wonderful savoriness that is usually absent from such fat heavy dishes. The tempura was the next arrival. What arrived was a plate of two long pieces of shrimp and three pieces of a butterflied fish (the name escapes me, but it might have been Mozu). The pieces were competently fried without being overly saturated with oil. Even with the bowl of dipping sauce the pieces desperately needed the macha salt – this is not a complaint, I have found that real tempura is never salted when it comes out of the frying and it is left to the diner to use the provided flavored salt to season to taste. The other special were the grilled cheeks of the fish that is used for the sashimi. Eric was a bit leery as a fishy smell arrived with the dish, however, the fishy flavor did not come across in any of the fish. What a great use of scraps. At this point there was a lull as we waited on our Beef Tongue, so we decided to order a few more things. Two of the items were off of the $5 sake accompaniment portion of the menu, they were the squid in liver sauce, and cured firecracker squid, the other dish was the Kurobuta Sausage. The squid in liver sauce was a polarizing dish. The liver sauce is very pungent, and after two bites Eric left the rest of the dish for me to finish. I am not saying that I would sit and eat bowl after bowl of this, but there was an almost blue cheese quality to the sauce that I found alluring. We had a dish similar to the firecracker squid at Daikya, but this was a far more generous portion and significantly less expensive without losing any quality or complexity. There was something of a citrus flower taste to the squid, like an orange blossom. Finally the Beef Tongue arrived. I liked the first piece, but that is about my limit for tongue. It was very tender and had a delicious flavor, but was incredibly rich. I am glad that the dish had not arrived earlier, it was so rich that I think that it would have made it difficult to eat much afterwards. While I liked the yuzu miso with the Akimo, in this dish I thought that it needed more yuzu and less miso to cut the richness. Our final dish was the Kurobuta Sausage. This is the one dish that I would not order again. The sausages were just too bland, and the mustard did not do enough to bring life to them. We were sitting next to the pass and saw some wonderful dishes go past. I made sure to take note of the dishes that looked like something I would want to order in the future. The wildest looking dish came up right as we were leaving; it was the fried baby octopus – whole baby octopi sitting along a rectangular plate as if they were swimming along in a straight line. I wish we had seen this dish earlier as we would have added an order to our dinner. The food was spirited, but at the same time simple. The atmosphere was spot on, quiet but not dead, restrained, but not colorless. The service was helpful, but not overbearing, the waitress with the colorful arms really knew the menu and made certain that our glasses were never empty. Seki is everything that I look for in an izakaya.